>Metcalfe's model: Some acts are collateral worship of chaotic deities. This
>strengthens chaos but not much, since other gods are probably getting some
>of that worship, too.
Wrong. Some acts are *not* "collateral worship of chaotic deities". Some acts give worship to a deity and collateral worship to other deities. These other deities may or may not be chaotic.
If you had looked at the relationships as a vast interplay of magical energy and forces instead of focussing needlessly on the insignificant benefit a chaotic god gets, you would have seen this.
>Other acts are direct worship of chaotic deities that
>may cause observable chaotic effects. There is no way to be sure which is
>which without a lot of pawing through myth looking for "chaotic" actions by
>non-chaotic gods, because then it can't be caotic, can it?
I do not know where Peter Larsen is getting this last sentence from. I have not said anything remotely like it. I have said that Rape and Treachery are examples of chaotic actions.
>Chaotic acts cause chaos, but, if you're just being collateral about it,
>you get away unscathed (by chaos, at any rate).
Wrong. Acts which give collateral benefit to a chaotic deity only strengthen that deity, not chaos in general.
>I really don't understand why raping someone is direct worship of Thed
>but eating someone is not direct worship of the Ogre ancestor -- he's the
>source of cannibalism, for crying out loud!
Because the Ogre Ancestor is not the source of cannibalism, perhaps? People were eating each other before the Great Darkness - Yargan the Cannibal of Pelanda for example.
>Krjalk is god of treachery -- how treacherous do you have to be before
>it's direct worship?
An act of treachery is direct worship. An act of treachery is Krjalk.
> I really don't see why my model is so much inferior to yours.
Because it requires Chaos to be culturally relative (which is wrong) and a rather needless spelling out of unpleasant things.
--Peter Metcalfe
--__--__--
Powered by hypermail