Without weighing in on any particular theory (I'm not up to Fonrit yet in the Guide beyond gathering notes) and without looking at my notes, it is entirely possible that Jraktal is a divine/chaotic being that takes the magical energy from something else, AND Jraktal's worshipers get some small portion of what is fed to Jraktal.
I don't think Jraktal is Unliving, like Nontraya or that Western philosophical construct, the Living Dead.
> FWIW I think that Tapping was invented by Zzabur to regenerate the
> Cosmos after the Great Darkness so it would be slightly difficult for
> the Vadeli to give the Fonritans tap magic in the Storm Age - what
> Revealed Mythologies speaks about Energy Prisons and Energy Combat
> Magics, not Tap spells.
Tap is a principle, not a spell per se. The Brithini and the Vadeli were far better at understanding the subtleties of magical energy than the mortal Malkioni (although the God Learners probably came close and their grimoires likely have some of the same).
>
> > But I think the Fonritians have managed to think of plenty of Bad Shit
> > of their own. Basing your entire cosmology on slavery, and so on.
>
> The Fonritan slave cosmology is little different than the Islamic notion
> that one should submit to the Will of God and all that and is not bad
> shit in and of itself. Chattel slavery which the Fonritans also
> practice is bad shit but is not a necessary part of their cosmology.
>
Not quite. Islam involves a "voluntary submission to God" (we can argue elsewhere how "voluntary" that submission is). Fonritan Ompalamism would view that as pathetically naive - we are all slaves, whether we acknowledge it or not. The soul is the slave of the body. Everything in this world has something it *shall* and *must* submit to, whether it wants to or not. Even the gods are slaves of Ompalam, or to use barbaric terminology, of Arachne Solara and the Great Compromise.
But I agree, in and of itself, that cosmology is not "bad shit". It is largely common-place observations about the world very forcefully made. Of course fire submits to water and water in turn submits to air. I could imagine we could run wild with Hegelian dialectics and Nietzsche's moral interpretation of phenomena.
That being said, it is very easy to see lots and lots of "bad shit" in Fonrit. And more recently, they got to have the Vadeli as teachers, which can't be good.
Jeff
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