Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1719634" data-attributes="member: 2205">molonel; you already got one of the groups I mentioned though; The Mouth of Sauron was a Black Numenorean.  I'd hardly say that goes anywhere at all towards making your point of localized high magic.  It does make the point that there is actually some magic, but nobody has ever accused Middle-earth as being a no magic world.  And other than the Mouth of Sauron, maybe Queen Beruthiel, and probably some of the Nazgul before falling into wraithhood, those are the only examples of Black Numenorean sorcerers we know of.  Not that we know a lot about Black Numenoreans anyway.  Nor do we know what sorcerer means in this respect.  It's entirely possible that they were more like ritualistic priests of Sauron or Morgoth; since we never actually witness any of them doing any magic, it's possible that they never actually do.  Although I wouldn't put that out there as a strong possibility, it is telling that nobody except for Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond (and indirectly Sauron and the Nazgul) are ever doing anything that could generously be described as magical.On the other hand, Numion actually raises a good point: Yes, some of the toys are described in "A Long Expected Party" as "obviously magical."  Not sure exactly what that means, though -- after all, the blasting seige engines of Saruman are also called "sorcery" when I think it's clear that Tolkien was describing engineering rather than magic.  But rather than try to set up some special pleading here, I'll take what it says at face value and say that yes, that is an example of a higher level of magic than the rest of the books seem to imply.As for buttons that opened themselves, I'm not sure I remember anything like that, although now that you mention it, I almost seem to remember someone mentioning it as a legend of sorts; that either the Old Took or the Master of Buckland had them as a gift from Gandalf.  If so, and I'm remembering correctly that that anecdote does even exist, then it would still be attributed to Gandalf.And this entire discussion has gone a fair amount beyond the original scope here; although I strongly believe that both Hyboria and Middle-earth are great examples of low magic settings, my own interest in low magic is not necessarily based solely on them.  I like the pseudo-historical feel of low magic; I like that it is realistic, but with a twist.And I like some high magic settings too.  I think the Wheel of Time game is excellently done, and it is also a very high magic setting, albeit one quite different from a D&D-ish setting.</blockquote>

Verification