Oh, your player characters might learn how, though, on down ten years into the story or so. And they can do it too, if they want to contribute to the breakdown of the cosmos.
>Greg:
>> Defiant entities are exceptions to many rules, of course. So perhaps my
>> 100% was overstated. I'd have to see a whole list of the defiant entities.
>
>Surely that's, you'd have to write it, so _we_ could see it!
Then trust me: defiant cults may have an exception, but if so it is still
of no major consequence. Mind you, the Urox/SB cult is not an exception,
really. The Eternal Battle might be said to co-exist in several worlds at
once. Or it might be said to be its own Short World with connections to the
God and Spirt Planes.
>Is there
>some useful characterisation you can make about who the "defiants" are?
Not easily. SB/Urox is the biggest exception I know about. Very few of them
exist anywhere.
>Is defiant a category of exception to such rules, or essentially a synonym
>for any possible such exception? For example, if someone got a brainwave
>and wrote up some minor otherworld entity, and decided (just for yucks,
>or some deep reason) that it should be "defiant" is there some rule of
>thumb we might use to judge whether this was on the right lines or not?
Yes: does it add to your story?
>> But off-hand, I cannot think of one that has the power to go from one
>> Otherworld directly to the other.
>
>The "100% never directly" makes sense, yes, I was just compelled to poke
>at the "only via the mundane world" part.
Poke away. You will find my stand to be unshaken. It is, as I said above, a
part of the future plot. It is not a part of past history or mythology.
>> >And isn't
>> >it possible, if one had the correct knowledge, to go from the God
>> >World, to the Eternal Battle (say), and thence to the Spirit World?
>> The Eternal Battle is one of those Shared Place, the equivalent of going
>> through the Middle world.
>> Same for the Underworld.
>
>OK, that's a fairly large set of exceptions, though granted not of any
>interest or use to the "normal" worshipper or magician.
Not exceptions at all.
The Underworld is another Shared World, a part of the shared human Middle
World. The Shared Human Middle World exists in time, hence a variety of
Hero Planes of the "past." Not exceptions at all: just the rule.
>What about draconics?
nope.
> Are they in some sense in more than world, or in a Shared
>Place that's not strictly in any of them, or...? (I appreciate that
>this isn't necessarily going to be a clarifying example so much as
>a further-befuddling one.)
Any Shared World is not really relevant. You have to go thought the
barriers to go from world to world. You can not go from one Otherworld to
another.
>On the comment that the Heroplanes are "like" the mundane world:
>firstly this is _really, really_ confusing terminology,
The Hero Planes ARE like the mundane world in the way that I described:
they are the link between Otherworlds. They are also like the mundane world
in many other ways.
>though I
>admit I might just be being a bit of a RQ2/3 hag here. Meself I
>prefer to think of these simply as "Mythic Ages".
Think as you like, but in fact, the Storm Age is a Hero Plane (several, in
fact).
>"Heroplane" still
>conjures up to me images of the Sky World, etc (perhaps better called
>the Outer World), places that are inhabitted my "Hero Scale" entities.
This is true too. her Planes has several applications. What they all share
is that supernatural quality/magnitude events/being exist opening there,
whether it is Altinela or Barntar's Stead.
>(Maybe back in the Golden Age all warriors were Heroically Good, say,
I wouldn't say this is so. The Golden Age didn't know anything about good
or bad.
Also, populations of ordinary people existed then, just as now.
>but we have considerable evidence that this was not so in the Dawn
>Age, for example...)
Dawn Age etc. are historical and different from the Mythic Ages in that
they occur after the Great Compromise.
>Is it true to say, then: there is the otherworld(s), which are "more
>or less" eternal and unchanging.
This is so. Three exist that we know of.
>The mundane worlds are entirely mutable.
Yes.
>Now, what about the Outer Worlds of the Mythic Ages? (What I'm struggling
>not to call "the heroplane of the heroplane...") Presumably if I go
>to the Sky World of the Storm Age it's _not_ unchanged from that of
>"today", but equally I'd expect it to be both less changed, and more
>"subjective" than the mundane worlds of those Ages. So are such places
>in the Otherworlds per se, or not? Are they "somewhat" in them?
The Upper and Under worlds both exist as mutable parts of the universe:
parts of the Center World. They can change according to the Age when you go
there. If you go there and do anything, they take on the appearance and
substance of the world you are going to.
You'll get to go there soon enough in the Great Dragonrising scenario.
Kallyr is looking for trusted volunteers to help her out to raid the sky.
>It seems to be that some quests must involve _all_ of the above. For
>example (once again) Orlanth's LBQ. This starts in the "mundane world"
>of the Storm Age (O. being more "personified" in them days...), heads
>into the Outer World of that Age, then ends up in both the God World
Some of the hero Plane Eras have a collapsed cosmos. The LBQ takes place in
a time when the worlds have merged, or overlapped or not finished
separating. The Great Darkness/Chaos Age is the time when all the worlds
have become one place.
>and the Underworld. Or is that an even more confusing way of looking at
>it?
It doesn't confuse me terribly. I am happy to use this discussion to help
suss this out for other people.
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