Dragaera

Kelly (long) was Re: the next vlad book?

Wed Jul 17 17:42:08 PDT 2002

Matthew Hunter wrote:
-snip-

>  
> Steve, I'm curious how much you agree with Kelly vs Vlad in terms
> of the "movement".  In particular, Vlad is pretty harsh with some
> of his accusations, and there seems to be some truth to his
> comments about the "movement" not caring about individuals --
> especially when viewed together with historical implementations
> of similar philosophies.
> 
> (Plus, I'd like to share a chuckle at the exchange between
> Noish-pa and Vlad:
> "What is the word?"
> "Friends?  Compatriots?"
> clearly a reference to "Comrades!")
> 

Is that the cue for my anti-kelly rant?

Of all the characters in the books Kelly is the one most in need of a 
good slapping.

Why? Well he is a well read, highly intelligent individual who 
understands social systems quite well, but for some reason is completely 
unable to see why his marxist revolution is doomed to failure.

Doomed? Yes. Basically for two reasons, they are out resourced, and, 
more importantly, the do not have a stanglehold on providing the means 
of production.

If it came down to a revolt, I really don't think that Kelly's gang 
stand a chance. Fundamentally thay lack the magical resources to 
seriously challenge the current hierarchy. Yes they "Held" south 
adhrilanka. But when they come up against a Dragon Army, with Sethra, 
Morrolan , Aliera  and a cohort of Athyra battle wizards how long do you
give them? Whe have seen in Dragon how nessacary it is to have your own 
wizards to defend, lest you get slaughtered. And Morralan, Aleria et al 
are going to be Untouchable by your average Tekla, unless someone takes 
down there protective spell. It will be like Infrantry armed with swords
taking on tanks.

On the meta-physical side of things. In order to achieve Kellys stated 
goal of taking down the cycle he will have to, IMHO, attack on both the
mudane and meta-physical levels. ( I belive that he may have to send 
people through the paths of the dead to physically destroy the cycle 
there, though this is just conjecture ). Anyway the gods are clearly 
against him, well at least some of them.

Finally, there is Zerika. At the moment, or at least as far as we know, 
I feel she has prevented a complete slaughter of the rebels, firstly 
cause it would disrupt the empire far too much and secondly because I 
don't think she wants to kill a lot of people ( Kelly I believe does not 
seem to share that concern ).  But at the end of the day, if the empire 
is threatened, she will and she has the orb.
This is something that I have often considered. How powerful is the orb.
We know that every citizen of Dragaera has a link to the Orb, Vlad uses 
it to tell the time, and it is also the source of power for sorcery.
But the question is if every citizen can access the Ord, can that link 
operate in reverse, and what exactly can it do? How could that link be 
used by the establishment to defeat the revolution. Of course they could 
sever there links to the Orb, but that puts them at a severe 
disadvantage magically.


Secondly, and this is much more interesting, lets look at the social 
situation in Dragaera it self.

We are post Integrum, when magic is at the strongest it has ever been. 
Sorcerers, even those that aren't particalary good, can teleport them 
selves arround, a thing that even great wizards did not seemed to achive 
before, or if they did they weren't telling :). Revivication is 
possible, something that seems to have been unthought of before.

So how does this effect the role of the working class, Tekla and 
Eastener. In brief , Welcome to the Industrial Revelotion. Even Kelly 
realises this. We see that people are becoming unemployed, more  and 
more, in the services industry as the Middle/Higher classes choose to 
use magic rather than servants to do things. So what would happen if 
there was a revolt. If the crops needed to be delivered or harvested and 
the traditional suppliers of that labour, refused or weren't there to do 
it. Would this accellerate the erosion of the working classes 
traditional roles in society. And also would it generate a lack of trust
between classes that could cause the Upper classes to prefer to use 
magic rather than servants out of distrust, this has happened before ( 
see TPG ), except without the magic bit, but back then they couldn't 
replace the Tekla on the farms and in most of the industry, now I 
believe they can, and in some ways this is already happening.

All I can see happening is Kelly accellerating the Teklas displacement 
>from they traditional occupations in the empire and getting a lot of 
people dead, unless he creates an alliance with some other, better 
resourced, external power. The Eastern Kingdoms, maybe, but I can't see
Feudal lords being all too keen on Kelly's republic either, after all it
might give their subjects ideas. The Jenoine? He wouldn't, would he?

Anyways sorry for the long rant, but he profoundly irritates me.

Andrew.