From: Paul Reilly (paul@phyast.pitt.edu)
Date: Tue 12 Oct 1993 - 23:43:49 EET
Paul Reilly here.
Stuff about natural laws:
>>Greg:
>>You ask whether gods' physical manifestation, such as Yelm as the Sun,
>>violates the Compromise, since they still obtrude upon the world. It seems
>>to me that the Compromise guaranteed each diety's dominion over his or her
>>domain, and that for many gods, this domain is a very real thing (Sun, Earth,
>>Storm, Winter, etc). So, Yelm killing you with Sunstroke is legal under the
>>COmpromise.
>Seems like a short step between this and Yelm SunSpearing folk who he
>doesn't like. *That's* within his domain too. :-)
I have to go with Greg here. In the Celestial Court theory of the universe, the actions of the Celestial Court determined the basic natural laws. Aether chose to live atop the sky, thus Fire and Light are drawn upward. Ge (Gata?) had a fixed shape, so Earthy things have a fixed shape, etc. This principle continues on down the line, thus how plows behave is determined by Barntar.
Once Time is started, the mythic acts that determine the laws are 'frozen in'. Fire now always rises, etc. - to alter these basics violates the Compromise. But Fire is still a manifestation of Aether's primal power, it is just that it always behaves the same way. In some sense _every_ mating draws on Uleria's power, _every_ killing uses the power of the First Sword, etc. So when A kills B with a sword it is through Humakt's power that the killing is made possible, much as Yelm kills someone through sunstroke as above. But as long as they are following the _fixed_ pattern agreed to in the Compromise, everything's OK. Mortals retain free will and can invoke the Primal powers through Rune magic, without violating the Compromise, but must sacrifice part of themselves to access these special powers.
>>Any ideas for fixes that get at the proportional values of STATS? I have
If we believe the resistance table then the stats must be logarithmic. This is fine with me, as long as people realize it. Something should be done about Magic Points in this case, rather than POW. And the stats of big monsters should be fixed - they should be in the tens to low hundreds range, only major Gods should be in the thousands (if even them).
Nils' comments on the spirit plane are very good. This sort of junping around fits in well with tales related by Siberian shamans, for example. His ideas on following trails of 'cowness', etc. are what I was describing as following a Fibre which leads to the Platonic reality on the God-plane. Thus all fires are connected to The Fire (Aether), all bears are connected to The Bear (Rathor), all lovers are connected to The Lover (Uleria), etc. There is also a lot of 'geography' on the way between the Mundane plane and these Absolutes.
Nils also coments:
> I envision an ancient forest in the mundane plane as being
>many times larger on the spirit plane.
This fits in well with the description given by various shamans in
'The Way of the Shaman'. Things are _bigger_, _livelier_, etc., rather
than grey and featureless.
More on the spirit plane another time...
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