<< Jeff Erwin:
> If Orlanth dies... his Runes, even the combination of those Runes, still
> exist. One can posit a hypothetical god for each combination of Runes, but
one
> should acknowledge that one set of runes can have more than one god as
well.
Peter Metcalfe constructed a rather nifty God Learner Fallacy from the former proposition; I'm sure one could do much the same for the converse notion, and suppose that some sort of Divine Pauli Exclusion Principle operates. Counterexamples? Only "generic" deities a la GoG cookie-cutter River God, City God, etc spring to mind, which could certainly be questioned>>
I've been thinking about Hsunchen cults recently, and while I think the principle that all of them should have a different set of runes is a neat one, it's difficult to put into practice. All Hsunchen cults should have a Beast rune, and at most two others IMO (indeed, current examples have only one rune besides Beast, unless you count the Chaos rune tagged onto Telmor in historical time). Trying to come up with a different combination for every Hsunchen race/cult isn't going to be easy, given that certain combinations won't make sense and that many Hsunchen races are fairly similar to others - there are at least three different types of cervine Hsunchen (Pralori, Damali and Uncoling) and a fourth (Alekki) is quoted in some unofficial sources. OK, so maybe it isn't *impossible* to give them all a unique set of runes that make sense, but it'd be a stretch.
<< -- while River Gods seem mostly interchangeable (and hence ultimately the same, or related?)>>
It depends what you mean by 'the same'. One could, I suppose, define two gods with separate cults as being the same if they possess the same set of runes and have other properties in common (e.g. both River Gods). But then the argument becomes suspicously circular IMO.
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
This is leaving aside the whole question, pan-Digest flamebait as it is, of how univeral the idea of a fixed, given set of Runes is in any case...
Slainte,
Alex. >>
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