That 1st link is Allan's site, he is wandering around here somewhere and I'm sure he'll be able to tell you why he came to that conclusion. _________________ Kneel before me, or you shall be KNELT!
IIRC, I got that info from a post in the GT archives from Noel (Graham?) who was friends with Carl Sargent....
I can't find the post at the moment, but it was probably under his vision.at.work@JUNO.COM account if you want to scroll through the GT archives to find it. I thought I had printed out the post in question, but I can't seem to find it at the moment :( _________________ Allan Grohe (grodog@gmail.com)
http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html
Thanks to CF!'s homepage featuring David Leonard's Greyhawk Musings, today I read his recent post, "On Philidor the Blue," Greyhawk Musings (Dec. 15, 2023), and thanks to Jason Zavoda's Forum Index, this old thread seemed like the best place to comment on and discuss David's musings, which very helpful gather many (all?) of the relevant canon discussions about Carl Sargent's Philidor.
I never used Philidor in my campaigns, but I initially associated him with one of my first wizard characters, whom I briefly played in AD&D 1e and later developed as an NPC for the early campaigns that I DM'd. Of course, Philidor seemed overly Gandalf to Iuz's Sauron, which David discusses, and for a time—perhaps following an old GreyTalk post—I thought of Philidor as one of the blue Istari that Tolkien briefly mentioned as having gone east in The Silmarillion. For a time, I was also somewhat taken with the argument that Philidor might be a future Tenser from an Alternate Oerth.
The one "theory" that I never felt persuaded by, however, was that Phildor was a divine (intelligent and self-aware) construct of Pelor and Corellon. Maybe if Sargent had the opportunity to spell out this plan, I could have been persuaded? Clearly, he had a lot in mind, and some specific ideas about Pelor vis-à-vis Mayaheine being from another Prime Material Plane, but this just seemed bizarre to me.
Anyhow, I'll stop writing tonight to ask if Living Greyhawk, or any of you, ever further developed Philidor, particular the juicy LGG tidbits about him being last seen near the entrance to the Valley of the Mage, its seeming coincidence with the Black Mage of the Valley having gone missing, and that "Rary and Mordenkainen were said to have sponsored rival adventuring parties to the valley—both suffering high casualties. LGG at 128.
I have not done anything with Philodor and don't plan to for two main reasons. The first is that I don't need an extremely powerful NPC who breaks the rules in my game like Philodor does. The second is that I have a dislike of what I will call bad 90s RPG metaplot. Hints are dropped about a powerful and mysterious NPC/item/event and spread over many books. Each hint doesn't actually reveal anything, but it looks like there's motion to do so, and this encourages fans to keep buying products because the next one might reveal everything! Then it turns out that the island in Lost is purgatory/Mulder's missing sister has been dead for years/the Lady of Pain is still mysterious and unkillable. Bleah, I say, BLEAH!
Strip out his rules-breaking abilities, tone down his annoying mysteriousness, and maybe something can be done with him.
Here's an alternative Philodor nugget that you could do something with: a blue-haired (but not blue-skinned) Philodor is an emissary from the Sapphire Brotherhood mentioned in the Monk's Test in Fate of Istus. He's a monk/wizard (under old 2nd edition dual-class rules, use the Scarlet Brotherhood monk from the SB supplement) who believes in testing others in philosophy while they are under combat stress. Watch a bunch of episodes of Kung Fu if you need an example.
Before Return of the Eight brought Tenser back, it was a popular fan theory that Philidor was Tenser (who is associated with the color blue) returned from the heavens like Gandalf the White, sent by the gods to help save the Oerth from its plunge into darkness in his celestial form even after his mortal death.
Tenser showing up again as himself put a damper on that theory. But Philidor did disappear after Tenser's return...
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