Such weapons offend because the true warrior understands that while one is learning how to use a sword, one should also be learning why and when to use a sword. Such a weapon strikes terror into the heart of the true warrior, and not because he fears that he will fall victim to it, or even that he fears it will one day replace him. The Gondsman spoke of some weapon called an arquebus, a tubular missile thrower with many times the power of the strongest crossbow. It is a lifelong pursuit with gradual increase in power, as mystical as it is secular. There was no mention of the fact that powerful wizardly magic is not given to anyone, but rather, is earned, day by day, year by year and decade by decade.

My Gondsman companion promised me that he and his fellow inventor priests would one day replicate every spell in any wizard's repertoire, using natural elements in the proper combinations.īut there was no mention of the discipline any wizard must attain as he perfects his craft. Even a wizard's magic might be no more than a way of conveying universal energies - and that, too, might one day be replicated. To a Gondsman fanatic, everything can be broken down, taken apart and put back together. How could i even begin to enlighten him to the complexity? How could i show him the variations between drow and surface elf in the very view of the world resulting from eons of walking widely disparate roads? And, given his devotion, almost fanaticism, it seemed to me as if he felt he could affect a change in more than physical appearance.īecause, in his view of the world, all things could be so explained and corrected.

I think that the Gondsman honestly believed his claim that if he could merely find the various elements that comprised the drow skin, he might affect a change in that pigmentation to make the dark elves more akin to their surface relatives.

'What element is missing,' he wondered, 'that makes your race different from your surface kin?' He even asked if he could take a piece of my flesh, that he might study it to determine why the skin of the drow elf is black. He went on to explain the premise of his religion, his very reason for being, that all things were based in science, in mechanics and in discovery. 'I am a Gondsman!' he proudly told me as we sat beside eachother at a tavern bar, I sipping my wind, and he, I fear, partaking a bit too much of his more potent drink. “In my travels on the surface, I once met a man who wore his religious beliefs like a badge of honor upon the sleeves of his tunic.

Ra salvatore streams of silver