Headscratchers / Dragonlance

• I want to know what's with Weis and Hickman and their characters' items? The sword of Kith-Kanan seemed rather unnecessary, considering what the series eventually does with it, and they are VERY choppy at describing exactly when Tas has his hoopak. He apparently loses it in Autumn Twilight, but then has it again by Spring Dawning, and then it's never mentioned in the Twins trilogy, despite being an item that is supposed to be his birthright and iconic to the Kender race, and then at some point in Lost Star a character sees a version of Tas (either a dream or a ghost, can't remember, bottom line is it's not really him), and he's described as carrying a hoopak, despite not having it on him for what amounts to the majority of his life.
  • Hoopaks aren't exactly difficult to make. And Tas loses and picks stuff up all the time.

• What bugs me is the MarySueness of Coryn. Any one else bugged by this?
  • Nothing wrong with her character in general, though it might have been better for her to have not gone from hedge witch running on instinct to Head of the White Robes all in one book. The fact that she came through the Test unscathed is a big Berserk Button of the fandom, though. A Test works by finding and correcting (often painfully) character flaws so that the wizard can be better dedicated to the magic. Justarius, a proud athlete, had his leg crippled. Dalamar dreamed that he could have saved the Dragon Orb from Lorac but didn't, choosing the magic over the fate of his homeland. A Bishōnen Black Robe had his face permanently scarred. And so on. The fact that Coryn was left untouched by the Test means that she has no flaws. It doesn't get more textbook than that.
  • Same with Palin, though. He didn't seem to sacrifice a lot during his Test. He was put into a very frightening position, but that was it.
    • Palin had his illusions about his uncle destroyed which, while not on the level of the others, was a corrective measure. It also made him face he'd perhaps be called to die for the service of good (as his brothers eventually would do). Then again, Palin eventually abandons his magic so maybe they failed in making his Test.
  • A lot of the fandom (Okay, some people over at the Dragonlance Forums) are annoyed by it. It is interesting to note that Margaret Weis herself approved of Coryn and said she was like a "Magical Mozart".

• There will be no more novels for Dragonlance for the foreseeable future.
  • Arguably, that's not a really bad thing. While I love the War of the Lance and the Twins series, the War of Souls Trilogy was rather awful, in my opinion. And you never know, a book was just released last year I think, Dragons of the Hourglass Mage
• What really bugs me is how I feel that Fistandantilus' potential was wasted. He seemed like such a cool character to have get killed.
  • Spoiler tag?
  • Define "Fistandantilus". The original may have died, but most of his awesome lived on in Raistlin. It's pretty explicit in War of the Twins that while Raistlin's personality was dominant, he absorbed most if not all of Fistandantilus's memories, knowledge, and power, to say nothing of his identity.
    • There's a big argument that the Stable Time Loop before Tasslehoff entered the frey meant that Fistandtilus never actually did any of the cool things that made him famous and it was always Raistlin. The later novels didn't go with that but it was a possibility.

• Anyone else bothered by the fact that things would have been way easier if Paladine would have NOT granted Crysania and Raistlin entrance to the portal? Yeah yeah yeah, Elistan said something about that, but still.
  • Way easier for whom? Don't forget that when Raistlin and Crysania are trudging through the Abyss, Takhisis sends out legions of dark wizards and clerics, among other things, to stop them. The implication is that these are Takhisis' followers whose souls went to the Abyss when they died. Presumably Raistlin's soul would also have gone there when died. So Takhisis would have had the most powerful wizard in the history of Krynn as her servant for eternity. Instead, Raistlin repented at the last moment, so Takhisis didn't get his soul. Presumably either Gilean or Paladine did. So Paladine gets his two pawns to eliminate legions of his archenemy's most powerful followers, after which, Paladine possibly gets Raistlin's soul in the end. Paladine wins.
    • Interesting point. Of course, it depends on where souls go and whatnot, but your explanation seems pretty sound.
  • Also by denying them entrance to the portal wouldn't Paladine be violating his freedom of choice stance? I forget how exactly Paladine could have denied them entrance but Paladine is pretty big on personal freedoms and by denying them access he would be violating that in a big way.
    • All Paladine would have had to do would be to not grant Crysania the power to cast her part of the spell. Paladine is himself free to deny the requests of his worshipers when it suits him. He certainly did so with the Kingpriest and the other clerics of Istar.
    • The Kingpriest still had his powers until the very end, as shown in the Kingpriest Trilogy. I think this is because he actually was a good man who was horribly misguided by his advisers.
    • The Kingpriest had his powers at the end because he was powerful enough to basically force Paladine to give them to him. He managed to use resurrection magic on Cathan Twice-Born for just about the first and last time in history through sheer force of will, which inspired his plan years later to entrap Paladine within his own body. Paladine can't (or won't) revoke his clerical powers because, technically, the Kingpriest is still working toward his tenets, though in a massively Knight Templar fashion. Other priests who are corrupt or only pay lip service to the faith get diddley squat.

• The fact that wizards have to choose an Order bugs me. If you are a Wizard of the Black Order you are pretty much saying to everyone that you're evil. None in his right mind would attack you in plain view, but still I don't think the poor town people would care if one obviously evil mage died.
  • Most Black Robes seem to consider themselves Above Good and Evil, and join up with that order so they can have a chance to learn powerful Black Magic no one else would teach. Most of them wouldn't care about what the townsfolk thought, because they don't care if a bunch of peasants die either, though they could probably still worm their way into their good graces if they had too (see Dalamar, who was certainly feared but also a very respected citizen of Palanthas- though admittedly, that respect mostly came from fear''). And there have been several cases of evil mages who were actually members of the Red or even White to throw off suspicion (Fistandantilus himself started out a Red, and only switched to Black because the Deal with the Devil he made with Takhisis and Nuitari demanded it). Finally, keep in mind that the wizards are basically a religious order, and Nuitari wants his followers to acknowledge their allegiance to him.
  • Also, not every wizard walks around in his wizard robes all the time. A wizard of any of the three orders is free to live in secret, concealing the fact that he's a wizard from the general public.
  • Besides, what are the "poor town people" going to do? Cut the Black Robe's throat in his or her sleep and invite retaliation from all wizards for murdering a legitimate member of one of the three orders? Not exactly a wise move either...
    • They don't actually do that; white and red robes don't want to antagonize the commoners further with retribution that might lead to another war against wizards, while black robes have little respect for any of their own who falls to the attack of mere peasants. The prequel trilogy mentions one black robe who made the mistake of forging money through magic, and got burned at the stake for her troubles, abandoned by Nuitari for being Too Dumb to Live. The Conclave just retrieved her spellbooks and closed the file on her.

• Kender. Just... Kender. The characterization given in the sourcebook makes it impossible for them to survive through a single winter, and the sheer Sueishness revolts me. The fact that they're responsible for the whole Age of Mortals by turning the setting into a Bad Future is icing on the cake.
  • YMMV. Personally, Tasslehoff is by far my favorite character, and I really like the kender as a race. It's nice to see that even in the times of darkness, there's a race that just can't help being innocent and upbeat.
  • Yup, I think too that Kenders are great, honestly I'm more annoyed at the fact that Paladine choose Elves as the "Good" race. I can't actually remind them doing anything useful in the whole settings.
  • The tropers before me are correct, it's strictly YMMV, but I also dislike the Kender. First picking Autumn Twilight up when I was 10 years old, I thought Tas was hilarious, but as I grew up and reread the books at 20... my God he grated on me. It doesn't help that he's the only character to be in all of the books in the main series, (the seven Dragons books and the Twins books), and could be considered the central character of the entire series due to how much is told in his POV and how much influence he seems to have on the entire history of Krynn.
  • YMMV aside, how on earth exactly would the Kender realistically survive as a people? Physically tiny and practically defenceless, stated to have very little sense of self-preservation, would likely be unable to focus on any kind of boring but highly necessary work due to their ADHD (like stockpiling crops, learning to write or digging latrines), they'd probably be barred from most other race's towns and cities and would certainly be barred from any bazaar or marketplace due to what you could call "cultural differences", they'd also be unlikely to ever build any settlements of their own as (of course) they'd keep getting bored from building and wander off to "borrow" other Kender's tools and materials... The problem with them is that even if the sheer harshness of the Crapsack World didn't just kill them off, people would (quite rightly) treat them as vermin, and they're not really clever enough to be effective opportunists; think of all the worst racist stereotypes of the Romani, and then mix them with the Eloi.
  • 5th edition seems to have toned down Kender a lot. There is no mention of kender kleptomania or ADHD - they are simply described as nearly fearless and incredibly curious and adventurous. The accumulation of items is now attributed to their extreme curiosity rather than absent-minded sticky fingers syndrome.

• Why does everyone treat Sturm's "sacrifice" at the end of Dragons of Winter Night like it was the most noble and heroic thing ever? I thought it was a Stupid Sacrifice and the biggest Idiot Ball in the series...the guy was offered a Dragonlance by Laurana (which they'd spent the last two books trying to get) two minutes before he went to face Kitiara and turned it down. He said that he wouldn't know how to use it. Surely an intelligent chap like Sturm could figure out that you use the Dragonlance by sticking the pointy end in the dragon. What better opportunity to restore the honor to the Knights of Solamnia than to be the first Knight since Huma to duel a dragon with a Dragonlance? Sigh....
  • Yeah, it seemed pretty pointless. To be honest, I never really liked Sturm, and I didn't really care too much when he died. Flint, on the other hand...*sob*.
    • Even with the Dragonlance his odds wouldn't have been very good.
    • Also, remember that Sturm's sword Brightblade is also a powerful magical weapon, in which he had probably put a lot of weapon mastery ranks (or had spent a lot of feats on, in later edition mechanics, etc.). In D&D mechanics, a weapon with which you are very skilled is often a better choice for most applications than even a somewhat more powerfully magical weapon with which you are not skilled. Which was precisely Sturm's reasoning.
  • Why is it so hard to fly a rocket? You just need to press a bunch of buttons. The trick is, theory is a lot harder than practice. Using a large weapon designed to be used on dragonback, when your typical weapon is smaller, differently-balanced, and has a different part that hurts people (which requires changing every part of your fightiing technique), it's not hard to see how Sturm wouldn't be good with a Dragonlance (rules concerns aside). Moreover, if he had used the Dragonlance, there is a decent chance that it would be lost, either by dropping it over the fortress wall, leaving it stuck in Skye, or Kitiara simply looting it off his dead body. Finally, even with the Dragonlance, Sturm's chances would have been slim; best-case scenario, he gets one hit on Skye before getting killed, but more likely is that the fact that Sturm isn't using his typical weapon is noticed, which leads to the conclusion that maybe the lance Sturm is planning to use on a dragon is a Dragonlance, and they have Sturm fried by Skye's lightning-breath before they get within stabbing distance (and then steal the lance). Overall, the lance wouldn't help.

• Elistan's sudden conversion to Paladine in the original series. This troper wouldn't have minded so much if he and Goldmoon had gone through some kind of great debate or he had witnessed an undeniable miracle, but instead his conversion comes after Goldmoon gives him a quick (and weak) parable about a gem in the woods to which his reply is pretty much "how could I have been so blind?"
  • My memory of this might be a bit fuzzy, but didn't Goldmoon heal a lot of people before that? I assume that someone told him about Goldmoon's healing powers and I guess he's just trusting and assumed she wasn't lying. Besides, the parable isn't exactly weak when it's completely proven that the gods do exist.
  • Pretty sure he was dying before they met, and he was one of the ones that got healed. I think that's probably grounds for a religious experience...
    • He was dying when they met, and he was the first one to be healed. However it was only after he had his 'how could I have been so blind' moment that Goldmoon confirmed to Tanith that Elistan would be saved. It's true that Goldmoon had invoked her goddess' power a few times before, but not when Elistan was around. Not exactly much evidence of the gods when they only save a guy after he suddenly starts believing in them for no apparent reason (and had literally no reason to think that they existed beforehand).
  • Elistan had also been searching for something to believe in his entire life, hence joining the Seekers, so he was pretty open to new ideas.

• How do you pronounce Raistlin?
  • I've always went for something like "Ricestleen". Then again, English is not my mother tongue so...
  • I've read that Raistlin's name was supposed to sound like "Wasting Man", so I pronounce it as "Rayst-lin".
  • I always pronounced it "Rayst-lin", but I realized after finishing the series that my friend pronounced it "RAZZ-lin", and I actually prefer that pronunciation.
  • It is, indeed, "Rayst-lin". These people should know.

• Is there any connection between the Majere family and the god Majere? I've only read a couple of novels and sourcebooks and it always baffled me.
  • Their family name is named after the god, but other than that there is no connection.

• Lord Soth's blown chance at redemption. It seems to be confirmed from multiple sources that he could have confronted the Kingpriest and had he done so he would have prevented the Cataclysm. If the Cataclysm was something that could be tossed aside for the sake of one knight's redemption for murdering his wife and seducing another woman then why was that stupid apocalypse treated like a necessity elsewhere? You can't even say it was the result of multiple authors, these accounts all come from the main books written by Weis and Hickman.
  • Lord Soth killing the Kingpriest would presumably have been such a Heroic Sacrifice that it would have derailed the Kingpriest's corruption of humanity from its tyrannical fascist theocratic state. He being a Knight of Solamnia on a holy mission from God. The kind of heroic story to inspire humanity to go My God, What Have I Done?. Instead, Soth chooses murdering his wife...again.
  • Either the confrontation would have been enough to derail the Kingpriest's plan (whether by stopping him from doing it, making him not want to do it anymore, or just giving the gods an opening to stop it); the gods knew Soth wouldn't quite manage it and told him that he could anyways; the gods had a backup method to stop the Kingpriest (perhaps a different disaster); or somewhere along the line from gods to Soth to narrator, the message was corrupted. There are a lot of possibilities.
    • Lord Soth was kind of a test for humanity. Basically, they were seeing if someone as horrible as Lord Soth could be redeemed then surely the people of Ansalom were not beyond redemption. He wasn't, so they were.
  • The other factor is that the reason Lord Soth was the Last-Second Chance is the Kingpriest was about to become an all powerful God-Emperor even the gods couldn't stop and would've gone on to commit genocide on everything and everyone he deemed evil (possibly causing more deaths than the Cataclysm did. So it was not only a chance for them to prove themselves as worth of being spared, it was literally the last possible chance for mortals to stop the Kingpriest. They'd given mortals many chances before this to stop the Kingpriest or him to stop himself, such as the 13 Warnings and multiple other heroes, and they didn't stop, and now it was literally the last possible chance to stop him. Had Soth stopped the Kingpriest, it'd not only have been an inspiring act of redemption, it would've bought mortals more time to get their act together. So it was a combination of the gods finally getting fed up with the mortals letting the Kingpriest and Istar continue beind genocidal fanatics when Soth abandoned his quest for one of the pettiest reasons imaginable and that the Kingpriest had to be stopped then and there and Soth was the last mortal that could have stopped him before he succeeded.

• Paladine is also called the Platinum Dragon, and Takhisis is sometimes described as a dragon with five different colored heads. These descriptions make them dead ringers for Bahamut and Tiamat from a number of other settings in D&D. Are Paladine and Takhisis the same as Bahamut and Tiamat but under different names, aspects of them, or different beings altogether?
  • The short answer is they're Expy of them that became their own thing. Chemosh was also one for Orcus.
  • To some extent, though as the series continues, Takhisis makes it clear she ISNT lawful evil by her short-sighted (by the standards of deities with the ability to perceive time in a non-linear fashion) self-defeating methods.
  • Depends which edition of D&D you're talking about. In 1st edition, Tiamat and Bahamut were just very powerful dragons, not gods, so Takhisis and Paladine were Krynnish deities who'd adopted their respective forms. Later, when the number of deities in D&D was high-going-on-ridiculous in 2e, the Krynnish deities and draconic deities were definitely separate; indeed, the latter were implied to be a bit miffed as how a couple of measly one-planet gods had stolen their image! When the ranks of the gods were drastically cut back for simplicity in 3e, Paladine began to be depicted more as an aspect of Bahamut, and Takhisis, as an aspect of Tiamat.