Council of Gods?

Discussion in 'History and Lore' started by ARCHIVED-ratbast, Nov 19, 2011.

  1. ARCHIVED-ratbast Guest

    The vague nature of the agreements has always felt unsettling to me.

    Veeshan comes and goes. Brell drops off some kids.

    pact 1
    Brell makes 'pact' with Prexus and Tunare. zek opts out of 'pact', but does his own thing anyway. all 4 gods make races.
    pact 2
    Brell makes pact with cazic-thule, bristlebane, zek. innoruuk curses gods and does his own thing. all 5 gods 'make' races.
    last wave
    marrs make barbarians and frogloks

    in the end, brell makes 3 waves of races, rallos makes 2. story is told like brell is looking for excuse to put his races on norrath, and uses pacts as excuse. rallos avoids commitment on first pact but makes giants anyway. gets in on 2nd to make ogres.

    what are terms of 'pact', and what need is there for one? seems to me any proper alliance would include 'we stick together and dont fight each other' and if one person breaks the agreement we all attack them. otherwise what purpose does it serve...
  2. ARCHIVED-ratbast Guest

    so the terms of the 'pact' is never spelled out, and you have zek breaking any semblance of an alliance with the rallosian war, but cazic-thule doesnt fight back against a pact breaker until zek ravages his temple.
    the lines of ally and enemy are drawn now, but it doesnt resemble the original pact. cazic-thule and inny were on opposite sides of pact 2(included/exluded). whatever the original pact was, all bets are off now, alliances have been fractured, and new ones have been created in secret.

    after 2 pacts, and 2 rallosian wars, we are back at the same place, with rallos zek doing his own thing, and threatening everyones existence by going after kerafyrm. where is the sneering solusek ro now? shouldnt he be enraged with his buddy?
    if zek can thumb his nose at pact 1, and then later attack other races, in genocide fashion, why not do it? there doesnt seem to be any penalty by coalition. each god responds on 1-on-1 basis.
    what is looks like to me, is that brell has some sort of authority to 'sanction' (as zek felt) the inhabition of norrath. so if he gets an extra turn every time he commissions a pact, why didnt he make an official pact with the marrs? and how come zek gets to bend the rules and make a race during pact 1? he's a big cheater and he's been getting away with it.
  3. ARCHIVED-BollyUK Guest

    As far as I know the only pact is to keep veeshan in check - i mean rallos does invade the rathes plane which might not necessarily break the pact (although you would expect it to!)
  4. ARCHIVED-Meirril Guest

    Alluvial@Antonia Bayle wrote:
    None of the elemental dieties were part of the pact. Also the only terms of the pact was to not allow Veeshan to claim Norrath for herself. Basicly if Veeshan comes to complain, we stand by each other and say "we don't care that you were first, we have rights to Norrath too."
    As for the whole Zek vs Cazic thing, Zek and his followers only respect strength. They don't respect fear. They sacked Cazic's temple, and Cazic sicked the Greenmist on Zek's army. The funny thing is if you wanted to say who beat Zek in the 2nd Rallosian War, you'd have to say it was perty much Cazic Thule's Greenmist all by itself. All other forces were in a loosing position until the greenmist struck.
  5. ARCHIVED-BollyUK Guest

    Meirril wrote:
    aha! thanks that makes sense now :)
  6. ARCHIVED-kelvmor Guest

    If I remember right, didn't the four elemental deities create the Gods of Influence? Brell came from Earth, Solusek from Fire, Quellious from Air, and so on?
  7. ARCHIVED-Meirril Guest

    Ugreth@Antonia Bayle wrote:
    Well, yes no and maybe? You really have to look at each god's origin story...which is a shame because some gods don't have origin stories!
    Solusek is the son of Fennin. That's all the origin story we get for him. But he is a Ro and a greater god of influence. When you have a bunch of gods with the same last name (like Ro), it means there was some kind of divine creation going on and they acknowledge each other as family members.
    Other gods families: Marr, Thule, Serillus. Though the Serillus family is quite mysterious. While Brell has several brothers...he doesn't have a known parent or children. It could be that Brell was actually the creator of his "brothers", but that is just conjecture on my part. Brell is the creator of the most races, though Cazic is in the running too.
    Bertoxxulous just arose on his own. No other gods were involved with his ascention. He just suddenly came into existance as a greater god of influence. It is unclear if Rodcet was a diety before he assumed his position, or was raised to the position. If he was raised, he isn't a demigod. He doesn't have a patron diety. He is considered a greater god.
    Zeb is a special case. While no diety helped him to ascend, he did learn the secret of it while studying on the Plane of Knowledge and under the patronage of Druzzil Ro. Also I'm not sure if he is considered a greater or lesser diety. Or was considered since he appears to be mortal now? Even that is debatable. FIY: The Plane of Knowledge is a part of the Plane of Tranquility, probably because the devs wanted to use Quellious's influence to explain why you can't fight there.
    All other gods: perty much there is no origin story for them. Nobody knows how Cazic came to exist, but from various writings he sounds ANCIENT. No creation story for Innoruuk. No idea how Quellious came to exist. Honestly a lot of the gods get stories written about them but creation mythos? Apparently unimportant.
  8. ARCHIVED-Rainy Guest

    that's like asking a christain how God came into being on the origins of most of the 'greater' gods.
    we know the Nameless spawned 5 beings. the four Elemental Gods, and Rohen Theer, Sentinel of Balance.
    we know that Fennin created Soluesk, though we don't know if Druzzil was fennin or Sol Ro, or if Ayonae was sol ro or druzzil...or who exactly made Varig.
    Xegony isn't credited with creating anyone. nor is the Rathe Council.
    Tarew Marr of the Triumverateof Water is the father to Mithaniel and Erollisi.
    no one knows if any of the Water gods were responsible for Prexus.
    Rallos is father/lord to a BUNCH of gods. Vallon, Tallon, Sullon, Rolfron, Gorryn..though most of his 'godlings' seem to be mortals he raised to that position (Vallon/Tallon/Sullon/Rolfron)
    there's a lot of Serrilis' too. but no one knows who made them either.
    As to the Pacts.
    the first 2 pacts were like Meirril stated. it was a 'lets make a race so that V can't hog norrath all to herself and her dragon kids, and if she complains, we'll all back eachother up against her' Rallos didn't go with the first pact but made a race anyway...but did get in on the second pact as an excuse to make another without anyone getting overly suspicius of him I wager.
    the EQ2 pact though was a simple agreement that you'd think Quellious would have worded better. the idea was none of the gods would directly influence norrath at all, after they stripped norrath of certain abilities (teleportation). of course each of the biggest contenders for each side of the original arguement used that loophole of no 'direct' interferance to empower mortal avatars with thier divine power.
    hence they don't get involved directly, the mortals do, they just happen to be imbuded with divine powers.
    they had some issues they didn't forsee. 1 was the Curse of the Rathe was lifted on Rallos' mortal children. which united them, made them smart again/tactical again and empowered them to a second Empire. the Rending was another one of those issues.
    Rallos's avatar w/ Flame's avatar leads the newly formed Rallosian Army in a World War type scenario for Antonica. I also think that the War of the Fay occurs around the same time, so you could speculate that the Rallosians made an agreement with the Tier'dal empire, in a kind of axis of evil. the Rallosians take care of Anotnica, the Tier'dal conquer Faydwer. (considering nektulos is on the way to Freeport...you'd think the ogres, knowing about neriak, would have invaded it otherwise)
    the side pact between Rallos and Cazic was mostly a you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. again a pact not enforced by divine decree to thier mortals...so Gurdunk I think it was, violated it, and sacked the temple.
    Cazic, still bound by no direct influence, called on the Greenmist. (it apparently is NOT a weapon of cazic's creation, but it's own entity that happens to listen to him) the Greenmist smushed the Rallosians.
    in fact, the only God that DOES violate the Pact is Brell. who causes an earthquake when the AoFlame starts setting gnolls on fire to use as suicide attackers.
  9. ARCHIVED-Coniaric Guest

    Rainmare@Oasis wrote:
    I suspect it is actually more of the Avatar of Below's doing, not Brell.
    Avatars are supposed to ensure their god's creations are treated properly and enforce in the interest of their god.
    Also, Quellious knew the opposite side will attempt to get around the pact - worded right or not - and that's why she recruited Tunare and Karana in defense of what's good and right and the survival of Norrath and its mortal races.
  10. ARCHIVED-kelvmor Guest

    Rainmare@Oasis wrote:
    Ahem. Tallon and Vallon were gods that Rallos Zek created; only Gorryn, Rolfron, and Sullon were mortals raised up to godhood. Gorryn was a member of a four-armed race native to the Plane of War who was the best of Zek's gladiators, and he made him the god of gladiators or something like that, and allowed him to raise an Arena on all of the planets under Zek's domain (Remember the Arena from eq1? Gorryn built that). As for Neriak's invasion of the Faydwer and the Rallosian invasion of the Antonican continent, that happened at different times; the invasion of Faydwer happened before the Rallosian War, and Neriak was sealed up and forgotten by the time the Rallosian Empire rose up again under Urduuk.
    As for the Serilis brood, there are only two Serilis gods that have been confirmed; Bolgin and Brell. There was talk of a third Serilis, but no dev ever commented on it. Now, Cazic really doesn't have many "children"; he only claims Terris-Thule (who we believe to be trapped as a mortal, but who was probably absorbed by Cazic, according to the Defiler epic quest) as his daughter, even though Morrell-Thule still has Cazic's name. Morrell is much more a son of Quellious, as Terris is much more a daughter of Cazic.
    As for the Ro family; Solusek came from Fennin, and originally he was both the Sun God and the God of Magic. Well, he got bored with that last part, and so he created Druzzil Ro and gave her that power. Ayonae was then created by Druzzil, to give music to Norrath. Varig Ro is another son of Solusek, as Vhalen said in a thread concerning Brell Serilis and his role as a god. Here's a screenshot:

    [IMG]
  11. ARCHIVED-ratbast Guest

    cazic-thule is my fav god, i dont know if it counts as origin, but his first recorded quest was to decided upon a form to be identified as. he tried on different deities 'incarnation costumes', but eventually settled on 'faceless'. reminds me of the deformed faces in pictures that are missing features(like noses) in the movie 'the ring'. i imagine the face of cazic-thule to be a slowly swirling iridescent semitransparent glass phantom with occasional disappearing and reappearing features (tormented expressions of course) that manifest just short enough, in duration, to make you question whether it was ever there at all. his failure to stick with 1 identifiable face makes me think vascillation is big part of his own fears. from my perspective he still hasnt picked a face. major indecision. he's too afraid of picking wrong face that isnt scary enough. the end result of his vascillation is the 'unknown'. now we have come full circle, and fear of the unknown turns out to be a great vehicle. in hindsight he should be happy how indecision shaped his chosen form.
  12. ARCHIVED-ratbast Guest

    Alluvial@Antonia Bayle wrote:
    Sometimes lore is narrated from 'voice' of superstitious and is intentionally vague and inaccurate. think valkyries, minotaurs, behemoth.
    When I hear a pact by divine beings was that simple, it makes me think the 'voice' thought we were too stupid to understand a more complex breakdown of their agreement. giving info a kindergardener would understand.

    From my perspective, narrations intentionally placed in 'ancient' context imply details are omitted/simplified/possibly only 1/2 true, as interpreted thru the fog of time: A) unsure memory if they were actually there for events, or B) bad translation from ancient language (or natural changes to a living language) if from a book.

    If you want to make a lore fragment 'gospel truth', you need to utilize a special voice who has both credibility to be honest and first-hand knowledge of the subject he is speaking on. out-of-context lore releases are gospel-truth, such as Creation Story from eq1 website, but really need to be reaffirmed as creative license over time can modify its validity.

    this is why i dont think 'keep veeshan in check' is the whole story. When you read lore on deities in general, it says who their enemies are, and who their allies are. intelligent divine beings would have clearly defined relationships (and vague where it served them). not this binary kindergarten-type friend or foe, lets play nice. i can see elemental deities being petty raw forces who are reactionary and thoughtless about relationship dynamics...but i imagined gods of inlfluence to be fully sentient (even if still petty and jealous).

    if the race seeding phase of the eq2 universe started as a game of 'Risk' played by the deities, norrath is a small pocket with limited accessibility, like australia, that noone wants the others to horde and collect the 'per-turn' army bonus of holding an easily defensible continent. not sure if other gods are aware yet, but brell had a backdoor. he can open that whenever he wants?
  13. ARCHIVED-BollyUK Guest

    behemoth, orc society and on the origins of the shadowed men are all written from the point of romiak's research so not necessarily inaccurate
    [IMG]
  14. ARCHIVED-Rainy Guest

    As to Vallon and Tallon I though someone had said that Rallos' 'real' son peeved him off and got destroyed for it, and he took those peices and empowered Vallon/Tallon into gods with it. but if not, no big deal.
    the thing with the 'enemies' and 'allies' among the gods is that just like mortals, those can shift on a dime. for example, Mith Marr and Sol Ro are friendly rivals. implying more often then not, they are on the same side. even though we know that Sol ro's other good buddy, Rallos...and Mithaniel are definately NOT pals.
    there are some that are steadfast in allies. Tunare is a good example of that. and even some of her allies are more of sharing a mutal enemy then caring about eachother as friends. Tunare is Mith/erollisi Marr's ally and Rodect's ally, becuase she's the enemy of Bertox and Inny. Not becuase she's necessarily friends with rodcet or the marr twins.
    in fact I'd bet Inny and Tunare probably wouldn't give one thought to eachother if Inny hadn't stolen tunare's Dal to make his Tier'dal with...which rightfully upset Tunare, and made them enemies.
    and even the 'Good' dieties can have some nasty mean streaks. Quellious shows that with her curse and torture of the Rucksif family for Garanel's insanity.
    Bristlebane is known for pranks that are not only mean spirited but for mortals potentially deadly.
    Just like some of the evil deities can do 'nice things' like Cazic's greenmist getting rid of the Rallosion army and the shissar empire.