On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 12:48:40AM -0400, Steve Simmons wrote: > >> . . . . Looking back, I can't find a a single > >> skill or power that we've seen from the gods which we haven't also > >Whatever happened to Aliera in _Taltos_, perhaps. > Damn, I must have missed that. What specificly are you referring to. The whole resurrection thing they go to the Paths of the Dead for? > Actually, I'd counted her as a god, and she enters at the same time as > the others (Issola 226). You say she's "unclassifiable". From all the There's no evidence to classify her as anything we've seen before. There's no evidence gods normally travel back in time and such, or exist before they're born. If anything she's closer to the Serioli Morrolan talks to. If she's a god, she's way more powerful than the others, being able to take down a Jenoine by herself. > of any of the gods). She is the granddaughter of Verra, has the ability Aliera is Verra's daughter, and isn't a god. > to move back and forth widely in time . . . or maybe Aliera gives birth > to her far in the past . . . after all, Brust says Keiron is her father. "I haven't been born yet." > Anyway, why do you say "unclassifiable"? We may not know much about the Lords of Judgement, but nothing indicates that Devera is one of them. She could be, but we cna hardly say so. And given her freakiness, plus her appearance in non-Dragaera books, it seems rather more likely that she's not anything as simple as some local deity. Never-to-be-explicated authorial whim seems more likely to me. Like Tom Bombadil. (And for that matter, about as cute.) > > . . . -- 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. > > Ohhhh, no, I'm not getting into one of those "all these universes can be > linked together" sort of things. They're fun, but that way lies madness, I didn't say they were linked. I suggested the origins have a resemblance. Amorphia/sorcery resemble cacoastrum/iliaster. If he reuses the metaphysics he can recycle the cosmogony without the histories being the same or connected. Just reusing a good idea. -xx- Damien X-)