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Dec. 4th, 2006 09:20 amWell, I'm awake, which is more than I wanted to be this morning. Awake and at work. Dunno how late I'm going to be here tonight, depends on how much the coding people need me. Had a nice little panic this morning when the offsite backup service said 'no restorable data for $YOUR_FILE_SERVER_BWAHAHAHA', but I got into work and found that it was just an idleness issue over the weekend, not a comms failure or something.
Still darned unnerving.
On another note, I've recently started playing a god at Milliways. The god in question is Belar, the bear-god of the Alorns, from the Belgariad and Malloreon books by David and Leigh Eddings. I'm playing him post-canon, once the Prophecy is resolved and the majority of the world's responsibilities have been put on the newest god's shoulders. It's my belief that as long as people outside the new god's immediate responsibilities believe in and pray to the original gods of that world, the original gods are still responsbile for their people- there's a point in the books when Garion is told 'you'll probably live to see the day when he's god of the entire world', which sort of implies that even though the original gods pull out at the end of the series, they're still at least bound to their people. Belar's essentially been on vacation since the end of canon; as long as he still answers his people's prayers regularly, he's free to do as he likes. Since he's been through around ten thousand years of division and strife and being God of people who used to have clan wars at the drop of a hat, he's been mellowing out for the past thirty-seven years with the snowboarding, skiing, and surfing communities of the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah, I know, his people were some of the most enthusiastically warfare-prone people of his entire canon, but ten thousand years. That's enough war to slake anybody's thirst, except for Torak (crazy) or Chaldan (a war god from the get-go). He's allowed to decompress.
Anyway, I've been playing him as pretty mellow in temperament and boisterous in enthusiasm. He's not an Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent god whatever the Bear-cult might've thought of him; he's the God of his people, and he's not about to go out and stump for converts or steal some other god's worshippers. He gets irritated by things like waste, unnecessary killing, anybody lifting a hand against his chosen people, and disrespect for the north country (the Alorns were not circumpolar only because they didn't want to freeze their butts off along with the demon worshippers of the far north, I think) and the sea. Probably other things, too, but they haven't come up yet. He likes beer and blondes; that's canon. He's also amazingly even-handed. In Belgarath the Sorceror the Alorns don't join in the war against Torak for- I think- two years, because they can't decide who gets to lead the warhost and Belar refuses to play favorites by choosing one clan-chief over another. I think that's part of his nature. He will not- can not- favor any one group of his children over any others. When clan wars or feuds break out in Alorn society, I don't think he gets involved at all; they can fight as much as they like and say what they like, but he's not going to take sides in a dispute like that.
This is relevant largely because a meme came up recently. One of the creepier Milliways denizens has been trying to figure out what love is, and not doing very well at it. The meme was to say what your character would define love as. Since I don't think Belar is even capable of romantic love on the individual level- it just doesn't seem in line with the nature of most of his world's gods- I answered the meme for him as follows:
( Okay, love is- okay. Uh, let me see if I can explain this, okay? )
... I should probably mention that Belar's PB is Owen Wilson. This may have affected his speech patterns somewhat.
Still darned unnerving.
On another note, I've recently started playing a god at Milliways. The god in question is Belar, the bear-god of the Alorns, from the Belgariad and Malloreon books by David and Leigh Eddings. I'm playing him post-canon, once the Prophecy is resolved and the majority of the world's responsibilities have been put on the newest god's shoulders. It's my belief that as long as people outside the new god's immediate responsibilities believe in and pray to the original gods of that world, the original gods are still responsbile for their people- there's a point in the books when Garion is told 'you'll probably live to see the day when he's god of the entire world', which sort of implies that even though the original gods pull out at the end of the series, they're still at least bound to their people. Belar's essentially been on vacation since the end of canon; as long as he still answers his people's prayers regularly, he's free to do as he likes. Since he's been through around ten thousand years of division and strife and being God of people who used to have clan wars at the drop of a hat, he's been mellowing out for the past thirty-seven years with the snowboarding, skiing, and surfing communities of the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah, I know, his people were some of the most enthusiastically warfare-prone people of his entire canon, but ten thousand years. That's enough war to slake anybody's thirst, except for Torak (crazy) or Chaldan (a war god from the get-go). He's allowed to decompress.
Anyway, I've been playing him as pretty mellow in temperament and boisterous in enthusiasm. He's not an Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent god whatever the Bear-cult might've thought of him; he's the God of his people, and he's not about to go out and stump for converts or steal some other god's worshippers. He gets irritated by things like waste, unnecessary killing, anybody lifting a hand against his chosen people, and disrespect for the north country (the Alorns were not circumpolar only because they didn't want to freeze their butts off along with the demon worshippers of the far north, I think) and the sea. Probably other things, too, but they haven't come up yet. He likes beer and blondes; that's canon. He's also amazingly even-handed. In Belgarath the Sorceror the Alorns don't join in the war against Torak for- I think- two years, because they can't decide who gets to lead the warhost and Belar refuses to play favorites by choosing one clan-chief over another. I think that's part of his nature. He will not- can not- favor any one group of his children over any others. When clan wars or feuds break out in Alorn society, I don't think he gets involved at all; they can fight as much as they like and say what they like, but he's not going to take sides in a dispute like that.
This is relevant largely because a meme came up recently. One of the creepier Milliways denizens has been trying to figure out what love is, and not doing very well at it. The meme was to say what your character would define love as. Since I don't think Belar is even capable of romantic love on the individual level- it just doesn't seem in line with the nature of most of his world's gods- I answered the meme for him as follows:
( Okay, love is- okay. Uh, let me see if I can explain this, okay? )
... I should probably mention that Belar's PB is Owen Wilson. This may have affected his speech patterns somewhat.
