Cosmology 101

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Delia
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Cosmology 101

#1 Post by Delia » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:26 pm

Starting from the basics...how do people see it, is it all right to refer Taniel as "up there" and Sathonys as "down there"? Could Evren easily seen as "all around us" and Zhakrin when referring to the "mountains" ( I somewhat experience Zhakrin as god of crafts too, be that wrong or not ). Gwen might be "within us". I'm not all at all sure how to refer to Asral and Liliith though. What do you think of these analogies?( do add some for Asral and Lilith if something pops into mind )

Point in these would be how the common folk view where the gods recide, bit like how a common christian ( no offense meant ) easily point upwards towards the sky as "the heaven", home of god.

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genesis
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#2 Post by genesis » Sun Jan 21, 2007 4:05 pm

Hmmh, interesting viewpoints.

Asral, of course, lives in the battle and/or weapons.
Lilith lives in distrust, chaos etc. :P

Yes, do gods live in the same place everyone? Do they have a corporeal body, or are they incorporeal?
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#3 Post by Devi » Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:19 am

I like those analogies.
Maybe Lilith could live in fire or shadows.
Asral could live in warcries or spilled blood.
Gwen could live in orgasms or songs. I think she's also the mother of music and what not.

Personally, I imagine the Gods as entirely corporeal world-walking numbers with bodies and such. I think it's just because I love the whole Magic the Gathering planeswalker thing. Gods are just superpowered ultramagical mortals (who also happen to be immortal...) I don't think this is how they're supposed to be interpretted though. There's absolutely no evidence. :)

My characters all have different views.

One wrote a (rather awful!) book about how the gods must live in another plane without space and time. It reads a bit like medieval philosophy, but it's not quite as good as the real world stuff. ;)

The other believes they live just beyond the world (off the edges). There are seven directions: north, east, south, west, above, below, and center.
Lilith lives to the west (setting sun), Taniel to the east (the rising sun), Sathonys lives to the north (winter winds), Evren to the south (summer winds), Asral above, Gwen below, and Zhakrin in the center (within). Travelling northwest is a bit shady.

I guess the whole Asral/Gwen thing is a bit odd. She figures love and war have a lot in common and they aren't as evil/good as the others. Since the world is thinner than it is wide (like a giant cookie sheet!), Asral and Gwen must be closer to Zhakrin and closer to each other.

So yeah, I've thought about this before. ;)

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#4 Post by Delia » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:05 am

The other believes they live just beyond the world (off the edges). There are seven directions: north, east, south, west, above, below, and center.
Lilith lives to the west (setting sun), Taniel to the east (the rising sun), Sathonys lives to the north (winter winds), Evren to the south (summer winds), Asral above, Gwen below, and Zhakrin in the center (within). Travelling northwest is a bit shady.
I recently thought about a gypsy mystic who could divine with a ouija board of sorts. One could visit her, pay the fee and she could sense the state of one's soul ( perhaps another way of "faithcheck", hard to think what else she might reveal ).

But if we are talking where gods actually might live, its really hard to make any sense of Zhakrin, I also see Zhakrin just being "all around/within" rather than being pinpointed in one place, and giving "balance" might be bit hard to grasp for a commoner ( and for a player too sometimes! ), I like to think Zhakrin might have something to do with

Crafts and Gifts of the Mountains

from Adoption Of Man By Asral
The first race to exist was the race of the dwarves, conceived by the master craftsman Zhakrin. They were filled with the desire to create, to reveal the beauties buried within the depths of Geas, and they pleased their lord greatly with the gems and ores that surfaced from their mines, and with the intricate and lovely creations they formed with them.
Naturally trade and commerce will follow, after having nice things to play with, and after heated "arguments" justice, truth and mediation is needed, just one simple thing the scales could represent besides the overbearing Balance, and while justice, truth and so forth do sound like goodie virtues, I'd see them as tools/virtues the evilhearted could also use.

Now to bring this closer to topic, perhaps dwarves refer to Zhakrin as "the root of the mountains"? When generally thinking about places of gods, there is evidence of other planes/dimensions IC. Elor is one subject of debate ( well, an NPC has said "...in other dimension" or something ),Clerics have their own methods of travel and there is one quite outrageous room in Arborea if I remember correctly ;)
Last edited by Delia on Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
"To be is to do" - Sokrates
"To do is to be" - Jean-Paul Sartre
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#5 Post by Delia » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:25 am

Of course, there is also the sun, moons ( were there two or three? ) and stars. All of which there is very little information about. The names of the moons were quite very well hidden somewhere in-game, hopefully I have them stored somewhere...

This brings us to Taniel and Lilith (Light/Darkness). Is "light of Taniel" the light of the sun, or more abstract "celestial light"? Is the sun more an Evren thing? Now that there are moons, might one be "the eye of Taniel", vigilantly observing what happens around his dominion, and following this natural pairing Lilith would be there too, whispering secrets to her faithful and guiding them from light's way. One could start seeing Taniel and Lilith as a married couple, constantly bickering after the joy of matrimonial bliss has become rather arduous and now the two are just constantly trying to out-do each other.
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#6 Post by genesis » Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:14 am

I think we have 3 moons, two visibile and one black! :P
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