From: Sandy Petersen (sandyp@idgecko.idsoftware.com)
Date: Mon 11 Dec 1995 - 22:32:23 EET
David Cake:
>To the Dara Happans, a man who has committed vicious and evil
>criminal acts at some point in his life really has very little hope
>of redemption,
Peter Metcalfe
>This is very bleak. What ever happened to the concept of
>extirpation or purification of the bad deed? And Yelm got tossed
>into the Deepest Pits and yet he got out.
The Dara Happan culture does not support such a concept.
Repentence is only possible in the slightest degree. When a man
foully blunders, his soul is forfeit, and that's all there is to it.
Lodril never rose back to the ranks of the sky. The Dara Happan
heroes are all men who _never_ failed, despite terrible trials and
temptations -- from Yelmalio (or your favorite name for this god) to
Yelm to Lightfore to Dayzatar.
Yelm was tossed into the Deepest Pits, but he was
guiltless. More to the point, he was able to leave the pits _only_
by remaining pure and stainless to his ideals. If he had weakened,
shown fear, compromised with the dark and the chaos, then he would
never have returned. But his selfless dedication to what he knew was
right, despite all odds, forced his destroyers to seek forgiveness
after which he led them to life once more.
Argrath or Orlanth -- heroes who fell and learned from
their misdeeds, are alien to Dara Happan psychology, as is any kind
of comprehension of dualism. They don't grok the idea that Gbaji and
Nysalor could be two parts of the same being (a common concept
outside Peloria). There are traces of dualism left in their culture
(viz. Gorgorma and Dendara), but mainly they view the world as a
hierarchy, not a spectrum.
Sandy P.
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