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It is true. El is secretly a divine basset hound.
Diogines fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Oct 10, 2013 |
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Oct 10, 2013 04:46
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Diogines posted:It is true. El is secretly a divine basset hound. You heard him. Its canon. Snarls Barkley is El.
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Oct 10, 2013 05:30
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The real answer is that El is secretly the well known grilling and barbeque fanatic Hank Hill.
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Oct 10, 2013 07:21
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Jewcoon posted:You heard him. Its canon. Snarls Barkley is El. Snarls isn't a basset hound. He is obviously a blood hound!
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Oct 10, 2013 08:35
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Theglavwen posted:The problem I have with statements like this, or with what I think SerSpook is typically getting at, is that there's a big difference between our belief in El, and our behaviour towards El. I don't think anyone has any issues with Enkindel believing in El, the thing that seems weird is the constant reverential prayer votes for everything, up to, and including, praying to El asking it to provide us with our own sacrifice to it. If I were born as the next-in-line thrall of an evil demonic entity whose only promise is 'do what I say and maybe I won't eat you', I'd sing the praises of a god who explicitly forbids cannibalism, and occasionally helps out the virtuous, too. You seem very eager to forget our fish-laser experiment resulted in us getting dragged through the air and almost being consumed. Enkidel has every reason to glorify El's name at any opportunity even if it turns out El is nothing but smoke and mirrors, because he knows what it's like to live as a servant of a demon. Sure, we have a brain and don't need the constant guidance of a god as in Rivers. But prayer, especially during a trial that is very much based in religion, is not strange or weird at all.
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Oct 10, 2013 10:33
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Why in the hell do we want to pledge our life to serve something as boring as el. Let's pledge to one day slay the big fish. Also, the voice stated that he took what he has by right of conquest. Literally walking into the Asherah's home, beating him up, kicking him out and stealing his land. We have a divine mandate that states anything you can take from someone is yours, and then you can make up the rules. So we don't have to feel bad about murdering and stealing. Or more to the point, since Tyudia abandoned us out here, we no longer belong to him, and we can take ourselves off of ourselves, thus meaning we are our own property, and thus ours by right of conquest. And so we can make up our own rules that we must live by, which we can change at will. Arbitrary rules are fun.
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Oct 10, 2013 11:20
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D. - With one capitulation. We should capture a living monster and sacrifice it to the altar of El. I imagine not many, if any have done this so it should bring us some badass rep. Q. Better yet if it is a demon wizard of Asherah we sacrifice, pledging one day to rid the world of his hunger. U. Sensible way to get back.
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Oct 10, 2013 12:32
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Yeah, if there's, like, an informal "Should we devote our lives to El?" sort of thing going on here, I'm all for not doing that. Hell, lets not devote ourselves to loving/destroying anything at the moment - man, woman, deity, demon, dog, or goat. We're a teenager. Lets see the world a bit, get some experiences, and then figure out if we want to be tied down to something. 5 years from now, devoting ourselves to El or vowing to destroy Asherah might be a great idea. For now, lets not make any life long promises before we're even a man, OK? Hell, if in 5 years Danal tells us we're going to be devoted to cleaning his room for the rest of our lives, we don't really have much say do we?
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Oct 10, 2013 14:28
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DarkCrawler posted:D. - With one capitulation. We should capture a living monster and sacrifice it to the altar of El. I imagine not many, if any have done this so it should bring us some badass rep. I am going to assume that the reason not many have done this for their manhood trials is because anyone crazy enough to try died horribly. Assuming you mean an actual monster monster, like a minotaur, because seriously we have been repeatedly informed that it's a bad idea for a full-grown, fully-equipped, and fully-prepared warrior to go after monsters alone, let alone capturing them while unarmed and starving/thirsty/untrained in almost anything we actually CAN make.
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Oct 10, 2013 14:33
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Task Manager posted:Yeah, if there's, like, an informal "Should we devote our lives to El?" sort of thing going on here, I'm all for not doing that. Hell, lets not devote ourselves to loving/destroying anything at the moment - man, woman, deity, demon, dog, or goat.  I guess you don't understand the solemn importance of oaths made in adolescence
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Oct 10, 2013 14:53
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spacetimecontinuu posted:
Given the nature of divinities in this setting, not to mention the fact that whatever oath we make will be one made during a test of manhood, I'm pretty sure we are in fact going to be obliged to take our oaths seriously even if it's something ridiculous like "I vow never to refuse a drink from a one-legged woman" or whatnot, lest we face divine retribution and curses for breaking our oath. If nothing else, we can probably expect a certain level of social ostracization and likely ROYAL retribution (Tudiya is definitely going to take the oaths seriously and he's got good odds on outliving us) if we try to wriggle out of it by saying "Hey, I was just a dumb teen saying stupid poo poo, doesn't matter, right?"
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Oct 10, 2013 15:21
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Zybourne Clock posted:If I were born as the next-in-line thrall of an evil demonic entity whose only promise is 'do what I say and maybe I won't eat you', I'd sing the praises of a god who explicitly forbids cannibalism, and occasionally helps out the virtuous, too. You seem very eager to forget our fish-laser experiment resulted in us getting dragged through the air and almost being consumed. Enkidel has every reason to glorify El's name at any opportunity even if it turns out El is nothing but smoke and mirrors, because he knows what it's like to live as a servant of a demon. Besides that, Tudiyah rescued us from a violent father and provided us with a life of luxury, and in addition he's a badass superhero. I can definitely see taking his word as law and imitating his reverence of El.
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Oct 10, 2013 15:26
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The guy also killed a lot of our friends, kidnapped us from our home, lets people call us a savage, would kill us for making out with his daughter, and refuses to consider us as anything but a slave. Hardly the best father figure around.
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Oct 10, 2013 15:36
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spacetimecontinuu posted:
Tomn posted:Given the nature of divinities in this setting, not to mention the fact that whatever oath we make will be one made during a test of manhood, I'm pretty sure we are in fact going to be obliged to take our oaths seriously even if it's something ridiculous like "I vow never to refuse a drink from a one-legged woman" or whatnot, lest we face divine retribution and curses for breaking our oath. If nothing else, we can probably expect a certain level of social ostracization and likely ROYAL retribution (Tudiya is definitely going to take the oaths seriously and he's got good odds on outliving us) if we try to wriggle out of it by saying "Hey, I was just a dumb teen saying stupid poo poo, doesn't matter, right?" Yeah, pretty much this. If we were just internally dedicating ourselves to an ideal or something, no problem. People are advocating going to the temple in front of the whole city and whatever divine powers may be watching and solemnly swear to be BFFs with El and destroy Asherah no matter what it takes when we can't even competently beat up the biggest kid on the block yet. It's just rash, and the consequences are much bigger than breaking a dumb adolescent promise.
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Oct 10, 2013 15:39
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Slaan posted:The guy also killed a lot of our friends 
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Oct 10, 2013 15:50
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I think he's assuming that Tudiya killed a fair amount of people while in our home village while bugging out, some of whom were presumably our friends (I don't specifically recall if he and his men killed anyone but dad). I don't know that we really made any close connections while we were in the village, being something of an outcast kid, but hey, maybe to this day we mourn the death of Nameless Villager X who didn't do diddly to stop our poppa beating us.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:05
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Slaan posted:The guy also killed a lot of our friends, kidnapped us from our home, lets people call us a savage, would kill us for loving up a ritual, and refuses to consider us as anything but a slave. Hardly the best father figure around. I know right. I'm so glad he's dead now and we're safe from all that abuse.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:09
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Zepa posted:"These Are The Laws And Ordinances Which You Shall Keep To You And Keep Among Your People For All Generations." Tudiya posted:"Myself. I rested my head upon the altar and pledged to serve El till my final breath." Anybody else figure that Tudiya failed his test and immediately tried to make for it by making a sacrilegious offering? He left on his journey with his cherished spear, found the Obelisk, made his mark, and then traded his spear to Azazel for food and water; in order to atone for such, he offers himself (a human sacrifice) to El and devotes his life to trying to live up to his failed obligations. Voting for 1N: Pray to El for a sign of where we are most needed, but not necessarily a offering. El helps those in need, right? We're in need of a Righteous Deed to show our worth. Any token we receive for helping, no matter how trivial, will be our offering; even if it's "I helped someone in the wilderness and they said 'thanks,' but it was El who guided me to them, so I offer their thanks unto El in their stead." 2Q 3W: but only after we're sure the month has passed.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:14
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Doesn't seem to be going against the law if you're offering yourself, just if you use someone ELSE.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:30
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A Terrible Person posted:Anybody else figure that Tudiya failed his test and immediately tried to make for it by making a sacrilegious offering? Pretty sure that Tudiya offered a lifetime of service, not a blood sacrifice. It's like the polar opposite of what you're suggesting.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:33
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I was just joking around with a sarcastic comment guys.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:41
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quote:Your fathers eyes are glowing bright red. Your father raises his hands and and shoots lightning out of them at the empty handed man and at two of the men next to him. The two men beside the empty handed man go down and the rest of the outsiders scream, the empty handed man cries out in pain but does not fall down. Some of the other outsides stab their spears at Mopo and Kikar who go down bloody and screaming, their screaming ceases after another quick stab and a jerk from their spears. So yeah, some of Tudiya's men did in fact kill two of the villagers, after seeing Shushem zap their king. Seems a reasonable reaction when surrounded by savage demon-worshipping cannibals that practice sorcery. Were they friends? Do we give a poo poo about them? Odds are they didn't like us, since we were even more of an outsider back home than in Zepath.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:52
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Lanky Coconut Tree posted:Doesn't seem to be going against the law if you're offering yourself, just if you use someone ELSE. Volmarias posted:Pretty sure that Tudiya offered a lifetime of service, not a blood sacrifice. It's like the polar opposite of what you're suggesting. Perhaps, perhaps not. We don't know the details; what if what he did was one of those Qorban things? I honestly don't know, I'm just throwing my doubts out there. Personally, I trust Tudiya; but I also think he's not as great as he wants us to think. He's a braggart, as evidenced by his claims upon returning to Zepath, including saying the pearls we gave Jalitha were spoils of a battle rather than our price for rescue. He presented us and Jalitha as a trophy. When asked if we were a slave, he admonished and guilt-tripped us for wondering, then straight up told us we would be a coming-of-age gift to Danal just the same. He brings us out into the wilderness with no survival skills then, instead of showing us any real examples of how to rough it, frivolously uses magic to produce water and fire. I just get the feeling he hosed up his test, and that's why he returned without a "real" offering. I'm also fairly certain I'm wrong about that. Who knows, though? I still think it's funny that this guy: Diogines posted:He is a 100+ year old giant adonis with super powers who looks to be in his early 40s and is apparently still fertile. expects normal mortals to uphold the traditional trial of the direct-line descendants of Zepa without any warning. I wonder what the survival rate was for the trials before the tradition was softened and "coddling" became more commonplace?
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Oct 10, 2013 17:08
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank Canuck for counting votes on this one and for Sogol for the ones he did recently! It looks like going to the coast is going to win. Informal mini vote. Do you want to do a series of votes detailing attempts to survive in the next few days, or skip ahead till the next noteworthy event or serious problem occurs, i.e., you get stocked up and are on your way, something odd or dangerous finds you, you find something odd or dangerous or you fail at wilderness survival and are in trouble. If you decide to skip ahead, you will use your resources, skills at hand and luck as best as you can manage on auto pilot, you might get a better or worse outcome if you do it vote by vote, which could run two to three rounds of voting. Diogines fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 10, 2013 |
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Oct 10, 2013 17:33
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Yeah, Tudiya seems like a good guy, but being a near-immortal demigod seems to have gone to his head a bit. If anything, I think he has acted this way because he truly thinks we are capable enough to handle this. If he thought we were nothing more than a plaything for Danal I don't think he would have even bothered having us do the easy version of the test let alone the test his ancestors have done since recorded history began. That being said, yeah, would have been nice if he would have given us a little survival training a few months prior. Edit for minivote: no auto-pilot, at least to start. I think our attempts to initially find food and maybe get some survival tools in order could be interesting - once we have a basic grasp on how to survive I'm all for cutting out the mundane day to day stuff. Task Manager fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Oct 10, 2013 |
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Oct 10, 2013 17:42
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I am also not really in favor of using ourselves as an offering or dedicating ourselves Tudiya style. I don't think it was a cop out on his part and that he takes it really seriously. It just not us. Being a Priest of El did not get one single vote as I recall. It seems there are also worldly events to consider should we survive. Tudiya has a 'plan' for us, so he said when someone offered some ridiculous price to by us. Whether we will like this plan or not is a different matter. At some point in what sounded like the not incredibly distant future Danal will have to go to Baitel. Tudiya has said we will accompany him. Ishamal's advice has been to climb the mountains, traverse the forests and deserts and 'spit in death in the eye'. Azz says we should develop a sense of humor. The Witch Idor says we have a talent for 'magic'. Apparently even though we feel mediocre at the bow, Chait says we have a natural apptitiude. Rathal says we have a head for numbers. Baitel is the holiest city for the Ur peoples I think. It is at the foot of Mt. Har. There are a bunch of different faiths practiced there and people from a bunch of the different 'tribes'. From the point of view of Baitel we are likely a country bumpkin at best. We have lived with being an 'outsider' of one sort or another our entire lives. It will be a first for Danal. We also just learned that in addition to taking the land for Zepath from Asherah, Zepa had a beef with Baitel, since he was denied his inheritance 'in the Shadow' of Mt. Har and feels the perpetrators should feel 'Shame' for these acts. It is the birth place of both our Mom and Ishamal apparently. I am still very curious about how and why Mom fled while pregnant, if that is what happened. Baitel is a place that might have answers, but all the challenges and bureaucratic bullshit of a 'big city'. Like going to Rome or something. Of course we have no frame of reference for any of that and it is still basically just a mythical place we have heard about in stories so far. We know the nomads worship the Sun, Moon, Stars in some way, but don't know much about all that. About the Elemental/Demonic powers. We know of three. Presumably there is an Asherah type figure for the Quetzatl/Minotaurs. It is beyond the lands of the nomads, deep in the mountains according to Tudiya. By way of story we know that Dragoom also exist and Tudiya has slain a large one. So we know of three such powers. Asherah is not unique. (There are possibly 2 others, Leviathan and Ogar, but we have not directly encountered those, though maybe through Ishamal's stories?) Its a big world and we have encountered some of that directly and a lot through story. Among our chief features we are consistently curious and stubborn as hell. I get why people don't want to go full on El zealotry (zELots?). I don't really get the Asherah love without some sort of information we don't currently have. We may know the names of the people killed in the village besides Sushem, but we have never asked and they have never been spoken. Given our dream sequences why would we be more interested in Asherah than this mysterious figure that keeps showing up in different forms? And... A storm is (still) coming. Save for the hard times. Along with a message from or about Mereniel and Xuriel. What are we doing about any of that?
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Oct 10, 2013 17:52
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I say we switch to autopilot for a while, until the next notable event occurs. Enkidel doesn't have that many survival skills to speak off, at least not on land, so I don't think micromanaging his actions will be particularly useful.
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Oct 10, 2013 17:55
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Yeah, I think we can assume our guy is smart enough to coast through the auto-pilot at this, and micro-managing him won't help all that much. Lets get to adulthood already! Autopilot
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Oct 10, 2013 17:58
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Autopilot and it was mentioned earlier, but I don't think we have people voting to take an oath to slay Asherah. I suggested an oath to take the people of Athar out, which honestly doesn't seem super dangerous, as I'm pretty sure Shushem got fishgod coming to us back in the day, not Tudiya taking us.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:00
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Autopilot.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:19
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I vote for non-auto pilot for a couple of votes, specifically because I would like us to spend time working with VAYAHI OR.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:21
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I want to note "autopilot" is by no means a promise of even minimal competence. You will use your limited skills and resources as best you can, but they are, limited. If nothing else it might simply skip ahead to when food and water are a serious problem! Or you find a monster or a person or something odd and so on.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:23
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Sogol posted:I vote for non-auto pilot for a couple of votes, specifically because I would like us to spend time working with VAYAHI OR. I like the idea of trying to mimic the words, but also want to autopilot our way out.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:26
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Autopilot this trial until something serious comes up. I think with Snarls by our side we'll be OK. Just make sure we play it safe and get to the coast.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:27
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Voting autopilot in the possibly vain hope that we will only drink dog piss when we really need it instead of doing so at the first opportunity. More seriously I'm not sure that goons will be much more effective at guiding wilderness survival actions than Enkidel himself, and I'd prefer to vote on points of note instead of every little decision.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:28
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I still vote for putting ourselves in autopilot mode, but if we end up doing this manually I will pre-emptively vote to sleep next to the obelisk during the oncoming night. Just like the art installation we came by on our journey to Zepath, this obelisk apparently has the same 'go to sleep now' quality to it. I don't know what it does, but it might be something good.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:33
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A Terrible Person posted:expects normal mortals to uphold the traditional trial of the direct-line descendants of Zepa without any warning. I wonder what the survival rate was for the trials before the tradition was softened and "coddling" became more commonplace? See, was he a demigod before or after his trial? The trial makes sense from an earlier perspective of Zepath, freshly founded with danger possibly lurking. You'd have hunter gatherers bringing in most of the food, sons would be trained in the wild more and taught to fend for themselves. Then they go out and spend a month proving they've learned those skills well enough. We're coming in now, generations later, when they've gotten comfortable and civilized. For all his bragging and whatever else you might throw, Tudiya has always been fair and just. We spent a LOT of time with him ingame, so we know this first hand too. So for him to test us this way indicates he believes we can handle it. I vote to Autopilot but first make a list of things we want to work on at the same time as fending for ourselves, like the Vayahri Or stuff
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Oct 10, 2013 18:54
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Voting auto pilot.
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Oct 10, 2013 18:55
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Not Autpoilot Also, you might have a point about the trial making us Mighty Men. Women do not have a trial, their blood tells the world that they are women. Men have to earn it. How do we know that we are Zepa's own? By our deeds. Wild conjecture suggests that we may have exchanged blood with ZepaStone, and Zepa was closely related to Labaras. Maybe the Blood of Labaras is not a metaphor.
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Oct 10, 2013 19:17
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Zybourne Clock posted:I still vote for putting ourselves in autopilot mode, but if we end up doing this manually I will pre-emptively vote to sleep next to the obelisk during the oncoming night. Just like the art installation we came by on our journey to Zepath, this obelisk apparently has the same 'go to sleep now' quality to it. I don't know what it does, but it might be something good. Off the top of my head I don't think the obelisk has any narcoleptic powers - it's just that we'd just voted to spend the whole day walking with our magic "Don't feel the stress of travel until you stop moving" sandals, recall, and we managed to cure the hunger and thirst by drinking of the magic water flowing from the obelisk (which I think stopped flowing after we drank). So it wasn't the obelisk making us sleepy, it was the effects of a whole day of travel hitting us at once.
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Oct 10, 2013 19:25
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