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Compass of Terrestrial Directions: Below

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glamourweaver replied on 3 Nov 2009 1:40 AM
Holden:
What, no love for CoTD: Above?

(Well, I guess in the strictest sense that'd be CoCD: Above...)

You've hinted at Dragonblooded in SPAAAAAAAAACE!  But until we get our hands on GotMH, "Above" is still empty air (save for some Sanctums & Elementals) until one hits the Dome.


Hmmmm... CoCD: Autochthonia, CoTD: Below, CoCD: Above, CoTD: "Stuff we Missed" (Cherak, Calin, Nameless Lair, Parrot Tribe League, etc)
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PrinzMegahertz replied on 3 Nov 2009 2:41 AM
Wasn't there a goddess of dreams that kill? I can't remember just where she was mentioned, but as far as I know, she was banished and since then people can dream without the fear of instant heart attack
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glamourweaver replied on 3 Nov 2009 2:54 AM
PrinzMegahertz:
Wasn't there a goddess of dreams that kill? I can't remember just where she was mentioned, but as far as I know, she was banished and since then people can dream without the fear of instant heart attack

Ithmit-Laia.  Presumably the phenomenon she oversaw was something the Solars worked out of reality (thus meaning it only exists now when she specifically wields a charm to cause it).
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Pandalunar replied on 3 Nov 2009 3:05 AM
"Maybe there was a censor for the Below once, and the God of the Endless War convinced Heaven he wasn't really needed..."

That could be the fungus elemental dragon, perhaps.
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glamourweaver replied on 3 Nov 2009 6:04 AM
Friv Yeti:
In fact, I think this could go a long way towards explaining why Heaven is ignoring the Endless War so thoroughly. The God of the Endless War would have a metric crapton of ambrosia from millions upon millions of Darkbrood actively sacrificing him. If he's the one that Heaven is trusting to oversee the darkness, he can easily bribe everyone who might care, and work to keep the war from spilling over so that there's no reason for them to ever look into it No Exalts come from the darkness, so not much chance of anything mucking up his good deal. Maybe there was a censor for the Below once, and the God of the Endless War convinced Heaven he wasn't really needed..

Interesting.  I wasn't actually imagining that the War God in question would interact with or be recognized by Heaven.  As I said, it seemed to fit that he was a Forbidden God & thus a Creature of Darkness.

hmmm...

What if the closest thing that the subterranean world has to a censor, is the God of Buried Secrets (employed by the Forbidden Manse of Ivy obviously).  Heaven trusts him to make sure that what happens underground, stays underground.  It was his decision to recognize the most powerful Battle Spirit amongst the Forbidden Gods as the "official" (though highly highly highly classified... basically it's just him, Jupiter, & Mars that even know about the guy in Yu Shan) God of the Endless War.  The God of Buried Secrets basically made an arrangement with the rising spirit warlord that he would get to divinely administer the Endless War, with all the ambrosia the worship & power of the position entailed - in return for making sure it remained completely subterranean.
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mercucio replied on 3 Nov 2009 2:59 PM
glamourweaver:
Interesting.  I wasn't actually imagining that the War God in question would interact with or be recognized by Heaven.  As I said, it seemed to fit that he was a Forbidden God & thus a Creature of Darkness.

First being a Forbidden God does not automatically make a CoD, any more than it automatically places you outside fate.

Second, why would he be a Forbidden God? There is nothing in his portfolio that indicates his domain would be antithetical to Heaven's purposes. Furthermore, I can see him be assigned by E-Naluna and told "Make sure neither side wins. You do that I will keep the Censors off your back".
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Sacheverell when someone argued otherwise
 "...10 it is. Period. Fin.  Go doubt your sexuality before you doubt the rule of 10."
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Rafilar replied on 3 Nov 2009 3:19 PM
glamourweaver:
Interesting.  I wasn't actually imagining that the War God in question would interact with or be recognized by Heaven.  As I said, it seemed to fit that he was a Forbidden God & thus a Creature of Darkness.
I think I prefer Friv's interpretation. But then again, I play Sidereals, so I'm biased in favor of anything that involves heavenly conspiracies and politicking.

That being said, while this guy, the God of War Below, wouldn't be a forbidden god now, he probably will become one if it gets around that there's been a war underground between the Mountain Folk and the servants of the defeated Primordials, and he's been working to make sure the war never ends.
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glamourweaver replied on 3 Nov 2009 3:51 PM
mercucio:
glamourweaver:
Interesting.  I wasn't actually imagining that the War God in question would interact with or be recognized by Heaven.  As I said, it seemed to fit that he was a Forbidden God & thus a Creature of Darkness.

First being a Forbidden God does not automatically make a CoD, any more than it automatically places you outside fate.

Second, why would he be a Forbidden God? There is nothing in his portfolio that indicates his domain would be antithetical to Heaven's purposes. Furthermore, I can see him be assigned by E-Naluna and told "Make sure neither side wins. You do that I will keep the Censors off your back".

Well nothing in canon makes Forbidden Gods outside fate at all, but they are CoD because they are of a class condemned by the Unconquered Sun.

Anyway, the issue of why I saw him as a Forbidden God was because as far as existing canon is concerned E-Naluna & the Celestial Bureaucracy have no idea that the Endless War exists - so a being outside the hierarchy made the most sense.

Under this theory he would have begun his existence as a Forbidden God, of a class of condemned spirits like the Leech Gods - some breed of darkbrood Battle Spirit.  However he grew in power & worship to fill this metaphysical hole & made an "arrangement" with the handful of divine gods active beneath the surface - or at least the celestial ones - to keep the Endless War contained.
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mercucio replied on 3 Nov 2009 4:53 PM
glamourweaver:
Well nothing in canon makes Forbidden Gods outside fate at all, but they are CoD because they are of a class condemned by the Unconquered Sun.

You really, really, really need to fix the conflation of Forbidden God with Creature of Darkness going on in your mind. Forbidden gods are not inherently Creatures of Darkness.

Forbidden god is a blanket term for any deity Yu-Shan would rather not exist. Further, the term "Creature of Darkness" does not even appear even once in RoGD I--in the Forbidden God entry or any other. Individual forbidden gods might be CoDs, but forbidden gods as a class are not, as their taxonomy is too broad for a single declaration of the UCS to catch every spirit that falls underneath that umbrella. As an example:  Leech gods were banished to the Underways by their Primordial creators who grew tired of their single-minded consumptive urges--the UCS did not banish them from Yu-Shan or declare the CoDs.

glamourweaver:
Anyway, the issue of why I saw him as a Forbidden God was because as far as existing canon is concerned E-Naluna & the Celestial Bureaucracy have no idea that the Endless War exists - so a being outside the hierarchy made the most sense.

E-Naluna would be aware of any war in Creation--even if it is below the surface the world--as it falls under her domain. The whole premise that Yu-Shan is ignorant of the Underways and its affairs is both fallacious and silly. They are most definitely aware of what occurs in the Underways--whether they care to any notable degree is a different story.
Holden on Essence Caps:
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Sacheverell when someone argued otherwise
 "...10 it is. Period. Fin.  Go doubt your sexuality before you doubt the rule of 10."
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Pandalunar replied on 3 Nov 2009 5:08 PM
mercucio:
The whole premise that Yu-Shan is ignorant of the Underways and its affairs is both fallacious and silly.

I don't agree: we can decide that for some reason heaven _is_ ignorant or careless, we just have to come up with a proper explanation.

As for the CoD thingy, with that I do agree. It is not necessary for every single forbidden god to be a CoD, unless someone in the Celestial Bureaucracy is somehow responsible for them to be (and even then some would fall between the cracks), some god, who is appointed by the US for this task. Besides, there are not that much ways for someone to get a comingout - these creatures live underground, they usually don't get to be seared by the sun or any Holy effects, so it doesn't make a difference for them either way.
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mercucio replied on 3 Nov 2009 5:27 PM
Pandalunar:
mercucio:
The whole premise that Yu-Shan is ignorant of the Underways and its affairs is both fallacious and silly.

I don't agree: we can decide that for some reason heaven _is_ ignorant or careless, we just have to come up with a proper explanation.
You'll note that while I said Yu-Shan would know of events in the Underways the degree to which they would care is questionable--unless the events in question were severely detrimental to the function of the Terrestrial or Celestial Bureaucracy. Considering the vast number of pre-existing ways for the Celestial and Terrestrial to gather information on the Underways to say Yu-Shan is wholly ignorant of events occuring there is simply ludicrous.
Holden on Essence Caps:
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Sacheverell when someone argued otherwise
 "...10 it is. Period. Fin.  Go doubt your sexuality before you doubt the rule of 10."
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Rafilar replied on 3 Nov 2009 5:31 PM
mercucio:
to say Yu-Shan is wholly ignorant of events is ludicrous.
I wouldn't suggest for a second that Yu-Shan is wholly ignorant. But this is a very different thing from E-Naluna being wholly ignorant. Effectively, Yu-Shan is too broad a category to be useful here.

It is very plausible that E-Naluna knows nothing of this, because her inferiors--all the clerks and data analysts who see the data coming in and evaluate it for her--long ago learned that she didn't care and it wasn't worth their effort to tell her. Now, millennia later, it's a much bigger problem than it was back when she didn't care, and she probably should care, but bureaucratic inertia keeps them from sending the relevant reports to her desk.


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Pandalunar replied on 3 Nov 2009 5:45 PM
I did not mean to say that _all_ Yu-Shan was ignorant, either. But if we decide the main strokes, we can deviate the idea from there.
We can come up with the idea that Yu-Shan is not deeply investing in the underland, it may be lack of interest or lack of access, lack of communication, a whole lot more. But to flesh out the idea and come up with the reasons for something, the whys, we should first settle on a few broad themes and agree on that. The whys come after that, and that is where it becomes interesting.

But, yes, of course. To say that heaven is wholly ignorant is stupid, and Yu-Shan is not. But since we do not really have much on this in canon, I would suggest that maybe the things and entities and powers we do know in canon are similarly not that deeply in the know about the underlands.
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mercucio replied on 3 Nov 2009 6:24 PM
Rafilar:
It is very plausible that E-Naluna knows nothing of this, because her inferiors--all the clerks and data analysts who see the data coming in and evaluate it for her--long ago learned that she didn't care and it wasn't worth their effort to tell her.

Sense Domain, Intrusion Sensing Method, and a host of other Spirit Charms disagree with this stance. In addition given the depth, breadth, and duration of the Endless War to claim she knows nothing of it remains ludicrous.
Holden on Essence Caps:
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Sacheverell when someone argued otherwise
 "...10 it is. Period. Fin.  Go doubt your sexuality before you doubt the rule of 10."
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glamourweaver replied on 3 Nov 2009 7:12 PM
mercucio:
E-Naluna would be aware of any war in Creation--even if it is below the surface the world--as it falls under her domain. The whole premise that Yu-Shan is ignorant of the Underways and its affairs is both fallacious and silly. They are most definitely aware of what occurs in the Underways--

That is however not canon, and that's why I was trying to come up with an explanation that would make the canon make sense.
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