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hkmaly

Story, Monday July 30, 2018

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10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Ok, Zeus is out, number of "no change" proponents: 0.

Correction. Number of fairies that we know, whom we expect to be "no change" proponents: 0.

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4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

"Kneel Before Zod!"

That command becomes less fun to shout if no one is able or willing to stand in opposition.

"In the end... You will always kneel."

 

 

"Not to men like you."

"There are no men like me."

"There are always men like you."

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On 7/30/2018 at 1:47 AM, Haylo said:

So the immortals might decide to go back to being demigods, with the implication that mortals might be very disposable to them.

And that might be Voltaire's downfall -- the very fact that the Immortals could be related to humans should mean that they will want their descendants to be protected from abuse by other Immortals!

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13 hours ago, animalia said:

Care to break that down for us layman

I miswrote the first part, it was Aten, not Amun, that had such a strong following from Pharaoh Akhenaten that all the other temples to all the other gods of Egypt were defaced, the priests executed or forced into exile, the people forced to switch religions. After his death, the same was done to Aten by the rest of the gods.

El-Shaddai, the mighty one of the mountains, is better known as Elohim, the worshipped one, or Adonai, Lord, or the name he gave Moshe on the mountain of Sinai, YHVH, later degraded to Jehovah. His worshippers, the descendants of Yisrael, sacked and plundered countless Phoenician villages and cities which worshipped Ashera, Molech and Ba'al, fertility deities. In what Elohim claimed was lack of faith, the Hebrews were allowed to be destroyed multiple times by the very people they genocide earlier, taken into captivity and their Temple burned to the ground and looted. In one instance the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of Elohim, was brought to the temple of Dagon, lord of the sea. In spite and petty jealousy, Elohim knocked over the statue of Dagon.

Mahabali was a mighty king, advised by a demon guru, who conquered the entire universe and humiliated the Devas, and though all the gods tried to stop him, no one succeeded. But he was a fair king, and after making sure his rule was permanent, he offered the mortals any gift they asked. In desperation, some gods and mortals petitioned Vishnu to intercede and help, so Lord Vishnu came down and incarnated as Vamana the dwarf Brahmin. Vamana came before Mahabali, and the demon guru immediately recognized Vishnu, and demanded the king refuse the dwarf's request, but Mahabali was fair and just, and did not listen to his advisor. Vamana asked merely to possess three paces' worth of land, and Mahabali made to seal the compact by pouring water from his pot into his hand, from his hand into the dwarf's, and from the dwarf's into Vamana's gourd pot. But the demon guru blocked the spout of the king's pot, so Vamana used a twig and cleared the spout by blinding the demon. When the water was poured and the agreement sealed, Vamana grew and grew until a single step took him from one end of the world to the other. He grew larger still as Mahabali fell down in worship, and his second step crossed the very heavens. "Mahabali, you have given me three steps, but I have nowhere left to go." "Lord Vishnu, I offer unto you my head for your third step." So Vamana stepped upon Mahabali's head, pushing him into the underworld, where the king was content to live and rule the rest of his days. But Vishnu is kind, and rewarded the goodness of Mahabali by allowing him to visit the universe he once ruled every year.

Like El-Shaddai, Aten and Mahabali before him, I think Voltaire will find that the other gods and goddesses will have issues if he tries taking over the universe for himself. 

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Why do Immortals seem to have some kind of fixed human forms? The obvious real-world answers are so Dan doesn't have to make too many new character designs and so the readers will know who's who without so much hard thinking that their heads will explode.

However, for the in-story justification, perhaps they began as mortals. Roman emperors did it all the time, starting with Julius Caesar. Or, maybe, they played with humans for so long they started absorbing human nature.

This would look to be the end of Sister 3, except that there's supposed to be one more comic. I kind of think someone else will dominate the last panel and the last word of the last comic: Pandora. 

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3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Why do Immortals seem to have some kind of fixed human forms? The obvious real-world answers are so Dan doesn't have to make too many new character designs and so the readers will know who's who without so much hard thinking that their heads will explode.

However, for the in-story justification, perhaps they began as mortals. Roman emperors did it all the time, starting with Julius Caesar. Or, maybe, they played with humans for so long they started absorbing human nature.

This would look to be the end of Sister 3, except that there's supposed to be one more comic. I kind of think someone else will dominate the last panel and the last word of the last comic: Pandora. 

Shapeshifting aside, there does seem to be a default form, we saw with Pandora that her child through to elder forms all shared a common appearance that looked like a natural age progression. I think that it has a lot to do with their Basic Nature which would mean they had a preset form that they will always revert back to when they reset. Whether this form is what they had way back when they were mortal or if it was a form they chose when they first decided on making resets a thing.

Then again their basic nature could look completely different and part of the reset involves a sort of character creation phase where the Immortal can customize their default form, and then they learn to shapeshift later.

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7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Ok, Zeus is out, number of "no change" proponents: 0.

Correction. Number of fairies that we know, whom we expect to be "no change" proponents: 0.

Yes, true.

6 hours ago, wanderingmagus said:

YHVH, later degraded to Jehovah.

I'm pretty sure that "YHVH" was just the "we are too cool to write vowels" notation.

5 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

However, for the in-story justification, perhaps they began as mortals. Roman emperors did it all the time, starting with Julius Caesar.

If they would began as humans, how do you explain the ears?

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

Shapeshifting aside, there does seem to be a default form, we saw with Pandora that her child through to elder forms all shared a common appearance that looked like a natural age progression. I think that it has a lot to do with their Basic Nature which would mean they had a preset form that they will always revert back to when they reset. Whether this form is what they had way back when they were mortal or if it was a form they chose when they first decided on making resets a thing.

Then again their basic nature could look completely different and part of the reset involves a sort of character creation phase where the Immortal can customize their default form, and then they learn to shapeshift later.

It could be form they chosen when they first started interacting with people.

But yes, just because they are shapeshifters (and note that it IS possible their shapeshifting is limited until they get to later age) doesn't mean they don't have some default form. Or sex/gender. Note that Loki is always considered man, despite that episode of him giving birth to Sleipnir.

 

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm pretty sure that "YHVH" was just the "we are too cool to write vowels" notation.

The Semitic language group is funny in that it only has comparatively few distinct vowel sounds. This meant that they could get away with a simplified alphabet that only included consonants; vowels could usually be deduced from context. It is for the same reason that the Egyptian hieroglyphs did not include vowel sounds. Of course, more vowel rich languages like English (or God help me, Danish) kinda need those vowel indicators for legibility when written down.

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13 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

And that might be Voltaire's downfall -- the very fact that the Immortals could be related to humans should mean that they will want their descendants to be protected from abuse by other Immortals!

Ooh, me likey. I'd love to see that.

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The Semitic language group is funny in that it only has comparatively few distinct vowel sounds. This meant that they could get away with a simplified alphabet that only included consonants; vowels could usually be deduced from context. It is for the same reason that the Egyptian hieroglyphs did not include vowel sounds. Of course, more vowel rich languages like English (or God help me, Danish) kinda need those vowel indicators for legibility when written down.

And yet English renders thirteen vowel phonemes using only five letters without diacritics or other auxiliary markings.

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm pretty sure that "YHVH" was just the "we are too cool to write vowels" notation.

The Semitic language group is funny in that it only has comparatively few distinct vowel sounds. This meant that they could get away with a simplified alphabet that only included consonants; vowels could usually be deduced from context. It is for the same reason that the Egyptian hieroglyphs did not include vowel sounds.

Thanks for confirmation. :)

1 minute ago, ijuin said:

And yet English renders thirteen vowel phonemes using only five letters without diacritics or other auxiliary markings.

Likely with explanation like "because we can".

Sure, Semitic CAN leave out vowels and English CAN render thirteen vowels with five letters, but just because they can doesn't make it good idea.

25 minutes ago, partner555 said:
13 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

And that might be Voltaire's downfall -- the very fact that the Immortals could be related to humans should mean that they will want their descendants to be protected from abuse by other Immortals!

Ooh, me likey. I'd love to see that.

It might be good line of defense for the "minimal change" proponents.

... however, I'm mostly afraid we wouldn't see the negotiation AT ALL.

 

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Just now, partner555 said:
12 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

And that might be Voltaire's downfall -- the very fact that the Immortals could be related to humans should mean that they will want their descendants to be protected from abuse by other Immortals!

Ooh, me likey. I'd love to see that.

There's a good chance that something like that would make would make territorial disputes more likely, sure Immortals wouldn't want to harm their own family, but some Immortals might not have any issue with harming another Immortal's family.

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10 hours ago, Scotty said:

There's a good chance that something like that would make would make territorial disputes more likely, sure Immortals wouldn't want to harm their own family, but some Immortals might not have any issue with harming another Immortal's family.

6 hours ago, Haylo said:

Sadly, a few immortals might prefer not to be burdened with any descendents,  so might look for a way to eliminated all of them...

... and considering the quite high probability some people are descendants of multiple immortals, that would make VERY BAD territorial disputes.

(In fact, baring some very hard interference from Will of Magic or something like that and considering how long ago the elves started those lines of descendants, MOST people should now be descendants of MOST immortals who ever had children. But we were already discussing that.)

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1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

... and considering the quite high probability some people are descendants of multiple immortals, that would make VERY BAD territorial disputes.

(In fact, baring some very hard interference from Will of Magic or something like that and considering how long ago the elves started those lines of descendants, MOST people should now be descendants of MOST immortals who ever had children. But we were already discussing that.)

Seers like Tedd, Van and Arthur would very likely have multiple Immortal ancestors.

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19 minutes ago, Scotty said:
24 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

... and considering the quite high probability some people are descendants of multiple immortals, that would make VERY BAD territorial disputes.

(In fact, baring some very hard interference from Will of Magic or something like that and considering how long ago the elves started those lines of descendants, MOST people should now be descendants of MOST immortals who ever had children. But we were already discussing that.)

Seers like Tedd, Van and Arthur would very likely have multiple Immortal ancestors.

It makes sense, yes, however it wasn't said DIRECTLY, so it's still just "very likely" and not "totally certain".

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35 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

(In fact, barring some very hard interference from Will of Magic or something like that and considering how long ago the elves started those lines of descendants, MOST people should now be descendants of MOST immortals who ever had children. But we were already discussing that.)

This is true. A given person, after some amount of time, is statistically extremely likely to be an ancestor of either NOBODY alive, or EVERYBODY who possibly could be descended from him.

If you have any western-European ancestry from the last 200 years or so - any at all - you are descended from Charlemagne.

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4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

If you have any western-European ancestry from the last 200 years or so - any at all - you are descended from Charlemagne.

Now that would be an interesting puzzle to sort out, trying to divide his kingdom up between his current heirs. *scratches head*

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22 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

If you have any western-European ancestry from the last 200 years or so - any at all - you are descended from Charlemagne.

Now that would be an interesting puzzle to sort out, trying to divide his kingdom up between his current heirs. *scratches head*

I find very unlikely there was EVER system of inheritance which required dividing between ALL ancestors.

On the other hand, just finding out the oldest would be quite a challenge.

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1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

I find very unlikely there was EVER system of inheritance which required dividing between ALL ancestors.

Me too, but I think you may have meant 'descendants'? :doom:

Still. It would result in hundreds of millions very small kingdoms. And probably not many subjects in each who would all be immigrants anyway. Hrm.

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20 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
23 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I find very unlikely there was EVER system of inheritance which required dividing between ALL ancestors.

Me too, but I think you may have meant 'descendants'? :doom:

... yes. At least I can blame the fact English is my second language.

21 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Still. It would result in hundreds of millions very small kingdoms. And probably not many subjects in each who would all be immigrants anyway. Hrm.

There MIGHT be some of his descendants in Asia as well ... which could make the number of kingdoms be billion. And the Asian ones might actually have some subjects.

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1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

... yes. At least I can blame the fact English is my second language.

Trust me on this. You have a LOT of company. Me, I can readily make a fool of myself in my NATIVE language. And it is a personal dictum of mine that every time I learn a new language, I also learn a new way of making a fool of myself. :icon_eek:

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

There MIGHT be some of his descendants in Asia as well ... which could make the number of kingdoms be billion. And the Asian ones might actually have some subjects.

Um, that depends on whether it would only be land he actually had a claim on at the time of his death. And with that many heirs, the kingdoms would get REALLY small.

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Supposedly the division of Charlemagne's empire between his descendants was the exact reason that it ceased to be a coherent empire--his three grandsons split it between themselves, who then split it among THEIR heirs, etc., until many of these descendants ruled "kingdoms" that barely qualified as counties.Keeping the domain together is a BIG argument for primogeniture, at least with respect to land and noble titles.

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