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[Let's Read] Dragonlance: Towers of High Sorcery
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 7885818" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter Three: Gods & the Orders</strong></p><p></p><p>This chapter’s a bit poorly titled; it implies that it covers the relationship between the deities of Dragonlance and the Orders. While this part is true, it’s more like <em>The Gods, and also the Orders</em> in terms of subject matter in that we cover subjects of a secular nature as well: the history of arcane magic in Ansalon and Conclave politics.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>The Gods of Magic & Role of the Other Gods in Magic</strong></p><p></p><p>I’m combining these two sections into one due to related material. We first cover the three gods of magic. Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari are also the same names for the three moons in the sky and have an intrinsic connection, although more in a sense of “Apollo is the god of the sun” rather than “Apollo <em>is</em> the sun.” They have less of a hostile status between each other than the traditional good/neutral/evil divide of their divine peers; more of a rivalry than a blood feud. Individual members of the Orders do come into conflict, but the Orders and their patrons’ uniting cause is the promotion and regulation of magic. When primal sorcery ran wild in the Age of Dreams, the Orders figured that pooling their resources for these overarching goals but otherwise remaining autonomous was an ideal compromise. But the return of primal sorcery in the Age of Mortals is straining the Orders’ once-strong bonds on how to handle the increasing number of spontaneous magic users.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/nH1211r.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Solinari’s Ideology</strong> promotes the use of magic for the public good along with caring for those unable to help themselves. During the rise of the Kingpriest it appears that anti-arcane sentiment was not limited to just Istar’s government, for Solinari was trying to convince the other Gods of Good that they should not fear those who practiced it and was one of the few among their number to view the rise of the Kingpriest as a bad thing.</p><p></p><p>Wait, hold on a second here. The Kingpriest’s anti-magic purges were something the good-aligned deities agreed with, and not one of the reasons for why they brought about the Cataclysm?! Was their breaking point the anti-kender laws or the mind-reading secret police or something?</p><p></p><p>In spite of his “magic for all” ideology, Solinari’s limits are reached when it comes to primal sorcery, viewing magic which cannot be regulated by the Orders as a force that can destroy the world. But he views Nuitari’s advocation of Sorcerer genocide as going too far. As a result, the White Robes heavily encourage sorcerers to join the Orders as equals. Supposedly that is; Solinari is getting along with his evil brother due to a shared distrust of sorcerers.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/uDpS96t.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Lunitari’s Ideology</strong> is more -freespirited than her two brothers and views all forms of rules and regulations with suspicion, which makes me wonder why she agreed to the creation of the Orders in the first place. She and the Red Robes view magic as a means of self-empowerment, and that its study should be encouraged in all its forms as a means of furthering this. She and the Red Robes are also the most tolerant of sorcerers, and Lunitari has been known on a few rare occasions to manifest in front of a primal magic user just to ask them questions and develop research rather than for the purposes of conversion. She takes a hands-off approach and even encourages sorcerers and wizards to cooperate, but if primal magic users ever made their own equivalent Orders then she is in agreement with Nuitari that they should be crushed.</p><p></p><p>So much for the Tolerant Middle.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/MT3XSY6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Nuitari’s Ideology</strong> encourages magic as self-empowerment like Lunitari, but also to use that power to dominate others. They obey the bureaucracy of the Orders and Conclave in a “strength in numbers” way given the many centuries of anti-magic sentiment which threatens them all. Nuitari is on particularly poor terms with the divine evil gods on account that Takhisis has a track record of stealing magical power for herself; both in the creation of her own order of the Gray Robes and with the theft of the world during the Chaos War. But he’s encouraged the spread of arcane magic among the minotaur race in spite of their cultural distrust, viewing them as the next rising superpower on Krynn.</p><p></p><p>Nuitari has found new reasons to bond with his good-aligned sibling due to sharing a distrust of primal sorcery; like Solinari he believes that they may destroy the world if left unchecked, but he encourages his Black Robes to murder sorcerers where they can rather than attempt to recruit them. Lunitari just looks at her brothers and goes “you both are crazy.”</p><p></p><p>So how do the <strong>Other Gods</strong> view and approach arcane magic? Well they mostly take a hands-off approach, using their own divine magic to control and regulate their followers. This was different during the rise of Istar during the Age of Might, where the good-aligned gods minus Solinari gave the Kingpriest their blessings to limit the power and influence of the Orders due to a belief in the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” when it came to arcane magic. Even up to and including state-sanctioned violence.</p><p></p><p>The gods of magic were <em><strong>quite rightfully pissed off</strong></em> at the Gods of Light for being hypocritical bastards, but their protests fell on deaf ears. The Black Robes and a sizeable amount of Red Robes suggested an eye for an eye to show the Kingpriest that they’re not to be trifled with, although the White Robes realized that they will not win against Istar long-term and sought a possible compromise/ceasefire. A ceasefire which in the next chapter we find out was sabotaged by a Black Robe assassination attempt (see Istar: the Bloody-Fingered Hand entry).</p><p></p><p>Eventually the rest of the pantheon realized that granting legitimacy to the Kingpriest’s government was a terrible idea, and eventually set in the biblical signs which led to the Cataclysm. The gods withdrew from the world afterwards, save the three Gods of Magic who really had nothing to atone for when it came to Istar’s rise. After the rest of the pantheon returned to the world during the War of the Lance they adopted a more respectful yet arm’s-length attitude towards the Orders, not eager to repeat the mistakes of the past.</p><p></p><p>There’s no mention of how the Neutral pantheon felt about Istar’s policies. The evil gods were no doubt opposed, although in the sense that they were the ones whose worshipers were suffering the most at the Kingpriest’s hands.</p><p></p><p>Takhisis is the major exception to the arcane-divine divide. Nuitari being her son, she initially thought he’d be loyal to her upon his birth and resented the fact that he kept the powers of the Black Robes under his exclusive thumb all these millennia. She decided that she would create her own order of wizards shortly before the Fifth Age. Takhisis’ Gray Robes were a new subsection of her new knightly order, using a cosmic magical loophole to grant them arcane magic directly while also subtly recruiting from the Black Robes. The Gods of Magic, Nuitari in particular, were angry at the usurpation of their power, but their demands for punishing Takhisis were put on hold when Chaos broke out of the Graygem and all hell broke loose. She took the world and hid it from the other gods in the confusion, and for a time was Krynn’s only true deity. But a lot of stuff happened in the War of Souls novels: she died, Paladine became mortal, and now the Gray Robes and the Knights of Takhisis (now the Knights of Neraka) are a godless, secular order yet still potent in the magical arts.</p><p></p><p>So long story short, the Gods of Good and the Gods of Magic are power-hungry hypocrites who talk a big game about ideals but throw that all out when a possible threat to their status quo arises.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>History of High Sorcery</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/PT1TpM7.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Age of Starbirth:</strong> The mortal races did not exist yet, and the gods were fashioning the very fabric of the void into reality. The sparks from Reorx’s forge created the stars which contained spirits. The gods warred over these potential new spirits and what to do with them, and as a compromise the spirits were fashioned into mortal bodies (good gods) with free will (neutral) but would sicken, age, and die (evil so that they can be tempted). The three moons were placed into the heavens so that the Gods of Magic would look down upon the world. The Graygem held a bit of Chaos, the primordial entity which existed before time and space had meaning, and was secreted away within Lunitari’s moon in an attempt to calm the raging entity.</p><p></p><p><strong>Age of Dreams:</strong> the only known magic was divine magic, and the elves and ogres received many blessings. The humans, children of the neutral gods, were exploited by the others because the neutral gods withheld their magic for unknown reasons. The gnomes built a spaceship to Lunitari and ended up taking the Graygem down to Krynn to harness as a power source but ended up breaking it. The primordial energy spawned and twisted life all over Krynn, giving birth to new races as well as primal sorcery which until now only dragons could manipulate. The gnomes tried to hunt down the now-mobile Graygem which wreaked havoc all over the place, but the few hunters were warped into the first non-dragon primal magic users and became the Scions. Spontaneous displays of sorcery began to spring up among the other races.</p><p></p><p>The elves got tired of humans and ogres and colonized a forest filled with dragons. Neither side was eager to live alongside each other and they ended up in a war. The three Gods of Magic shown dreams to the elves of how to create five magic runestones* to end the First Dragon War, absorbing the dragons’ spirits into the stones and burying them deep within the mountains.</p><p></p><p>*If you think these sound like the Dragon Orbs, they’re not. These won’t be invented until the Third Dragon War.</p><p></p><p>The dwarves dug too deep and rediscovered the runes, letting out the spirits which returned to the dragons’ bodies. The dragons declared war against the elves again with the aid of ogres and lizardfolk, with both sides making use of sorcery in the Second Dragon War. The all-out arcane warfare rent such massive devastation to the land that the Gods of Magic gathered up the three greatest sorcerers in a citadel and cast them into the Beyond. Vowing to never let such a catastrophe happen again, the Gods of Magic worked with the sorcerers in the citadel in finding ways of reshaping Primal Sorcery into safer conduits. And here the seeds of the Orders of High Sorcery were planted, philosophical ideals and scholarly workings penned down for future generations known as the Foundations of Magic. They spread their findings among trusted members of the mortal races and constructed the Towers of High Sorcery, working together to learn and control arcane magic.</p><p></p><p>The Third Dragon War came when Takhisis decided to lead the chromatic dragon clans in conquering Ansalon. This was an age of myths and legends, when a brash upstart Red Robe named Magius and a promising young knight named Huma went on an epic fantasy RPG journey to defeat Takhisis with the aid of the newly-forged Dragonlances. The Orders were not slacking off during this time, and the entire Conclave participated in a ritual to create the Dragon Orbs based off of elven magic blueprints. Each Tower thus had its own orb to safeguard after the war ended.</p><p></p><p><strong>Age of Might:</strong> Takhisis was slain by Huma and Krynn was at peace. The empires of the elves, Solamnia, and Ergoth were fading in comparison to the rise of Istar, which would soon grow to be the American Evangelical Christian version of Lawful Good: preaching a lot about holiness but acting like hypocritical Lawful Evil jerks. The Kingpriests were so obsessed with wiping evil from the world that they enforced more and more oppressive laws: making even neutral-aligned faiths illegal, enslaving and genociding entire races which had “fallen from the Light,” declaring kender inherently evil and offering bounties for their deaths and capture, and the belief that the Orders’ vaunted self-regulation wasn’t enough when arcane magic could be potentially learned by anybody without the aid of a god.</p><p></p><p>With the blessings of the Gods of Light and the unknown sabotaging of the Towers’ various groves, Istar’s armies besieged the Towers. During this time wizards were hunted down and murdered all over the Empire. The Orders’ headquarters were forced back to the Tower of Wayreth at the southwest end of the continent, the only Tower which remained standing. It turned out that a crafty Black Robe archwizard named Fistandantilus revealed to the Kingpriest that he helped sabotage the Tower groves so that he’d be the greatest remaining mage on Krynn, and that he should be appointed as a governmental advisor due to the great boon he granted to the unwitting Kingpriest. Despite being very, very obviously Evil, the Kingpriest agreed…but only because he wanted to keep and eye on him and not because this is an obvious political power grab! The Kingpriest is still Lawful Good, guys, Paladine still granted him spellcasting ability up to the time when-</p><p></p><p>naughty word it, there’s really no justification for this. The Gods of Light are hypocritical bastards.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Age of Despair:</strong> Eventually the Gods of Light came to see reason when the Kingpriest started appointing secret police with mind-reading magic items to arrest people who were so much as thinking naughty thoughts. But even after rapturing up the few genuine Clerics left, Istar’s populace was still loyal to the Kingpriest. So arrogant was he that he eventually tried to command and enslave the gods themselves because he thought that he could do a better job at fighting evil than they can. The gods sent their answer with a giant meteor smack-dab in Istar’s capital, which would affect the rest of Krynn irreversibly.</p><p></p><p>Everything sucked during this age. The majority of the populace (quite rightly) were angered at the untold suffering and genocide that the gods brought about during Istar’s reign, and also the giant frickin’ meteor which plunged most of the eastern continent underwater and the ensuing geo-political struggles which followed. The loss of divine magic hurt even more when injuries and plagues grew out of control.</p><p></p><p>The wizards saw things differently. Many were also resentful, but the three moons still hung above, still channeling arcane magic to Order members with the movement of celestial bodies. The gods they served never left them unlike the rest of the pantheon. Things still weren’t easy; many people still hated and feared wizards due to Istaran cultural holdovers, and being the sole spellcasters left on Krynn made people even more fearful of their power. The loss of four Towers severely impacted their ability to find prospective mages, set up academies, hunt renegades, and conduct research. The rise of the Dragon Empire in eastern Ansalon spooked the Red and White Orders, and the Black Robes entered into a secret alliance with the Dragonarmies and much of their number departed from the Tower of Wayreth. The leader of the White Robes sought to create a living magical superweapon by finding a candidate whose power would be refined via a magical forging of the soul.</p><p></p><p>That superweapon’s name?</p><p></p><p>Raistlin Majere.</p><p></p><p><strong>Age of Mortals:</strong> This is the Age at which most Dragonlance fans declared the setting RUINED FOREVER. The Graygem broke open, unleashing Chaos into the world. All of the gods banded together to unite their mortal forces against this threat to all reality, and the Knights of Takhisis were formed as the evil counterpart to the Solamnic Knights. Takhisis formed the Order of Gray Robes as part of this knighthood, who quickly took over much of the continent during and after the Chaos War. While the rest of the gods were recuperating, Takhisis stole the world. By cutting off Krynn from the moons and the rest of the gods, this made her the sole deity who can grant both arcane and divine spells...of a prepared nature. Sorcerers were the only group that remained unbound to her dominion. During this time countless wizards resorted to draining magic items of their power to “recharge” their daily spells without the conduit of the moons, and some tried to become primal sorcerers to varying degrees of success. Palin Majere would go on to found a formal order for primal sorcerers. The Wizards of High Sorcery fell into such desperate measures that the Conclave “permanently” disbanded as an organizational body.</p><p></p><p>Things would get back to relative normalcy after Weis and Hickman released the War of Souls book series and the surviving members of the Heroes of the Lance went on an adventure which brought the gods back through time travel and other shenanigans. Takhisis ended up getting killed by Paladine for causing this whole mess in the first place; but Paladine made himself mortal to “preserve the balance.” The three Gods of Magic reformed the Orders and Conclave, but have a lot of work to do in regaining what they lost. Mistress Jenna of Palanthas, the head of the Red Robes, also became Master of the reformed Conclave <em>and</em> Master of the Tower of Wayreth in a clear violation of the checks and balances vital to reasonable limits on governmental power. But everyone seems fine with that for now. Given Solinari and Nuitari’s fledgling anti-sorcerer bromance and how mean and petty the non-neutral alignments are in Dragonlance, this may be the least of all evils.</p><p></p><p>Oh, if you’re wondering whether or not the Wizards destroyed the primal sorcery academy, it was already destroyed earlier by Beryllinthranox, one of the five alien mega-dragons whose plane of existence ended up adjacent to Krynn when Takhisis stole the world.</p><p></p><p>The Fifth Age was <strong>weird,</strong> man.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>Structure & Rules of the Conclave</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/4xhywLH.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>The Towers were regional affairs, and the Orders were divided by philosophy, but some universal body had to unite them all. The Conclave, a council of 21 divided by 7 mages of each Order, make decisions by majority vote on issues which can affect all member wizards across Ansalon. Their votes determine the selection of the Masters of the Towers, and the Master of each of the three Orders is drawn from someone serving on the Conclave. Unlike the Masters of the Tower, the Masters of the Orders can still sit on the Conclave and the three can cast tie-breaking votes and make decisions on behalf of their fellow Order Conclave members voting-wise when others cannot attend. And of those three Order Masters, one can become the Head of the Conclave who acts as a final arbiter and whose position is held for life barring gross incompetence, defying the result of a Conclave vote, or other reasons that demand the Head’s immediate removal. It’s not mentioned if there are term limits or how long a Conclave seat is held for non-Heads in this case.</p><p></p><p>Each Order has its own means of determining from among the Conclave seats who should be their Master. The White Robes are naive in the ways of politics and trust that their number will make the right decision when all options and points of view are presented in an open and honest manner. The Red Robes, much like their patron, aren’t exactly fond of bureaucratic red tape and determine their Master by drawing lots from among the seven Conclave members. The Black Robes hold secret competitions among their own which are usually dangerous wizard duels.</p><p></p><p>Not gonna lie, I kind of like how none of the Orders’ methods guard against magical or political corruption, and only the White Robes’ system has any means of selecting someone with a skill set based on good governing skills. Reminds me of the <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo" target="_blank">engineers and woo phenomenon.</a></p><p></p><p>Conclave meetings are commonly held at dates when at least one of three moons is in High Sanction, although emergency meetings can be convened in times of crisis. And meetings range on all manner of topics that can conceivably affect the Wizards of High Sorcery or arcane magic in general: assignment of funds to research projects, how to best combat threats to the Orders, and so on. The Conclave also has a Council of Three which are tasked with running the day-to-day activities of individual towers. Wouldn’t this be the job of a Master of a Tower?</p><p></p><p>Beyond this, we have a section on what happens to people who break the laws of High Sorcery and common punishments. Every wizard who passes their Test is instructed on the details of said laws, but mentors of apprentices are expected to integrate these rules into their lessons over time. The Conclave has created many regulations and is responsible for voting on the severity of punishment, but a few most pertinent to PC wizards are listed along with general levels of severity:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><br /> [li]Using magic for common entertainment purposes is frowned upon because it gives the impression that magic is a silly, frivolous thing among the general public rather than something to fear and respect.[/li]<br /> [li]Using magic to to duplicate, create, or destroy fiat currency is banned, for it can exacerbate economic problems and gives governments a good excuse to punish, oppress, and regulate wizards.[/li]<br /> [li]Leaking confidential plans of the Orders to organizations outside High Sorcery is treated as treason/spying and punished just as harshly.[/li]<br /> [li]Wizards must abide by the rulings of the Conclave and senior Order members, even if they voted against a Conclave measure.[/li]<br /> [li]Activities of renegade mages must be reported to an appropriate authority figure within the Orders.[/li]<br /> [li]The Towers are neutral ground for all Order members. Acts of theft, violence, and similar acts on Tower grounds is punishable by varying degrees of severity.[/li]<br /> [li]Altering the foundational blocks of magic and creation is expressly forbidden unless permission is granted by the Conclave to do so.[/li]</li> </ul><p></p><p>Misdemeanors and first-time offenders with a good track record are given a warning. More serious offenses or repeat ones will be met with a higher-ranking member of the Order, who threatens that their organization will punish them if they do not stop or make amends. Said mage is then secretly monitored by Order members to the best of their ability. More serious incidents and/or rule-breaking caught by said surveillance have more serious punishments which tend to differ by Order:</p><p></p><p>White Robes either imprison offenders in a building designed to hold dangerous spellcasters or exiles them from the Order. In the latter case the wizard must either join the Red or Black robes or end up a renegade.</p><p></p><p>Red Robes do the same thing, but in some rare cases before exile ask the prisoner if they wish to consent to enchantment magic. This will alter their mental state so as to make them incapable of repeating the criminal activities. This violation of free will is so abhorrent to so many Red Robes that this is rarely used. But I’d like to mention that they’re the only Order which does this “mental behavioral therapy,” so this free will ideal kind of falls flat on its face.</p><p></p><p>Black Robes rarely police their own unless a Conclave vote forces their hand. In such a case they apprehend said member and subject them to torture as a deterrence method against causing the Order such an inconvenience.</p><p></p><p>Serious repeat offenders are apprehended and brought before the Conclave itself, while mages whose crimes involve some harm directed to a Conclave member or to magical development on a large scale never even get a trial: they end up mysteriously disappearing and are never heard from again.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>Stat Blocks and Template</strong></p><p></p><p>Scattered throughout this chapter are stat blocks for notable mages throughout Ansalon’s history. We have Fistandantilus, who is an epic-level Black Robe wizard who specializes in necromancy magic; Magius is a 14th-level Red Robe wizard at the height of his power and heavily focuses on evocation and transmutation spells; Mistress Jenna of Palanthas is a 17th-level Red Robe wizard with levels in Spell Broker and has just about every item creation feat of note.</p><p></p><p>Finally we have the Master of the Tower template, which grants several powerful abilities as long as they remain within the Tower grounds: the ability to prepare spells from 3 cleric domains thematic to the Tower as arcane spells, automatically learning Time Reaver and the spell which grants safe passage through the Tower’s outer defenses, bonuses on Spellcraft checks and research time for putting new spells into their spellbook, and Spell Resistance of 10 + half their total levels in arcane magic classes (rounded down).</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far:</strong> I admit that I’m not entirely fond of this chapter. The explanation on Conclave politics is very in-depth but I cannot see it mattering in most epic high fantasy stories that Dragonlance encourages. I can see it as an offbeat adventure where the PCs have to grease the dysfunctional wheels of mage politics to unite the wizards against some greater threat, or get a sentence cleared for their wizard ally on trial. The Gods of Goods’ sanctioning of the Kingpriest’s purges was not something other sourcebooks talked about, so I do not know how canon is this part. But it really makes Paladine and company look bad, which even with the Cataclysm is saying something.</p><p></p><p>The Gods of Magic’s anti-sorcerer bias is understandable given the devastation of the First Dragon War, but treating all of them as walking time bombs who need to be exterminated or kept under heel is likely to exacerbate a potential war. Solinari and Nuitari finding common ground while their neutral sister shakes their heads shows how self-serving the gods can be.</p><p></p><p>On the one hand, I don’t think that having hypocritical deities and organizations falling short of their ideals is a bad thing in fictional worlds. There’s a bit of dramatic irony in the wizards oppressing sorcerers using the very same talking points the Kingpriests used against the Orders, which sadly has historical precedent in our own world. However, Dragonlance’s black and white cosmic morality (and by extension the rest of D&D) with clear lines drawn in the battle between good and evil runs up hard against this and leaves me shaking my head.</p><p></p><p>I felt that the history of magic veered too hard at times into unrelated material which sought to set up the backdrop of various Ages, but the core and setting books for the respective eras already cover these parts. I do like how the Conclave and the Orders have differing and sometimes arbitrary methods of resolution for various things; flaws in the system make for good role-play and believable conflict, and shows that just because people are smart in a nerdy area doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be rational, reasonable, or skilled at governance.</p><p></p><p><strong>Join us next time in Chapter Four as we get detailed write-ups on the five Towers of High Sorcery and other notable magical fortresses and academies of Ansalon!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 7885818, member: 6750502"] [CENTER][B]Chapter Three: Gods & the Orders[/B][/CENTER] This chapter’s a bit poorly titled; it implies that it covers the relationship between the deities of Dragonlance and the Orders. While this part is true, it’s more like [I]The Gods, and also the Orders[/I] in terms of subject matter in that we cover subjects of a secular nature as well: the history of arcane magic in Ansalon and Conclave politics. [CENTER][B]The Gods of Magic & Role of the Other Gods in Magic[/B][/CENTER] I’m combining these two sections into one due to related material. We first cover the three gods of magic. Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari are also the same names for the three moons in the sky and have an intrinsic connection, although more in a sense of “Apollo is the god of the sun” rather than “Apollo [I]is[/I] the sun.” They have less of a hostile status between each other than the traditional good/neutral/evil divide of their divine peers; more of a rivalry than a blood feud. Individual members of the Orders do come into conflict, but the Orders and their patrons’ uniting cause is the promotion and regulation of magic. When primal sorcery ran wild in the Age of Dreams, the Orders figured that pooling their resources for these overarching goals but otherwise remaining autonomous was an ideal compromise. But the return of primal sorcery in the Age of Mortals is straining the Orders’ once-strong bonds on how to handle the increasing number of spontaneous magic users. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/nH1211r.jpg[/IMG] [B]Solinari’s Ideology[/B] promotes the use of magic for the public good along with caring for those unable to help themselves. During the rise of the Kingpriest it appears that anti-arcane sentiment was not limited to just Istar’s government, for Solinari was trying to convince the other Gods of Good that they should not fear those who practiced it and was one of the few among their number to view the rise of the Kingpriest as a bad thing. Wait, hold on a second here. The Kingpriest’s anti-magic purges were something the good-aligned deities agreed with, and not one of the reasons for why they brought about the Cataclysm?! Was their breaking point the anti-kender laws or the mind-reading secret police or something? In spite of his “magic for all” ideology, Solinari’s limits are reached when it comes to primal sorcery, viewing magic which cannot be regulated by the Orders as a force that can destroy the world. But he views Nuitari’s advocation of Sorcerer genocide as going too far. As a result, the White Robes heavily encourage sorcerers to join the Orders as equals. Supposedly that is; Solinari is getting along with his evil brother due to a shared distrust of sorcerers. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/uDpS96t.jpg[/IMG] [B]Lunitari’s Ideology[/B] is more -freespirited than her two brothers and views all forms of rules and regulations with suspicion, which makes me wonder why she agreed to the creation of the Orders in the first place. She and the Red Robes view magic as a means of self-empowerment, and that its study should be encouraged in all its forms as a means of furthering this. She and the Red Robes are also the most tolerant of sorcerers, and Lunitari has been known on a few rare occasions to manifest in front of a primal magic user just to ask them questions and develop research rather than for the purposes of conversion. She takes a hands-off approach and even encourages sorcerers and wizards to cooperate, but if primal magic users ever made their own equivalent Orders then she is in agreement with Nuitari that they should be crushed. So much for the Tolerant Middle. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/MT3XSY6.jpg[/IMG] [B]Nuitari’s Ideology[/B] encourages magic as self-empowerment like Lunitari, but also to use that power to dominate others. They obey the bureaucracy of the Orders and Conclave in a “strength in numbers” way given the many centuries of anti-magic sentiment which threatens them all. Nuitari is on particularly poor terms with the divine evil gods on account that Takhisis has a track record of stealing magical power for herself; both in the creation of her own order of the Gray Robes and with the theft of the world during the Chaos War. But he’s encouraged the spread of arcane magic among the minotaur race in spite of their cultural distrust, viewing them as the next rising superpower on Krynn. Nuitari has found new reasons to bond with his good-aligned sibling due to sharing a distrust of primal sorcery; like Solinari he believes that they may destroy the world if left unchecked, but he encourages his Black Robes to murder sorcerers where they can rather than attempt to recruit them. Lunitari just looks at her brothers and goes “you both are crazy.” So how do the [B]Other Gods[/B] view and approach arcane magic? Well they mostly take a hands-off approach, using their own divine magic to control and regulate their followers. This was different during the rise of Istar during the Age of Might, where the good-aligned gods minus Solinari gave the Kingpriest their blessings to limit the power and influence of the Orders due to a belief in the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” when it came to arcane magic. Even up to and including state-sanctioned violence. The gods of magic were [I][B]quite rightfully pissed off[/B][/I] at the Gods of Light for being hypocritical bastards, but their protests fell on deaf ears. The Black Robes and a sizeable amount of Red Robes suggested an eye for an eye to show the Kingpriest that they’re not to be trifled with, although the White Robes realized that they will not win against Istar long-term and sought a possible compromise/ceasefire. A ceasefire which in the next chapter we find out was sabotaged by a Black Robe assassination attempt (see Istar: the Bloody-Fingered Hand entry). Eventually the rest of the pantheon realized that granting legitimacy to the Kingpriest’s government was a terrible idea, and eventually set in the biblical signs which led to the Cataclysm. The gods withdrew from the world afterwards, save the three Gods of Magic who really had nothing to atone for when it came to Istar’s rise. After the rest of the pantheon returned to the world during the War of the Lance they adopted a more respectful yet arm’s-length attitude towards the Orders, not eager to repeat the mistakes of the past. There’s no mention of how the Neutral pantheon felt about Istar’s policies. The evil gods were no doubt opposed, although in the sense that they were the ones whose worshipers were suffering the most at the Kingpriest’s hands. Takhisis is the major exception to the arcane-divine divide. Nuitari being her son, she initially thought he’d be loyal to her upon his birth and resented the fact that he kept the powers of the Black Robes under his exclusive thumb all these millennia. She decided that she would create her own order of wizards shortly before the Fifth Age. Takhisis’ Gray Robes were a new subsection of her new knightly order, using a cosmic magical loophole to grant them arcane magic directly while also subtly recruiting from the Black Robes. The Gods of Magic, Nuitari in particular, were angry at the usurpation of their power, but their demands for punishing Takhisis were put on hold when Chaos broke out of the Graygem and all hell broke loose. She took the world and hid it from the other gods in the confusion, and for a time was Krynn’s only true deity. But a lot of stuff happened in the War of Souls novels: she died, Paladine became mortal, and now the Gray Robes and the Knights of Takhisis (now the Knights of Neraka) are a godless, secular order yet still potent in the magical arts. So long story short, the Gods of Good and the Gods of Magic are power-hungry hypocrites who talk a big game about ideals but throw that all out when a possible threat to their status quo arises. [CENTER][B]History of High Sorcery[/B] [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/PT1TpM7.png[/IMG][/CENTER] [B]Age of Starbirth:[/B] The mortal races did not exist yet, and the gods were fashioning the very fabric of the void into reality. The sparks from Reorx’s forge created the stars which contained spirits. The gods warred over these potential new spirits and what to do with them, and as a compromise the spirits were fashioned into mortal bodies (good gods) with free will (neutral) but would sicken, age, and die (evil so that they can be tempted). The three moons were placed into the heavens so that the Gods of Magic would look down upon the world. The Graygem held a bit of Chaos, the primordial entity which existed before time and space had meaning, and was secreted away within Lunitari’s moon in an attempt to calm the raging entity. [B]Age of Dreams:[/B] the only known magic was divine magic, and the elves and ogres received many blessings. The humans, children of the neutral gods, were exploited by the others because the neutral gods withheld their magic for unknown reasons. The gnomes built a spaceship to Lunitari and ended up taking the Graygem down to Krynn to harness as a power source but ended up breaking it. The primordial energy spawned and twisted life all over Krynn, giving birth to new races as well as primal sorcery which until now only dragons could manipulate. The gnomes tried to hunt down the now-mobile Graygem which wreaked havoc all over the place, but the few hunters were warped into the first non-dragon primal magic users and became the Scions. Spontaneous displays of sorcery began to spring up among the other races. The elves got tired of humans and ogres and colonized a forest filled with dragons. Neither side was eager to live alongside each other and they ended up in a war. The three Gods of Magic shown dreams to the elves of how to create five magic runestones* to end the First Dragon War, absorbing the dragons’ spirits into the stones and burying them deep within the mountains. *If you think these sound like the Dragon Orbs, they’re not. These won’t be invented until the Third Dragon War. The dwarves dug too deep and rediscovered the runes, letting out the spirits which returned to the dragons’ bodies. The dragons declared war against the elves again with the aid of ogres and lizardfolk, with both sides making use of sorcery in the Second Dragon War. The all-out arcane warfare rent such massive devastation to the land that the Gods of Magic gathered up the three greatest sorcerers in a citadel and cast them into the Beyond. Vowing to never let such a catastrophe happen again, the Gods of Magic worked with the sorcerers in the citadel in finding ways of reshaping Primal Sorcery into safer conduits. And here the seeds of the Orders of High Sorcery were planted, philosophical ideals and scholarly workings penned down for future generations known as the Foundations of Magic. They spread their findings among trusted members of the mortal races and constructed the Towers of High Sorcery, working together to learn and control arcane magic. The Third Dragon War came when Takhisis decided to lead the chromatic dragon clans in conquering Ansalon. This was an age of myths and legends, when a brash upstart Red Robe named Magius and a promising young knight named Huma went on an epic fantasy RPG journey to defeat Takhisis with the aid of the newly-forged Dragonlances. The Orders were not slacking off during this time, and the entire Conclave participated in a ritual to create the Dragon Orbs based off of elven magic blueprints. Each Tower thus had its own orb to safeguard after the war ended. [B]Age of Might:[/B] Takhisis was slain by Huma and Krynn was at peace. The empires of the elves, Solamnia, and Ergoth were fading in comparison to the rise of Istar, which would soon grow to be the American Evangelical Christian version of Lawful Good: preaching a lot about holiness but acting like hypocritical Lawful Evil jerks. The Kingpriests were so obsessed with wiping evil from the world that they enforced more and more oppressive laws: making even neutral-aligned faiths illegal, enslaving and genociding entire races which had “fallen from the Light,” declaring kender inherently evil and offering bounties for their deaths and capture, and the belief that the Orders’ vaunted self-regulation wasn’t enough when arcane magic could be potentially learned by anybody without the aid of a god. With the blessings of the Gods of Light and the unknown sabotaging of the Towers’ various groves, Istar’s armies besieged the Towers. During this time wizards were hunted down and murdered all over the Empire. The Orders’ headquarters were forced back to the Tower of Wayreth at the southwest end of the continent, the only Tower which remained standing. It turned out that a crafty Black Robe archwizard named Fistandantilus revealed to the Kingpriest that he helped sabotage the Tower groves so that he’d be the greatest remaining mage on Krynn, and that he should be appointed as a governmental advisor due to the great boon he granted to the unwitting Kingpriest. Despite being very, very obviously Evil, the Kingpriest agreed…but only because he wanted to keep and eye on him and not because this is an obvious political power grab! The Kingpriest is still Lawful Good, guys, Paladine still granted him spellcasting ability up to the time when- naughty word it, there’s really no justification for this. The Gods of Light are hypocritical bastards. [B]The Age of Despair:[/B] Eventually the Gods of Light came to see reason when the Kingpriest started appointing secret police with mind-reading magic items to arrest people who were so much as thinking naughty thoughts. But even after rapturing up the few genuine Clerics left, Istar’s populace was still loyal to the Kingpriest. So arrogant was he that he eventually tried to command and enslave the gods themselves because he thought that he could do a better job at fighting evil than they can. The gods sent their answer with a giant meteor smack-dab in Istar’s capital, which would affect the rest of Krynn irreversibly. Everything sucked during this age. The majority of the populace (quite rightly) were angered at the untold suffering and genocide that the gods brought about during Istar’s reign, and also the giant frickin’ meteor which plunged most of the eastern continent underwater and the ensuing geo-political struggles which followed. The loss of divine magic hurt even more when injuries and plagues grew out of control. The wizards saw things differently. Many were also resentful, but the three moons still hung above, still channeling arcane magic to Order members with the movement of celestial bodies. The gods they served never left them unlike the rest of the pantheon. Things still weren’t easy; many people still hated and feared wizards due to Istaran cultural holdovers, and being the sole spellcasters left on Krynn made people even more fearful of their power. The loss of four Towers severely impacted their ability to find prospective mages, set up academies, hunt renegades, and conduct research. The rise of the Dragon Empire in eastern Ansalon spooked the Red and White Orders, and the Black Robes entered into a secret alliance with the Dragonarmies and much of their number departed from the Tower of Wayreth. The leader of the White Robes sought to create a living magical superweapon by finding a candidate whose power would be refined via a magical forging of the soul. That superweapon’s name? Raistlin Majere. [B]Age of Mortals:[/B] This is the Age at which most Dragonlance fans declared the setting RUINED FOREVER. The Graygem broke open, unleashing Chaos into the world. All of the gods banded together to unite their mortal forces against this threat to all reality, and the Knights of Takhisis were formed as the evil counterpart to the Solamnic Knights. Takhisis formed the Order of Gray Robes as part of this knighthood, who quickly took over much of the continent during and after the Chaos War. While the rest of the gods were recuperating, Takhisis stole the world. By cutting off Krynn from the moons and the rest of the gods, this made her the sole deity who can grant both arcane and divine spells...of a prepared nature. Sorcerers were the only group that remained unbound to her dominion. During this time countless wizards resorted to draining magic items of their power to “recharge” their daily spells without the conduit of the moons, and some tried to become primal sorcerers to varying degrees of success. Palin Majere would go on to found a formal order for primal sorcerers. The Wizards of High Sorcery fell into such desperate measures that the Conclave “permanently” disbanded as an organizational body. Things would get back to relative normalcy after Weis and Hickman released the War of Souls book series and the surviving members of the Heroes of the Lance went on an adventure which brought the gods back through time travel and other shenanigans. Takhisis ended up getting killed by Paladine for causing this whole mess in the first place; but Paladine made himself mortal to “preserve the balance.” The three Gods of Magic reformed the Orders and Conclave, but have a lot of work to do in regaining what they lost. Mistress Jenna of Palanthas, the head of the Red Robes, also became Master of the reformed Conclave [I]and[/I] Master of the Tower of Wayreth in a clear violation of the checks and balances vital to reasonable limits on governmental power. But everyone seems fine with that for now. Given Solinari and Nuitari’s fledgling anti-sorcerer bromance and how mean and petty the non-neutral alignments are in Dragonlance, this may be the least of all evils. Oh, if you’re wondering whether or not the Wizards destroyed the primal sorcery academy, it was already destroyed earlier by Beryllinthranox, one of the five alien mega-dragons whose plane of existence ended up adjacent to Krynn when Takhisis stole the world. The Fifth Age was [B]weird,[/B] man. [CENTER][B]Structure & Rules of the Conclave[/B] [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/4xhywLH.png[/IMG][/CENTER] The Towers were regional affairs, and the Orders were divided by philosophy, but some universal body had to unite them all. The Conclave, a council of 21 divided by 7 mages of each Order, make decisions by majority vote on issues which can affect all member wizards across Ansalon. Their votes determine the selection of the Masters of the Towers, and the Master of each of the three Orders is drawn from someone serving on the Conclave. Unlike the Masters of the Tower, the Masters of the Orders can still sit on the Conclave and the three can cast tie-breaking votes and make decisions on behalf of their fellow Order Conclave members voting-wise when others cannot attend. And of those three Order Masters, one can become the Head of the Conclave who acts as a final arbiter and whose position is held for life barring gross incompetence, defying the result of a Conclave vote, or other reasons that demand the Head’s immediate removal. It’s not mentioned if there are term limits or how long a Conclave seat is held for non-Heads in this case. Each Order has its own means of determining from among the Conclave seats who should be their Master. The White Robes are naive in the ways of politics and trust that their number will make the right decision when all options and points of view are presented in an open and honest manner. The Red Robes, much like their patron, aren’t exactly fond of bureaucratic red tape and determine their Master by drawing lots from among the seven Conclave members. The Black Robes hold secret competitions among their own which are usually dangerous wizard duels. Not gonna lie, I kind of like how none of the Orders’ methods guard against magical or political corruption, and only the White Robes’ system has any means of selecting someone with a skill set based on good governing skills. Reminds me of the [URL='https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo']engineers and woo phenomenon.[/URL] Conclave meetings are commonly held at dates when at least one of three moons is in High Sanction, although emergency meetings can be convened in times of crisis. And meetings range on all manner of topics that can conceivably affect the Wizards of High Sorcery or arcane magic in general: assignment of funds to research projects, how to best combat threats to the Orders, and so on. The Conclave also has a Council of Three which are tasked with running the day-to-day activities of individual towers. Wouldn’t this be the job of a Master of a Tower? Beyond this, we have a section on what happens to people who break the laws of High Sorcery and common punishments. Every wizard who passes their Test is instructed on the details of said laws, but mentors of apprentices are expected to integrate these rules into their lessons over time. The Conclave has created many regulations and is responsible for voting on the severity of punishment, but a few most pertinent to PC wizards are listed along with general levels of severity: [LIST] [*] [li]Using magic for common entertainment purposes is frowned upon because it gives the impression that magic is a silly, frivolous thing among the general public rather than something to fear and respect.[/li] [li]Using magic to to duplicate, create, or destroy fiat currency is banned, for it can exacerbate economic problems and gives governments a good excuse to punish, oppress, and regulate wizards.[/li] [li]Leaking confidential plans of the Orders to organizations outside High Sorcery is treated as treason/spying and punished just as harshly.[/li] [li]Wizards must abide by the rulings of the Conclave and senior Order members, even if they voted against a Conclave measure.[/li] [li]Activities of renegade mages must be reported to an appropriate authority figure within the Orders.[/li] [li]The Towers are neutral ground for all Order members. Acts of theft, violence, and similar acts on Tower grounds is punishable by varying degrees of severity.[/li] [li]Altering the foundational blocks of magic and creation is expressly forbidden unless permission is granted by the Conclave to do so.[/li] [/LIST] Misdemeanors and first-time offenders with a good track record are given a warning. More serious offenses or repeat ones will be met with a higher-ranking member of the Order, who threatens that their organization will punish them if they do not stop or make amends. Said mage is then secretly monitored by Order members to the best of their ability. More serious incidents and/or rule-breaking caught by said surveillance have more serious punishments which tend to differ by Order: White Robes either imprison offenders in a building designed to hold dangerous spellcasters or exiles them from the Order. In the latter case the wizard must either join the Red or Black robes or end up a renegade. Red Robes do the same thing, but in some rare cases before exile ask the prisoner if they wish to consent to enchantment magic. This will alter their mental state so as to make them incapable of repeating the criminal activities. This violation of free will is so abhorrent to so many Red Robes that this is rarely used. But I’d like to mention that they’re the only Order which does this “mental behavioral therapy,” so this free will ideal kind of falls flat on its face. Black Robes rarely police their own unless a Conclave vote forces their hand. In such a case they apprehend said member and subject them to torture as a deterrence method against causing the Order such an inconvenience. Serious repeat offenders are apprehended and brought before the Conclave itself, while mages whose crimes involve some harm directed to a Conclave member or to magical development on a large scale never even get a trial: they end up mysteriously disappearing and are never heard from again. [CENTER][B]Stat Blocks and Template[/B][/CENTER] Scattered throughout this chapter are stat blocks for notable mages throughout Ansalon’s history. We have Fistandantilus, who is an epic-level Black Robe wizard who specializes in necromancy magic; Magius is a 14th-level Red Robe wizard at the height of his power and heavily focuses on evocation and transmutation spells; Mistress Jenna of Palanthas is a 17th-level Red Robe wizard with levels in Spell Broker and has just about every item creation feat of note. Finally we have the Master of the Tower template, which grants several powerful abilities as long as they remain within the Tower grounds: the ability to prepare spells from 3 cleric domains thematic to the Tower as arcane spells, automatically learning Time Reaver and the spell which grants safe passage through the Tower’s outer defenses, bonuses on Spellcraft checks and research time for putting new spells into their spellbook, and Spell Resistance of 10 + half their total levels in arcane magic classes (rounded down). [B]Thoughts So Far:[/B] I admit that I’m not entirely fond of this chapter. The explanation on Conclave politics is very in-depth but I cannot see it mattering in most epic high fantasy stories that Dragonlance encourages. I can see it as an offbeat adventure where the PCs have to grease the dysfunctional wheels of mage politics to unite the wizards against some greater threat, or get a sentence cleared for their wizard ally on trial. The Gods of Goods’ sanctioning of the Kingpriest’s purges was not something other sourcebooks talked about, so I do not know how canon is this part. But it really makes Paladine and company look bad, which even with the Cataclysm is saying something. The Gods of Magic’s anti-sorcerer bias is understandable given the devastation of the First Dragon War, but treating all of them as walking time bombs who need to be exterminated or kept under heel is likely to exacerbate a potential war. Solinari and Nuitari finding common ground while their neutral sister shakes their heads shows how self-serving the gods can be. On the one hand, I don’t think that having hypocritical deities and organizations falling short of their ideals is a bad thing in fictional worlds. There’s a bit of dramatic irony in the wizards oppressing sorcerers using the very same talking points the Kingpriests used against the Orders, which sadly has historical precedent in our own world. However, Dragonlance’s black and white cosmic morality (and by extension the rest of D&D) with clear lines drawn in the battle between good and evil runs up hard against this and leaves me shaking my head. I felt that the history of magic veered too hard at times into unrelated material which sought to set up the backdrop of various Ages, but the core and setting books for the respective eras already cover these parts. I do like how the Conclave and the Orders have differing and sometimes arbitrary methods of resolution for various things; flaws in the system make for good role-play and believable conflict, and shows that just because people are smart in a nerdy area doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be rational, reasonable, or skilled at governance. [B]Join us next time in Chapter Four as we get detailed write-ups on the five Towers of High Sorcery and other notable magical fortresses and academies of Ansalon![/B] [/QUOTE]
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