Re: Vodoni, a different perspective

From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Vodoni, a different perspective

They say that history is written by the winners, so I think that you can 
justify saying that the winners have distorted the facts to make their 
enemies look more evil or dishonourable than they actually are.

I'm sure that you could put a similar spin on the orc/goblinoid side of the 
First Unhuman War or the Netherese Spelljamming Ships. Both societies could 
argue that they tried to fight the elven super-power that was dominating 
wildspace and preventing them from having their rightful share of access to 
wildspace.

The elves see themselves as protectors of wildspace, but others may well see 
them as an organisation that puts the desires of groundling elves above all 
other races.

I think that I recently saw a d20 System or OGL product that created a world
where the good guys were orcs, goblins, hobgoblins and other similar races.
I don't recall the name, but I'm sure it could be worked up as a goblinoid
groundling world in the middle of a crystal sphere where elven privateers
fly overhead and attack all explorers who try to fly into wildspace. You
could even argue that these gobilnoids had nothing to do with the First
Unhuman War and that the elves overhead are not native to the sphere..

> --- Loki <george.williams.iv@?????.com> wrote:
>
>> You know Adam, that almost might make Under the Dark
>> Fist playable for the first time if you flesh it out
>> more.
>
> Heh.  Heck, the more I think about it, the worse the
> "Alliance" looks, IMHO.  I mean, look at the alliance:
>
> Humans, elves, & gnomes - ok, you can argue these guys
> are the good guys, perhaps they're acting out of fear.
> Still, there innumerable evil examples of these races
> in the Known Spheres, so they're not pearly white.

Humans are a random race, so I think you can argue any sort of behaviour 
fits
in with some form of human culture.

As for the elves, I think the Cloakmaster Cycle made almost every navy elf
with a rank a power-mad nutcase, who thinks they can single-handedly save
their own race.

The gnomes are the hardest race to deal with. These are not normal gnomes.
They are Krynnish Tinker Gnomes. These guys have got to be on some sort of
life quest. Look at Barnes Wallace (the real life guy who invented the
bouncing bomb). He was fascinated with making his bombs and blowing up dams.
The bombs actually killed a lot of Russian prisoners and did little to
damage the really German war effort. But the big floods really impressed the
press in the UK and USA. I'd expect a bunch of Tinker Gnomes to have similar
attitudes to war. They should be *obsessed* with making something like a
discus with razor wire that decapitates goblins. They shouldn't be worrying
about who might misuse the weapon after they build it.

> Dwarves - the only reason they're on board with the
> invasion is pure greed; they're after the Vodoni's
> mineral wealth, and they don't care what they have to
> do to get it.

You are right, but I don't like it. Greedy dwarves are as bad a stereotype
as snobbish elves. I really don't think that the dwarves of wildspace should
act as one race. I'd like to see a few more local variations.

There should be a few more that are greedy for things that *can't* just be 
bought and sold. Take The Hand of Reorx for example. They are always trying 
to win people over for the god Reorx. You could argue that they have greed 
for souls instead of gems. I would like to see the occasional dwarven 
subrace that isn't dominated by a desire for cash. And a greed for some 
other thing, can give you a way to divert dwarven behaviour into a different 
direction.

> Illithids, beholders, & neogi - yeah, these guys are
> *better* than the vodoni?  Right.  All the Vodoni
> slaves will be doing is trading one master for
> another!

You can put a spin on these races if you really try really hard. If you can 
have elves turn into drow, you can have evil races turn into good ones:

Illithids take over the bodies of other creatures and are supposed to 
occasionally recall memories of those creatures. You could make an 
individual group of mentally strong people who deliberately infect their 
brain with an illitihid lava (or whatever the proper name is) in order to 
turn into an illithid. As long as they "convert" their bodies at a slow 
rate, they would be able to identify and kill the bodies where the illithid 
mind takes over. You could even have a group of elven psionicists who, like 
the bionoids, attempted this process in order to create a crack military 
unit. However, while I can see a unit like that being created, I can't see a 
justification for it to continue to expand. Only the immortal nature of the 
elves could keep it going.

Beholders are a lot easier to convert. We know these guys all mutate. It is 
very hard to believe that they all mutate into races that want to cause harm 
to other races. There was one beholder in one of the products that realised 
his/her/its race had a higher purpose. I don't see why we couldn't have a 
hive mother make that leap of faith and then create an entire race of 
do-good beholders who go around zapping harmful groups. I'd see these 
beholders as some form of self-regulating privateers who wait for pirates to 
attack an obviously inferior ship and then wade in, using the attack as an 
excuse to kill the pirates and cease the pirates goods. I'd also see them 
using illusion magic to create seemingly defenceless bait-ships.

The neogi are a bit tougher. I think that the subrace from Clusterspace is 
probably the sort of spin that you can apply to this race. I probably would 
want to develop that as something that exists elsewhere, rather than have 
two variants.

"My name is Bruin Shambrath -- you killed my father -- prepare to die!"
David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
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