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last_herald_mage2012-11-21 11:19 am
tiz) wrote in last_herald_mage2012-11-21 11:19 am
Entry tags:
Greetings
Hello everybody :)
I am a new convert of this trilogy :D
Despite some anger towards the Author, I admit I am hooked to the characters (mostly to Vanyel and Stefen). I would like to write something about it, but since my interest in reading further works on Valdemar is rather low (She DID angered me <.<'), and I need some informations before writing, I am making some questions^^
1. About the Vrondi-net. How does it work, exactly? O.o I mean, sort of air-elemental who spy on mage inside Valdemar, ok. All the mages who aren't Heralds? Or all the mages who came from outside Valdemar?
2. About the magic. As far as I can see, there is no way that somebody born with the mage-gift(s) to learn how to use it without guide, not only that but they are *always* unusable if not "untapped". Correct? °-°
Thank you all for your help!^^
(Yes, the fic I wish to write is, to begin with, a short story centered about the Vrondi-net. I DO feel it was a lot an Orwellian measure and quite a dark thing to do, and I would like to explore on that^^)
Also, I want to thank Theme who pointed me there ^^ My thanks!
(I apologize for any mistake, I am Italian^^)
I am a new convert of this trilogy :D
Despite some anger towards the Author, I admit I am hooked to the characters (mostly to Vanyel and Stefen). I would like to write something about it, but since my interest in reading further works on Valdemar is rather low (She DID angered me <.<'), and I need some informations before writing, I am making some questions^^
1. About the Vrondi-net. How does it work, exactly? O.o I mean, sort of air-elemental who spy on mage inside Valdemar, ok. All the mages who aren't Heralds? Or all the mages who came from outside Valdemar?
2. About the magic. As far as I can see, there is no way that somebody born with the mage-gift(s) to learn how to use it without guide, not only that but they are *always* unusable if not "untapped". Correct? °-°
Thank you all for your help!^^
(Yes, the fic I wish to write is, to begin with, a short story centered about the Vrondi-net. I DO feel it was a lot an Orwellian measure and quite a dark thing to do, and I would like to explore on that^^)
Also, I want to thank Theme who pointed me there ^^ My thanks!
(I apologize for any mistake, I am Italian^^)
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1. Vrondi are air elementals who live "in" (on the magical plane that lies over/under the 'real' world) the air everywhere, but they haven't been discovered by most mages. Vanyel tied the Vrondi to the Haven Heartstone to give them power ("feed" them) and keep them set on their task to watch for mages.
This means every mage who is inside the boundaries of Valdemar, whether born there or not. The 'boundaries' shift a little over time; the Vrondi seem to understand "border" to mean "as far out from Haven as there are active Heralds". Since Valdemar gets bigger after Vanyel's time (Forst Reach is almost a border fort in Vanyel's time, but several hundred years later it's nowhere near the border), making the Vrondi define "Valdemar" by the presence of Heralds rather than physical landmarks was probably smart.
I would guess that being a Herald makes the Vrondi lose interest in someone, BUT I don't know how it would affect that person before they were Chosen. If their Gift was active for a while before being Chosen, they might get the interest of the Vrondi until a Companion shows up to claim them.
2. Yes and yes, as far as we know. There are hints in later books that Heralds with Mage-Gift are actually trained as if they have the Gift of Farsight -- presumably because Mage-Sight and Farsight are similar, and Valdemarans 'forget' about the existence of Mage-Sight as well as the Mage-Gift after Vanyel's death.
From what we see of Vanyel's Gifts, it seems like a lot of people in Valdemar could have Gifts and never know it because they're never "turned on". When Vanyel was a kid, Savil said his potential was inactive, and seemed to think it would stay that way forever. Only having his mind torn up by Tylendel's spell made Vanyel's Gifts become usable. So yes, a lot of people in Valdemar could have potential Mage-Gift, or mind-magic Gifts, and never be able to use it unless something happens to force their Gift to develop. In this case I think the Vrondi would ignore them, the same way Vanyel wasn't Chosen by a Companion before his Gifts were triggered to develop; a Gift that's only potential counts as no Gift.
Some mind-magic users have active Gifts from a young age, though, so it's likely that a few people also have active Mage-Gifts without needing any trigger to make them tappable. Those people, presumably, become really uncomfortable (Vrondi attention) and leave Valdemar, or maybe (I am guessing about this, but we *do* learn that Companions have a little bit of an ability to use magic) the Vrondi can alert Companions and get those people Chosen?
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It is more or less as I thought. Am I the only one who think it is a tad bit dystopian? O.o
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It is a bit extreme! But I think it's probably pretty reasonable for a country that has NO other defence against mages; Vanyel knew he was the last one, and he didn't have time to train anybody even if he could find an apprentice who was/would be Chosen.
It would feel a lot more dystopian if the circumstances were different -- if Valdemar had any mages at all, or if the Vrondi were instructed to be hostile (or a more hostile/powerful elemental had been used). For something as mild as "watch them", though, I'd hesitate to say it's dystopian; there's no punishment or harm involved -- the Vrondi don't even alert the nearest Herald to mages' presence, much less, say, attack mages if they don't leave. There doesn't even seem to be any provision for mages who are doing Very Bad Things -- any blood mage who passed through Valdemar, for instance, would still only get stared at till he left. Even if he killed people, or was a Karsite spy!
So as the spell stands, in both the circumstances it was made in and the conditions it sets, I always thought it was a pretty cautious system. In fact, I've often wondered if there weren't a mage or two somewhere in Valdemar anyway, who just grew up thinking that feeling of being watched was normal! :)
I'd certainly love to read a story that presents it in a darker way, though. Convince me! :D
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Last question: so there was NO mage in Valdemar between Vanyel and the next some 500 years after, correct? ò.ò
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Yeah, but with Orwell, Big Brother isn't *just* watching; he's watching for something, and will get you in trouble when you do it. The Vrondi don't have that kind of follow-up, so it's like... to me it sounds like putting up a video camera in your store, but not storing the data. Lots of people will be deterred from robbing your store because they see the camera there, but if someone robs it anyway, there's no record of the deed, the camera isn't going to produce any evidence against them, and it isn't going to call the cops. That's maybe mildly creepy, but not very Orwellian to me. It's a valid measure to protect the lives of the people who work in the store, and it's not even a very strong measure. :D
As for your question: there was no Herald-Mage in Valdemar after Vanyel for ~500 years. There were probably visiting mages; in fact, we find out shortly before the anti-Mage spell ends that there was a Mage-gifted spy in the Palace for years. There may have been mages in the Rethwellan diplomatic service who came from time to time. And some mercenary Mages have passed through -- or tried to pass through -- the outskirts of Valdemar on their way to assignments elsewhere.
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Van describes it as "somebody tapping insistently on your shoulders, every few minutes" and I know I would hate that ò.ò
Now, peraphs the Vrondi-net changes with time, but I am pretty sure of what it was back then °-°
There are a lot of things I don't understand!
Are Herald-Mage particularly stupid and/or the Karsite particularly good to kill so many of them?
Why couldn't Heralds send mage-gifted youngsters out of Valdemar for training and then take them back to rebuild Herald-Mages?
What about people like Tallo/Moon?
Is it my ignorance or there are rather big plotholes? ç_ç
(Better for me, more to fill :P)
PS: Apologize for the delay. No internet for days.
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Herald-Mage particularly stupid and/or the Karsite particularly good
We do find out that the Karsite mages have been "cheating", for lack of a better word -- they use a lot of nasty summoned creatures that a Herald-Mage would never use, a lot like 'Lendel's wyrsa pack! So one Karsite mage controlling a pack of mage-creatures could kill a lot of Herald-Mages, or at least keep them trapped at the border; and I suspect that even a pretty weak mage can summon, so that sort of gives the Karsite mages another advantage.
The other part is probably due to Leareth's attempts to kill potential mages -- no one can guard every Mage-gifted youngster in the whole realm, even if they though to do so, which would be crazy. It seems Leareth spent quite a bit of time carefully killing Mage-gifted Valdemarans from a distance before they could become Herald-Mages, so now Valdemar doesn't have many people with Mage-Gift to start rebuilding from.
The main problem with sending Gifted kids off for training is just *identifying* them -- it seems to take Mage-Gift to recognise Mage-Gift! So without any Herald-Mages, Valdemar doesn't have a way to find out if any Herald-Trainees have Mage-Gift in addition to mind magic.
The only way they could 'find' mages would be to trust an allied country to send a mage to them as a "detector", and then trust the ally to train them without changing their loyalty to Valdemar. Those allies may not have any mages without apprentices already; and they certainly would expect to be paid for training someone who's not going to stay in the country. Would you train somebody to be a weapon, then give that person to the neighboring kingdom? (Plus, of course, Valdemar seems to want all its mages to be Herald-Mages; it doesn't have court mages the way other places do. So if they went to the trouble of finding somebody, arranging a treaty so that person could go off and get trained, waited for the training, then brought the person back and presented him to the Companions... and that person wasn't Chosen, then what? Send him back to the other country? Exile him?)
I'm not sure what you meant by "people like Tallo/Moon" -- Tayledras? Mages from another country? Criminals? :D
are there rather big plotholes?
There are some, for sure! I have always imagined that it ought to be possible for Valdemar to have 'borrowed' some mages from an ally like Rethwellan, for instance; if any got Chosen, great! If not, they could still hold a court title and maybe look over the Herald-trainees once a year to see if any of them are Mage-Gifted. (What to do after that's a puzzle, but I'm sure they could find out.)
A lot of it I think just never had time to happen, because of Vanyel making everybody 'forget' that magic existed! IF he hadn't done that, then Valdemar might have solved its mage-problem given some time. Instead they weren't able to see it as a problem, so nothing got done.
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Well, I plan to use a -rather brief- ficcie to fill some plotholes :D so good for me.
Tallo/Moondance learnt a lot of magic by himself (enough to kill). Even if Leareth and the Karsite killed a lot of mage, I highly doubt all the mage-gift to be gone ò.ò It is like clear eyes. Even if you kill everybody with fair eyes in a country, the trait will resurface, maybe after a few generations since it is recessive (the mage-gift does seem to be recessive ò.ò). So it stand to reason that in 500 years somebody with that level of ability would be born. And everybody tell me there had be no sighting, which is good for my ficcie u.u
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I had a look - it's on p70 of Magic's Price, and Van says he wanted to get them to do that but hadn't worked out how, so presumably he never did get that to work.
I assume that they couldn't 'borrow' mages from their allies because of the shield effects described in By The Sword; foreign mages really don't want to be there.
What I'm not sure of is how consistently the Companions could identify Mage-Gift; it seemed like Gwena knew Elspeth had it, but no one knew Pol had it.
My impression was that mages who weren't Heralds were really looked down on in Valdemar - always referred to as 'hedge-wizards' and assumed to be borderline criminals.
(total aside, but it was Stef rather than Van who claimed credit for making people forget that magic had existed; what with the epilogue, where he seemingly makes poor Herald Andros forget that he existed, I headcanon that at some point Stef simply figured out how to delete people's memories because he is that much of a badass/screwup.)
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The point is, if you would be a young would-be-mage, with powers you don't understand and can barely control (whenever your gift is "naturally" awaken or awaken after a trauma) and you started to feel watched, and everybody had forgotten that what you can do is possible to do...
Well. For me, that is one good definition of "nightmare".
And I don't buy for one moment that in some far-away village people haven't stone to death young would-be-mages in the 500 years between Vanyel and the next mage. People are people are people, Heralds might be Heroes, but the people of Valdemar are not all saints ò.ò
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Well, on the plus side, it would serve to reassure the ally that the borrowing really was temporary! :D But yes, I don't think it would be tenable for any long period, but a month or two? Maybe my tolerance for being stared at is higher than most people's, but that seems feasible to me.
mages who weren't Heralds were really looked down on in Valdemar - always referred to as 'hedge-wizards' and assumed to be borderline criminals
I... think part of this may be the Herald angle, but a lot of it may also be a rank thing. Hedge-wizards are a valid category of mage elsewhere, and they're the category with the lowest power -- far below Journeymen, often just barely Gifted at all or even doing small magics without any Gift, just by sheer willpower. As such, they tend to be looked down on *by most mages*, especially those with formal schooling from an established mage school. In consequence, they seem to be regarded as "mages for peasants" -- many of them live in villages or travel, selling small spells and potions and other services that fit the size of their Gift and their lack of training. (The 'borderline criminals' thing is probably part and parcel with this -- in the vein of tinkers and peddlers and other perpetual travelers being regarded as suspicious/cheats/immoral/thieves by a settled culture.)
It could be that, in Valdemar, Companions make darn sure that anyone Gifted enough to be more than a hedge-wizard gets Chosen, or it could be that "hedge-wizard" is such a common term for a mage who sells his abilities that, in Valdemar where there are Herald-Mages to provide contrast, it's applied to any mage who is for hire (and the unpleasant associations stuck, too).
Response to aside: I had the vague memory that Stef and Van had either concocted the idea together, or else Stef thought it up and Van implemented it, but couldn't remember Andros' name, and my books aren't in reach.
It wasn't Stef alone, though; the idea I think was Stef's, but not the execution, since he had no magic except Bardic gifts. I always understood Stefan's disappearance to be a conspiracy -- the idea was Stefan's, but the Companions were the ones who carried it out, possibly at Vanyel/Yfandes' request.
Remember Herald Andros' Companion gently shepherding him away from the forest, with the 'story' of why he was there with a second saddled horse, alone? Even if Stef had discovered a way to change people's memories, I don't believe he could do it to a Companion, considering what they are. So even if Stefan did the actual memory-wipe on Andros, they had to be in on it up to their pointy white ears. Though I always thought that either the Companion had done that, too -- would a Companion let anyone else mess with their Chosen's mind? -- or that it was because Vanyel implemented the spell -- I can't recall the exact timing, but if Stef was dead at that point then it could have been Vanyel setting the kingdom-wide spell in motion. If I had my searchable copy, I'd check... *misses dead laptop*
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It does seem a little implausible that all mid-to-strong gifted mages in Valdemar would be suitable to be Heralds...surely some of them would just be flat-out terrible people. (Savil said that Staven would have been Chosen if he wasn't such a jackass, but there's no indication that he's mage-gifted specifically). Interesting to wonder what other strong mages did - maybe they often emigrated or became mercenaries.
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Iirc it says somewhere that the Vrondi-net expands as people use Truth Spell in new areas - I think it's in Winds of Fury, not sure.
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Perfect, thank you ò.ò
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I had forgotten that, but it makes a lot of sense! Since they define the 'borders of Valdemar' by the presence of Heralds, and only Heralds know the Truth Spell, that'd surely be a fast way to alert the Vrondi to "hey, Heralds are present all the way out to here now!" :D
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About your questions, as I recall, the vrondi are set to watch anyone who uses magic within Valdemar's borders who is not a Herald. So someone can be a mage and be from Valdemar and as long as they never use magic, the vrondi will ignore them. But as soon they cast a spell the vrondi will start watching them.
The mage gift; not everyone with the potential will have their gift activated. It seems pretty arbritrary who will have their gift activated naturally and who will have their gift remain dormant (unless it's triggered by trauma like in Vanyel's case)
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I am rather opinionated, too u.u
So so... It is as I thought more or less.
Expect ficcie with ballad soon u.u
Are there any major event in the 500 years between the Last Herald Mage and the, you know, Next-Herald Mage? ò.ò
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In some way it is like Arthur Conan Doyle, who made a wonderful character but used him astonishingly badly.
So I don't plan to read other thing of hers.
But nothing that talk about young Valdermar mages, correct?
Goodgood.
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But, I completely understand what you mean (See: the community name). On the one hand, people who read the Valdemar books in the order they were first published already knew the outcome of LHM, because at that point in the timeline, Vanyel is a famous historic figure, and she wrote that he died saving the kingdom. But people like you (and me ;__;) who didn't read those books first had no idea Vanyel was going to die at the end, so it's like...okay...you gave him this horrible life...what's the payoff? Oh, he and his lifebonded get to haunt a forest together??? What the hell kind of ending is that???
The thing that fills me with rage the most is, when you do the math, Vanyel didn't even get a year with both Tylendel and Stefen combined! And then in Magic's Promise, the Shadow Lover told him he wouldn't be alone anymore. Nine years later he finally meets Stef...and then dies six months after lifebonding to him. FUUUUUUUUUUUUU that is not faaaair ;_________;
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It is not that terrible things happened to Vanyel. Terrible things happens to all heroes, it is a part of the stock of trade so to speak.
To take another example: think Sherlock Holmes. Everybody knows of him, so he made a good example.
Conan Doyle killed Holmes at Reichnback Fall. Not because it was what the story demanded. Not because it was a fitting end. Even if it was, mind you, like Vanyel, he died to destroy his arch-enemy. But that wasn't the Reason for his death. The Reason was that Doyle had got annoyed at him and wanted him gone, because he wanted to write about other things.
(He had to make him come back from the dead because his fans demanded him, but that is beyond the point)
The WHOLE story of Vanyel is the same. Vanyel doesn't suffer or die because his story or character demanded it. Vanyel suffered and died because MERCEDES LACKEY WANTED THE READER TO CRY.
It is blatant emotional manipulation. A cheap trick in which even good author sometime fall. I suppose that, since she knew that Van had to have a Tragic End, she strived to make it as tragic as possible.
JK Rowling falls in the same trick in the later HP books, when she kills beloved characters at random for cry-value.
I hate when Authors try to manipulate me like that. I hate it.
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Just to be clear, I am agreeing with you; my point isn't that manipulating the reader's emotions is bad in and of itself, it's manipulating them without a clear purpose. A perfect example: The gang rape. What purpose did it have? Did anything significant come of this? No. Not a damn thing.
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It is the difference between pulling a guitar string and playing it.
A good story should "play the cord of your heart" so to speak. It shouldn't pull it to get an extreme reaction.
It is... overplayed. A good actor don't need to exagerate to pass a meaning. A subtle gesture is sufficient.
You get it with the rape. There was no reason save to make us all heartsick. And pretty much all of Vanyel story is like that.
We are saying the same thing, anyway :D It is ok to kill characters if the story demands it. But killing them off for angst value (or because you are bored of them, like Conan Doyle)is wrong. It is a cheap trick.
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