> > For that matter, in some more distant (non-Heortling) Orlanthi culture,
> > where sheep are important but alynx are not, I wonder if Voriof would have a
> > Dog aspect? (as in a sheep herding dog).
> >
>
> Probably not, as that is quite distant from his natural form.
> I can imagine somewhere up in Carmania where there is a protector of some
> sort, who appears as the ram, as the he goat, as the bull, as the lion and
> as the sheepdog, And there is a statue of that Protector somewhere, with a
> name, and with all those animals about his feet, awaiting his commands...
>
> But it isn't Voriof.
I've sometimes wondered about this myself, and I think that the trouble is that I'm not really sure that there actually *is* anywhere large enough to be significant where they have both sheep and Orlanthi but dogs and not alynxes... Umathela is the only place I can think of that might *possibly* be a candidate, but even this is highly doubtful in my opinion. I can't really see why there wouldn't be alynxes there...
And I don't think Voriof would have a canine form either. There may potentially be such a thing as an Orlanthi sheepdog, but I think this would either have to be a specific Protector as Greg has suggested, or some specific dog god, or possibly a shape of Heler (if your purpose was to keep the idea that this dog were another shape of an established god).
Voriof is not completely unlike Heler, due to some similarity of character and of their similar jobs in Orlanth's Great Tula and some shared mythology, but Voriof doesn't have any special shape-changing powers, beyond those that every Orlanthi god has. Many of the Orlanthi gods have an animal associated with them, or several animals, and they can take the shape of these animals due to this association -- Orlanth can be an alynx or a bear for example, Lhankor Mhy can be an owl IIRC, Ernalda can be a cow, Elmal can be a stallion, etc -- but only the actual shapechanger gods like Eurmal or Heler can really take any animal form that you can think of.
If you wanted to have some local weird Orlanthi with a tradition for using dogs in the shepherding instead of alynxes, well there's no real reason why you shouldn't do so, and there must at the least be just such weird clans somewhere or other -- but I think that whichever dog they had, a shape of Heler or some other kind of dog, this dog would be Voriof's friend but not Voriof himself in my opinion. But YGWV, and whatever suits your game really ... :)
Julian Lord
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