Id Like To Thank My Parents, Ed Greenwood And Ayn Rand

I’D LIKE TO THANK MY PARENTS, ED GREENWOOD AND AYN RAND So there’s this nasty rumor going round that I’m a libertarian, supporter of Ron Paul, devotee of Ayn Rand, and all-around neo-conservative firebrand. How may that occur? Granted, I did write a fantasy re-telling of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, so there’s that. But . . . what? One of my favourite issues is to see someplace online where a Forgotten Realms fan “outs” me, positively or negatively, for having based mostly the Watercourse Trilogy on The Fountainhead, as though that’s some kind of startling revelation, uncovered solely after months of exhaustive detective work by lit-pol CSI agents. Yeah. It’s in the acknowledgements. But that might make me a card-carrying objectivist, right? Surely it should. No, I’m afraid, it does not. So listed below are the two issues behind the Watercourse Trilogy: Book I: Whisper of Waves Let’s begin with the canal. I spent about fifteen years, first at TSR then at Wizards of the Coast, with a map of the Forgotten Realms (spanning three editions) on my office wall. As the FR line editor for years the continent of Faerûn grew to become my residence away from home. Time and again I stared at this map, making an attempt to figure out some various bit of continuity or the opposite for one of the books I was enhancing. I’m not one hundred% sure which guide it was, however an writer needed to know how to get from Kara-Tur within the far east to some realm or another on the coast of the Sea of Fallen Starsâ€"through ship. Turns out you possibly can’t. The huge ocean to the west isn't related to the Sea of Fallen Stars (aka the Inner Sea) by any navigable waterway. Hmm. That obtained me considering. When travel by sea was hindered by having to go the good distance round continents, crafty individuals constructed canals. The Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, as an example, are two of probably the most important in our real world. And individuals have been constructing canals for a very long timeâ€"millennia, even . The people of the Realms, particularly when you add in magic, are perfectly able to building a serviceable canal. I thought they should. And the extra I thought about it, the more it appeared like a story value telling. Not becuase the development of a canal is terribly compelling in its own right, but becuase something that threatens to tip the delicate steadiness of commerce in Faerûn tends to bring out battle, and conflict equals story. The Zhentarim made more than a few gold items a yr running items across Anauroch, for instance. If all of a sudden ships from Waterdeep can sail to pleasant ports in Cormyr and Sembia, that’s going to harm the Zhentarim. So clearly there can be powerful forces at work to both help the canal be constructed, or stop it from being constructed. Okay, that’s the first half. Still no hint of Ms. Rand. Book II: Lies of Light The second half I might title: “How I Brought a Neutral Neutral Hero to the Realms” From the second I first played Dunge ons & Dragons, in the summer of 1978, I’ve been fascinated with the (pre-4th edition) alignment system. I can not tell you the variety of hours spent with associates, pontificating on the true nature of every alignment. What historic figure greatest represents every alignment? Easy, right? Hitler was Lawful Evil, Charles Manson was Chaotic Evil. Gandhi was Neutral Good . . . or was he Lawful Good? And so on and so forth, ad infinitum. For me, though, the toughest was Neutral Neutral. This is someone who isn’t significantly chaotic or lawful, nor significantly good or evil, just kind of right within the center there somewhere. Who is this guy? Is that even possible? Oh, how I would rack my mind. Then it hit me: Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Hero. That is true neutral. This is a guy who has his personal agenda, which is crafted neither for the profit nor detriment of anyone else, and applied completely as the individual sees match, neither blindly cleaving to a set of legal guidelines imposed from outside, nor allowed to run rampant with the baser instincts of the mob (chaotic). Book III: Scream of Stone What Ayn Rand was writing about was a guy who didn’t give a shit both means. To my data, the Realms had by no means seen a “hero” like that, and as a devotee not of Objectivism, but of the D&D alignment system, I made this my mission. And what higher approach to do it than to go to the source. So I started reading The Fountainhead, and what an enormous undertaking that was. Trust me that is hardly a bit of “mild reading.” And I made notesâ€"intensive notes. Page after page after web page after page of notes, principally under the heading of “what is this chapter trying to do?” I did re-order stuff, by the way, and once you make one of Rand’s characters a dragon, and set the entire thing in a world of gods and magic, it finally ends up veering off into instructions that I feel fairly confident Ms. Rand would not have seen coming. But does this mean I’m an Objectivist? Sorry, all people, however no, it doesn’t. It means that my Neutral Neutral “hero” of the Watercourse Trilogy, Ivar Devorast, is, although the words “Objectivist” and “Objectivism” don't appear in any of the three books. I labored very exhausting to not make this trilogy any type of a press release on objectivism as a philosophy, Ayn Rand as a philosopher, and (consider it or not) on the time I was writing it I don’t even remember being particularly conscious of the influence Ayn Rand’s writing was having on certain elements of the neo-conservative “motion.” I didn’t attempt to say Ivar Devorast is mistaken because . . . or right becuase . . . I simply informed the story and let him be who he was. And precisely as together with your reading of The Fountainhead, or any other guide, you get to decide for your self if he’s somebody you love or hate. I’m not a political author, by commerce, and for me the train was rather more philosoph ical than political. I’ll leave it to you to determine if Ivar Devorast (nee Howard Roark) is a hero, a villain, or as his alignment would dictate, one thing smack dab within the middle. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans