RE: Re: Ernalda Options

From: Sam Elliot <samclau_at_0z5pI9bdyKCU4Ec7We7gOxTUUAF_qNrllm3maI0i0lkP3UDxrZ4xVSMIQqV7AUIW7lF3>
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 21:08:13 -0300


Hi David. Thanks for your comments (although I find the tone pretty negative), but I wasn't trying to *understand* Ernalda. I was suggesting things which, IMO, could be interesting.

Of course AS is going to be tangential to Ernalda, but there might be somewhere where they do overlap. Of course any myths involving the two wouldn't agree, that's the whole point - the question "do they agree with one another" was rhetorical, the answer being no, if there are myths, as ever.

Donandar is not outside her two families. Donandar is a cosmic, transcendent being (whatever that means) like Arachne Solara.

> > more active
> OOPS. Wrong. Not active, except very much behind the scenes.

I was proposing ways she might be more active, reflecting my interpretation of a number of comments about her being failry reactive, fairly passive. There is no right or wrong, I was making a suggestion.

> > Doing magical things which affect people at a distance. Being
> > a bit more, well, witch-like, like Morgana and that lot.
> Sederosa (which is Her being friendly with spirits, as opposed to
> messing with them all the time and ignoring the important things like
> crops and grandchildren, like Orlanth's brother Kolat)(Ernaldan POV,
> there)

Well yeah, Greg asked for ideas for roles. Of course there are a heap of roles in the sources, but I don't recall doing things like making people in a different clan fall in love, have bits fall off and so on.

> > (3) I never get the impression she gets things wrong.
> Well, SHE certainly claims that. And when someone claims that She WAS
> wrong, you can bet that She has some story to prove that She was right

Does she? She's starkly different from some of the others then. I don't recall anyone else saying she's got things wrong either, not that I know my myths.

> all the time (in some crazy way of looking at things, like claiming
> that the Holocaust was all a Jewish Plot to make anti-Semitism
> disreputable, even when it is occasionally justified).

Okay, if she doesn't admit to being fallible, well then she is more interesting already. She's a megalomaniac. I like that.

> > Couldn't she be a bit more terrible at times? A bit more scary?
> > (And at the same time, make the Gors a bit less so, give them
> > something else too.)
> No, you don't understand. She IS the Gors, when She is being Terrible,
> and They ARE Her, when They are being gentle.

I know that, thanks. For a PC, though, this isn't the case, the PC is stuck with one or the other. She could be scary in less of an "I'm going to destroy things" way too, something more subtly scary. Meanwhile, the Gors could have a bit of relief. Oh, someone else explained this much better than I can already.

> > overly long fingernails stirring bowls of water, the
> > occasional cackle, cruelty to amphibians, invertebrates and
> > flying mamals, cauldrons, blasted heaths, you know the stuff.
> Yes. Stupid momsense. BTW, the bats and newts are dead before the
> potion is brewed, you know (at least, usually).

Okay, but some people sometimes like a bit of that cod. I know I do. I understand Shakespeare was partial to a bit too.

Bats and newts are dead before the potion is brewed. Right. Um. Come now, what is this, a super-literal reading of text? I bet a genuine witch would use a fresh wriggling thing in preference. I was actually thinking of a colleague who traps bats, starves them for a few days then looks at the sugar and fat levels in their livers when I wrote that. She has black hair so she must be a witch. I told her she was a witch. I'm sure it is unnecessary, her behaviour.

BTW, we have elves with pointy ears, dwarves with long beards, ducks with cigars and my cackling witch is stupid nonsense? Where's that thing Stu wrote? It began something like, "If you spend your spare time pretending to be a wizard or a duck..." Someone send me it again so I can use it a sig for this list...

> > You know it makes sense.
> Only to foreign gods. I expect that Malkioni have tales like that,
> just as Orlanthi myths totally misunderstand Solace, saints, wizards,
> etc.

Not quite sure what this means. But yes, if foreigners misunderstand Ernalda and call her a witch, that's grist to the mill, no? I had a fellow PC call my PC an interfering witch or similar recently and I thought that was fab.

Sam.            

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