Lhankor Mhy forfend!
[brilliance]
> He actually fathered the Independents.
I keep harping on this bit because we can all recognize that "the Independents" is a historical construction that shifts to accommodate people who come to the Plaines at one specific moment Since Time or another but aren't formally accepted into the Great Tribes system.
The exceptions are the rhinos (who apparently fell out of Great Tribe status) and maybe the baboons (who are weird and may ultimately be from the Teshnos side anyway). If we buy Drastic Prax, even the bolos are adopted from elsewhere in the garden. Maybe Lost and Hidden Tribes, but who knows about those weirdos.
So while FOI may not be the father of *our* Praxian Independents, I wonder if he served that role elsewhere as you point out. Father of interlopers, immigrants, people who just don't belong.
Inter...lopers. Hey! Artmal already came up in this thread but we know the God Learners hate the Zaranistangi and would do whatever it takes to cripple and corral one of their troublesome gods.
Another funny detail we know about the Dead Place for no apparent reason is that it's a very useful place to trap someone else's gods, but the procedure is so dangerous that nobody wants to try it.
But if the loper angle is over the top, the Seshnegi also have an old grudge against lion people and know all too well how to kill lion gods.
Third and grotesque angle that comes to mind is that we don't know when FOI showed up in the Dead Place. He's a cripple. Another dead god of our acquaintance had silver feet. Issaries and his mysteries mentioned.
> The third and last class of
> spirits that he has would be his children. These are the Praxian
> Independents who have acknowledged his kinship/believed his lies in the
> past and provide a weak shadow (ie charms only) of the magics of the
> independent tribes.
Sounds to me like the seeds of another non-Wahaist religious system in the Plaines, which is all I wanted to begin with.
One More Thing on Dead Place magic: I had forgotten that a very strange spell was attributed to Flesh Man of all people in the old days, Spirit Block. Stopped spirits dead by neutralizing their POW much as some less controversial interpretations of the Dead Place can be said to do.
Enigmatically, the spell is the reason Flesh Man "is especially liked because he taught this spell to all living priests. He called it 'their vote on the spirit plane.' This spell, by the way, is allowed by all priesthoods."
If I were rehabilitating this spell, I'd give it to FOI to reflect his attunement with conditions extremely hostile to spirits, however the mechanic works. And it would be another "structural parallel" between him and the Grandfather Mortal complex, but why not?
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