Re: Making Gods Vanish

From: Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_sierratel.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 08:28:00 -0700


> > > > Can you make a god vanish? Yes, I think so.
> > From my understanding: no
>
> Well, there's a fairly clear disagreement - but I think we're just
> disagreeing over what "dead" means...

I think so too - to me, the only way to permanently erase a god is having done so in the Gods War by having him swallowed by Chaos. Anything *now*, since the dawn, can only make people forget about him, which might reduce his powers, but they can still be recovered.

> >you can't by normal Heroquesting. At least not
> >ones that existed (in whatever form) at the Dawn, when the Master CD of
Gods
> >was burned by Arachne Solara.
>
> In other words, most current gods are supported by all the other gods
whose
> worshippers believe in the great compromise. This is another example of
> what I was getting at. "Killing" a god isn't a matter of heroquesting to
> the right place, and stabbing him, or whatever. Instead you have to
> undermine his entire existence structure. It's a big, big task.

It is a *huge* undertaking. While perhaps theoretically possible, I don't think that it would be actually possible with the resources of a mortal (or even formerly mortal) being. Even if your cultural hero won a Heroquest challenge against their cultural hero, so Yelm replaces Elmal as the Sun God, Elmal is still kicking around somewhere, and it is possible for him to be "found" and his powers restored (maybe not by the Heortlings, but another group, somewhere). Elmal isn't struck from the roster of the gods, just pushed into the dusty pages of the appendix.

> >You can make people forget about their god, or renounce him, or whatever,
> >and his manifestations in the Middle World can wane until there isn't
much
> >of anything left,
>
> Seems pretty like "dead" to me - at least for the purpose of the original
> question...

Time to bring in Miracle Max - let me just channel Billy Crystal here....Hummmmmm....
"Ah, but he's only *mostly* dead."

It doesn't even take a trip to the underworld to "resurrect" a forgotten god. Just when you think you've seen the last of that pesky Elmal (or Orlanth, or Prixy the God of Periwinkles) some hermit Godtalker will come out of his cave in the deep woods and start spouting off about him and reconverting your converts. Or he'll spring up over in some remote part of the empire among a culture that previously never heard of him.

> > but if someone finds this poor forlorn godlet and
> >heroquests to discover what he was, and convince his people to follow
this
> >god, then the god can be restored to full Glory.
>
> This I'm less sure about. We have myths from the darkness of gods who are
> killed by chaos so that even their names aren't remembered. Now, maybe you
> can resurrect these gods, but if even their names are forgotten, what's
the
> difference between this resurrected god and an entirely new one?

Gods eliminated by Chaos before the dawn are gone. They are more than just dead, they are unresurrectably, irretrievably, morally, physically, spiritually, undeniably dead (sorry, the Undertaker from Wizard of Oz is crowding Miracle Max). I don't think that there is the slightest possibility of getting one of these guys back.

> Anything short of that - yeah, resurrection is an option. Genert is dead
> now, but his resurrection is a potential part of the hero wars.

We have canonical evidence that gods can be forgotten and still be "resurrected" - Firshala's Prison in Griffen Mtn does exactly that.

And the ability to "add" new powers in your Clan Wyter or Guardian Spirit has been described by Greg (I can't remember if it was during philosophical discussions during HW/HQ rules writing, or if this has been published) as simply rediscovering old powers that had been forgotten (Yes, your Clan Wyter may have been a Great God!)

> >Even the Lunars don't have System Level access to the Gloranthan OS!
(Much
> >as they'd like us to believe that they do). Even the God Learners merely
> >muddled the User Interface (The Goddess Swap, frex), rather than actually
> >making changes to the gods.
>
> Not sure this is the best analogy - if you want to go down the computer
> analogy, all we really have is the user interface. We're not even sure
> whether we have four different OSs, or just four virtual machines running
> on top of an unknown OS... So far from getting system access, no one can
> really tell what they need system level access to. I'm also pretty certain

I use to call that "Security by Ignorance" :-).

> that you're under-estimating the GLs. I believe they got a long way in
> creating a taxonomy of the gods, and started changing those that didn't
> quite fit.

But I don't think that they changed them at the Cosmic God Plane level, but at the "We understand this about them" level. It's a lot easier to change people's minds than to change the primary characteristics of a god.

> >I *think* (from discussions with Greg, he can override me if he wants)
that
> >even messing about on the God/Spirit/Logical Plane can't grant "System
> >Access" to all of Glorantha. So even if a Cultural Hero went and whacked
Big
> >Windy on the God Plane, only his Culture would gain the "benefit" (if you
> >can call it that...) of having no air.
>
> True. Probably the best anyone can actually achieve (unless you're very
> powerful and on a destroy the world, let in chaos kick) is to replace one
> Big Windy with another. Pretty much what the Lunars (temporarily) did in
> Dragon Pass - transplant Orlanth with Doburdun.

Loko-Moko is another one.

And in another thread...

> But... if I'm remembering my Thunder Rebels correctly, there _is_
> a sub-cult of Orlanth for crafters, and by inclusion at least,
> potters, isn't there? If there is indeed, then this would suggest
> that either a) this sub-cult has managed to 'acrete' something to
> Orlanth's fundamental nature other than what it was 'before'; or
> b) that his fundamental nature is, and always was (or was changed
> to be?) something different from, and in several sense broader than,
> simply "storm" as such.

If Simon restates his point to Orlanth Thunderous instead of Orlanth, he'll be okay.

Orlanth Allfather is the god of the Orlanthi culture, so has subcults for everything a culture needs - craftsmen, warriors, leaders, food producers. Should some Orlanthi come up with Telephone Sanitation, he'll probably find that there is a previously unknown subcult of Orlanth the Telephone Sanitizer. However, you wouldn't find the subcult under the Thunderous (or Adventurous) aspects.

RR
It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has done what he has done.
- Richelieu

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