Changing Gods and Horizons..

From: Daniel McCluskey (Volt Computer) <"Daniel>
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 10:45:55 -0800


Richard Ohlson askes re: Humakt...

        Free will or no, it might be part of Humakt's character to be offended by

        pointless killing, and the fact that a Hero went nuts and carried things

        "to far" doesn't really change the god, does it?

I would have to answer that it absolutely DOES change the god. Humakt is probably the very best example of that change... Arkat (our token Hero going nuts) went and took some obscure storm godlet, surgically removed him from Orlanths Kin, and gave him a 'rilly spiff sword. Even if you are unwilling to accept that Humakts "character" was largely CREATED by Arkat for his own purposes, Arkat DID change the god in the course of his heroquesting.

I view the act of heroquesting as a process of sharing with the Gods. The more Power you GET out of the heroquest, the more of a mark you leave on the god. Thus thousands of initiation rituals by rural Orlanthi over the course of thousands of years might cause little noticeble change in "Orlanth himself", and Arkat's (single?) quest to gain Death powers from a storm god left the original almost unrecognizable. IMO HeroQuests are sort of a trade between the "mortal" plane and the Gods Plane. You can't Bring somethng back without leaving something on "the other side."

Thus (again IMO) If a Troll (capital H) Hero successfully performed the "Lightbringers Quest" as Orlanth to bring back Korasting, Any further visitors to the hero plane would be likely to stumble across a "stopping for lunch" station on the quest that their priest hadn't mentioned, and might wonder a touch about their god having Much Bigger Teeth than they had supposed he would.

        Or, in the case of Humakt(and teeth), I think that the mere existance of Onslaught means that if Humakt evere WERE to smile, you would see that he actually DOES have Iron Teeth ;-)


on Horizons and Bendy light.

As a proponent of the "Bendy Light" hypothesis for Earthlike Horizon Generation, I would like to note that instead of light bending uniformly Upwards, Light likes to bend towards Yelm. Thus the Castle Coasters would be able to see the sunrise at approximately the same time as East Islanders, even though they would be unable to see the land in between.

If Heat followed the same path as Light, then you would get roughly the same amount of heat "falling" on the West (reduced intensity of "direct" heat offset by additional heat "bending down") as you have in the East (more intensity, less volume). Providing roughly earthlike conditions everywhere.

I personally prefer the Idea of warmer mornings in the east and warmer sunsets in the west, with "normal" earthlike conditions in the center. and want that IMG, but I am not desperate to see it applied to everyone else's.

danm


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