Dragaera

Gods, gods, demons, and monsters (spoilers for Issola)

Mon Sep 9 21:01:05 PDT 2002

Steve Simmons <scs at di.org> writes:
-snip-
> Correct.  But here's a place where we ought to be cautious.  We don't
> know that Sethra has god-level powers, and we don't know that she doesn't.
> In fact, we don't even know what god-level powers are.  The only statement
> we have as to what the gods are is what Sethra tells us above - multiple
> manifestation.  Sethra's statement (which I quoted in toto) looks very
> much like she considers it complete.  We get three classes of things
> here: gods, who can multiple manifest and not be controlled; demons,
> who can multiple manifest but can be controlled, and everything else.
> It's not a comforting definition, but going by what's in the text,
> I think it's right.

Sethra says -"multiple manifestation and all that implies"-.  This
means, in addition to simultaneous manifestation, there are additional
abilities you can assume a god has.  (These "additional abilities" are
not necessarily a simple fixed set.  It might be something like

    X + Y + Z >= 10

) Although it is not necessarily true, I think it likely that these
additional abilities include abilities other than the branches of
magic we've had named for us (witchcraft, psionics, necromancy,
wizardry, etc.).
 
> So it's my opinion that Sethra Lavode would not have become more powerful
> if she were made a god.  
-snip-

Possible, but *my* opinion is that she would have additional
abilities.  (Plus, I don't think there's any disagreement that "more
abilities" or "more power/stamina" means "more powerful" in the sense
of being able to do more things.)

> 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.

-big snip-
> So when we think of the powers of the gods, we need to ramp down our
> opinions.  They're powerful all right, but they're not Gods.

Disagree.  They don't strike me as being all that different from, say,
many of the Greek gods.

- tky