Getting around the Karaethon Cycle

[Maianel Istor]

If you're someone who breaks out in hives at alteration to canon, look away, because this is going full alternate universe.

I have a yen to run a WOT tabletop RPG someday for my friends. The genesis for it came about thusly:

- It would be interesting to run something set in Hawkwing's time. There's lots of interesting people and stuff there -- Hawkwing himself, Bonwhin, Guaire Amalasan, the War of the Second Dragon, etc. Very useful for building a campaign.

- Oh, and that bit about Jalwin Moerad being Ishamael in disguise. What plot would I make out of that?

- . . . huh. You know, this would be fun way to mess with my players: they'll assume that since this is taking place centuries before the series proper, it isn't about the Dragon Reborn. But what if it IS about the Dragon Reborn?

So here's the idea, leading up to the bit I'm sticking on: My notion is that the Wheel didn't wait thousands of years to spin LTT's soul out as Rand. It's actually spun him out multiple times; some (though certainly not all) false Dragons have been more like failed Dragons. There's a tipping point -- probably Callandor -- that would cement someone as the Real True Dragon Reborn and start fate marching more rapidly toward Tarmon Gai'don . . . but time and time again, Dragons have failed to make it that far, being killed or gentled before they can achieve their destiny.

In fact, part of the reason they keep failing is the interference of Ishamael and the Black Ajah. The sooner the Last Battle happens, the stronger the seals are when it takes place; an early Last Battle is a Last Battle the Light has a better chance of winning. Ergo, the plot of the game would be that Guaire is actually (another) Dragon Reborn, and sort of fate-bound to Hawkwing through them both being strongly ta'veren. (One of the fan theories from back in the day was that all three of Rand, Perrin, and Mat were ta'veren to keep Rand from basically ripping a hole in the Pattern by having all that weight centered on himself. I can't remember if canon ever said anything one way or another on that.) Hawkwing is meant to wind up supporting Guaire, but Moerad interferes to prevent that and ensure Guaire's failure. Enter the player-characters, etc. etc. plot ensues.

Here's the bit I'm sticking on: the Karaethon Cycle. The parts of it that aren't just flowery prophetic mutterings are rather obviously tailored to Rand's life (since canonically he's the only one they're talking about), but that doesn't work well for my scenario. It would be way too obvious if multiple guys all fit that exact biographical profile. I know Logain says something at one point about how if he'd succeeded in his bid then undoubtedly the histories would show he'd been born on Dragonmount -- but he wasn't, and "people will just forget the truth" feels to me like an unsatisfactory answer for dealing with prophecy. Chewing on this so far, here are the options I've come up with:

1) Rewrite the Prophecies of the Dragon to be vaguer and more flexible, so they can plausibly apply to multiple people. Downside is that "vague and flexible" tends to be the opposite of "flavorful and compelling."

2) Lean into the fact that Seanchan has their own prophecies and the Shadow has their own prophecies, and these things don't always agree; therefore, there could be multiple contradictory texts of the Karaethon Cycle. Downside is that I'm pretty sure canon just positions these alternatives as wrong, and also it feels a bit weird to say "there is totally fate in this setting, but it's frequently multiple-choice." On the other hand, that maybe fits with the idea that the Dragon Reborn isn't fully the Dragon Reborn until he fulfills a specific condition? On the other other hand, I feel like if people in this world know there are multiple versions, some Brown sister would have figured out that maybe it means the Dragon will reincarnate more than once, and I don't want that being a theory that exists at the start of the game.

3) Lean into Darkfriend interference, and say they somehow corrupted the text of the Karaethon Cycle so that it's just wrong and everybody but them is looking for the wrong thing. Downside is that this doesn't actually let me have multiple possible Dragons, since the real text would presumably still lay out descriptors for how he's born etc., which either puts me back to the original problem or turns this into option #1.

4) . . . something something Mirror Worlds? I don't really know how to leverage this. They fit with the idea that there are different ways this can play out, but branching events creating new Mirror Worlds doesn't mean that retroactively changes the text of prophecy -- and even if it did, the characters would only have access to the version that now exists in their world; anything they found via Portal Stone or Tel'aran'rhiod or any means of accessing a Mirror World would seem like it applies only to that world, not their own. But this feels like a very cool way to go, if only I can figure out a way to make it work.

Anybody have a suggestion for that last one, or other alternatives I've overlooked? (The *finn? Nakomi? Did we ever learn what's up with her?)

 

[Arinna Katal]

This is a super cool idea! Maybe, in your game world, the Karaethon Cycle is a little like Snakes and Foxes. It could never be won until suddenly the game could be won. Maybe, if a potential Dragon starts fulfilling prophecies, the remaining ones shift to allow for fulfillment? I don’t know, probably extremely hard to implement, but that was the first thing that came up.

 

[Jocasta Braithe]

How big of book nerds are the people you're going to be running this with? Because I would probably just handwave it for the coolness of the story if they aren't going to bring it up at every turn. If they are going to, I'd just set the whole shebang in a mirror world, in which the threads of the pattern are slightly shifted, and rewrite the Karaethon Cycle for that world only.

 

[Aratouial Delafeld]

In the campaigns I've been a part of, lore like the Cycle gets handed out as bonus rewards (we asked good questions of an NPC, we rolled well on investigate, etc). I'd just be hand-wavy about it and share pieces of the cycle that did fit what I was doing and be very Aes Sedai about the rest.

 

[Maianel Istor]

@Jocasta Braithe -- They're not huge book nerds, but the issue isn't getting it to describe Guaire (I could rewrite it that way easily), but getting it to describe Guaire . . . and Yurian Strongbow . . . and a handful of other failed Dragons along the way, without either having them all seem like cookie-cutter versions of each other (which someone in the setting would notice and realize is significant) or else being so vague it isn't satisfying ("At his birth she shall scream," okay, pretty much everybody giving birth screams). It's less an issue for their deeds as adults -- especially since I think most of the listed deeds would be things that don't end up happening because they don't fulfill the Callandor condition first -- and more about when/where/to whom they're born, i.e. the "On the slopes of Dragonmount shall he be born, born of a maiden wedded to no man, he will be of the ancient blood, and raised by the old blood" stuff. That's where it's basically impossible not to see it as Rand -- that and the heron-marked bits, because if all the failed Dragons wound up getting herons burned into their palms or something, people would notice.

@Aratouial Delafeld -- Unfortunately, "be very Aes Sedai about the rest" doesn't feel to me like it'll work when one of the major goals of the campaign will be for the players to find out that there have been multiple failed Dragons. It means that at some point they need to be able to look at the text, or multiple variant texts, and see that something is hinky there, and there needs to be an explanation for why. Basically, I can't give them something to discover if the only thing behind the curtain is me waving my hands, y'know?

 

[Jocasta Braithe]

Hmmm ok I didn't realize your point was for them to uncover the multiple dragons thing as they go. I thought you were baking that into the setting and giving it to them as a given as a storytelling device. That'll require further thought.

(although, prophecy is so twisty, "at his birth she shall scream" could refer to so many things. Gitara Moroso certainly screamed at Rand's birth, and I rather suspect Tigraine did not!)

 

[Maianel Istor]

Yeah, the idea is that they will find it out. If it were just the underpinning that only I know about, this would be much easier -- but much less fun.

 

[Laralelle Susandrea]

Mirror worlds should be Portal Stone Worlds...just to keep it in-world.

 

[Maianel Istor]

Mirror worlds should be Portal Stone Worlds...just to keep it in-world.

Yeah, Mirror Worlds are the ones you get at through Portal Stones. But even if I go that route, there would still be a canonical text for the Prophecies of the Dragon in that world, and variants in alternate worlds (if I send the characters through Portal Stones or Tel'aran'rhiod, which touches on them as well) wouldn't imply anything about the world the characters came from. I would need things to somehow be crossing between Mirror Worlds, like either naturally or by someone's interference a new set of Prophecies come through when a prospective Dragon fails, which somehow 1) replace the copies people have and maybe even their memories of what those copies say, but 2) don't replace all evidence, because there needs to be something the PCs could discover to figure out what's going on. Which . . . feels hard to arrange? But also I'm not sure my alternatives are any better?

 

[Leira Galene]

that and the heron-marked bits, because if all the failed Dragons wound up getting herons burned into their palms or something, people would notice.

In theory, this could just mean they get a heron-marked sword. It doesn't necessarily have to mean they're literally branded, and that could actually be a neat, fairly subtle clue.

 

[Elania al'Manir]

Yeah, like "twice the heron" could be defeating a blademaster and getting his sword, and then later be confirmed by a council of masters. The only prophecy that I see as really hard to come up with an alternative explanation for is "On the slopes of Dragonmount shall he be born, born of a maiden wedded to no man." Everything else either happens during the main story or can be explained differently if you get creative.

I did notice that there's a reference to Mat in CoT: "Fortune rides like the sun on high With the fox that makes the ravens fly. Luck his soul, the lightning his eye, He snatches the moon from out of the sky."
Maybe the Dragonmount birth line of the Prophecy can refer to any hero being born as the trigger, and it just so happens to be the Dragon in this turning? We don't have the lines from before or after that section, so for all we know the historians and philosophers have been reading it in a context that's too specific and they just got lucky by correctly guessing it applied to the Dragon instead of one of his companions.