for future work: does anybody know...

[ooljee0mosi]

For future adventures
people were saying about destroying doomstones etc
Do we know whow created for instance:
the graveyard of the ancients
caverns of kalte
tomb where the book of the magnakai is found
among other places?
I think some of these unknown places where created by the shanti (and agarashi?) but clearly soon were created by evil ancients. could these be the basis of further work?

[Taryn]

I thought the Shianti were just another name for the Ancients.

[beowuuf]

They were, I think he was suggesti8ng not everything was done by good ancients like the shianti

[outspaced]

Wasn't Shasarak a renegade Shianti? Presumably other Shianti also turned aside from worship of Ishir, seeking to dominate the free peoples of Magnamund.

[frankwanderer]

outspaced said:

Wasn't Shasarak a renegade Shianti? Presumably other Shianti also turned aside from worship of Ishir, seeking to dominate the free peoples of Magnamund.

Shasarak seems to have been regarded as fairly unique individual as a "Shianti rebel", so far as it goes, whereas the Ancients, the Majhan, etc. seem almost to imply groups or collectives rather than individuals. It's a stretch to presume that there might have been whole wedges of Shianti "rebels".

But then, I do not know that there needs to be. After all, we might be giving the Shianti too much credit for a morally "good" nature that they may not actually have had. While not servants of Naar, obviously, there is a fair evidence to suggest that the Shianti as a whole may not have been the most morally pure race ever to grace Magnamund (and therefore may have created lasting legacies like the Graveyard of the Ancients or the Tomb of the Majhan which were easily "converted" to evils in the world):

1. Though the Ice Demons were an evil, certainly, and needed to be combatted as a threat, the Shianti deliberately lured them to Magnamund, entrapped them, and appeared to have enslaved most of them to power various Shianti devices in Kalte. The morality of the setting certainly suggests this as being a reprehensible (if not actually Evil) act.

2. The Shianti did not exactly seek a "by your leave" from either the Gods or the native people of Aon before trespassing, occupying and eventually dominating large portions of Magnamund (both area and culture).

3. Again without either a "by your leave" or any consideration of the natural order of the world they had trepassed in, the Shianti eventually and for their own benefit, pulled into Aon a great foreign power in the form of the Moonstone.

4. They were apparently willing to ignore the potential threats and influences of Naar introduced into Magnamund during their time, including, but not limited to, the introduction of the Drakkarim and the various areas and regions dominated by agareshi.

5. When Ishir finally pointed out what kind of harm and damage the Shianti were doing to the world and asked them to leave the world, the Shianti instead argued and negotiated under the auspices that "they had come to love the world" and did not want to return to wandering the Daziarn (a decidedly self-centered motivation to remain).

Again, I am not saying that the Shianti as a whole were as bad as, say, Shasarak. I am also not saying that they did not improve themselves and their culture on moral levels during their long exile on the Isle of Lorn. But it is certainly appears conclusive that a Shianti like Shasarak was not THAT far from the possible moral "norm" of the Shianti and therefore other evils could have easily arose from the Shianti moral/ethical "norm" that did not involve rebels or renegades.

Frank the Wanderer

[beowuuf]

Plus if there were one set of powerful wanderers from another plane, why not more?

[section350]

The Shianti (called Ancients, Majhan, and other names in various parts of Magnamund) were as a group, overall, well-meaning and sympathetic to Ishir (though not servants of her per se). This does not mean that all individual Shianti were always acting Lawful Good; after all, Lone Wolf isn't above cheating at cards or snapping a Town Guardsman's neck to get around a checkpoint or even attacking the helpless Halvorc to get out of Port Bax, why wouldn't a Shianti do shady things for his perceived "greater good?" [Set aside the possibility of a Rogue/Evil Shianti like Shasarak for a moment]. After all, let's take a look at those Shianti magic disciplines:

Physiurgy: not just summoning elemental spirits (elementalism) but COMMANDING them.
Telergy: Mind control (among other enhanced enchantment abilities)
Necromancy: Advanced evocation, not just communing with the dead but commanding them.

Now it does mention in the text to GS book for that this aspect of Necromancy is "forbidden by Shianti Law" and of course heroic Grey Star never uses necromancy in this way. But, clearly, these skills do exist in Shianti Wizardry and are taught to some of them, at least

The Shianti were powerful and there were no checks on them. Think of it like when an animal is introduced to a new ecosystem where it has no natural enemies/predators. It goes wild, is incredibly successful, but ultimately harms the balance of the overall environment. This is why customs and ports have all those checks to make sure you're not accidentally carrying anything.

They didn't mean harm, but they had the potential with their magic to do it, even unintentionally; and nobody else on magnamund could tell them "NO!"; in fact humanity was fawning on them reverently as godlike. Which was ultimately harmful, as the Shianti could get as decadent and self-indulgent and vindictive as they wanted [like luring the ice demons so as to trap them and use them as batteries]. Even a Shianti who didn't go fully rogue like Shasarak could "fall off the wagon" for a week or so and do some selfish dead-raising or mental enslavement before his conscience got the better of him or the other shianti reined him in.

They could also certainly get so arrogant as to see a need to "protect" their superior knowledge and magic from the hoi polloi races (like humans) who "wouldn't understand" or "would misuse" so they place traps on it (like at the Graveyard of the Ancients). Since as Grey Star proves, a human could use Shianti magic if he learned/was taught it.

None of this is "evil" or even reprehensible necessarily (the ice demons don't seem like nice things, maybe everyone's better off with them trapped?) but it does seem very much like a case of Power Corrupts as applied to a decent, but selfish, people.