Reply To: Role of Demons in History
Yeah, war is a pretty huge fact of life. At the moment, the story just happens to be in a part of the world that’s been largely settled for quite some time and powerful wizards basically create a Mutual Assured Destruction environment, so people have come to peace.
The core part of Norelon that we see in the book is primarily The Council States and Oorstemoth, thing around the Council States are very well organized by wizards…as you head East towards Lenamare’s School and Turelane there are no large empires immediately, but lots of local lords who skirmish. If you keep going there is another giant mountain range and then The Grove which is a HUGE treasure trove of non-humans as we will see in book 2. Trevin D’Vil you may or may not recall is the Enchantress of the Grove and a member of the Council. East of the Grove, go North and you have a huge primordial forest with Wood Elves, due East is a good sized trading empire, than untamed lands, more antagonistic regions south. (most of this is not on the posted map)
Same as you go west on Norelon. Going North you run into the dwarves who are pretty well organized and to the South Oorstemoth, which you may not have noticed, but it does have a penchant for Law And Order…
Those mountain ranges shield this region from a lot.
South of Oorstemoth you have some pretty lawless regions and planes/wastelands and then some interesting territory.
On Eton, the region around GizzorDell is pretty open, and there are often conflicts, it’s a lose grouping at best, it’s called “Eastern Free Eton” for a reason, and let’s just say it’s something of a Libertarian Paradise…
Etonia which is sort of diagonal is basically the remnants of an older empire of the whole continent. It’s generally at a stalemate, if not open hostility with New Etonia which is an empire with a divinely annointed Emperor and this is where the Etonian gods hold the most sway. I.e. this is the seat of the Rod, and Tiernon’s power, along with the other gods in the pantheon.
Etonia is a council state/semi democracy/oligarchy, in theory guided by the Society of Learned Fellows but well…they are scholars not politicians so…
Now as to non-humans…yes, the Council of Wizardry is hugely human based. I think the appropriate analogy would be that humans in the Council States are the “old white men” of the US and Europe. By which I mean in this part of Norelon, Humans (of all colors and genders) are the “old white men”
But this is somewhat do to the fact that humans have the most wizards, or at least the flashiest. A lot of the other races either work more like animages, or have Druids/Shamens or similar traditions. Dwarves and Heartheans have Thaumaturges and some pyromancy for Dwarves. The Aetos just don’t show up in this part of the world, they are mainly in the mountains, and they tend to be Enchanters. Gle’gren live under the sea.
You do see various Alvar, most of the other Sidhe stay out of sight in the forests. The same with most of the hybrids.
The one race you do see a lot, but for some reason Tom didn’t notice are the Orcs and the Orks (two different related races) and some of the other Jötnar
this was more by happenstance.
Orc(k)s are pretty common. Particularly Orcs (which are smaller than Orks). These guys are usually mercenaries and so they usually show up where there is a lot of fighting going on. You also find them going Viking. There are raider Orc and Ork tribes that do the old rape and pillage thing in the more lawless lands.
In particular, many regions have had problems with dragon born Orcs and Orks coming in from the sky burning the hell out of a town and then looting it.
(see http://www.astlan.net/Home/AstrometryAstrology.aspx)
Now this is interesting, you might note, in that dragons are demons.
Yes, well that’s curious because while we demons know that dragons are alien demons, apparently Astlanians don’t know that, and in fact there are dragons that live all the time in Astlan. I personally am not sure how they got there, but I’m guessing some long time ago, a bunch got summoned to Astlan and decided not to leave, and they’ve subsequently nested and raised generations of dragons outside the Abyss. It’s very curious, if I ever get time, I’ll look into it.
As to how Incubae and Succubae are created…that’s in book 2!
Most children have to grow into their full potential, so I assume he’d get stronger or better with his abilities.
I plan to explore the Orc(k)s, Satyrs and Minotaurs plus others in some short stories on the side.