>> How do you connect that to their alleged failures as draconists?
> The dragonewts had been interested in guiding humans to dragonhood as they (the newts) knew it, and in Obduran they saw success. After Obduran's transformation, the EWF leaders began to depart from that path, probably to the bewilderment of the newts. When they saw only the equivalent of a rebirth as dinosaurs in the remaining participants of that experiment, they terminated both the experiment and its subjects. All that IMO, and of course the newts and their motivations are as unfathomable as the Ultimate, etc. - but this works for me.
My chief complaint is not with the meat of this theory (even if I disagreed violently with it, I can hardly rebut it) but with your unnecessary shoehorning the theory into a framework of mysticism and then concluding the EWF leaders were mystical failures. Your theory works fine without it.
Firstly, draconic magic is not mysticism. The Dragonewts of Dragon Pass use dragon magic towards a mystical end but I doubt that the Wyrms, the Dragonewts of Teleos or Ormsland are so inclined. There may be costs to not pursuing the mystical path, but I do not believe that not pursuing the mystical path turns you into a dinosaur. Most barbarian 'newts will just hit a wall.
So turning to the EWF, I prefer the position of the Dragon who said:
The fault of the Empire was not in the misue (sic) of its power but in misunderstanding it
Dragon Pass Rulebook p29
On the subject of failures, it only said that Ingolf failed and that neither Burin or Jagaran became True Dragons as Obduran had. Now there's more to the leadership of the EWF than just those three. There was the Dragon Sun who reappeared after his assassination at the Dragonkill War, Isangdrang, Lorenkartagan. That neither Burin or Jagaran became True Dragons doesn't mean that no other leader or member of the EWF did.
So what were Jagaran or Burin up to? I agree that the statement they did not become True Dragons implies they did not seek the mystical goal. But this does not mean they are failed mystics. They could have easily been boddhisvattvas following the example of the Inhuman King. That the Inhuman King later decided to have the EWF done in does not require that he considers them mystical failures, he could have decided that the damage they were causing to the World Dragon outweighed any advantage the success of their project would bring.
>> Not so. What it says was there was a schism between two draconic
>> powers (those who accepted Godunya's teachings and those who
>> rejected them) and that a true dragon came along and devoured the
>> rejectors.
> That's a compression of events (the assisted "utuma" of 1042 and the Dragonkill of 1120, both in a far away and insignificant country) in a similar way as the Sword Story is a compression of the slaying of Yelm and the Lightbringers' Quest.
You don't have the uncompressed sequence of events and a split in the EWF followed by the complete destruction of one fits neither the utuma of 1042 or the Dragonkill but the murders of 976 ST which Ingolf fled (p52 History of the Heortling Peoples). The Godunya and Ingolf are on opposite sides of a philosophical debate that ends in bloodshed is a lot more interesting to me than both Godunya and Ingolf make the same objective assessment about the fallen nature of the EWF. It should be possible for otherwise good gloranthans to draw differing conclusions about the same thing - having the EWF as a whole as an objective mystical failure removes that possibility and for what? Your theory doesn't require it.
>
>> That's quite different from the fall of the EWF. The
>> acceptors of Godunya's teachings cannot be the Dragonewts because
>> he's a human and they don't believe Kralori claims of being aided
>> by Dragons.
> The dragonewts have accepted that a human's path to true dragonhood cannot be through cycles of utuma and rebirth as with the newts. Anything Godunya has to teach to humans is unsuited for newts. No surprise here.
Except here the Dragonewts are making the judgement that the Kralori are liars or deluded. You allow their judgment to be mistaken or faulty when it comes to Kralorela but in the similar case of the EWF, the judgment of the Dragonewts becomes a statement of gloranthan truth. That doesn't seem to me to be very convincing.
>> So if the EWF are flawed because Godunya condemned half of them
> The other half being the Kralori?
No.
A schism between the two draconic powers grew confrontational until a true dragon was summoned,
which promptly devoured the part of the council that rejected Godunya's teachings.
Revealed Mythologies p83.
The council is the ruling council of Hemkarba. The other draconic power are the people who accepted Godunya's teachings. It seems that some members of the Council were persuaded before the True Dragon was summoned.
This can be worked into the following theory. Originally the Council stood alongside the Inhuman King in doctrine and practice. When Godunya appeared, the Council and the Inhuman King tried to kill him and suppress his teachings. As his teachings grew more popular, some members of the Council were persuaded while a True Dragon devoured the others in 976 ST. Among the dead was the Inhuman King. The New Inhuman King was still unreconciled to Godunya's teachings on the grounds they were for humans (and they could have even caused grave spiritual harm to the Dragonewts as per your theory) and decided to betray the Council in 1042 ST.
Now this may or may not be the correct sequence of events (there is a further event in Ingolf's Saga which could refer the slaughter of the council rather than the murders of 976 ST), but it is still more interesting and nuanced that the theory that the EWF were mystical failures, both the Inhuman King and Godunya objectively recognized this fact and dealt to the EWF as was necessary).
>> then isn't the Kralori Empire flawed because the Dragonewts don't
>> believe their claims?
> Did the Kralori claim to have been taught by dragonewts? I don't think so, Daruda came up with a different concept. The (early, at least) EWF explicitely sought the teachings of friendly newts.
And the later EWF according to Godunya accepted his teachings instead. If the Dragonewts betrayal of the EWF reflects the gloranthan fact they were mystical failures, then surely Kralorela should also be a mystical failure? Or perhaps it's just better just to junk the concept of mystical failure in analysing the EWF and analyse it in terms of political power struggles. After all, nobody wastes time deciding which side of a dart competition had the more orthodox interpretation of the Lunar War.
>
> Do you mean to say that the teachings of Shang-hsa-may-his-name-be-cursed are a valid path to dragonhood and only vilified by Godunya?
According to the Elder Secrets Book:
The strongest magic of the New Dragon's Ring grew more difficult for non-Kralori to invoke and then
disappeared, leaving only their False Draconic powers manifest.
p22 Elder Races Book
It's difficult to read that passage without the premise that the New Dragon's Ring *had* true dragonic powers at some point but were magically outmaneveured by the conservative Mandarins. Given that Mao Tzen's path was originally valid, I think that the Path of Immanent Mastery is valid Draconic Magic but that very few of its practitioners have any inclination towards mysticism. As a result they are not failures, they just haven't even started. Because of not-so ancient history, the other Sages show no mercy in slandering them left, right and centre.
>> But the text specifically says there "Ingolf squandered his powers
>> trying to help others" [History of the Heortling Peoples p51].
> Yes. That's what he did wrong, straying from the path of mystical self-advancement where he would have been in a state where that wouldn't have damaged him (or he wouldn't care any more).
I do not believe that using draconic powers to help others is an error nor is it an error to use such powers before one has achieved the appropriate status (ie boddhisvattvahood). The Dragonewts do not behave in such a way, buddhist heroes do not behave in such a way and so I think Ingolf's flaw was not they he used his powers in such a way but that he squandered his draconic selves to act in such a way. In other words, he lost control when invoking his draconic powers.
--Peter Metcalfe
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