I'm not sure I buy this. I don't recall which source it was in, but my memory of the description is that Waha dug the river so that the river would "digest" the remains of the Devil. Which implies it's a serpent, not a bath.
> To the Beast Riders, all sources of water are sacred (note that
> all the "altars of Prax" are oases).
Does the Stool not count? It has no water. Apart from that I think it's a generally valid observation, but I don't draw the same conclusion. Sources of water are rare, useful, and important. Spirits live in most of them, so they are certainly sacred in that sense. But I don't see that has much to do with the ability to wash away chaos.
> So, to Praxians there are two ways to get rid of Chaos - water or
> wildfire. If you can conceive a way to burn away the Chaos taint (and
> survive the experience), there might be another way.
They certainly tried the latter, presumably with some success, though not so much on themselves. It was not complete -- there were still chaos armies left after Oakfed at everything.
> Note that any ritual involving complete submergence is an Underworld/Death
> experience to Beast Riders.
Why do you say that? I don't see any correlation. The Dedrawaha don't have much in the way of water myths.
> Even the watery methods should cause great etched scars etc. to show the ordeal.
Assuming you allow them in YG, I agree.
> > perhaps requiring you to travel back to the green age or golden
> > age, before chaos entered the world.
>
> Why would those innocents know how to remove Chaos? It should be
> impossible to restore innocence (except through death/rebirth, and loss of
> identity).
They would not. The idea was that, if you go back before chaos entered the world, you wouldn't have any in you when you were there, so you might not have any in you when you returned. It seems very likely to fail, but almost anything can happen in the green age. Of course, you might also come back with a completely different personality and no combat skills . . . . And you might have spread a tiny bit of chaos to everyone's ancestors . . . .
> > (And failure on the quest probably means that you arrive in the
> > Storm Age at the same time as chaos arrived -- and you're to blame!)
>
> Nicely nasty. IMO _to succeed_ you have to go there, and shoulder the
> blame. Then start to get rid of it.
Well, the only problem is that only one god ever managed to do it that way: Orlanth. I'd say that the Praxian equivalent would be reliving Storm Bull's fight with the devil. So, you fight it, you fail, you get help, you fight it, you beat it down, and you bury it. It's highly unpleasant, considering the Storm Bull was literally torn apart. But I don't think he shouldered the blame. He had other motivations.
Chris
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