Re: Renaming the Unhuman Wars

From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Renaming the Unhuman Wars


> --- David Shepheard <david_shepheard@???????.com>
> wrote:
>
>> > 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.
>
> Maelstrom's Eye (don't know the page #).  I recall a
> scene where the good elven Admiral was talking to
> Teldin about the Unhuman Wars, how it was named such
> because humans felt it had nothing to do with them.

I just had a quick skim through the book, but couldn't find this reference 
in the scene on the Rock of Bral. Did they meet up again later?

(I've actually got to go through the Cloakmaster books one page at a time, 
to suck out all the information I need, so will probably find this 
eventually.)

> This was later contradicted in RPG products,
> particularly Lost Ships (Barge of Ptah fighting
> goblin-kin) & LotSJ (Octopus & Cuttle Command
> entries).

I don't think this contradiction is necessarily a continuity error. If 
somebody says something to Teldin Moore, they might be trying to simplify 
the situation, distorting the truth to get him on side or outright lying.

The Barge of Ptah description doesn't specifically say that humans fought in 
the Unhuman wars, so it might have been used to defend against "pirate" 
attacks by goblin-kin. My LotSJ boxed set is in the loft at the moment, but 
I'll check it out later.

I still think that some humans would assist the elves and other humans would 
let the elves deal with the goblin-kin by 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.
>
> Privateers are essentually Agents of the Crown.  They
> were historically used to conduct warfare between
> states far from the boarders of said states, typically
> in colonial waters.

Thanks for backing me up on this. I think you *could* have paladin 
privateers, but *not* paladin pirates.

>> 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.
>
> Rock of Bral, Vodoni, & the royal house of Greatspace
> are the only three I can think of off-hand which have
> a powerful SJ presence, outside of Clusterspace.
> There are organizations, but none have a definate
> "home base" from which they originated.

[See separate email "SJ Organisations" for an answer to this point]

>> 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.
>
> Yes and no.  In terms of reach, yes, since they're
> spread out across many spheres.  In terms of manpower
> & resources, probably not.  For the most part, they're
> widely-scattered ships & agents, typically no more
> than a dozen ships per given sphere.  Assuming the
> organizations are mostly the officers (most crewmen
> are just paid lackies, not likely to be actual
> members), any given organization will have only
> hundreds of members.  Overall they may have thousands
> of members, but would be hard-pressed to muster a real
> army to "hold ground", as it were.  They could perhaps
> take a few (small) cities, but would be ground to bits
> trying to sieze large swaths of land.

I don't think that true spacefaring organisations would be interested in 
obtaining land. I think they would desire to take control of wildspace. They 
do need access to landing sites and they do need access to repair 
facilities, but I think they could get hold of those by doing deals with 
existing groundling kingdoms.

I could be sold on Known Space having several more groundling worlds, where 
small countries (which are unimportant in world affairs) are major 
spelljamming ports (as far as spacefarers are concerned).

Outside Known Space, I would like us to be able to create crystal spheres 
around planets taken from TSR campaign worlds or d20 System campaign worlds. 
I would like us to use those planets as groundling worlds, and create a 
society of similar spacefarers who mostly avoid contact with the groundling 
world. In fact, I think that Frontier Space or Unknown Space is going to be 
a much more interesting thing to create, as we can include cross-over 
campaign spheres and epic-spheres without endangering existing SJ canon.

>> 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'd look at the purpose of each individual
> organization.  The Tenth Pit wants to rule trade
> routes, ala the Zhents of FR.  The POTS are a response
> to rampant slavery.  The Long Fangs are
> assassins/thugs for hire, only vaguely organized.
> Etc.

That makes sense. However, I would like us to create a few more spherebound 
organisations that keep to their own area and *do* have a greater connection 
with their own society.

I would also like to see a greater connection between religion and culture 
and wildspace organisations. Organisations dedicated to exploration, could 
and should have close ties to The Celestians. Organisations dedicated to 
specific spheres should have often connections to the local gods.

>> 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.
>
> Here's how I've come to view the Unhuman Wars: the
> wars themselves were the tail-end of a very long
> period of time, at least 200 to 500 years, during
> which goblins had increasingly grown stronger &
> bolder.  They went well beyond petty piracy to where
> they became an actual menace to whole worlds.  As the
> goblins grew more powerful, so did the elves, who
> began stockpiling weapons, training, gathering intel,
> and growing a bumper-crop of ships.  The Battle of
> Kule is when the elves finally made their move,
> crushing the largest orc fleet.  They then spent the
> next century pummelling the heck out of the goblins,
> and drove them right out of Known Space.

That makes sense. If we finalise the positions of the crystal spheres within 
Known Space, we could use the positions of the spheres to spread the battles 
over that centaury and help make Known Space seem more three dimensional. 
Fleets need to travel down Phlogiston Rivers, so we could infer an order for 
defeats and victories, from the relative positions of the spheres.

> For the other races, they were glad to be rid of the
> goblins.  However, once the goblins were gone, it
> became the elves who were greatly feared.  In an
> effort to make peace, part of the elven fleet split
> off into the Sindaith Line while at the same time a
> huge number of ships were decommissioned to create
> "Crown" bases, such as at Karpi, Spiral (Crown of
> Corelleon), & Gaya (Rainmiste).

Is the "fear" something you have inferred or invented or is it original 
canon?

I love the Sindiath Line (SIC). I love the way that they have a history 
built into them.

I also love those Crown bases. Have you got an estimate of how many 
Man-O-War and Amada ships were decommissioned? We could divide that number 
by 7 or 9 (or whatever) to get an estimate of how many Crown bases we need 
to scatter around Known Space. (I would like to see at least one Crown base 
stolen by the Gith and taken into the Astral Plane.)

Don't forget the Elven Exiles. They broke off from the fleet and went their 
own way. Beyond the Moons has one branch of exiles written up as the 
Confederate Navy, but I'm not 100 percent sure I like that name (as it 
reminds me too much of the Deep South). I think that exiles should have 
small single sphere fleets with out of date ships like the Archaic 
Man-O-War.

> Humans by no means were "absent" from the Wars but
> lacked the unified means of fighting back against the
> goblin hordes like the elves did.

I would argue that specific kingdoms (or planets) of humans would have done 
better than other groups of humans. I think that the Unhuman War makes a 
great opportunity for certain groups of humans to show their quality to the 
elves.

I would love for the Shou Lung Dragonship Fleet to be fighting alongside the 
elves in Realmspace at some point in the war. I would also love for some of 
the organisations without exact starting dates to originate before or during 
that war. The Company of the Chalice *must* be an organisation that the 
elves would have respected. I would love to see The Company have a history 
comparable to the real-life Eagle Squadrons (of WWII).

>> 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.
>
> I think humans did have some presence in SJ prior to
> the UWI, and did put up a fight, but were no means
> effective.  I think the rise of human spacefarers
> (along with other races, such as dwarves & gnomes)
> have little to do with the elves.  They just don't
> have the power to keep everyone down on planets; their
> fleet measures in (low) thousands of ships, certainly
> not enough to put heavy patrols around every
> groundling world and keep the
> neogi/beholders/illithids in check.

Fair enough on the numbers. But we know that they did suppress the Netheril 
Navy in Realmspace, so anti-human activity is possible if the elves act 
before an "evil" human nation gains a strong foothold in wildspace. I would 
suggest that their would be some elves looking out for "bad" humans to hold 
back and other elves, like Admiral Sindiath, who would want to work with 
"good" humans and get them to become potential allies for the future.

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/