Re: Renaming the Unhuman Wars

From: "Michael Shell" <FenrysStar@???.com>
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Renaming the Unhuman Wars


> The Unhuman Wars is largely a name given to the conflict by humans. Humans
> did not participate in any meaningful way.

Is this canon material or your opinion? If it is canon material, can you 
tell us where it is from, so we can check it out ourselves. If it is your 
opinion, that is ok, but you need to give us a clue.

> There might have been a few pirate
> ships that earned Letters of Marque at that time but Human nations let the 
> elves
> and the goblins fight it out amongst themselves.

Letters of Marque are carried by privateers - not pirates. While the two may 
have similar methods, privateers consider themselves to be similar to 
mercenaries. Pirates are just thieves, but privateers are people who support 
a cause, but want to be paid for their work.

For example privateers, could have ambushed ships supplying weapons to the 
Unhumans, confiscated their helms and passed the helms over to the elven 
navy. The "illegal" weapons could also be confiscated, to pay for the crews 
wages and food. I'm sure that a paladin could work as a privateer, but not 
as a pirate.

They might look the same to you, but I'm sure that you could start a fight 
in a wildspace tavern with your statement.

:-)

> That is the main impetus
> behind the name: Human arrogance.

As far as I know, the SJ timeline is not very well developed.  I'm not sure 
if Paul has left out a lot of unimportant events, but I get the distinct 
feeling that very few human governments are actually active in wildspace. At 
the moment, I can only think of the Shou Lung and Netherese.

In the "present day" organisations, like the Pragmatic Order of Thought, or 
religions, like the Celestians, seem to have much more influence than a king 
or emperor.

There has to be a reason why humanity is focused on multi-sphere 
bureaucratic organisations instead of kingdoms. Perhaps humans had no real 
organised presence in wildspace, before the Unhuman War, and the 
organisations from the SJCS are organisations who had some sort of 
involvement in The Unhuman War.

I don't think The Unhuman War can be looked at in isolation. I think that we 
need to carefully evaluate the entire period around the war, before we can 
even *think* about tinkering with it.

I suspect that the elves may have deliberately relaxed their control on 
specific human spacefarers in order to fill wildspace up with ships that 
will mostly fight against the Unhumans, Illithids, Neogi, Beholders and 
other races that could cause trouble to the elves. Despite their lack of 
respect for nature, and frequent association with evil causes, 
wildspace-humanity could seem to be the lesser of two evils. However, 
without looking at the canon, that is a totally uneducated guess.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://spelljammer.wikia.com/
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/