Thesis: Oronis is not the first avangion on Athas that we know of; that honor goes to Korgunard.
Oronis and Korgunard
Oronis faces a fundamental limitation in his potential desire to reverse his defiler metamorphosis. He cannot achieve this on his own. His nature as a defiler, and the inherent properties of defiling magic, make self-reversal impossible.
Core Principles
Magical Incompatibility: Oronis practices defiling magic. This magic is fundamentally incompatible with the Preserver Metamorphosis. Defiling draws power from destruction; preserving draws power from life. Oronis has the “wrong” magic to cast the Preserver Metamorphosis I spell.
Creation vs. Activation: Oronis can create the Preserver Metamorphosis I spell, but he cannot cast it. Creating a spell is intellectual; casting it requires the correct energy source. Oronis lacks that source.
Oronis’s Facilitation and Need for Help: Oronis, while unable to use the spell himself, played a critical role by giving the Preserver Metamorphosis I spell to Korgunard. This act facilitated Korgunard’s metamorphosis into the first avangion. Oronis needs Korgunard to reverse his own Dragon Metamorphosis, which he cannot do himself.
Korgunard’s Power and the Reversal Condition: Only an Avangion possesses the power source needed to reverse Oronis’s transformation, and Korgunard is that Avangion. Korgunard must possess more ranks in Avangion Metamorphosis than Oronis has in Dragon Metamorphosis for the reversal to be possible. Oronis has halted his transformation and is waiting for Korgunard to reach this necessary level of power.
Oronis’s Taint: Oronis is tainted by defiling and he cannot cleanse himself. Oronis needs the intervention of an avangion.
Conclusion:
Oronis’s situation is defined by a magical law: a defiler cannot undo their own transformation. He is magically incompatible with the process of preservation. Korgunard’s active assistance, empowered by a greater number of Avangion Metamorphosis ranks, is an absolute prerequisite for any possibility of Oronis’s change. Oronis’s act of providing the Preserver Metamorphosis I spell to Korgunard was a crucial first step, but his own redemption hinges on Korgunard’s future power.
In my campaigns I also run Oronis as a fake avangion for similar reasons, especially #1, 2 and 5. There is no Druid on Athas of high enough level to cleanse him through the ritual of blood. Did you forget Nerad as an Avangion previous to Korgunard?
Apparently yes. There was also another avangion that was killed by a mob, if I recall correctly, in some flavour framing fiction. Do you remember which one that was?
I believe you are thinking of Thokrat, who was it seems, for a fleeting moment, a threat to Androponis. However, Thokrat was actually a budding dragon, and not an avangion. After a long absence, upon revealing himself and his initial metamorphosis to the people of Balic, he was stoned to death by the horrified and disgusted mob, to the Dictator’s pleasure. This story can be found in Dragon Kings.
For many reasons, he is one of the hardest leaps for me upon the debut of 2nd Box. As I have argued extensively elsewhere, it is difficult to imagine that the Dragon would fail to recognize the presence of New Kurn. The Levy was a requirement, and at the very least, even if Oronis hid New Kurn, the Levy would still have to be paid by Old Kurn. It would not make sense otherwise.
I side with Red King, that the transformation from dragon to avangion should be impossible. Dragon Kings says the metamorphosis is irreversible. Even with high magic, to me it would require psionic enchantments from a being more powerful than Oronis himself. This is not impossible, but would have to be explained. Perhaps character elements or spirits of the land might have helped him do several rituals to cleanse away the dragon… if such a thing is possible.
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For me, due to his popularity and presence in our community, I reluctantly accept Oronis. But morally I would make him a much more complex figure. Even if New Kurn somehow stands, and he managed to deceive Borys for centuries, then Old Kurn would at least have had to pay the price for a millennia. The “good” king would have had no choice but to guarantee the Levy be paid, or else Borys would have destroyed him, with his city. Perpetuating diabolic evil for some potential later great good is quite the moral leap, but I suspect such a being would think himself beyond normal good and evil, right and wrong, as we can see it.
Personally, I speculate he was the third avangion. In the Preserver War, there was the “Great One,” a potentially fully metamorphosed avangion, the memory of which is lodged in the racial consciousness of all the kreen. Whatever happened to that being? Then there was Nerad, whom Borys destroyed. I speculate that at some point, if we accept this, that Oronis became the third. The others we know of are Korgunard and the Sage, from the Tribe of One series.
Yup some good points. With Revised codifying the PP events and then adding new SK’s that did not bother to participate in the PP events made things shoehorned.
Par for the course for this setting there were lots of contradictions and stuff that wasnt fully thought out.
From what we know of the Dragon, he would not tolerated such dissent from his subordinates, less it encourage others. Or that the other SK’s would simply accept an increase in their levies because of the other two. Or that only the 7 SK’s attacked Dregoth when there were the other 4 (Sielba, Kalidma, Oronis and Daskinor [or that they had no other names in their cleansing war titles] the list goes on and on. [Although I enjoyed the PP novels back in my day, I hate that they [and their lore] were baked into canon so thoroughly and preferred more ambiguity.
As for Avangions, there was also Amiska from the short story “Service” by Lynn Abbey.
So, I’m probably among the most lore-ignorant of the Athas community, so please correct me if my shaky recall is way off base.
I seem to recall that the moons are supposedly life filled? At least one of them? Which, iirc, some here were commenting that it ran counter to the general Sword and Sandals theme prominent in Athas.
Would it be possible that the Great One retreated to one (or both) of the moons and set up whatever passes as paradise from its mutated perspective?
What about the other side of the planet? Or would that be problematic with the whole sludge thing that consumed the oceans? Again, iirc.
As a total side comment, the SKs really need to eat rail gun shells to the head from orbit.
In my game, Oronis was a once lover and lieutenant to Borys, making him conveniently left out of a lot of the grief he gives to the other Sorcerer Monarchs. Borys currently considers Oronis weak and a non-threat. He would have no issues killing him if it meant he had some benefit from the action… but doesn’t really have the need in my campaign currently.
Ooooh, I like the twist of him being Borys’s one time lover. I don’t like him as a lieutenant, but I’m going to find a way for my Avangion Council to discover the lover angle. That could certainly explain a few things. I’m also liking the idea of him actually still being a Dragon, hiding behind illusions until someone can actually figure out how to change him. I’ll still roll it with requiring a druid as well.