Tannen's tower rewrite

[Red]

In defense of the halflings, it was kinda all races that made the orcs pissed. Halflings were the worst, but no one gave any kindness to them.

[jaumito]

Nah, it's all the trolls' fault. They were the first ones to make lucky charms out of halfling body parts, and since halflings can't tell trolls and orcs apart...

Anyway, this who's-to-blame game is sorta pointless: just remember that the Trojan War, Dido's suicide, the Latium wars, the enmity between Rome and Carthage and the latter's destruction, can all be traced back to the gods agreeing on the fact that Eris was a party-pooper.

[Doctornull]

As for Zigur, here's the thing: basically every bad thing in the setting is due to either 1) Mages, or 2) Halflings.

(...)

It's pretty clear that the only reason that halfling woman is leading Zigur is that she's mad wizards muscled in on the halfling turf of ruining everything.

On one hand Zigur is made of violent fanatics. On the other hand, they didn't do anything so terrible as to make that list.

Nobody currently alive did anything so terrible as to make that list, so you might as well assign the Halfling half to Mystie the Zigot.

[Red]

Nobody's alive who's actually guilty, so let's blame someone who's guilty of other things. What a just system you've got there, Doctornull.

It's well estabilished that Zigur are fanatics and none moreso than their leader, but you can't blame everything on them. In fact, you can't blame much on them at all. They're responsible for mage burnings, real mages and imagined, as well as forcing the mages to stay in hiding, at least to some extent. Part of it is just how most people feel about mages.

But trolls eating people? Bandits in the woods? Necromancers plotting in towers? Corrupted forests and caves? Orcs invading from down below? Trees coming to life to attack people who enter their forest? A madman on a mountain sending storms to torment small towns? Cultists summoning demons? Sunwall being steadily overrun by orcs? Orcs not breeding properly? A minority of nagas trying to recreate the great flood? Demons invading on their own?

None of that is Zigur's fault. None of that is Angolwen's fault either, though a decent chunk of those threats are mage based, caused, or assisted.

[Dracos]

I believe the point to be pretty obvious:
If you blame the wizards of Angolowen for those issues that none of them (save Supreme Archmage whatever) were alive for, then you might as well blame the Zigur leader for all the halfling evils for which she wasn't alive. Otherwise, the entire 'wizards are responsible for horrible things' providing cause for present day hatred falls apart. You can acknowledge it as undeserved, much like the present day halflings probably don't deserve that the Orcs want them all to die horribly, but it's basically like deeming all sword holders to be genocidal world threats because the protagonist is carrying a sword, and well, that kind of looks close enough to bob carrying a sword.

Basically, for most people alive at the moment, the horrific evil of mages is at most a passed down story carried most heavily by vicious murder cultists, who themselves do evil things. There are mage terrorists, but they're currently subtle out of the way groups or lone madmen, something of less obvious danger than the roving bands of killers that will hunt you down for wearing a magic ring or the thieves that will kidnap you for money.

Zigur remains in a weird inconsistent place in lore. You'd think as a side effect of the whole ravenous mage killing post spellblaze that they'd basically have posts in almost every town, representing a significant and well respected place in social lore for focusing the defense against those evil mages. But they're not.

You'd think that if not, they'd at least be a big public area, driving a new age Live With Nature vibe or something and known to be a place of salvation to escape magic and its ways. But they're not. For all the lore saying they are great folks, magic users get no option to Repent and join the Zigur ways. You were born a Shalore? We must kill you. You have a magic rune on? Death to the monster! The Zigur village is even hidden for some reason, which doesn't make sense when the history is strongly saying that the last X many years has been Anti-magic ascendent. They're basically established as a hidden village that judges and executes folks in the shadows, separate from any government in the setting. Why don't they have the support lore would suggest? Why are they hidden at all in any route? Shouldn't the answer to the mage terrorists be: "We're a group of people that eat mages for breakfast, so do us a favor and charge into our fortified city of people that kill mages, so we can kill you sooner?"

A lot of their abilities aren't defined in a way that a peasant could distinguish between a Mage and a Zigurite. "Okay, so this guy made the ground shake and this guy made roots come out of the ground and grab everyone. So they're both mages right? And that guy is floating in midair with a glowing bubble around him? Not a mage? Really?" But they're supposed to be believable as leading the charge to root out magic? And the average uneducated acting Maj'eyal person is supposed to follow the differences?

For all their issues, they don't seem to have any problems with magic items being sold actively in literally every other town in the country. Despite the terrible spellblaze, we don't see arcane equipment relegated to the east and angolowen, or only buried in deep dungeons. We see it in every store save Zigur itself.

They're clearly not a losing side, because all the lore suggests that the riots nearly wiped out magic, but they're hardly cast as an in power, in public eye, or even a side confident in its own power, since they use some nature 'power' to hide their village.

Zigur doesn't get much historical blame since they're effectively a non-existent entity prior to the spell blaze, and then just a whole bunch of psions and nature 'unmages' somehow got together and formed an organization, complete with potions of anti-magic and initiation regiments that show you can murder a whole bunch of magical creatures. Then they go ahead and only change the world by roaming around and murdering random people. THey're not part of any social structure of the world, despite in theory being the Winning side of the post spellblaze history. They're basically ineffective cultural terrorists, because while they go around murdering those who disagree, they show no footholds of the rest of society accepting and playing along with staying rid of magic in present day.

[Red]

Actually, they were originally made a power by the dwarves. I just went through Reknor again and one of their notes mentions funding a small antimagic group, so they're the ones that made Zigur a credible threat rather than a bunch of impotent radicals. Well, maybe. Can't be sure, details were sparse.

As for Angolwen itself, that wasn't central to the issue. It was about magic and mages, not just the hidden city. In that big ol' list of issues on Eyal, Angolwen is to blame for about the same amount as Zigur. The main issue I have with Angolwen is there passivity-they have enough power to do a lot of good and they don't. I'm aware there are issues with helping people, but as Tannen himself shows, if you start small people trust you. Runes are damned useful, so if that's your public face, you can start building good relationships with people and dispel the magic=evil taboo. Angolwen outright forbids that.

The only one with a good excuse for not doing jack is Linaniil. I'm willing to believe she feels she has so much power that if she started interfering, she wouldn't stop until she "fixed" everything, and is afraid of becoming a tyrant. The other mages... They don't get that excuse. They never ate a god.

[Doctornull]

I believe the point to be pretty obvious:
If you blame the wizards of Angolowen for those issues that none of them (save Supreme Archmage whatever) were alive for, then you might as well blame the Zigur leader for all the halfling evils for which she wasn't alive. Otherwise, the entire 'wizards are responsible for horrible things' providing cause for present day hatred falls apart. You can acknowledge it as undeserved, much like the present day halflings probably don't deserve that the Orcs want them all to die horribly, but it's basically like deeming all sword holders to be genocidal world threats because the protagonist is carrying a sword, and well, that kind of looks close enough to bob carrying a sword.

You, sir, ought to win an award for reading comprehension.

They're clearly not a losing side, because all the lore suggests that the riots nearly wiped out magic, but they're hardly cast as an in power, in public eye, or even a side confident in its own power, since they use some nature 'power' to hide their village.

Well, hmm. The riots didn't wipe out the very public Brotherhood of Alchemists, and there sure seem to be a lot of mages wandering around needing to get escorted somewhere.

Zigur doesn't get much historical blame since they're effectively a non-existent entity prior to the spell blaze, and then just a whole bunch of psions and nature 'unmages' somehow got together and formed an organization, complete with potions of anti-magic and initiation regiments that show you can murder a whole bunch of magical creatures. Then they go ahead and only change the world by roaming around and murdering random people. THey're not part of any social structure of the world, despite in theory being the Winning side of the post spellblaze history. They're basically ineffective cultural terrorists, because while they go around murdering those who disagree, they show no footholds of the rest of society accepting and playing along with staying rid of magic in present day.

In my head-canon, the leadership of Zigur have sold out to a faction of horrors. Probably Oozing Horrors, but maybe others -- maybe some kind of fungal horror, too.

They don't act like a cultural force because what the horrors want isn't to celebrate Nature -- it's just to eat Arcane spellcasters.

IMHO this better fits Zigur's actual behavior.

[Red]

I believe that, due to the destruction magic has caused and continues to cause in Eyal, the majority of people have good reason to be afraid of magic. And people who are afraid are only a step away from people who are angry. While in many cases, the anger turning into violence is directed at the wrong people, hurting innocents instead of working against the truly evil mages, the core of the fear and anger is there for a good reason. The only flaw in the antimage sentiment of Eyal is how broad in scope it is, targeting everyone from mages who truly deserve to die for all the people they've killed and all the lives they've ruined to innocent people who are using their magic for good. If people were able to discriminate between mages who abuse their magic and mages who do not, then the antimage sentiment would have achieved its goal and be a force for good, working towards wiping out the people who have caused so many problems in Eyal.

Antimagic sentiment, that is, the belief that magic is an inherently corrupting force, is to my knowledge simply wrong. Magic is a tool and a very powerful tool, but it is no more corrupting than any other form of power. Linaniil, for all the mistakes she has made, is an excellent example of someone with ridiculous magical power who has not been corrupted, who still works her magic for good.

While I don't see any evidence that Zigur has been taken over by horrors, they are a radical, extremist group. Radical, extremist groups are pretty much always bad, and about the only way for them to be good is if they happen to be right, which Zigur isn't.

Zigur are part of the people-and I do say part, because many people clearly have a similar philosiphy, such as the people in Derth who specifcally ask after the people they know are not magic to save them from Urkis-who believe magic is an inherently corrupting force. That is, for lack of a better word at the moment, their culture, and they are the people who take it too far. If Eyal is in the Red Scare, Zigur is Senator McCarthy. Not a culture in and of themselves, but the worst and most polarized products of a much larger culture.

[HousePet]

[conspiracy]
Zigur was actually founded by the Conclave to research how to develop nature powers through mutations and other experiments.
[/conspiracy]

[Red]

On the one hand, there's absolutely no lore supporting that.

On the other, there's nothing against it...

Plus it might explain why they're so radically antimagic. The Higher, magicborn humans, used them and, like the Halflings to the Yeeks, used them cruelly, turning them against their masters and against magic. They studied their captors until one day they struck back, slaughtering their gaurds and researchers and escaping to found Zigur.

[Mankeli]

Ultimate evidence of mages' character:

There is an artifact belt named Neira's Memory in the game. However, the description of the item says that Linaniil wore this before the death of her sister Neira to shield herself from the fiery rains of the Spellblaze. Now, let me ask you a question: How come your belt that you wore before the death of your sister is named Neira's Memory? It's like you knew that your sister will soon be history.

Ergo: Linaniil murdered her young sister in cold blood so she could be the supreme ruler of mages one day. In Linaniil's mind, there just wasn't enough dead fantasy gods to eat for both of them. One of them had to go.

[Red]

Just read the bit of lore that goes over her death. It says that when the Spellblaze happened, Linaniil threw up a shield to save herself but could save no others, and her sister was slain by the arcane fires. She wakes up every morning to her sister's last screams.

Of course, this was written by Linaniil... Make your own judgements.

Though really, it seems like Linaniil is an honestly pretty good person. A bit too conservative, bit too cautious, but if you read Toknor's diaries you see she gladly came to the aid of the halflings against the orcs. I've seen nothing other than her amassing power to paint Linaniil as evil.

[Doctornull]

Ultimate evidence of mages' character:

There is an artifact belt named Neira's Memory in the game. However, the description of the item says that Linaniil wore this before the death of her sister Neira to shield herself from the fiery rains of the Spellblaze. Now, let me ask you a question: How come your belt that you wore before the death of your sister is named Neira's Memory? It's like you knew that your sister will soon be history.

Obviously when she ate the power of a fallen god, she gained the most broken spell in the game.

Rename Item.

[Red]

Kinda funny, to name a belt of powerful shielding after a person who's shields failed miserably and she died.

Funny and not exactly confidence-inspiring.

[grayswandir]

Kinda funny, to name a belt of powerful shielding after a person who's shields failed miserably and she died.

Funny and not exactly confidence-inspiring.

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing this at all. How does someone mourning for another decrease your confidence in them?