Changing History

From: kmnellist_at_...
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 02:15:14 EST

To misquote Samuel Butler:
"It has been said that though Heroquests cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to in this respect that Heroes tolerate their existence."

I'm going for a slightly semantic argument here. I agree with Peter that the past (things that occured within Time, anytime before Now) cannot be altered. However, "history" is a slightly different beast from being a complete catalogue of all events that have happened; it is how those events are perceived by the historian. Now, I think that this perception can be changed as the context of the events, the myths of pre-time, can be altered, as well as the normal RW methods used, for example, in the soviet era and (probably) every other nation state/culture. This is in addition to such magical tricks as Gift Senders, Minarian Memory removal and the other thing that I cannot remember. (Blue Moon cultists funeral rites which involve trying to remove every reference to a person ever exisiting)

I am entering into the spirit of a nitpicking contest here, but I prefer to call it a "Truth and Minutae" debate.

Keith