On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 02:59:01PM -0400, Steve Simmons wrote: > So it's my opinion that Sethra Lavode would not have become more powerful > if she were made a god. It's also my opinion that she is indeed a power > in the same class as the gods. I'll say why a bit further down. "Multiple manifestations" may have other implications. Such as having your central essence on some other plane, and thus being hard to kill. Verra was 'killed' in Fenario, but is untroubled elsewhere. Our friendly elves speculate that succesfully hitting Verra with a "powerful" Morganti dagger might cause her to be unable to manifest in Dragaera. By contrast, Godslayer presumably wipes out a god, period, no more manifestations anywhere. > something about relative powers. Looking back, I can't find a a single > skill or power that we've seen from the gods which we haven't also > seen from at least one other resident of the Dragaeran world (Eastern, > Dragaeran, Serioli). If anyone can cite such, it would be useful to know. Whatever happened to Aliera in _Taltos_, perhaps. > Dragaerans and of at least some of the gods. One Jenoine is killed > early on, one remains mostly aloof. Killed by the one being you forgot to list, the unclassifiable Devera in the form of a dragon. Not the gods or the other powers. > Lady Teldra/Godslayer kills one of them. Even then, the element of > surprise is probably as much a factor as the power of Lady Teldra. Nnng. Maybe. The battle was being waged with sorcery+, and Godslayer seems to just cut through sorcery. Lack of surprise wouldn't help, except in being able to shift offworld, or bring up other powers. How much of what we saw was actually native Jenoine power, vs. Jenoine using sorcery thanks to their link to Adron's Sea? It's impressive of course that they were so good at it with so little apparent practice -- part of the reason for my speculation that the Jenoine origin resembles that of the angels in _To Reign in Hell_; they're familiar with iliaster/sorcerous power from way back. But that they desired access to amorphia so much -- remember where the Great Sea came from -- implies that it does give them powers they lack, giving gods and Dragaerans an edge normally. What we saw was beings with all the (stolen) powers of the gods and wizards, plus their own powers. Leaving aside Sethra's "more powerful" statement. -xx- Damien X-)