Greetings

[tiz]

 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^^)

Comments

[krait]

that the Big Brother watches you for your own good

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.

[tiz]

I have only read the trilogy of Vanyel, so I don't know about later time ò.ò but Vanyel *specifically* said (I can find the quote, I have enlightned it in my kindle) that the Vrondi would advise the nearest Herald of mages. Also, there is a moment in which he thinks that a passing mage had been made definitively crazy by the Vrondi.
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.

[krait]

I had forgotten the part about alerting the nearest Herald! From what we see in other books, though, I don't think it worked -- the Heralds without Mage-Gift can't see or hear the Vrondi, so while they maybe get very "suspicious" or "feel like something's wrong" when the Vrondi try to alert them, just because they're all hanging around, they don't seem able to communicate clearly.

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.

[tiz]

Thank you for your answer!

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

[thene]

I had forgotten the part about alerting the nearest Herald! From what we see in other books, though, I don't think it worked

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.)

[tiz]

Yes, it is pretty much as I thought ò.ò

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

[krait]

they couldn't 'borrow' mages from their allies because of the shield effects

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*

[thene]

Oh yeah, Toril was definitely in on Stefen's disappearance - I just like to fancifully headcanon about the whole thing, because truth, invention and forgetfulness seem to be themes with Stef, and he is very powerful when it comes to what he can do. XD

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.