> Given the nature of some of the gods (Ordwynac is a flaming
> stick, for
> crying out loud) "Those That" may, in fact, be more correct
> in many cases.
> Presumably, the gods started out as souls to be judged,
> themselves. (If
> not from Dragaera, then from somewhere else.)
>
*opinion alert*
I've always assumed that the "gods" as we think of them didn't exist before
the Revolt that created the Greater Sea of Chaos. The survivors that became
uplifted ("Where were you when the Event happened?" "In Cleveland. Wasn't
everybody?") organized and created the Paths, the Halls, and the Empire
afterwards as wards against further incursions by the Jenoine. Prior to
that, there wasn't anyone around to do the judging and quite possibly no
cycle of reincarnation either.
As for the forms taken by the Lords of Judgement, it's difficult to say what
those represent. Some, like Verra, Kelchor and probably Barlan, represent
their original physical forms. Others, like Nyssa and Ordwynac, seem more
like representations of their Aspect. Perhaps the true difference between a
God and a Demon is that a demon doesn't have an Aspect and is therefore a
free agent providing he or she isn't summoned and bound by sorcery. A God is
bound to its Aspect, essentially. The god is "free" in the sense that it
cannot be bound by a sorceror against its will, but it is constrained in
turn by difficulty or inability to conceptualize and behave in contradiction
of its Aspect. This would also explain how one could study or train to
become a God. A sufficently advanced wizard could presumably perform the
operation upon himself even without the help of any of the Lords of
Judgement, leading to the current attitudes of the Dragaerans vis-a-vis the
Gods being worthy of some respect but not neccesarily reverence or worship.
It seems likely that most of the original Lords of Judgement were "demons"
in the sense that they had been summoned from another dimension and bound to
the service of the Jenoine before or shortly after the Jenoine arrived in
Dragaera. This sort of speculation essentially implies that the "angels" of
the Revolt, upon seeing their changed situation, voluntarily assumed their
various Aspects as protection against being summoned and bound by the
Jenoine once again.