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Ooh, I like that. It will certainly help with the mythology.
You know the saying, “You’re only as good as your mythology!”
I have no idea who this Kristof guy is…OK…maybe a little. I’ve got stuff from T-A-G to post in the Library. Look for new information to follow last nights map update later today.
You can maybe tell a little now from the House of Torson family tree which went up yesterday; the map update had names for the larger towns in the Wilds of Eton and a section on it is coming today.
Of course, Iume knows what happens to Lesteroth and Bellyachus…it was in the earlier drafts but got moved to the beginning of book iii
But it won’t spoil too much by telling you that they will be back in Volume III.
In fact I just came from where they are and Bellyachus was living up to his name….
Oh, they were able to get his head out of his butt though! I suppose that’s the important thing. But jeez those horns of his really had to hurt going in, and coming out.
You want to talk about a thankless task?
Talk to the poor demon schmucks that have to keep greasing the road to Hell! It’s got a very very steep incline and so the grease tends to run down the slope so they have to keep replacing it from the top.
The problem, of course is since they are in Hell to begin with, in order to regrease the top of the slope, they have to climb up the slippery slope to the top carrying large vats of grease.
It is a never ending task.
Actually, come to think of it, a pretty good punishment for their sins. :-k
Oooh! We could butter the ramp with gelatinous cubes!
Wait! =;
Are you trying to trick me?
[-x
If we butter the slope with gelatinous cube, will there be anything left of the person going down the slope by the time they get to the bottom? wouldn’t they be digested?
:-k
I think you are just looking for a free meal!
Hmm
It is a pretty steep slope, you’d probably have to alternate between sliming and psuedo-pod grabbing/dissolving to keep them slipping, but not slipping too fast to digest.
Might make a good gameshow, I could arrange for Pay Per View in the bars in the Courts of Chaos…
Yeah, I fear he might be one of the commitmentphobes.
It will take a lot of persuasion.
But I will do it, because I want to be the demon responsible for collecting the sacrificial virgins!
YES,yes…I know; Tom won’t let me sacrifice their lives, but how can he object to sacrificing their virginity?
Hmm, I don’t know, we might have trouble getting gelatinous cube worshipers. Do gelatinous cubes have virginity to sacrifice? As I recall don’t you guys reproduce by splitting in two?
Thanks!
It would be a lot easier if he ate my cookies, but so far he hasn’t tried one.
The cookies really help with anxiety, insecurity, tension, glaucoma, lack of appetite….
Yeah the cookies could probably help him on that.
Mortals love demon weed as very small doses greatly facilitates all sorts of transcendental states.
Seers, Voyagers, Sorcerers, Summoners, Link Masters, Shamans, many Druids etc all love demon weed and use it in their rituals and practices.
It’s great for astral projection and all sorts of things like that.
The problem of course is that it’s not as effective on demons as it is for mortals. It’s sort of like x-glargh vs glargh. Glargh gets mortals wasted, but it takes x-glargh to effect demons. You can imagine what x-glargh would do to a mortal. Well…actually you don’t, if they drink very much they die, otherwise they get very sick.
Very odd how normal alcohol doesn’t really affect demons, we have to have Denubian Choco-Coffee(TM), x-glargh, blood wine or several other demonic beverages; whereas avatars seem to be affected by normal alcohol. Or at least the ones in the second book really enjoy it.
The links get cut off to their gods; this is correct. You can’t directly have a link between the Abyss and the Outer Planes. This oddity is critical to keeping the gods and their minions out of the Abyss.
However, there is no reason that gods can’t come into the Abyss. They just get cut off from their god pools and pantheon pools so all they have are their own (considerable) mana resources.
As you may have noticed, Bestat and friends are all hanging out in their Outpost here, Phaestus spends a LOT of time here (more on that in book iii) and Sekhmekt was here. Phaestus has compared it to being naked/unarmed/defenseless, or feeling weak like with a cold or flu depending on how reliant the god is to doing without their god pool/pantheon pools. He’s spent so much time here (tens of thousand years+) that it doesn’t bother him that much.
Clerics can only do very simple spells and rituals powered by whatever mana they have on hand (which is typically less than a wizard would have since most of the time any mana a cleric collects is shoved up the link to the god/pantheon pools)
In order for a god to come to the Abyss, they either need to go to the Planes of Men first, or use alternate methods to those they normally use.
Oooh…that’s a new theory!
=d>
Very interesting, if Rupert’s dad was Demonicus Supremus then he would be powerful enough to affect Tom.
:-kHi,
Good points, here’s my thoughts:
#1 New Etonia is governed by the Holy Etonian Emperor and the 4 High Pontificates of each church. Very important to note this isn’t the same as the gods.
One thing we started to see in book ii was that the “Church” and the “Heavens” aren’t always on the same page. In book II, Hilda etal basically doesn’t trust the “Church” to be honest in accounting for the screw up. We will start to see more detail on this in book iii as Stevos and Teragdor have to work with the church offices to setup ground operations to watch for a D’Orc invasion. Basically the heavens and the church are not currently talking to each other.
We also see this in the fact that the Church in its alliance with Oorstemoth has not at all mentioned said operation to the Heavens. You can be absolutely certain that if the Archons knew about the Inferno and a planned church invasion of the Abyss, they would (will) have a freak out.
There are huge Compacts regulating interaction between pantheons and the Abyss. Lillith and friends are in clear/huge violation of this already and Oorstemoth, Church of Tiernon in Astlan are going to also violate it.
But back to the Council. A lot depends on the current members of the Council and the current Emperor in terms of the balance of power. We will start to see some of this in book iii…but I am not sure when/how exactly it comes in.
There is a lot of interesting stuff going on, but including it gets distracting to a lot of people (see too many POV/storylines) I am debating on how to spin off other shorter “sideline” series (E.g. The Seas of Astlan for the Captain Asmeth story cut from book ii). Who knows some of it may not get told until after the fact.
#2 This is actually a good question and stuff that should go into the library. I don’t have all that written yet, nor resolved with it. I’ve been a bit more focused on the Abyss’ creation mythology and the other stories and trying to reconcile all with the “real” story of creation or some version of it that could be consistent across multiple religions.
The idea for me, of course, is to make them semi-consistent with specific pantheon versions focusing on their side of the story. This is something that was always complicated when different societies merged and their pantheons had to be reconciled historically. Unfortunately, when there is NO question that the deities are real people, you can’t just easily write them off and forget the ones that are inconvenient to your narrative.
#3 Actually, civilization in Astlan is evolving very differently than on Earth, but is not static. The last few thousand years have seen a lot of progress thanks to better formalization and dissemination of wizardry across the globe. So from a technology point of view, Astlan is pretty close to on par with Earth, but with Wizardry being the Technology.
What is not so evolved is the democratic distribution of that technology, that is slower, but still better than it used to be. Astlan has very high levels of income and wizardry inequality. Wizardy works very well for the rich and powerful, but the trickle down to the masses is much slower/worse than technology on earth.
This is in large part because of politics and this is because Astlan is still pretty feudal and that is because they have some serious disparities in power between individuals. E.g. Gods, Archdemons, Clerics, Super Wizards, Anilords etc all are hugely powerful, and don’t require an industrial base.
That was the big thing on Earth. In order for the Nation Powers to advance and get more powerful, they had to build powerful industrial bases which in turn led to more wealth distribution and democratization of power.
In Astlan, Gods, Demigods, Elves and Dwarves etc (with their advanced technology) and the Anilords and powerful wizards did not require the same industrial base in order to lay waste to their enemies. There were/are still huge inequalities in power.
It’s these huge inequalities that make Astlan seem backward or more static than Earth. It’s like urban vs rural in much of the second and third worlds of Earth. In large parts of our world, there are very advanced cities with iphones, high speed internet, MTV, but in the countryside you have people using oxen and living by candles or lanterns and cooking on wooden fires.
North Korea is one rather insane example of this but you see it a lot in other regions as well.
Well, I’m not an expert on Astlanian dragons, because I don’t get to see that many, I know the Demon Dragons which I suppose are D’Dragons…
I sort of think that the Abyss dragons are the demon form of dragons summoned from other worlds like humans/elves/etc that become demons. But not sure.
I have seen quite a variety of size in demon dragons from almost human sized to really really huge, bigger than Smaug, btw, he was a great fellow, little paranoid, admittedly, but nice guy as dragons go…
I can speak to the ice dragons that I fought, those had about a 25-30 wing span (hard to tell cause they were flapping) So they would have a slightly large wingspan and body than Tom. Probably about the same size as the one he fought, although I never saw his myself.
Of course, not sure those things are really dragons cause, they were meltable/made out of ice. I am reasonably certain that the dragons those orcs ride in their raiding parties are organic, living creatures.
Actually, if you look at that picture on this [url=http://www.astlan.net/Home/AstrometryAstrology.aspx]website.[/url] You can get a pretty good idea of the organic type in Astlan.
The orcgre is about 10 feet tall, his slave is about the same height as Rupert, maybe a bit taller. The other orcs range in height from about 5’7 to 8′ tall.
Well, most people summoning demons are too self-centered, egotistical and narcissistic to actually ask. So lying rarely comes up. Everyone is pretty dead set on their preconceptions of Good and Evil, so they don’t think to ask.
Obviously, if a demon were to bring it up, anyone hearing it would most likely dismiss it as a trick or lie or obfuscation.
As to what other immortal types think; I have no idea. I presume that most archons/angels/avatars assume demons are sort of like themselves and got there that way. What the gods themselves know? Well, I have no idea. Some of them, obviously know what’s going on. Plus they all got to be gods someway or the other, so one would presume they have at least a basic handle on the whole “mortal vs immortal” business. Particularly if they can ascend mortals to become saints and archons.
A lot of what happens when eating depends on where you are being eaten. Keep in mind that in the Abyss, disassociating matter into raw elemental forms and harvesting the mana and animus takes a lot of energy, for those that can do it.
Eating another demon or immortal type is easier to digest and takes less mana, so you get a better meal of mana and animus. But it’s also much more dangerous. If you try to ‘digest’ the animus/lifeforce/soul of someone of near equal or greater power, you could end up getting eaten yourself…
But for example, if Lillith decides to eat someone, she’s probably only going to try and eat someone that won’t give her indigestion and that she can overpower, steal their mana and absorb their animus, i.e. fully consume the person’s soul. And that can be tricky, sometimes some of the animus or soul can escape. Sometimes, there is enough to infect the eater and well things get rather weird.
I’m aware of a couple cases where you end up with a hybrid being, often with multiple personalities. I know of one being (or actually a couple beings) that in fact go around consuming others partially to create sort of a hive mind creature.
The matter consumed is generally re purposed by the consumer into their corporal form; this is a cheaper way of acquiring matter than pulling it from the material planes.
Not all demons can digest other living creatures though; and some only digest parts. E.g. there are soul sucking demons and mana sucking demons that leave the other parts alone and don’t eat it.
And finally, eating someone on the material planes is very sloppy/messy and many times the soul and some mana escape complete absorption.