Geas

Here are some questions I've seen asked sometimes ic, often spawning massive debates. I don't know which of these are supposed to be common knowledge in the game world, which already have hidden answers, and which are supposed to be the subject of massive ic debates, so I'll just throw them all here.

1.) Which god created the halflings? What about gnotts? Faeries? etc.

> I remember someone (Genesis?) posting on the wiki a long time ago that maybe Gwen created the halflings, but I haven't heard much about it since.

2.) Where do the gods live?

>Do they live together? At the top of Giat? In heaven/hell? Another plane? Almost every culture has a standard answer to this question, even if it's the subject of philosophical debate.

3.) Why is scalping okay, but dissection isn't? Beheading? Are savage murders only acceptable because it'd be impossible to code the difference between a savage murder and a humane slaughter?

>Does this have to do with the surface of the body vs. the inside of the body? Respect the inside, but mess around with the outside as you please sort of thing.

4.) Just the seven? Can the gods get married? Can the gods have children? Did Evren and Sathonys ever have a love affair?

Another one that's come up before:

How does someone die "for good"?

>Old age? The gods stop caring enough to resurrect them? Arbitrary decision?

Devi wrote:1.) Which god created the halflings? What about gnotts? Faeries? etc.

> I remember someone (Genesis?) posting on the wiki a long time ago that maybe Gwen created the halflings, but I haven't heard much about it since.

Just like the halfling "empire", the creation of the halflings is also quite mysterious. Or to be more precise, we wizards didn't think much about it so far. Should there be one time a halfling capital, the question will be answered, but personally I don't consider the typical halfling traits of "finding" things and causing mischief very "Gwenish".

Devi wrote: 2.) Where do the gods live?

>Do they live together? At the top of Giat? In heaven/hell? Another plane? Almost every culture has a standard answer to this question, even if it's the subject of philosophical debate.

Depends on what their followers believe. I know that at least the Taniels believe in some sort of heaven, and there's also the concept of hell as well as the planes through which the Clerics sometimes travel, so one can safely assume that the gods can dwell in various planes. What they surely don't do is to live together.

Devi wrote:3.) Why is scalping okay, but dissection isn't? Beheading? Are savage murders only acceptable because it'd be impossible to code the difference between a savage murder and a humane slaughter?

First at all, beheading and scalping can be only done to corpses (if we don't count chopping off a head in combat). And it is one thing to witness three quick cuts across the scalp and a hard yank, or a swift chop to the neck, but it is a completely different thing to see some shady, pale, academic-type guy dig elbow-deep through the organs of some human corpse for sinews, glands and whatever else. At least I know what would give me more nightmares.

Devi wrote:4.) Just the seven? Can the gods get married? Can the gods have children? Did Evren and Sathonys ever have a love affair?

Just the seven. And no, they don't get married. No, Evren and Sathonys would never have a love affair. They hate each other. And yes, they can have children. I mean, they are GODS after all. They do what they want.

I always just wrote halflings off as some weird mix of dwarf and elf. Or maybe just some subrace of dwarf that eventually evolved into its own kind? Maybe they didn't necessarily have to be created by a god, but came to be by some natural.. event (I would disagree with them being artificially created like tshaharks, though).

-Tessa, Daughter of Gwen

1. I always thought it was Gwen. According to Abharsair they don't look quite Gwenish. (Perhaps the gift of Free Will and corruption of Lilith caused something.) Uuh, would be awesome to find out that halflings are actually Lilithite creatures.

2. This is an interesting question. Do deities have physical bodies, or are they simply souls or even minds living on another planes of existence?

4. So, gods can have children, but there cannot be more gods? How about if Lilith and Sathonys somehow -merge- into each other, combining the forces of Evil against the good...

genesis wrote:4. So, gods can have children, but there cannot be more gods? How about if Lilith and Sathonys somehow -merge- into each other, combining the forces of Evil against the good...

... ?

Lilith and Sathonys have wayyyy too much rivalry for that, as is evidenced in at least one place in the game by NPCs, and definitely roleplayed.
I think that a lot of what's good about the theology is that most mortals do have some sense of wonder and mystery about it. If all the details were spelled out OOCly, it would be sad to see everyone ICly suddenly "know" everything. I like the debates.

4. So, gods can have children, but there cannot be more gods? How about if Lilith and Sathonys somehow -merge- into each other, combining the forces of Evil against the good...

Gods having children would only result in demi-gods or something alike I think and sooner or later we'd have a more gods than the greeks Would be perhaps fun, but I think it would get simply too confusing pretty fast.

Cleric meets Person.
Cleric favourchecks Person.
Cleric finds out Person follows god XXL.
Cleric starts to browse through his book of gods in order to find out if Person is an enemy or not.
Cleric is busy to browse through his book of gods.
Person leaves.
Cleric sighs frustratedly.

2. This is an interesting question. Do deities have physical bodies, or are they simply souls or even minds living on another planes of existence?

I would figure they're essences that could take on physical or ethereal forms at their whim.

And if the gods did have children (which I really don't see happening, perhaps for the better), I would figure it would be with mortals rather than each other.

Mortals are the playthings of the gods, after all. Perhaps in more ways than one.

Tessa clearly wants to be a divine plaything.

No, Tessa was not shackling herself for Gwen.

Tessa was shackling herself for Sathonys.

*Adanath the wise*

Cemoch and Yegerfin would be frollicking hand in hand in a flower field before Tess devoted herself to that god.

good imagery!


anyways the gods in my opinion are good the way they are. the only thing we need are more clerics, but for that we need more people. it would be cool to have clerics for each god though.

As far as I know different deities favour different auras. So if you ask for a karma-check from a priest his answer will be according to the align of his god or it gives an average range from good to bad? (not sure, but I think this second version I think is currently implemented, though not sure if its fitting for RP purposes as I doubt a priest of Sathonys would ever call a pitchblack karma "bad" or a lilly-white one "good")

Another question. Do the priests have the knowledge to tell their followers what should they do to improve their karma towards the favoured alignment and maintain it there?

Karma from favour checks shows an average, from white/grey/red/black or something. White always means good, black is evil, and so forth, regardless of the god.

Checking karma with npcs at temples, however, shows how close you are to the god's ideal karma. So, if Sathonys says your karma is great, it means it's very close to max negative. Taniel would say it sucks. Equally, if you had max positive karma, Taniel would say it's great, and Sathonys would say it sucks.

I see, thx.

So is karma a straight line? You can go up, you can go down, and gods will think more or less of you for it?

I suppose then Zhakrin would think the most of you with a neutral karma (exactly in the middle of the line) and less and less as your karma gets towards the ends of the line?

I wonder what the possible outcomes for a karma check are? As in, what colors can karma have?

Yes, Zhakrin prefers the middle. The more off-center you go, the less he likes it.

The karma colour question is probably something that could be learned by asking around ICly (clerics would know, but it's not necessarily general knowledge).