Dragaera

Morollan's Memories (Was RE: City of Heroes and us)

Wed Mar 30 06:49:46 PST 2005

I think in regards to Paarfi's version vs. Vlad's version, Paarfi's has to 
be considered the more suspect.

Paarfi is a writer of historical fiction, and unfortunately history rarely 
provides events in the kind of tight packaging a novelist requires.  It is 
not uncommon in historical fiction to rearrange events, combine several 
people or the events that happened to several people into one individual or 
substitute a character in one location with a character in another for 
dramatic purposes.

In Paarfi's version, Morollan's arrival in the West is perfectly timed for 
the role he is to play in Paarfi's narrative.  If Morollan actually arrived 
earlier, and confronted Sethra before Zerika took her journey, it would 
make perfect sense for Sethra to send Morollan on the quest (especially if 
he already had Blackwand).  If the Count of Southmoor were the Dragonlord 
on the trip, as opposed to Kytraan, it would go a long way to explaining 
the friendship with Zerika that is observed in Vlad's accounts.  However it 
would not serve Paarfi's narrative well since after the mission history 
took Morollan away from the other participants: it would break up 
Morollan's story for no purpose and while that is good history, it is bad 
fiction.

I have no doubt that Kytraan (or the individuals that Kytraan represents in 
the story) joined Piro's band, but probably for reasons Paarfi did not find 
worthy of his history.  The offering of three counties to Morollan and then 
retracting them seemed a fairly weak bit of narrative; I think it more 
likely that Zerika offered the counties to earn the loyalty of some other 
Dragonlord (one who grew up in the West and would actually be impressed 
with their value) who played no part in Paarfi's story.

That's my conjecture,
Mark