Spirit Walker - Spoilers - Chapters 1 through part of 14

[MrNerdHair]

Finally, I'd like to posit an alternate solution to the crystals-are-running-out problem. Instead of making more crystals for humanity to use, drain all the crystals in the world. Sure, human society would descend into chaos, but there wouldn't be war, just a tidal wave of looting, pillaging, and other small-scale annoyances. It's already been shown that humans have guns and crossbows, so there wouldn't be a total power vacuum (though the Loreguard and Loremasters would get the short end of the stick, I can't see the spirits - especially the shadow fox - caring that much). Furthermore, the Arcans could escape easily if their collars are non-functional and the humans don't have painsticks or shockrods anymore.

As has been pointed out, humans would still have guns and such and the social organization to massacre the Arcans.
The idea of shaman making crystals for the humans to use, seems elegant to me because the money from the money from the crystals could then be used undermine, or take over, and liquidate key parts of the slave trade.

Well, a previous idea I had, but abandoned because this seemed simpler, was to drain all the crystals everywhere EXCEPT the Arcans' collars. Humanity gets thrown into chaos, and the Arcans aren't a greater threat to them than the general hoopla occurring in the society at the time. (BTW, the Arcans would not be killed for the crystals in their collars, as the crystals are permanently affixed to their settings. This is the bit I didn't notice earlier that made me abandon this idea.)

The objective of all this would be to derail the Loremasters' plans to kill Arcans to save crystals, and temporarily break down human society until the Arcans can be extracted - which will be much easier with all the alchemical communicators dead and governments suspicious of one another. Furthermore, the disorganization would help the Arcans avoid pursuit back to Haven. By the time humanity has the crystal problem sorted out, the Arcans will have disappeared, without any individual country, city, or village having noticed the full extent of the Arcan disappearances.

The only problem here (that I can see) would be avoiding drawing attention to the Arcans by the fact that their collars are all still functional. I'd suggest a selective draining of all non-red crystals over a certain point-weight, or all crystals with a certain internal structure that is common to more powerful crystals, but not to ones as small as those used in collars or lights, for example. Then the Arcan disappearances could be blamed on shattered collar crystals, and though humans would be wary of them, they wouldn't kill them because they could see that their Arcans had intact collars.

Possible ways to do this include a sonic emitter that resonates at a frequency unique to certain crystals - or, more likely, a harmonic that's too high for humans or Arcans to hear - (yeah, Great-Ancient-Civ style idea, but there's probably a Shaman spell that could emit that sort of sound with a range of a small village) or perhaps direct intervention by the spirits draining things, though I'm an engineer at heart and like the first idea better. (I'm the kind of guy who thought that the plasma-based tech in Subjugation was cooler than the Jyslin/Jason telepathic sex.)

And, while I'm at it, possible plot twists are the Loremasters having already learned enough about materials engineering from the Ancients to figure out that crystals were susceptible to this sort of sonic resonance attack, and having constructed some sort of crystal-based anti-high-frequency device to protect their crystals, sort of like Kyven's area-silence spell. Then, when the dust clears, the shamans extracting the Arcans realize that their greatest enemy is the only one still out there, and the newfound weakness of the Loremasters' enemies has made them more powerful than ever.


Unfortunately, I'm profoundly aware that by mentioning these ideas I have probably ensured that they will never be used... if Fel pays attention to the spoilers threads in order to find out what we're thinking and try to surprise us, as I expect he does. I bet the real event the Danna's-Kyven-blood line foreshadows has subtly changed 5 times since we started batting ideas about it around.

[MrNerdHair]

Okay, here's an idea it might work. The Loremasters want to recreate the old world. What if you give them precisely what they want? A complete instruction manual and technical materials and assistance needed to do it. All you'd need to do is present it in the right way. A starship returning from the stars for example... Illusions often work best when trick the other person into seeing what they want to see. And the loremasters would love to see this.

Well, that would be awesome, but I don't know that the Arcans have terribly extensive knowledge of the Great Ancient Civ, or that the spirits do either. It hasn't been established yet that the spirit world and the real world were in any way connected before the breaking... and I suspect the answer to that will either never be given, or be no, because otherwise Fel's going to have to make a statement with religious implications in the real world, and that would hurt the audience's suspension of disbelief.

So essentially, good idea, but where to get the tech to make the illusion from?

[boballab]

Ok first I think it is implied that the spirit world was always there, but seperated from the mortal world until the breach. From the way Stalker and Firetail explained it the Spirit World is not a seperate world but the same world just a different plane of exsistance. The question is how much did the spirits pay attention before the breach to the mortal world? The answer was probably not alot until the Humans caused the breach and killed some of the spirits.

Now on to Fel reading this thread and changing his story: Fel does read this thread, I have seen him in this thread and he has responded a few times here. Fel pretty much has his stories thought out ahead of time, that is what makes his stories so good. Also Fel as far as I know doesn't change the story just to mess with us. An example of this was that I postulated way back on page 17 or 18 of this thread that the Loremasters knew that the crystals were running out, that they were the remains of killed spirits from the breach and that the Loremasters were trying to revive that experiment. I put that forward as what the spirits were trying to stop. As can been seen in Ch 14 that was exactly correct. Fel didn't change his whole story because I puzzle it out from the clues he left in the story, I think he writes his storys in such a way you can figure the whole story out if only you pay attention to the trail of little clues he leaves behind. Now in his Evilness would he throw something in or delay something to tease us? Without a doubt. Myself and some others way back postulated that Kyven would somehow be allowed to change forms and Fel has been teasing us with it for several chapters now. Will it be part of the Story? If Fel planned the story that way it will be, if he didn't and doesn't want to use it he will just unmercifully drag it along until it kills us. That is just Fel at his Evil Best.

[MrNerdHair]

And as my final entry in this three-different-post top-of-the-24th-page sequence (which it seems boballab has now broken - bad boballab! The nerve of posting while I'm still typing! And good points, btw ), I'd like to beseech Fel for some stuff, and hope he doesn't turn me into an Arcan for it.

First off, I'd appreciate more insight into the motivations of the spirits. The Arcans disproving the Loremasters' "spirits are evil" idea is okay, but Kyven slowly finding out that the Loremasters are partially right and the spirits are taking advantage of the humans and Arcans for their life energy, or using the blank-slate civilization that Haven represents (and which they created) as a power base to turn the whole world into a spirit-worshiping theocracy, or something similarly twisted would be very interesting. After all the Loremasters' "the Shaman are Arcans controlled by evil forces called spirits" is only (apparently) wrong because of the word evil... it's been seen that the Shaman are, in a significant way, slaves to the spirits, and I'm very interested in the fact that the shadow fox made Kyven give up the mana whip because shaman magic could duplicate it. After all, it is the same magic... the main difference is that the shadow fox controls Kyven's use of Shaman magic, and I'm willing to bet that she wouldn't have been able to control Kyven's use of crystal-based magic, even though it would exact no physical toll on his body, and leave him better prepared to deal with situations with his Shaman magic. In short, the shadow fox is power hungry, and even though she uses guile and deceit (her innate tendencies) to get it, it has not been revealed yet that power-hungriness is an inherent trait of hers, so it may be that she has some ulterior motive for it. (And I haven't heard of any other shaman using crystal-based devices either... even though any shaman who didn't need to go incognito like Kyven does all the time would be wise to, say, carry a shockrod instead of using the lightning spell, in order to save their endurance for spells that it's not easy to build devices to replicate.

Also, where did the Arcans come from? It had to do with the Breach, that much is obvious, and they are related to the spirits... the shadow fox has her own shadow fox Arcans, and I'm willing to bet there's a spirit for each other Arcan type, and vice versa. So, why did the Breach create beings in the images of the spirits? Could that have something to do with the harm the breach caused the spirits? The Arcans are obviously more direct recipients of the spirits' intervention than the humans, and I'm not willing to believe that the story's central theme is something as old and tired as "slavery is wrong"... so I'm betting that the spirits are significantly more involved with the Arcans than the humans not because the Arcans need their help more, but because the Arcans are more directly related to the spirits. I think it'd be nice to see some anti-human prejudice on the part of the spirits, because a significant theme here is opening one's eyes to the real world, and the picture of slavery painted so far is very skewed in the Arcans' favor. I'm not accusing Fel of bad writing here, and I think that the coverage of the subject so far is very appropriate given that we're seeing things from Kyven's point of view. I do, however, think that if the spirits wanted to teach him wisdom, they'd show him both sides of the coin, and that something's fishy because shadow fox didn't do that. Slavery is a nasty business, and the nastiness isn't only on the part of the slavers. The affect it has on the slaves is enough to drive them to some pretty nasty behaviors too. I'd expect something along the lines of Kyven being manipulated into releasing an Arcan from slavery who then goes on a personal vendetta against humanity and slaughters part of a village, or something else that shows that the sharp mental distinction between two very similar groups that the rationalization of slavery requires is taught in equal measure to slaver and slave. If Kyven hadn't been originally human and known better, then after the treatment he received at the hands of humans, it would be just as easy for him to brand all humans as evil and utterly separate from Arcans as it is for a human to say that "it's only an Arcan". Slavery means the slavers are twisted to begin with, but it also means that once everything's said and done, the slaves are just as twisted, and the slavers can usually stop being twisted faster than the damage to the slaves can be healed. After all, the Arcans won't even let humans in their lands beyond their first village.

A little personal history, which you can skip if you want:
I grew up in a white family in the state of Mississippi, but we moved there from Scotland, my home by birth, and I never even noticed that there were "black people" until I was about eight; not because I'd never seen one (the city we were in was 3/4 black), but because I never considered drawing a distinction between "black" and "white" until it was pointed out to me. There were just people, with different skin colors just like people have different eye or hair colors. I got a front-row seat (and a third-party view) to the kind of tension and despicable mess that can result from slavery, and I cannot easily believe that, no matter how different the Arcan mindset from the human one, the humans are the only ones who are in the wrong, or that the situation would simply be resolved if the humans all had changes of heart and let all the Arcans go to Haven. It's just not that simple. To borrow a phrase, there are no happy endings to institutionalized slavery. While I can believe that the council is blind enough not to see this and would thus posit simply segregating all the Arcans from human society to fix things, I can't imagine that that's the way things really are. Segregation works, but only for a generation or two, and only because the two groups are physically separate. There comes a time when the children who don't believe that the "other side" is as bad as their parents think break the segregation, and as the most paranoid and nutty typically carry a lot of weight in a society, the "other side" is bound to not receive them with open arms, and then the conflict erupts once again. Frankly, integration doesn't work either. In Mississippi, I was hated by the average black as much as the whites hated the black people. Oh, I wouldn't get crosses burned in my front yard, but there were sections of town I couldn't walk through because the absolute best I could have received was a serious roughing up, and there were neighborhoods that blacks "weren't welcome" in either. And though there were those on both sides who knew better, the one constant to the whole situation was that it was a mess, and it won't get better any time soon. The point I'm trying to make is simply that slavers always look more morally reprehensible than the slaves, but that's because slaves don't get much slack to commit morally reprehensible deeds. In terms of pure human nature, everyone is screwed up to some degree, and because of the law of averages it's almost impossible to say that one group is inherently better or worse than another.

Obviously, it could be said that Kyven was made a Shaman to teach Arcans that not all humans are evil... but given that the shadow fox has utterly neglected to educate him about the depth of the hatred and prejudice Arcans have against humans, I'm not sure that holds a lot of water. After all, Kyven's going to have spent a stint as an Arcan, but he started human, and he'll never be tortured into a frame of mind in which humans are evil, so his time as an Arcan in slavery wouldn't give him that kind of insight. He'd have to interact with lots of Arcans who had just been freed to gain a true handle on that sort of prejudice.



Finally, I REALLY hope that the spirits (as a whole) are going to turn out to be not as benevolent toward humanity as they've been portrayed this far... because, as you can see from all the stuff I've said in this post already, I've had to do some pretty serious extrapolation and interpolation to explain why they're acting like they are, and if they DO have motives as pure as it seems so far, I'm really not sure how to reconcile all of this. Fel, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, save my suspension of disbelief!

[Mizriath]

And my simple thoughts were that the Spirit was not inclined or not wanting to want another Breach.

It was not really stated what the Breach really is as it was part of the histroy to be unfold for the future but it affects the spirits. Further conjecture would be that the spirit world was quite peaceful until the breach that could hurt and kills spirits. It could end result that the spirit in their vengefulness killed the side/humans which created the breach to the point that humans was plunged almost back the the middle ages... with ahem no computers.

[boballab]

Actually Firetail has told exactly what caused the breach.

“The war was the catalyst, not the cause,” she corrected. “The war raged for years before the chain of events that destroyed your people’s civilization. From what we’ve managed to piece together, which your Loremasters will confirm if you ask,” she smiled, “is that the war was beginning to turn. One side was defeating the other, and the losing side began grasping at straws to turn the war back in their favor. They began desperate experiments with forces they did not understand, searching for some new weapon, some new strategy to stave off their defeat. Simply put, child, the losing side began an experiment that created what we call the Breach.”

It is very simple. The Ancients conducted an experiment, the experiment didn't perform the way they thought and caused the breach between planes of existance, this breach killed some of the spirits, their remains came to rest in the mortal world as mana crystals. The release of that energy into the mortal world was in the form of an explosion. Basically it is like cracking a window on an airplane at 30,000 feet. The difference in air pressure between the inside of the plane and the air outside causes an explosive rush of air out of the plane. The same thing would result by breaching a plane of exsistance that had that much more energy potential then the one the Humans were in. The Loremasters don't know or care that the mana crystals are the remains of sentient beings in another plane of existance, all they see is their civ collapsing in a few years. The Experiment will get them more mana crystals and is all they care about and they probably think they know enough not to have another explosion. They probably have a team of Alchemists working on a device to regulate the energy. Basically in a way enslaving a spirit or spirits to make crystals from them.

Now the Arcans themselves I postulate that they are the result of mutations caused by the use of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological weapons in the War. These mutations could be of animals or even humans or both. Over the years these mutations could have inter-bred to give us the present day Arcans. This would explain why some are more intelligent then otheres and why some are feral. The ones with a more Human mutation background would have the intelligence the ones with more animal the feral.

[Mizriath]

Firstly, the crytals are not remains of the sentients. Kyven states that it is spirit energy which I take as the energy that empowers spirit and formed the mana crytals due to the Breach.

Yes it is called the Breach. But what experiment caused it, how it caused the Breach and the impact on the spirit is not known. It harms the spirits yes but in what way. I thought the spirits are well spirits and kind of dead beings of a higher level.

But a Breach that bridge to the spirit world and harms them! It even empowers the spirit to come into the material plane. It gives them godly powers that shows that they are more than just simple spirits in my simple head.

I will just wait to hear the connections and the dots.

[boballab]

Firstly, the crytals are not remains of the sentients. Kyven states that it is spirit energy which I take as the energy that empowers spirit and formed the mana crytals due to the Breach.

Yes it is called the Breach. But what experiment caused it, how it caused the Breach and the impact on the spirit is not known. It harms the spirits yes but in what way. I thought the spirits are well spirits and kind of dead beings of a higher level.

But a Breach that bridge to the spirit world and harms them! It even empowers the spirit to come into the material plane. It gives them godly powers that shows that they are more than just simple spirits in my simple head.

I will just wait to hear the connections and the dots.

The clues I used are these:
1. The Magic produced by the mana crystals and the Shamans are same. The shaman get the energy to perform the magic directly from the spirits. Same Magic, Same Energy

“Just so, human,” the wolf said. “The power of crystals is spirit energy trapped in the mortal world.”

“Kyven, Shaman can create mana crystals,” Virren told him. “They draw the power from the spirits and manifest it into our world in the form of a crystal, just like the crystals we mine. You can’t tell a Shaman made crystal from a natural one unless you’re someone who works with crystals for a living.”

“Yes and no. Crystals are trapped forms of spirit energy. We can access all types of spirit energy, but the energy we call on will be that form of energy to perform that task. We would call on what you would call green energy to heal, for example. Actually, it is just energy from different spirits.

Living in the spirit world are, well, spirits, child. They are entities without bodies who take on whatever appearances that please them. Since they are energy without material form, they only exist within the spirit world.

“That is the power of the Shaman, child. Our power is no different from the power of your crystals. The only difference is, we access it directly from the source.”

“It is the same energy. Alchemical devices just copy Shaman magic using crystals to power them

But, to return to the original point, child, mana crystals are nothing but spirit energy trapped in the material world,”

The spirits care about the humans, Danna, but the Breach harmed them, and they won’t permit another Breach

Ok its a lot of quotes but it shows how Fel has been stressing that the Energy used by the crystals and the Shaman are the same. So to me the Shaman get their Energy from the Spirits themselves not from the plane they inhabit. They even state that the crystals are trapped forms of spirit energy not trapped forms of spirit world energy. So to me the Energy the Shaman use is a portion of the Spirits own lifeforce. Now the Spirits are beings of energy so how did the breach harm beings of energy? By taking their energy away from them which formed the mana crystals. Now what do you have left over from an energy being once you take its energy away? The same thing that happens to humans when you take away their energy, a corpse. The Human body burns sugars to keep the body alive, this is what gives our body its heat. This is a type of energy and once you take it away we die, lack of food we die, take our body heat away we die. Same process with an Energy Being, take away their energy they would no longer exist, basically they would be dead and all that would be left would be the energy that was trapped in crystal form, a corpse if you will. Remember the Breach was not controlled, it was a chaotic mess. The Energy of the Spirit Plane caused the explosion when it rushed into the mortal plane, The mana crystals were formed when spirits caught in that explosion had all of their personal energy drained at once killing them. At least that is how I read Firetail's explanation. The Spirits are not dead things they are Sentient Energy Beings in a Energy Plane, just like Humans are Sentient material beings in a material plane. Both are alive, and to me the Spirits are not divine Godly beings. They are mortal in their own way. They probably have long life spans, they would be more comprable to the Were-kin or Dragons in Sennadar. Beings that can attain a great age and accumulate vast power and wisdom.

[ANTIcarrot]

Well, that would be awesome, but I don't know that the Arcans have terribly extensive knowledge of the Great Ancient Civ, or that the spirits do either.

The basic idea is the creation of a fictional third-party that can promise to solve all the loremasters problems, and actually solve one or two of them. It can be a starship with fake-computers, or a ship from 'Australia' that has finally managed to bypass the evil shamans and reach America, loaded with synthetic 100 point white crystals. In exchange you bargain for arcan lives, or present them with some kind of fait accompli that forces them to change policy.

The starship idea would depend on the loremasters also having a rather spotty knowledge of the appearance of ancient technology - and realising that an isolated colony several light years away might have made advancements they would know nothing about. The illusionary technology may only need to last for a short period of time. Create a few crystal devices that really don't look like they're crystal devices (and only cast the illusion when they are tested for magic) and how would they loremasters know otherwise?

and I suspect the answer to that will either never be given, or be no, because otherwise Fel's going to have to make a statement with religious implications in the real world, and that would hurt the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Eh?

[MrNerdHair]

and I suspect the answer to that will either never be given, or be no, because otherwise Fel's going to have to make a statement with religious implications in the real world, and that would hurt the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Eh?

(Full sentence being referred to follows)

It hasn't been established yet that the spirit world and the real world were in any way connected before the breaking... and I suspect the answer to that will either never be given, or be no, because otherwise Fel's going to have to make a statement with religious implications in the real world, and that would hurt the audience's suspension of disbelief.

My point is that the world Fel is working in this time is not a "fictional" one per se... it is a future version of our own universe, and we are all members of the Great Ancient Civilization. Saying that the spirit world was connected to the mortal world pre-Breach would require that spirits, and perhaps shamans as well, exist in our own world, and that is a lot harder to absorb than the idea that magic/spirits/shamans/etc. exists in a purely fictional universe.

There are plenty of sci-fi TV series (picking a genre I know a lot about) that are set in the future of our universe, and that setting lends a certain attractiveness to them in that the fictional events can be imagined as future events; I was really quite disappointed, for example, that 2001 passed without a mission to Jupiter being launched. And though many of these fictional futures include fantastical technology, time travel, magic, and the like, they very rarely delve into "rewriting" events that are in the past from the audience's perspective, because though plausible in the context of the story, the interpretation of the new chain of events would conflict with the established worldview of some of the audience, and hurt their capacity for suspension of disbelief.

I'm not saying that Fel couldn't declare that there is a spirit/natural world dualism within the context of the story, but I would find it hard to believe that there are animal spirits walking around and affecting my world. While that may be a perfectly acceptable concept for some, I'd be willing to bet that there's more people than just me that read Fel's work and feel the same way. All I'm trying to say is that it's probable that Fel will either not address the question, or do something along the lines of saying that the spirit world is an alternate reality or dimension that was attached to our reality by the Breach.

Ok its a lot of quotes but it shows how Fel has been stressing that the Energy used by the crystals and the Shaman are the same. So to me the Shaman get their Energy from the Spirits themselves not from the plane they inhabit. They even state that the crystals are trapped forms of spirit energy not trapped forms of spirit world energy. So to me the Energy the Shaman use is a portion of the Spirits own lifeforce. Now the Spirits are beings of energy so how did the breach harm beings of energy? By taking their energy away from them which formed the mana crystals. Now what do you have left over from an energy being once you take its energy away? The same thing that happens to humans when you take away their energy, a corpse. The Human body burns sugars to keep the body alive, this is what gives our body its heat. This is a type of energy and once you take it away we die, lack of food we die, take our body heat away we die. Same process with an Energy Being, take away their energy they would no longer exist, basically they would be dead and all that would be left would be the energy that was trapped in crystal form, a corpse if you will. Remember the Breach was not controlled, it was a chaotic mess. The Energy of the Spirit Plane caused the explosion when it rushed into the mortal plane, The mana crystals were formed when spirits caught in that explosion had all of their personal energy drained at once killing them. At least that is how I read Firetail's explanation. The Spirits are not dead things they are Sentient Energy Beings in a Energy Plane, just like Humans are Sentient material beings in a material plane. Both are alive, and to me the Spirits are not divine Godly beings. They are mortal in their own way. They probably have long life spans, they would be more comprable to the Were-kin or Dragons in Sennadar. Beings that can attain a great age and accumulate vast power and wisdom.

(Emphasis added)

That's what I don't see as obvious. Just because the spirits can manipulate, or produce, or contain magical energy a la mana crystals and shaman magic does not necessarily mean that they are made of this energy or that it is their lifeforce. Maybe there are multiple types of energy that the spirits are made of, or, more likely, they are the same form of energy that mortals have and can be seen with spirit sight, just without a body to go with it.

The Breach could have been damaging to the spirit world the same way it was damaging to our own: by the transfer of energy (or, perhaps, entropy... ooh! Look! I've been reading the Doctor Who wiki!) from our world into theirs. On the other hand, even if it's their life-force energy, we've never seen that spirits were killed in the Breach, so I doubt that the mana crystals are the remains of sentient beings... It's probably just that the spirits were drained of some of the energy they had, but weren't killed.

[Elsh]

Ok its a lot of quotes but it shows how Fel has been stressing that the Energy used by the crystals and the Shaman are the same. So to me the Shaman get their Energy from the Spirits themselves not from the plane they inhabit. They even state that the crystals are trapped forms of spirit energy not trapped forms of spirit world energy. So to me the Energy the Shaman use is a portion of the Spirits own lifeforce.

I'm fairly certain that the term spirit energy is a misnomer. I think its spirit energy because for the shaman it comes from the spirits, that doesn't mean that its actual source is the spirit. Its source could be the plane that the spirits inhabit. We don't know where the spirits get the energy that they give to Shaman, they could easily be a conduit for the stuff.

We don't know if the spirits are the only 'spirit energy' in their plane or anything else really.

We actually don't know that the energy trapped in crystals isn't spirit world energy, as far as shaman are concerned its identical to the energy that they get from the spirits, that does not mean that it also came directly from a spirit.

[furry_wolf2001b]

Yeah i agree.
For all we know crystals may be crystallized energy spirit poop. LOL

Another thing.
What i don't get we never really hear about the rest of the world, at all.
And why it lost just about ALL technology, the world are after all HUGE, and for an simple explosion to have affected things all around the globe...

So one thing i have begun to think about, are we really certain this is the real earth?
I mean having two sides duking it out on a colony world and blowing up in the end all the technology thats left seems way more likely as they might/could have been wherry localized on one continent.

[boballab]

I don't exactly remember who or where in the story but there is one mention of what would be europe in our world in the story. It had something to do with trade but don't exactly remember what.

Think of Kyven's world as a parallel version of ours, Fel has stated that the geography of Kyven's world matches ours and that the Ancient Civ is basically comparable to our own.

[ANTIcarrot]

Another thing.
What i don't get we never really hear about the rest of the world, at all.
And why it lost just about ALL technology, the world are after all HUGE, and for an simple explosion to have affected things all around the globe...

Most novel or TV writers portray the outside world as a inferior and/or spineless version of their own nation. Since Fel is american, it is quite normal (in the media industry) for him to specify that only america survived. By contrast, in British 007 films America is very much relegated to the sidekick role. And I agree, such a proposition does sound exceedingly unlikely given that america was the center of the disaster.

This is what I really mean by 'Eh?' above. Fel has asked his readers to believe exceedingly improbable things before (quite often before, depending on your point of view) and this time is little different.

[boballab]

I think we are missing what is meant by the term Great Ancient Civilization. The Great Ancient Civilization is not one country or even continent, it is the entire world. If you have a war in our society that used all or almost all the nuclear weapons on it, the fallout would basically destroy life as we know it world wide. The average people of Noraam really don't think much about what happened on the other side of the world during the war because it has no effect on their daily lives. All they know is what the Loremasters said and what they see. The Loremasters told them about the war, that there was this great human civilization, they then try to process what they are told with what they see everyday. When the average citizen whose ancestors probably going back many generations have stayed on or in the same farm/village all there lives their world view shrinks. It is just like Europe in the middle ages, the average serf didn't give a fig about what has happened or is happening in China, if he even knew such a place existed. All he cares about is the next crop, will he and his family survive the next winter, will the rival noble 3 hills over raid his nobles lands and cause a war. Even with his better education Kyven's focus will still be local over global. There is only one reference to any place outside of Noraam:

. Riyan was the tobacco hub of northern Noraam, where tobacco was grown, bought, sold, and made into pipe tobacco to be sold all over Noraam, even shipped across the Angry Sea to Eusica.

This little tidbit shows there is trade between what used to be North America and what used to Europe and it is the same trade that existed in the 16 and 1700's, tobacco. Now the thing to note and the reason everything in the story that would be important would occur in Noraam is very simple. The failed experiment that resulted in the making of mana crystals is in Noraam. This allowed Noraam to advance faster then anywhere else for the simple reason that they have the monopoly on them and that they can use crystals to make electricty, this can allow them to retrieve information that would have been archived on anything besides what is written on a stone tablet or paper. The rest of the world would have reverted back to almost stone age times and have a harder time working their way back.