Greg Stafford on me on him:
> >Which isn't to say that the same celestial object can't have (apparently)
> >_different_ magically powerful meanings (witness, Uleria/Mastakos --
> The key word here is "apparantly."
> The fact that you cannot easily see the relationshsip between them is a
> measure of the complexity of the being.
> This is not to say that Uleria = Mastakos, becasue they are different
> Beings. But rather, that both of those entities have something which is
> shared by the planet.
I didn't say they were unrelated -- by "different" I merely mean "not identical". The two manifestations are pretty strikingly different, though it's probably nothing that wouldn't look particularly odd if they were combined into a common cult of the "common entity" (if this were feasible). After all, if you separated out two not-especially- similar forms of Orlanth worship, with no context of historical relatedness the deeper connection might not be immediately apparent either.
> >to say nothing of the 57 different varieties of sun...).
> Great example to illustrate my point.
> The sun exists. Look at it there. Everyone agrees on that. Our suns share
> some commonalities: hot, bright, moves regularly across the sky.
> The meaning of the sun beyond the obvious varies: your sun is kind,
> friendly to you and loving. My sun is an evil emperor who has been put into
> his place. Yours retired to the Underworld becasue he'd been insulted by my
> god. Mine sat still int he misty dark sky because he's been insulted by
> your gods.
> Who is right? We both are agreeable on some counts, especially the physical
> reality and phsyical effects. We argue about the meaning of the sun.
> Divine beings are complex enough to have different (even seemingly
> opposite) meanings withn themselves.
Indeed, the (small-e) essence of deities is their moral quality (the virtues they embody, etc), and it's not a priori impossible to assign different moral significances to the same "physical" object. It may be more or less "correct" to do so, though. So for myself I see no difficulty with this. Whether they really are "different" in the sense of object identity, or are perceptible part of a larger whole, is another issue that I'll leave for another day (or better yet, no other day).
> Is one right and one wrong? Possibly. One of us might have assingned the
> meaning to it rather than discovered it.
Yes, this is true. An attractive feature of (the way I currently understand...) Short Worlds is that it enables such cases to occur with their "wrongness" being instantly self-evident to an outsider. (Or indeed to participants.) Yeah, that's the ticket -- Yelm is just running off of an oversized Imperial Statist Short World -- he'll run out of juice any second now, then we everyone can get back to worshipping Elmal like they oughta.
> HeroQuesting presents a way to settle this forever. We each get the totall
> 100%commited backing of our entire world community of believers, engage in
> HeroQuest challenge and pit our belief systems as a stake in the struggle.
> Whoever loses the HQ Challenge loses their stake forever. One combatants
> thereby proves his way is right, everyone in the contest (ie-the entire
> beleif community) loses their belief and the matter is setttled.
The way you phrase this implies that truth in these matters is something of a "might makes right". (Admittedly it doesn't preclude "You get -40 to your Mighty 'cos you're Wrong, guy", either...) Elsewhere though your implication is that there's an inherently _right_ answer, a priori. (Or maybe multiple equally/partially/possibly rights, and numerous definitely wrongs.)
Significance of this to roleplaying: minimal to none. Even if it's cosmologically the case there's only one "right" answer, unless it's explicit to everyone in advance what it is (which is No Fun, frankly), then it might as well be actually undetermined, for most practical purposes.
Cheers,
Alex.
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