Sarnoth history tells of a war fought between Echoes and normal sarnothi to flip control of the city. Things got crazy.
↓ Transcript
TODD: Pohl, hold up! Are you saying if she were still in Sarnoth, she'd be thrown into some shady "camp"?
POHL: Only if she were a threat of mis-using her abilities. Of causing harm, or insurrection.
POHL: I know Scar told you how he got his injuries. Imagine if Plo Quar had NOT been acting in self defense? What someone aggressively-minded could have done.
POHL: Sarnoth can be a bit more... "structured", than Americans are used too, but regarding us Echoes? It's generally for a good reason. No one benefits from a society where the laser-priests rule with impunity.
POHL: Only if she were a threat of mis-using her abilities. Of causing harm, or insurrection.
POHL: I know Scar told you how he got his injuries. Imagine if Plo Quar had NOT been acting in self defense? What someone aggressively-minded could have done.
POHL: Sarnoth can be a bit more... "structured", than Americans are used too, but regarding us Echoes? It's generally for a good reason. No one benefits from a society where the laser-priests rule with impunity.
Laser-Priest is a Sue and Kathryn reference, if you haven't read it. Yes, they're bad guys.
Heh. Laser priests.
“Or if she refused to do what the City told her to do”
You forgot one there Pohl old buddy old pal
The government-sponsored narrative probably quite deliberately doesn’t linger on that facet of it.
Since we the readers are at least two removes from the story and at least one more remove from the history coming to light, we need to be careful to choose an appropriate context from which to judge, and to be explicit about that context.
“than what Americans are used too” => “used to”
seeing echoes of the “indian schools” in that camp, myself
I think that line Dave left about a war between Echos and regular folk is very telling. After that kind of fear people would be desperate to make sure no future Echos turned murder happy. While it looks like a joke coming from a child who can only make her eyes glow the idea that she could Lazer off a persons face on a whim would be taken far more seriously especially if she hadn’t had that bow for a long portion of her life. I’m starting to think this is what her mother wanted to protect her from. Can’t get sent to a Re-education camp of you don’t have Lazer magic.
It’s not a good solution but likely the first they came up with that worked and well as the old human phrase goes “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
I don’t know how I sent my last message as a reply to you. That was meant as a stand alone statement not a comparison to your comment. I’m sorry about that
He does have a point about Americans being more focused on individual freedoms, and while I wouldn’t want it any other way, there’s definitely some big contextual differences between American and sarnothi culture. We don’t have what are essentially wizards living among us, after all.
We have guns, which makes every individual as deadly as a wizard. In that case, proper parenting and training in gun safety keeps people from killing themselves and others.
Late to the debate, but Pohl basically touches on what my view of this is. When you have a segment of the population that can shoot lasers, the best way to have any sort of liberty for everyone is to give those laser shooters a structured role in society. I’d be asking about the wars that might have been fought between Echos and other Sarnothi, but the author comment already covers that yep, they happened.
We have to remember that we are only seeing a small slice of Sarnothi culture. From what we’ve seen, Echos are very respected members of society, and don’t spend all their time Doing What The City Says. Obeying the city’s call may well be a matter of spending three months out of the year (or some other period of time) doing civil service to help with construction or tech maintenance. Remember, Echos are how a lot of Sarnothi tech WORKS, and even if Gien was being a stubborn stick in the mud, when people told him to lay off Selkie it was as much because she was too young as because she’s not really a PART of the clan. Again, from what little we’ve seen, it looks like (when the system is working properly) Echos learn that they have a great gift, and thus a responsibility, and by fulfilling that responsibility they are greatly respected members of society.
Now “reeducation camps,” yeah, THAT’S something that’s never good.
It’s a very different culture and of course it rubs us the wrong way at times, but that doesn’t make it BAD. It was pointed out early on by Prof. Trunchbull that the Sarnothi have something of a blue and orange morality compared to Americans; we’re seeing one of those clashes now.
In the webserial Price, there’s a government agency devoted to identifying people who develop super powers, and then approaching them and offering them well-paid government jobs in which they use their powers to benefit society. The idea is it cuts down on the number of supervillains.
People are free to not accept those jobs, and some do indeed become supervillains instead. But they provide incentives (in the form of a significant salary and meaningful work) to discourage that.
I was about to say, Sarnoth society seems like the flip side of what we saw in “The Incredibles.” Instead of supers chafing at their restrictions, we have a society straining to keep supers from destroying everything.
I don’t remember well the different types of sarnothis.
I thought echoes were the purple skinned ones like selkie but pohl is green. By the way it’s a good thing the categories is not done according to skin colour 😉
Echoes can come from any of the clans. Think of it like this: A Clan is the race of Sarnothi, of which there’s four. Pohl and Selkie are different races. Echo is simply the “class”, if you will. Any race can have Echoes. So, to use D&D as an example, Selkie and Pohl might be, say, a High Elf and a Wood Elf, but both are Sorcerers. In a similar way, Selkie and Pohl are two different Clans (Jin’Sorai and I want to say Tel’Dora…?), but both are Echoes.
Thank you ! 🙂
Laser Priests.
Okay. That’s it! I’M PUTTING SARNOTHI IN MY D&D GAME!!!
Can you possibly help me figure out some D&D 5e stat blocks for them?
For non-Echo Sarnothi, it feels like you could retheme water Genasi.
Very possible. And then give them a spell or two for projecting beams of light that do different things, maybe tweak in some dunamancy stuff, and BOOM… Laser Sarnothi! 😛
Nice Sue & Kathryn reference, btw. 🙂 If Selkie is listening, she’d understand the reference to “laser priests.” If she’s not, I hope Pohl explains this to her using that phrase.
Only if that episode has come out already.