The Age of Mortals

The Age of Mortal, introduced at the end of Dragons of a Summer Flame was a nifty idea.

It came at the wrong time, and its consequences, with a system change and a massive background change were, in my humble opinion, sad.

And yet...

My problems with the Fifth Age

My point is not to criticize, just list what didn't click with me, and thus, what I don't want to see in my Dragonlance campaign, be it as a game master, or as a player.

Here is what I didn't like with the ending of Dragons of a Summer Flame, and what followed after:

• Loss of magic (later replaced with alternative magic)
• Loss of high sorcery
• Loss of the three moons, and divine constellations
• Loss of gods
• Loss of the maelstrom in the blood sea
  
• The newly arrived magic "of the heart" (no, seriously...)
• The dragon antediluvians, their totems, the diablerie of dragons, and their destruction/alteration of half the continent
• The shadow sorcerer and the master of the tower
  
• The destruction/move of the Tower of Palanthas
  
• The Legion of Steel
  

All this come down to the fact that what we got in the end was a world that was reset, with all its cool features disappearing, and potentially replaced by.... new things I never asked for.

It's as if someone had just decided the next Star Trek: Next Generation's season would change to be more like Star Wars: Clone Wars. Both might be good, taken separately, but as a viewer of Star Trek: Next Generation, this was not what I was craving for.

Also, dragon antediluvians & diablerie...

So, yeah, my experience with Dragons of a Summer Flame, despite it being well written, was... not positive, because of its content, and what it led to.

... but still...

And yet, there is something that hinted at a meaningful change, the only sentence I actually loved in the book:

"Now is begun what will be known on Krynn as the Age of Mortals."

- Fizban, Dragons of a Summer Flame, Book 4, chapter 32

Ok, to be fair, at the time I've read that, I was furious, as it was before any game supplement contradicted the logical conclusion that it was the end of the Dragonlance world as a playable setting (if you wanted to follow the canon), despite it being barely explored (novels do not count - I wanted gazetteers).

But still, that sentence never left my mind.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

I'm a sucker for Greek mythology, which means that, no matter how bad that movie would be (20% fresh, 40% audience score), I'm still viewing it with pleasure. Mythological monsters, togas, and round shields do that thing, to me.

In the recent version (I don't remember much of the original), Kepheus, King of Argos, declared war to the Olympian gods.

King Kepheus, after ordering the destruction of the statue of Zeus - Clash of the Titans (2010)

And who can blame him?

Olympian gods were mean, prone-to-anger, egoistical, despicable and immoral morons. Wars were started in their name. Mortals were killed, raped, tortured, abandoned, orphaned, and/or exiled because of a god.

The Gods of Krynn

The universe of Dragonlance is very, very faith-heavy. Gods are everywhere, and half the wars (and without doubt the deadliest half one) have been fought because of some of them. More recently, during the Age of Might, the gods of good were on the rise, as Istar itself was on the rise...

... and wars were fought. Not just to defend, but to actively genocide entire species, because they were deemed evil. Powerful political figures, most of them on the "clerical spectrum" went deeper, and deeper in their religious, moral, and even racial intolerance, and brought their own people on board.

And the gods of good went along with that.

Wait, wat?

You might disagree with that statement: "the gods of good went along with that".

But in a systemic way, it was true. Let me explain:

Priests are gods' legitimate representatives

In a world so heavily religious, priest were agents of the gods, and were the only mortals able to wield divine magic, given to them by the gods.

Who could deny their legitimacy?

So, yeah, at that time, "following priests" was the same as "following gods".

Disagreeing usually meant suffering

Fun fact: The converse was also true: If you disagreed with the priests, then you were opposing the gods themselves.

And then their agents on Ansalon went berserk with religious, racial and moral intolerance.

And yet, gods remained silent

Of course, one might argue that priests supposedly lost their healing powers, but for some reason, it had no real effect. And for some reason, the priests still having kept their powers have been unable to make a difference.

So, let's not blame a population that had been educated to follow the gods' representatives' words, and/or that might have been fearful of publicly expressing any dissent.

Let's look, instead, at the gods themselves

For a long time, nothing happened, this means, at the very best, that the gods failed to make their disagreement understood by their followers.

The failure to clearly communicate is the gods' fault.

As well as their failure to predict/avoid the overall result.

Wait, it gets better!

At one moment, the gods decided enough is enough: If the mortals can't divine what is the exact will of the gods, then they need to be taught a lesson. And how would you do that?

You send a meteor right in their face.

Because, <sarcasm>between the passive-aggressive silence, and the orbital bombardment, there's clearly nothing in-between to communicate</sarcasm>.

One could even wonder if, when playing Sid Meier’s Civilization, all the gods had taken a look at the knowledge tree, and thought: "Aah, Diplomacy? What's the point!? I'll take Thermonuclear Bomb, instead!"

So, what was the plan the gods devised?

1. Take the true clerics away (so no more divine spells for mortals)
2. Make some ambiguous warnings that could be (and actually were) interpreted the wrong way
3. Make a half-hearted attempt to stop the whole thing by sending one moron to kill the Kingpriest, instead of telling everyone to unfollow him on twitter
   
4. Send a meteor on the Kingpriest's face, and ravage the whole continent (if not the whole planet) at the same time, killing and wounding countless people
   
5. ...
6. Profit?
   

<sarcasm>There's no way this could have led to a misunderstanding, could it?</sarcasm>

Wait, it gets even better!

No one really understood what happened, and their prayers to the gods remained unheard. Of course, there were no true clerics anymore to even try to explain them, so...

... Can you blame the mortals for being, at least, a bit bitter after being led astray by the gods' own representatives, then decimated by a cataclysm, and then abandoned amid the destruction?

Now, imagine a mortal, them and their family having suffering from religious persecution, then the destruction from the Cataclysm, then from war, famine and plague. That mortal, stumbling in a ruined temple in Xak Tsaroth, finding the statue of Mishakal, and then being told by the goddess that:

“The gods have not turned away from man—it is man who turned away from the true gods.”

- Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Book 1, Chapter 16

Would you blame that mortal if they had answered: "Are you freaking kidding me?"

... and what if...?

One could be tempted to find explanations, justifications, whatever, to justify that quote.

(And actually, I have a good explanation, at least, for my campaign... it is related to the notions of souls vs. spirit I wrote about before, but this is the kind of explanation a mortal might find disappointing)

But it is undeniable it would be dishonest to blame mortals for the crime of one moron and his church of morons, and then, on top of that, blame them for not understanding the cryptic messages the gods sent them, when even said gods' own priests are not able to do any of it.

By the way, what were the gods of Balance doing?

Gods of Evil were busy trying to conquer the world. Gods of Good were busy either supporting the Kingpriest, or gaslighting the mortals into thinking everything was their own fault.

But, what about the gods of Balance?

I mean, if we except the "free will" thing, the gods of Balance had been pretty silent for millennia. Reorx might have been busy mutating his own people, and Gilean might have been busy proof-reading his notes, but that hardly counts as being active, does it?

In my campaign...

... true to their philosophy, the gods of Balance worked hard to maintain the balance between good and evil... but the Cataclysm was an eye-opener for them:

What is the meaning of free will if your choice is limited to either "obey" or "suffer"?

To meaningfully exert free will, you need power.

And, in a fantasy setting, that power is magic.

In the Age of Dreams, magic was limited to a few creatures (dragons, and ogres, among them). Mortals were bereft of it. Unless they were clerics, and submitted their free will to a god, which then gave them access to divine magic.

It took Solinari, Lunitari and Nuitari, their meddling, and the Greystone, to bring arcane magic into Krynn. And, for the first time, mortals were able to exert meaningful power without direct control from the gods.

(The existence of renegade wizards proves the gods of magic were not controlling magic and its use).

This gave them the power to defeat the dragons in the Second Dragon War, and, at least, slow down the dragons, in the Third Dragon War.

And yet, despite that, mortals still couldn't really exert free will, as gods and their clerics were the only providers of divine magic (i.e. healing). Which means gods and their clerics, and their influence, could not be denied, nor ignored.

So, the gods of Balance decided that, to exert their free will, mortals needed unrestricted access to divine magic.

Conclusion

It may be cultural, but I have never been satisfied with the “The gods have not turned away from man—it is man who turned away from the true gods” as an excuse for the Cataclysm.

Yet, this is a very interesting point to analyze, and confront my players with. Which is why I will make a point to show both the gods of Good's benevolence (which is real) and how some of their decisions can be hard to justify. At which point, I'll offer an in-world explanation, and a way to, potentially, change (our own campaign world of) Krynn in a very concrete way, without needing another physical cataclysm to justify to change.

So...

Let's assume that the gods of Balance's plan is successful. What would be the consequences?

In the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book for D&D3.5, you can find two classes that didn't exist in previous editions rulebooks:

• The sorcerer (p53), which is the class described in the Player's Handbook
  
• The mystic (p47), which is a custom class, which can be summarized as "like the sorcerer, but with divine magic"
  

In my campaign, in the "Heroes of Apostasy" part, if the selected mortals (the players' characters?) succeed in uncovering secrets long lost to history, decide to act upon those secrets, avoid the anger of the gods, are deemed worthy (and by extension, if mortals are deemed worthy) of the tests and challenges, and are willing to accept the consequences of their act, then these two classes (and other variants) will suddenly become accessible to mortals.

Which will usher a new age.

The Age of Mortals.