The disappearance (and return?) of Gith

I've always been fond of my theory, that Tiamat gave Gith to the highest bidder, entity who wanted her the most - Ilsensine, whose thirst for vengeance against the woman who destroyed the illithid empire ran deep. Ilsensine, in return, gave Tiamat the sort of payment a greater god can give - an entire world, perhaps, or another major sphere of influence. The death of a rival. Something pretty that she can wear at clubs.

Ilsensine, after torturing Gith for a millennium, realized the best revenge possible - he implanted an illithid larva in her, transforming her into the species she hated the most. But for such a special host, only a special tadpole would do - a divine tadpole, suitable to create an illithid god. An illithid god, who consumed the soul of the being whose body it transformed to create itself.

This is how Maanzecorian came to be, and why it is only now, aeons later, with Maanzecorian's destruction that the soul of Gith is finally free.

I don't think so. Read my The Calling of the Dragon story for how I see the relationship between red dragons and githyanki. Red dragons are definitely no one's servants.

Not to be too snide, but I wrote it and know what my intentions were. Dragons serve the githyanki because the githyanki serve them; it's a partnership, like that between the Melniboneans and their dragons (the Phoorn) in Michael Moorcock's novels, or like that of the Dragonriders of Pern in McCaffery's books.

My idea, which isn't disputed anywhere in published sources, was that the deal didn't stop with Gith; githyanki agreed to a continuous service to the red dragons in perpetuity. Each time they call a dragon they have to offer it a significant sacrifice. They may have to perform other favors for the dragons as well. We know Gith formed some sort of pact with Tiamat's consort, but we don't know the details of this. I assume that I'm right, and it was a mutual alliance. Gith's disappearance may have been entirely incidental to the details of the agreement.

Githyanki are no less arrogant. They swallow their own pride and treat the dragons with deference.

Honestly, I don't think dragons would find carrying allies degrading (I specifically mentioned the absence of saddles, note). I suspect they carry their humanoid slaves/servants in such a way all the time (it leaves their claws free to carry other things), and this is no different.

Look at the Dragonlance series for another example - the Dragon Highlords rode evil dragons, but there was never a hint that they were superior to them. If anything, the dragons were running the show (this is certainly true in Lord Toede's case).

I don't agree. There are any number of advantages to an alliance with a planar race as powerful as the githyanki. Red dragons have many enemies, from humanoids to their metallic cousins. There's no reason they should see carrying someone around as humiliating - it's a position of great superiority, if you think about it. When a githyanki rides a red dragon through the air, she's trusting it with her life. The dragon has the githyanki at its mercy, should she fail to uphold her half of the pact. It's as if the githyanki agreed to be carried around in the dragon's mouth.

The horse analogy isn't one that a dragon would care much about. Dragons don't ride horses - they eat them. Githyanki don't ride beings they consider inferior (at least in my version, nightmares are considered the siblings of the knights who ride them), and red dragons are probably more familiar with githyanki traditions than human ones.

These are mostly chaotic evil beings we're talking about. "Serving one another" is probably as close to cooperation as you're going to get.

Use your imagination. It's not hard to think of any number of things the githyanki might do for them, as a nation and as individuals. I don't think it's reasonable or interesting to think of dragons as the githyankis' slaves, not when there are so many other possibilities. It seems to me that it's common sense that Ephelemon and Tiamat would have bargained for the best deal possible.

Exactly. Because the role of servant is unreasonable, it's reasonable to assume that's not their role. While nothing in print specifies what githyanki might do for their allies, neither does it say they do nothing. The interpretation, therefore, is up to us - does it make more sense to assume theirs is an alliance of mutual benefit, or to assume that githyanki have a one-sided mastery over a chaotic species due to a pact that took place eons before?

I've presented, in this thread, what I think is a very elegant solution to the problem.

Your quote is out of context. They're forced by older dragons, not by the githyanki. However, that doesn't mean they're getting a raw deal, or that the service isn't mutual. AGttAP goes on to say, "The githyanki respect these powerful friends and generally use them as efficiently as possible..." If they're friends, they're not slaves, as you seem to think.

Here is what the entry for githyanki in the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix One:

"On the Prime Material Plane, githyanki have a pact with a group of red dragons. These proud creatures act as mounts and companions to the githyanki." [Emphasis mine] I would argue that companionship is incompatible with servitude.

A Guide to the Astral Plane said: "Whenever, wherever the githyanki arrived on the Prime, red dragons were willing to work with them in their schemes and goals." [Again, emphasis mine]. So it's explicitly voluntary. Voluntary for red dragons in general, I assume, although specific dragons may force younger dragons to go in their steads.

The only use of the word "serve" is in one fan-created article (mine). While it may have connotations of servitude, it has other meanings as well (see the dictionary definition.

Obviously, I disagree. I think it's more interesting to consider that an eons-old, mutually beneficial partnership was forcibly severed to the dismay of both dragons and githyanki. Yet without the magical link between the two, how can they find one another? How can they prevent rogue dragons from attacking their former allies (for, as beneficial as it might have been, there will always be dissenters).

I like the idea of powerful dragons and githyanki working seperately to reforge the artifact - with the help of the PCs, of course.

I don't necessarily disagree with the substance of your premise, only the details. I like the idea of an alliance far more than slavery, but I don't dispute that magic and some amount of compulsion was involved to smooth the way - these are chaotic evil creatures we're talking about, after all. But I don't agree that Ephelemon and Tiamat would give their followers a blatantly disadvantageous deal - an alliance is all Gith asked for, and it's all she needed. Slavery of dragons to a humanoid race would be anathema
to Tiamat, and it's not something she needs to promise. I think the idea she would promise such a thing is not logically sound.

Furthermore, I maintain my idea fits the published material better than yours, as outlined in the quotes above.

I think the text implies they're forced by older dragons, not Tiamat. Certainly, the staff of Ephelomon mandates that some dragon comes to the githyanki's aid, but the fact that only the younger and weaker ones come indicates that the dragons are able to decide among themselves who it should be.

That's true. A servant works willingly in exchange for a wage. A slave is forced to work by his master and is not fairly recompensed. You were describing slaves, not servants.

The context above is more "to meet the requirements for" than it is "to be a servant of." As in, "this spoon will serve as a decent catapult" or "this car will serve as well as any."

That's rather beside the point, as only one person - Vlaakith - has the Staff at any time. The githyanki in general are equal partners with the dragons. Apparently Tiamat gifted the githyanki ruler with the ability to be more than that.

No, not fatal at all. Someone forced into servitude by magical compulsion is without doubt a slave, however. I'll not dispute that Vlaakith herself thinks of dragons as much less than friends or companions, but it's hard to imagine that she'd deal with them at all if she were forced to deal with them as equals as her knights do.

That would be a slave, not a servant.

Fortunately, the references don't seem to say what you think they do.

I think there's room for interpretation; I'm not going to say you're out and out wrong. However, I think your interpretation is weak.

No, I'm insisting the word has many definitions, and you're choosing a rather unnatural one in order to force a point. My investment banker provides me with a "service," but isn't my servant. Someone at a restaraunt may serve me, but we're both benefitting from the transaction thanks to wages and tips.

It says directly that the dragons are their friends and companions, which pretty much kills your idea that they're slaves serving despite their protests. A friend or companion is an equal. I'll agree that Dungeon #100 takes a somewhat harsher approach than Planescape did - but I always give Planescape priority.

Unfortunately, language is more malleable and open to interpretation than that. I think you've been distracted by a few loaded words, and missed the bigger picture.

Earlier in the thread, when you first started talking about your "theory," I was going to say something about "I wasn't aware you were presenting a theory," but it seemed rude.

And I've pointed out some logical problems with your interpretation, which I think deviates from the material under discussion in more ways than you're willing to admit, for the reasons I've stated above (the dragons are explicitly the githyankis' friends, for example). That you're not "pushing" this interpretation doesn't change the fact that you've been arguing it rather strenuously.

I don't tend to lock threads unless the combatants involved can't sort it out amongst themselves or the topic of conversation has strayed out into the rough. (Neither of which seem to have quite happened here.) I am hoping that the two of 'em'll finish getting things sorted out as I'm generally impressed with both posters - but can't have everything you want I suppose.

The problem with this conundrum is that the simplest explanations don't stand the "test of time."

I used to wonder if perhaps Tiamat agreed to the bargain for a short-term gain. After all, the chances of the newly-freed githyanki surviving in the Astral for very long was a long shot. So Tiamat struck an accord to gain something in the short term, assuming the githyanki would soon scatter to the Astral winds and free her from any oaths or alliances. Instead, the githyanki flourished. But that idea also suffers from the pitfall that Tiamat would come to resent the alliance, giving her no reason to cooperate further down the road, and meeting her end of the bargain with only the bare minimum.

But that's not what happened. Instead, Tiamat and Ephelemon seem perfectly pleased with whatever they're getting from the alliance. Enough, anyway, that they assisted (or at least permitted) with the creation of the Duth'Ka'Gith and have never (to our knowledge) tried to break the alliance.

So, the question of gain becomes the only question we can't answer. Clearly, the githyanki have gained substantially from the alliance. What have the red dragons gained?

I think that officially, an otherwise unclaimed githyanki soul goes to the Outer Plane of appropriate alignment (usually a Lower Plane). Those of very high-level githyanki generally ended up being added to Vlaakith's huge collection of captured souls in the Palace of Whispers (and, in scenarios where the Revered Queen is dead, were freed and went to their alignment planes). It seems likely that many githyanki knights (particularly those of high level and unusual renown) were transformed into tla'ikiths (undead sword spirits) and commanded to guard locations of particular importance. Let us not also forget that, in the reign of the most recent Vlaakith, undeath is probably not seen all that undesirable, probably because undead are generally totally immune to telepathic influence. Given that illithids are Enemy #1 to them that's a big deal.

However, the "go to the Outer Plane of appropriate alignment" explanation bothers me. Especially since one of the themes of Planescape is that belief shapes reality. The Outer Planes, as far as we know, do not occupy any special place in the githyanki belief system. At least to me, it just doesn't seem to... fit. I think a gith would be quite upset at the notion that, after a lifetime of service to the Revered Queen, working toward the utter annihilation of the illithid race, and the concept of liberty as githyanki understand it, his reward would be an anonymous damnation for eternity alongside the souls of inferior barbarian races.

While there's a certain ironic value in that, it casts the githyanki as colossal dupes. By comparison, the drow know they're evil and they absolutely revel in it. They also have access to a very non-anonymous afterlife in the form of Lolth's plane (or dimension of the Abyss depending on which cosmology you're using). Going to the Demonweb is desirable to them.

The big problem here is the premise that a true deity is necessary for a race to have a... culturally appropriate afterlife. If we wish to deviate from canon, here are some ideas:

Personally, I like reincarnation. A githyanki soul reincarnates endlessly (as a githyanki, of course, the only 'pure' race) until it either is taken up by the Revered Queen (perceived as a very desirable state) and either added to the Palace of Whispers or transformed into some kind of undead entity, or it totally screws up (goes renegade).

If the githyanki have a concept of hell, it would almost certainly be an afterlife-model of an illithid city, complete with an eternity of repeated brain extraction, forced gladiatorial combat, being forced to feed on the corpses of other thralls, and other unspeakable horrors. Given their history of enthrallment, I'm sure the githyanki have very detailed notions of what eternal punishment would be like.

To me, this seems far more realistic than ending up in the realm of, say, Mephistopheles. Should an entire race in a Planescape setting end up in a version of Hell that has little to no place in their own belief system?

It's also possible that githyanki prior to the most recent Queen simply believed in reincarnation (at least until all illithids and githzerai are destroyed, and possibly until graith enemies of the People are also defeated). The Revered Queen in that case simply co-opted the existing belief system for her own purposes.

I favor githyanki reincarnation as well. In fact, it makes sense to me that somehow the pact kept Gith's soul from coming back, somehow. Surely the soul of the most powerful psion the mutiverse has ever known served Tiamat well over the centuries.