Learn Thaumaturgy to unlock my Essence, become an Enlightened Mortal. Train. Go and beat down the god.
crudus said:
Scorched_Cascade said:
Two questions, depending on your mood and the seriousness of your disposition, answer whichever you'd like.
1)What is your stance on the whole god-killing thing?
2)How would you, as a mortal, go about doing it?
I've seen quite a few posts around arguing that having a mortal kill a God is impossible and therefore bad, or at least clumsy, storytelling; said posters state that a god is immortal and therefore having them killed off breaks the premise.
Personally I think that if done well it can be quite a powerful story telling device, particularly if the God is not actually killed just rendered ineffective.
As for how? I'd go with bifurcating it and burying each part at a separate cross roads face down with a sprig of Hawthorne and a wild rose in it's mouth...or am I muddling my lore.
1. I have no problem with it. I don't know why people seem to. Most of the time I hear about it it happens in books and it stirs up quite the controversy. I never understood it.
2. I would stop the story from being spread. I have always view Gods like Freddy Kruger. They can only exist if people believe in them. If nobody knows about a god then nobody can believe in it.
Hell, the Raistlin series (at least the last three books) were all about killing gods. Of course, it ended up turning the world into a barren wasteland, but hey.
Depends on the god if hes part of a Pantheon you could get another god to kill them i guess otherwise i would say it was impossible but again depends on the definition of god your using
Just one? *chuckles* So maybe in an old D&D game I slaughtered an entire pantheon.
Was fun when the rest of the party realized I was SERIOUS about the plan at 3rd level to eventually kill and replace the entire pantheon. Actually, in the long term, it was for the good of the setting, even if the God of Death, Rebirth and Entropy that my character became was a bit...aggressive.
People in that game learned that you never treat someone with disrespect when they have a long memory, and a strong belief in disproportional revenge...and the drive to take a slow and careful approach to reaching their goals. I was even nice and left the Paladin and his own deity for last. And impressed when their god submitted willingly, acknowledging that the gods truly had failed to fulfill their duties, and deserved the judgment brought down upon them.
I think it's kind of interesting, whether it can really fly depends how far away from a god mortals actually are in the book/game/movie/can't-think-of-a-generalized-word-argh!
In Forgotten Realms, the Time of Troubles really shows that a lot of the gods are like really one-sided children with super powers.
That is to say, if you cut off the god's true head. If they're walking around the mortal realm, then that's probably just an avatar, killing that may not really kill the god itself, I don't know.
But killing a god? You would need an extremely powerful weapon and/or the ability not to be exploded the first 7 seconds of the fight. Killing a god should only be done by something that can rival it's power, so probably not a mortal. Most likely a Demi-god, a god, or something of equal or greater power could kill a god.
Not according to Neil Gaiman's American Gods. If memory serves correctly he killed Mr. Wednesday with a spear made from a branch of Yggdrasil. That one worked very well.
Aside from that, the only other book I've read with a god being killed was The Amber Spyglass. I read that series a long time ago, but I remember not liking that one. Not because they killed a god, but because it changed the atheist themes from being subtle to being completely over the top.
I don't mind it as a device in a story if it makes sense in context and is handled well. Just like any storytelling device, it can be bad if shoehorned into the plot when it doesn't fit.
Two questions, depending on your mood and the seriousness of your disposition, answer whichever you'd like.
1)What is your stance on the whole god-killing thing?
2)How would you, as a mortal, go about doing it?
I've seen quite a few posts around arguing that having a mortal kill a God is impossible and therefore bad, or at least clumsy, storytelling; said posters state that a god is immortal and therefore having them killed off breaks the premise.
Personally I think that if done well it can be quite a powerful story telling device, particularly if the God is not actually killed just rendered ineffective.
As for how? I'd go with bifurcating it and burying each part at a separate cross roads face down with a sprig of Hawthorne and a wild rose in it's mouth...or am I muddling my lore.
Well, a lot depends on how you portray a god. If your dealing with some kind of metaphysical force that is neigh omnipotent, then really there isn't much you can do, as there isn't really anything tangible to fight against. If your dealing with something along the lines of Greek or Norse mythology where the gods are basically a group of really powerful schoolboys, who can be outsmarted and defeated by mortals (but also do terrible things when they find out) then it's not quite as unheard of.
The point is that there are various degrees of power involved. I also think relative capabilities come into play as well. Take "Stargate" for example, throughout the over a decadethat this series and it's spinoffs ran, the constant claims that "this race of aliens are not gods". To some extent you could see the arguement when dealing with aliens like the Gou'ld or Asgard, who were powerful but had technology within understandable levels. Though it's also easy to see why they would be seen as gods by those less advanced and who could not put such things into perspective. More interestingly though they got involved with the Ori and Ancients during the end of the series, and really at that point you still had them going "they are not gods" when really, the power levels and nature of the creatures in question was at the point where it's difficult to argue anything being more godlike without being the literal essence of all that is (like the Christian god). The same arguement could be made using "Star Trek" as an example with the numerous borderline omnipotent beings that were encountered through the various series.
Overall, I'd say that once you can conceive of the idea of killing a god conceptually, then by definition it's not ridiculous. The being is no longer godlike enough in comparison to those viewing it to really be considered a true divinity.
As odd as this sounds, I think "Dungeons and Dragons" has had a pretty solid take on the subject for a good portion of it's history, when you get away from the whine-centric "you can't kill gods at all" camp that has gotten itself into writing on a number of occasions. That is simply to say that gods are very powerful beings that have gained immortality and a connection to the planes, and have discovered the trick of gaining power through the psychic linkage of worshippers. The more followers, the more powerful. Their personalities follow the general human range, just with incredible power behind them, and one of their vested interests, whether good or evil, is to try and prevent many other beings from joining the club as possible. Thus deities, even the good ones, are sort of involved in keeping the mortals in their place, though they keep managing to do things that upset that status quo.
A good example of this would be "The Forgotten Realms" where humans managed to learn enough magic during the age of Netheril where one of the uber-mages managed to absorb the god of magic. This of course freaked out the other deities who didn't want mortals to operate on that level, so they took action to limit what mortals could do with magic from that point onward. The so called "weave" mages manipulate which was tied to the successor of the god
of magic being a way to control this. Of course since then, it's been a constant headache because no matter how much they clamp down, stuff keeps happening to make their lives miserable and humans peak around the edges. This is a general description, but in various "Forgotten Realms" novels which are about the deities directly, you can see where I'm coming from. It's sort of like the sword and sorcery version of "Stargate" on some levels I guess, where the humans in Stargate got to the point where they were no longer in awe of those with superior technology, or even the very idea of "ascension" in things like "The Forgotten Realms" beyond a certain point pople aren't quite as in awe of beings with superior magic as they once were, I mean once you've watched a couple of deities have a slap fight in the middle of a city (in the spirit of some of the confrontations in Greek and Norse mythology) and realize you can put it in context (ie, his lightning bolts are MUCH bigger than mine, but I can still make my own, and I keep making better lightning spells, so while very impressive and something I can't touch right now, it's not something so shocking and out of context to what I know that I feel properly worshipful) it ceases to be quite so impressive. Nobody wants to slot off a god, and worshipping them makes them happy, but at
the same time it's hard to remain entirely reverant.
... and yes, through most of D&D's history, it's possible (though very difficult) to curb stomp an uppity deity. At least officially.
Haha, it's not that important, but if you're looking for a new book to read sometime soon, try the Wizard of Earthsea. It's where the Ancient Language and the true names of things in the Eragon books came from, and it's a very good read.
Sounds good i need another good read [i love books have read all of the HP books 3 times, LOTR books 2 times etc....]. Just out of curiosity why does every one seem to dislike the Eragon books?
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