From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Thu 07 Nov 1996 - 09:58:11 EET
> My impression was that the outermost sky dome was impermeable
>prior to the destruction of the Spike, which blew a hole upwards through the
>dome (thus causing the hole that the Blue Moon falls through) and downwards
>through the earth, sea, and darkness (thus causing the hole that Magasta
>attempts to fill).
Stars are holes in the sky, AFAIK, and they existed before the
destruction of the Spike.
The Pole Star is the particular whole created by the destruction of
the Spike.
>Thankfully, Lewis Jardine reminds us that Chalana Arroy met Kajabor in Hell,
>not Wakboth, so ignore my previous explanation (although it should still be
>theoretically valid).
I think if you ever fall into the idea that the Gods were literal
beings that wandered about in a form much like a human being except for its
general super-duperness, you will always have paradoxes. The gods are
anthropomorphisations of myths. The fact that they are real beings who you
can meet and converse with does not make that false. They are not
super-heroes who happen to be worshipped (or if they are, in some cases,
that is only one lesser aspect of their mythic existence), but cosmological
powers that are occasionally take on human form.
>Fortunately, all the evidence comes from people who
>weren't there, so I can insist that they are just reflecting the fact that
>their minds are so accustomed to the existence of Time that they are unable
>to communicate or conceive of existence without Time.
The Wendarian sources from the Entekosiad are from a period that
would be well before the Great Darkness, and are from Valare Addi who
visited there in a heroquest. Maybe that doesn't count. But much of the
Entekosiad stuff is of similar antiquity, and was at least compiled
directly from ancient sources.
>But Creating
>a monomyth out of the vast and confusing landscape that is the GodPlane
>is obviously a very bad Idea.
Well, not necessarily. Such a monomyth is useful for all sorts of
purposes. It helps us, as GMs and other creators, get some idea of patterns
to draw on to create myths. It helps throw the big cultural issues into
some perspective. It helps us contruct a relatively universal metaphysics
of magic (which is something that has to be done to really get a real
heroquest system going).
But its very bad to construct such a monomyth and then assume that
a) that tells you all you need to know. You don't use an atlas to tell you
which areas of town are trouble on a Saturday night, or where the good
restaurants are. Or even to find the best way between two cities. The
monomyth is an atlas of the heroplane.
b) you can fiddle with the heroplane on that basis. Its a guide to whats
there, not a guide on how to change things. Think of the monomyth as the
basic theory - but it doesn't cover everything.
The theory of how earth goddesses fit into the cosmology might be
the same everywhere. But the theory of internal combustion engines is much
the same for all of them, but it doesn't mean you can swap parts between
them. And much the same with Earth goddesses and cosmologies. The theory
might be the same, but they tried the Goddess Switch and worked out that
the details do matter.
Remember, the monomyth worked for the God Learners for a long time.
Its only when they started to seriously fiddle with the heroplane that they
ran into problems.
Cheers
David
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