davecake

It is very tempting to just leave this extremely frustrating discussion there. Of course you can construct a narrative in which a monstrously murderous tyrant like Sheng can be seen as more sympathetic. It has been done for every monstrously murderous tyrant in history. I have no idea why you wish to do so. It is far more interesting to take him as he is, a superhero who is willing to soak the earth in blood to accomplish his spiritual and cosmological goals.

It was published in Moon Rites. I have no special access, I just bought a copy of Moon Rites at the time. I tend to rate something that has been published to the public in any form more reliable on detail than things that never have. I have a copy of Missing Lands too. Of course, most of it is redundant after the Guide, but I find the fragments about Pamaltela useful. Mostly, that Sheng cares much less about Saird than the Heartland. His motivations in Dara Happa are mythic and horrific, his motivations in Saird are simpler and more traditional.

So, Greya’s earliest memory, and her entire childhood, takes place after Shengs conquest, and during his rule. Are we having this entire discussion because you are misremembering a key source? Are you misattributing the excesses of Shengs rule to the prior Lunar rulership, and the Lunar reconquest to Sheng?

The sources say they are subject to ritual humiliation, not torture and murder. They worship the earth deities etc. They are serfs, not prisoners - most of the days they just labour in the fields unmolested. I'm not saying that it is a great life, just that (unless you think the Yelmalio cult is heavily into rape and torture) clearly leading much better lives than under Sheng. No just an actively pursued program. HIs primary purpose is returning Peloria to effectively pre-Dawn conditions, destroying urban civilisation with it. Starving the Pelorians to death is just a necessary side effect that he is totally willing to accept. (that is, of course, me being generous to Sheng. We know he destroys the farms, and doesn;'t care that as a result everyone starves. Possibly it is not a side effect and he really enjoys it though). Nope. I think the Lunars are a harsh, unpleasant, invading force. I just think there is a big difference between conquering and subjugating, and wholesale depopulation and grotesque misery with a side order of murder and rape for no particular reason. The Lunars wish to conquer Sartar and are willing to use harsh methods to do so, Sheng wishes to depopulate and destroy the civilisation of Peloria, and is happy for that brutal process to be flavouored with an much rape and torture as his men find entertaining. It is no comparison, and I find the endless reaching to excuse it bizarre. Sheng turns river red with blood for no reason other than to attract attention, and you talk about normal this is, and how the real villains are the exarchs for not giving in to this tactic sooner. And then call me the spin doctor. I don't get it. What would Sheng have to have done before you actually back away from this extreme moral relativist argument of 'we just can't distinguish between the moral culpability of any state that has killed or oppressed anyone ever'. He has murdered people wholesale. He has deliberately caused the death of millions simply because they are inconvenient to his desire to destroy their civilisation. He sets his men up as roaming rape and murder squads, for no reason other than to keep people in desperate fear. Is there literally anything he could have done that would make you say he was actually a bit worse than the Empires he conquered?

7M members like Kangharl, as I said. Well, plenty have done so after taking a city etc, not many during mass humanitarian disasters years later. And not every looting is the Rape of Nanking. The implication in the Greya stories is that this is not advancing forces, or garrisons, and they are not uncaring - they care enough about the suffering of the people to deliberately increase it, via regular rape and murder tours.

Monty Python time - All things dull and ugly, All creatures short and squat, All things rude and nasty, The Creator made the lot. Each little snake that poisons, Each little wasp that stings, He made their brutish venom. He made their horrid wings. All things sick and cancerous, All evil great and small, All things foul and dangerous, The Creator made them all. Each nasty little hornet, Each beastly little squid-- Who made the spikey urchin? Who made the sharks? He did! All things scabbed and ulcerous, All pox both great and small, Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Creator made them all. I think that is fairly Vadeli. Except they are glib and charming, and very aware of the response they get from others, so such things happen mostly when no non-Vadeli are around. They believe that neither Good nor Evil is Logical, but there are many acts that they know others consider Evil and they quite enjoy.

As I just said. In the section titled 'Brithos in History', implying it is pretty late in the chronology - though, admittedly it says it was a few centuries before that. Still, seems later than the Tadenitit genocide. It could be clearer. Yes, there is a huge range of possible timing we could apply, but you went for the most extreme early timing possible to provoke a contrarian private theory. I'm not convinced. The description of the Vadeli in the Guide. I don't know if you consider the Guide Brithini propaganda - but yes, the Guide. Which, as I have said before in this conversation, literally reads like someone pulling all the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy out of a text book. And also, just to be clear, means they are Bad People. or pg 511 Is this whole argument because you didn't read the stuff about the Vadeli in the Guide and thought it was just my own private theories? Yes, the passage you were just quoting from in RM pg 25 is the source of "the flayed, yet still-living skins of his ancient foes" comment. It is not named as the Red Book, but the contents seem the same. If you think sociopathy, a slave empire, Chaos etc collectively constitute a 'slight' change. I don't. True. Possibly the race of master sorcerers famous for using sorcery in war instead chose to betray the Helerites using pudding or something. I don't know what you are trying to say here. I acknowledge that some elements of their depiction (living in ghettoes, for example, and the depiction of the Brown Vadeli as always greedy merchants) are unfortunate, and I think it is important to minimise those aspects of their depiction. That doesn't mean we should try to represent them as good guys, it means we should try to represent them as uniquely Gloranthan villains. We don't need to resort to anti-semitic tropes or sources in any way for the Vadeli. I think we have more than enough.

Maybe Orlanth is dead is assuming a Lunar quisling king like Kangharl? Or maybe the Red Cow have just done a much better job of laying in their own food stocks, and so have more leverage? To the Red Cow, the Lunars are mostly offering food to those willing to become lay members of the Seven Mothers, they definitely are using the crisis to proselytize - and it works to an extent. But they aren’t using it for political submission (members of 7M are still clan members). And, of course, we are comparing it to Sheng whose approach was to offer nothing, destroy or steal what little they had , so besides no food they also had no shelter and no fire. And still send rape and murder squads around.

It doesn't matter whether Marco Polo didn't know about Chinese literature, or was just silly enough to think it was the same as early medieval romance. The point I am making is it still makes 'random observations of Marco Polo' a vastly less fruitful and interesting resource for Fantasy China material than the great actual fantasy literature tradition from actual China. I am confused as to why you still feel the need to argue otherwise.

Comes across because the Kralorelans have had thousands of years of interpreting these early myths through their lens of wanting to make everything about dragons, and the East Isles have had thousands of years of interpreting these early myths through a more orthodox mysticism centric framework. They are, however, the same mythic entities. The Orlanthi Emperor myths come across as very different aspects of Yelm too, and Worlath is different to Orlanthi, and so on. Both are so distant from modern humanity the differences seem of practical importance only to advanced mystics - who would probably mostly argue that they were only artifacts of imperfect human perception anyway. Aren't we, in several cases here, literally talking about the same entities? Not in the least. With Vith etc, you are arguing directly that equivalencies we are told are widely known and accepted and there is significant evidence for, aren't really true, based on what I think are fairly disagreements about the nature of Gloranthan divine entities. With the Angen the Green we are talking very deep speculation about an entity we know almost nothing about, and I'm just saying one of the approximately three things we know about him doesn't support your theories much. Sure, he could be an elf or an earth deity based entirely on the word 'Green', but given the dearth of elf or earth deities in the various mysticism stories, it doesn't seem like the best fitted speculation. I can speculate with the best of them. But you have to weigh the arguments, and I still think this is weak - the coincidence of colours is one thing, but making a God of War a god of Peace is a stronger counter-argument. Plus we have no evidence anyone outside of Alkoth ever associates Tolat with any colour except Red. You have to imagine him unleashing Chaos on everyone in the Empire that isn't Lunar regularly, the way Sheng tries to turn the lives of everyone in the Empire that is not some form of Sun worshipper into a living hell. He does not. Again, you seeming to see things in a moral binary (as with Zzabur/Vadel), the Red Emperor does some awful things in the service of the state, but the majority of his citizens live relatively happy pleasant lives, and only experience the Imperial dark side if they try to rebel against imperial rule. Sheng tries to grind the lives of the majority if its citizenry into a torturous half existence, as deliberate policy. Only because he had already convinced his core followers to live lives of harsh discipline and unflinching loyalty, even when ordered to commit atrocities, voluntarily, and having them rape and loot served his purposes. I think the rest of the Tripolis does not condone the periodic Alkoth initiated civil wars and unrest, but reluctantly accepts it as a periodic disaster. But it is notable that even the worst tendencies of the Shargashi are still less horrific than Sheng - the Shargashi do not seem to actually want to smash the Darjiin civilian population into the stone age that way Sheng does. Every Ergeshi in Sun Dome County lives a life that would seem like a comparitive paradise to the life recorded for the civilians under Sheng in the Greya story. You get to live under a roof? Actually work in a farm and have enough regular food to still be a good healthy worker? Not deal with regular rape and murder squads? These literally are the things the freed Lunar populace are getting excited about in the story. Don't get me wrong, freedom is important. But Sheng denies them food and shelter, basically as much of Maslowes hierarchy as he can manage. I also think the Ergeshi are a lot happier than food trollking, not being considered food for a start. Worker trollkin, you could make a case, but even that would be pushing it, Well, not necessarily happy, but willing to make harsh decisions to survive. As Great Darkness survival stories go, it is about par for the course. Sure, because Sheng would have drastically reduced the population in both Empires, and killed pretty much everyone who wasn't a solar nomad, led by harsh ascetic demigods. None of those remaining people are going to want to return to a rich, flourishing, diverse happy civilisation, having never experienced anything like it. Plus, if any of them did express the idea that maybe agricultural civilisation has its virtues, a harsh ascetic demigod will probably rape or torture them then stab them in the neck. Or a zolathi will offer them to the sacrificial fires while still alive or something. Empires tend to allow disastrous things at their periphery - the Lunars are no different. Few attempt to gut and lay waste to their own richest assets. But if it helps, sure, you can imagine Sheng as being equivalent to, eg the Belgian Congo only he regards most of Peloria and Kralorela as the Congo. Or treating Peloria like the Khmer Rouge treated Cambodia. Or like Stalin creating the Holodomor. None of this makes Sheng look like anything other than a monster, you are just sort of weakly claiming 'other Empires did terrible things' - well, yes, but rarely approaching the scale, enthusiasm, deliberateness, malice and cruelty that Sheng pursued as explicit policy. Other Gloranthan historical Empires can rarely approach him on one aspect or the other, but none come close on all at once (eg Fonrit is also a cruel slave state, but it likes to keep everyone fed, and allows religious diversity, The Windstop is also a great famine and disaster, but not deliberate or extended. The Ergeshi are thralls, but allowed the normal comforts of civilisation if not freedom, and so on). Your case is weak. I have no idea why you want to rehabiliitate Sheng, when he is clearly portrayed as horrific for his acts in both Kralorela and Peloria, but it is extremely unconvincing. Windstop again. And this is where you seem to really explicitly be overstretching, because you are explicitly ignoring the bits that don't fit your thesis. No, the Lunars did not come around during the Windstop and destroy housing, destroy what little food producing facilities there are, and gratuitously rape or murdere everyone they could find. You are just making that up, to stretch a failing argument. The Empires actions are documented in detail in Eleven Lights etc, and they are very different - they offer food to the starving, they try as they can to recruit to the Lunar cause but by offering them hope, they generally allow the Orlanthi to gather in towns and villages, they did sometimes take food - because they hadn't planned it and were left largely short of food as well.

So, first, thank you for taking the time to write this, and include pertinent details of Hrestols saga. I appreciate it. I agree that the stories about Brithela from RM 25-26 are still canon - but very poorly reconciled with the stories of the Viymorni and Vadel earlier, and the stories of the Vadeli in the South, and some work on the contradictions there is still necessary. I do think you have the chronology wrong - for example, by that text, it seems fairly clear that Zzaburs creation of his great books, including his innovations in book binding, takes place long after the Vadeli are established enemies of his, probably in the Darkness era, and probably after the death of the Tadeniti, so your argument about flipping the causality of the Tadeniti genocide do not seem to stand up. And I still think you don't get the distinction between amorality, and even immorality, and sociopathy. Colonialism, or nationalist warfare, and slavery etc are practices that we now morally disapprove, absolutely, but normal, reasonable, people can be convinced en masse that such practices are normal and necessary (see also the Crimson Bat etc). Zzabur is certainly able to convince his allies that genocide of the Vadeli is a reasonable thing to attempt. But the Vadeli are explicitly, in the Guide, not just amoral, but a bunch of evil sociopaths. Zzabur and the Brithini pursue some brutal acts as a society because they (however dubious their justification) believed it necessary. The Vadeli likewise, but they also enjoy doing awful things at an individual level because they are awful, which is quite different. I do not, for example, think the Brithini have no empathy - they love their families and communities, and simply (like generations of racists and xenophobes before them) do not extend that empathy to the bulk of humanity. The Vadeli just lack empathy. I think their family relationships are cold and creepy, just like their relationships with everyone. The Brithini may not be honest - but I think the Vadeli lie when they can get away with it partly for the pleasure of lying, and because speech is a tool for manipulation by instinct. It is certainly possible, though the chronology seems wrong to me. But the skins of Zzabur's foes were *still living* - this is not simply about the best writing medium, it is creating magical books using the Energy of his foes to enhance it. We don't know exactly why Zzabur did this, but it seems more of a sorcerous act than a simple matter of writing, and using the sort of techniques that Zzabur himself only learnt initially via the Viymorni.

I think that while the majority of Genertelan ogres are descendants of Cacodemon, there are examples of ogres who are not, including the ogres in Gaumata's Vision. IMG, the majority of ogres in Genertela are descended from Cacodemon, but the majority of ogres in Pamaltela are descended from succubi. (also, while Cacodemon figures in there somewhere, the ogres who appear spontaneously in the Red Cow are descendants of Ragnaglar)

You continue to miss the point here - we think of epic high fantasy like wuxia as a 20th century phenomenon, but to the Chinese reading high fantasy novels for fun goes back centuries. Journey to the West for example, is not something people thought was history or even fantastic history, but a fantasy novel, read for pleasure. They actually had the real historical version of events for centuries when it was written, a whole big pagoda dedicated to the sutras and the history of how they came to China. I'm uninterested in bad Western fantasy takes on historical China because there is a huge vibrant tradition of fantasy there already that is a better source in just about every way.

And the Orlanthi don't know all the stories about Yelm, and the Malkioni don't know all the stories about Orlanth even though they acknowledge Worlath, and so on. The East Isles and Kralorela had the same Emperor then, but they've had a few thousand years to diverge, during which they the Kralorelans were biased towards dragonifying all their previous Emperors. Though I assume the Kralori have their own versions of some of those myths. We are talking Golden and Green Age cosmic entities here. If their cultural understanding did NOT diverge quite a bit, that would be unusual. A few stories unshared does not mean they are talking about meaningfully different entities. I do not think we should draw much significance to what mythic details we don't know. We know only a few paragraphs about Metsyla - the Kralorelans don't mention his origins, but that doesn't mean they don't know - at most it means they don't care enough to put it in a one paragraph summary. When in doubt, about anything to do with the Abzered era assume the Kralorelan answer is similar to the Eastern answer, but maybe they care a bit less. It is a good question. Angen the Green could be stretched to Alkor the Green I guess... but he seems to be a mystic, so not convinced by most of these theories. Very different, I think. Aptanace creates civilisation from an individual perspective, rather than a social one. I think Aptanace is a form of ancestor worship again, only now linked to professions, while Shavaya creates the law and the Empire. The Hsunchen are mortals, right? And they even practice Ancestor worship. Ebe is the reason they are part human. I think the civilisation part comes later - though possibly involving Aptanace who is just one divine generation down the line. I do not think that at all. It is not the standard Solar hierarchy way to rape and murder, or to cause massive famine deliberately. So deliberately pushing society bad to pre-Dawn levels, for personal power. Yes. Not very Solar to me. Sure, but Sheng would have turned up in the severe winter and destroyed your house, destroyed your farm, stolen your food and then raped every he could and murdered a few just to keep you afraid.

Well, Viymorn at least. I certainly think it would be good if the history of that region could be a bit more sorted. I do tend to think that very old Western sources that are not represented in the material that made it in to RM or MSE probably did not make it because Greg changed his mind - much as I would love to know more about them. Bul ultimately, even if the Vadeli are oppressed peoples pushed out by Brithini cultural aggression - they are still a race of sociopaths. They don't get to say it was Zzaburs fault that they committed genocide against the Tadeniti, or set up a massive slave Empire, or got really into Chaos magic.

Bolongo was one of the Witnesses and has a major part in the creation of the world as we know it (a bad part, but a part), so I think of him as very native. Of course, the Trickster who does bad things cooperates with enemies sometimes - just like Eurmal does, for example. I would say Sikkanos. Absolutely. It is also a universal aspect of Trickster. He does seem rather fond of it. Presumably of more significance than just a really creepy hobby. I think the 'book binding is really just a weird way of mask making so Zzabur is a kind of trickster' line of reasoning to be a real stretch though. He doesn't appear to be lying about much else. The Vadeli sure do bug him, though. I'm sticking with my own theory about why, though - the Vadeli are the only people that he can't logically refute, and it drives him crazy. That most of their magic and power comes from disobeying him and going to forbidden places and learning forbidden things must also really bug him,.

It is a historical nomenclature problem from back when we only knew about Prax and Sartar, and so the only Agimori anyone knew were the one Praxian tribe. I generally refer to the unusual Agimori who make up the Praxian tribe as the Men-And-A-Half, and they differ from mainstream Agimori significantly. But they aren't the Agi, who are mythic beings.

You don't understand the difference between sociopathy and amorality. Zzabur is largely amoral, at least with regards to non-Brithini, but does not come across as a sociopath. He is not particularly manipulative or deceitful, he is not impulsive, he preaches responsibility and care in your actions.

I do not think the Agimori/Men-and-a-half are non-human, just humans significantly altered by long term magic.

The Vadeli are cursed because they are sociopaths and nihilists. Some of them survived Zzaburs - but none of the yellow or blue vadeli, and I do not think that is a coincidence - Zzabur tried to destroy them all, but prioritised destroying their leadership, and that may be a specific curse than simple targetting.

He has some remarkable qualities, but I don't think admiration is the term I would use. This is very much like saying Stalin is an anti-fascist hero during WW2, after the Holodomor. I mean, sure he murdered millions through an intentional famine (hey, just like Sheng!), sure he viciously purged thousands (hey, just like Sheng!), but we have a mutual enemy. Sheng also murdered thousands in cold blood just to provoke a response from the Exarchs. When literally the best thing you can say about Sheng as a ruler is that he tortures because he genuinely believes that enduring torture has spiritual value, that is pretty damn bad. The excerpt from the story of Greya Two-Eyes, written by Greg, excerpted in Moon Rites has details about life in Peloria under Sheng when describing her childhood. It talks about her eating centipedes, leaves and cockroaches out of starvation (she is not breast fed because her mother is also starving and has no milk). The 'demons' who are Sheng's troops come around regularly to rape all the women they can find, and murder those who resist - Greya is hidden (buried with only her nose out of the dirt, then covered with boards and weeds) and so not raped that time (her mother is raped and her aunt killed), but is raped by the nomads later in her life. They are able to save her the first time because the rape and murders are not a surprise, but a regular expected thing. The famine is mostly because Sheng has basically destroyed all the farms, because he hates agriculture. Though his men do also steal what other food they can find. That is life under Sheng. He may be an anti-Lunar hero, but he is also a monster.

I think to the deep sorcerous world view of the Vadeli, this isn't that much different. They understand that deities are just abstract energy clusters, that acquire any concept of personality etc through magical interaction with mortals. Well, I've literally not seen anything written about the Vadeli to suggest they are misunderstood. This the description of the Vadeli from the Guide if you can find much positive about the Vadeli in there, please talk them up. But that is pretty much just someone listing the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy, only a little worse. I don't think there is any evidence to suggest this, rather than Zzabur doing so later during the war period. But even if it was so, the Vadeli would still be sociopaths, practicing genocide to spite Zzabur.

I think Bolongo is a native Pamaltelan Trickster.

The universe can have different opinions to the Vadeli. This really the same idea that if ogres find cannibalism to be fine, why are they evil just for thinking other people are food animals? I don't think acts such as rape, torture, etc can be dismissed as being without moral weight, there are limits to the moral relativism of the Gloranthan magical world. And something being taboo or wicked it not the same as not doing it - I think the Vadeli feel the same visceral response of something being taboo that normal humans do at incest, torture, sadism etc - they just find the taboo nature adds to the excitement, they are entirely without empathy, and have convinced themselves that there are no real logical consequences to giving in to such indulgences in regard to other, lesser, humans if you can do so. Basically a lot of serial killer type psychology among the Vadeli.

I think the Vadeli of Chir would have looked at the Belgian Congo and nodded approvingly. I think they are culturally nihilists, more or less. They cooperate with one another out of a combination of a need to maintain immortality, familiarity and shared background, and a sort of cultural game theory that says they need to punish one another for major transgressions. They don't need to justify acts against non-Vadeli by anything other than personal benefit, and a shared agreement that the course of action is logical.