Clap on! 0-1. Clap off! 1-0.

[HoagieOfDoom]

A thought occurred to me while watching an AMG AMV.
We know that in the AMG universe, mortal reality is overseen and run by the giant computer Yggdrissil (Yggdrassil? Yggdrisil?). So how does it compute/perceive the presence of Doug, an extradimensional who, under the right cirumstances, can kill (and has killed) a God(dess) and is a mortal to boot? Would the system provide some sort of warning to its caretakers and three goddesses (and one god) in particular?*********
I am a very sensitive person! I can go from laughing to crying with just a kick to the face.
- Dave Attell

[robkelk]

First, it's "Yggdrasil".
Second, I doubt that there'd be anything in the Yggdrasil system about Doug. Yggdrasil appears to be strictly limited to the one universe, which Doug isn't a part of.
However, the overlaying of Skuld with the "Child" persona of The Three in chapter 1 of DW V might provide this information... if there's enough memory transference from the core intellect to the avatar. So far, we haven't seen whether there's any such transference...
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[HoagieOfDoom]

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However, the overlaying of Skuld with the "Child" persona of The Three in chapter 1 of DW V might provide this information... if there's enough memory transference from the core intellect to the avatar. So far, we haven't seen whether there's any such transference...

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The "Child" part, I understand, but the rest went right over my head. Sorry if i'm being dense, but could you clarify? Or type it in a simpler way?
Edit:

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First, it's "Yggdrasil".

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Damn, three strikes. Thanks.*********
I am a very sensitive person! I can go from laughing to crying with just a kick to the face.
- Dave Attell

[Bob Schroeck]

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So how does it compute/perceive the presence of Doug,

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This will be answered, in some small way, in Chapter Two.-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[Bob Schroeck]

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The "Child" part, I understand, but the rest went right over my head. Sorry if i'm being dense, but could you clarify? Or type it in a simpler way?

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Allow me.
The way gods work in the DW cosmology -- and by extension in the O!MB cosmology -- is quite simple: Each god in a universe is in fact a small fragment of a much larger being that spans an infinite number of universes. Think of them as a set of roleplaying characters, all run by the same person but in different campaigns.
The question being asked is, how much "player knowledge" does Skuld have? And that I'm not answering. -- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[Murmur the Fallen]

Hmm. So while Yggdrasil is for the mortal universe, there must be a superstructure for the higher dimensions. Which means that the heaven parts that we've seen, the Goddess Help Line etc., are just one or so level above the universe. So is there a "computer" system for that superstructure?
Also, an interesting speculation: from the Gateway to Goddess website, the author speculates that the reason we only see GODDESSES is becauase, per japanese corporate structuring, they are low on the totem-pole office ladies and thus are the ones that are tasked with the relatively unimportant scut work like taking care of our universe. All the male gods are out there doing presumably more important stuff like . . . going out on all-night binges!
-murmur
Ygg was an old name for Odin and Drasil meant horse, which was what a gallows was euphemistically called.

[Bob Schroeck]

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Hmm. So while Yggdrasil is for the mortal universe, there must be a superstructure for the higher dimensions. Which means that the heaven parts that we've seen, the Goddess Help Line etc., are just one or so level above the universe. So is there a "computer" system for that superstructure?

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That one is literally unanswerable in terms mortals can understand. Even the metaphors just describe other metaphors, which describe other metaphors. And Hexe doesn't even try to describe/explain her former higher-order existence, even though she has a frame of reference on either end -- it just doesn't translate.-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[jpub]

And the short answer for how the superstructure of he unvierse works:
God says it does.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[HoagieOfDoom]

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And the short answer for how the superstructure of he unvierse works:
God says it does.

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Reminds of something funny. You all know about Moses, right? Well, when he got to Mt. Sinai (I think it was there), he asked, "God, what is your name?!", and God responded "Yahweh."
Y'know what Yahweh means?
'Lord'.
(All apologies to anyone who is offended.)*********
I am a very sensitive person! I can go from laughing to crying with just a kick to the face.
- Dave Attell

[jpub]

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Also, an interesting speculation: from the Gateway to Goddess website, the author speculates that the reason we only see GODDESSES is becauase, per japanese corporate structuring, they are low on the totem-pole office ladies and thus are the ones that are tasked with the relatively unimportant scut work like taking care of our universe. All the male gods are out there doing presumably more important stuff like . . . going out on all-night binges!

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Clearly, this *not* the case in the OMB-verse. The various wish lines are more like chores for the celetials - *everyone* has to do them.
(Which, if you think about it, explains a lot.)
Skuld's job as debugger, Belldandy's as programmer, Urd's as sysadmin, Paradox's as tester - these are their their actual *work* jobs in the scheme of things, but they don't come up much. Really, there's a lot of gods, and not that much work. (Well, except for the debuggers, since everyone seems to *make* work for them.)
Most of the time, celestials spend their time watching over mortals, supervising their "sphere of influence", as it were, and generally working on the conflict between Above and Below.
--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[Bob Schroeck]

Likewise in the greater Drunkard's Walk cosmology that Chris and I are bolting onto OMB -- the metaselves of the gods essentially pick and choose their roles in the various universes, depending on the rules and conditions agreed to for each one. It's like working out your position on the baseball or football team, or your part in a roleplaying adventuring party. If there's "scutwork" at all, it's part of the role the metagod agreed to when they decided to "play" in that world.-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[ordnance11]

Hmmm....so depending on the particular dimension you happen to bump in, a Celestial Being in one dimension can easily become a Demonic one, depending on what constitutes good or evil in that dimension?
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

It's possible -- Shiva in the OMB world is quite a different being from most other Shivas, for example. But most stay on the same "team" from world to world. To quote both Gryphon and Donald Bellisario, don't examine this too closely, but in general "team affiliation" is not something that is lightly changed -- the state of armed warfare between the forces of Good and Evil in most worlds is a reflection of a similar conflict on the metalevel. Remember that the "roleplaying" and "Sims" descriptions are metaphors solely for how a god enters and interacts with a world, and are not to be taken a) literally, b) internally or c) as an absolute description of all of what's really going on. -- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[Murmur the Fallen]

It's possible -- Shiva in the OMB world is quite a different being from most other Shivas, for example. But most stay on the same "team" from world to world. To quote both Gryphon and Donald Bellisario, don't examine this too closely, but in general "team affiliation" is not something that is lightly changed -- the state of armed warfare between the forces of Good and Evil in most worlds is a reflection of a similar conflict on the metalevel.
[Umm . . .
(how can i put this without sounding like an ass)
I feel that one should always tread as lightly as one can when dealing with an extant major world religion, as hinduism is, especially when one is not a member of said religion. doing so smacks of cultural imperialism, as playing with one of its major gods, as shiva is, in a disrepectful, cavalier way can leave a sour taste in the reader's mouth.
which is not to say that i am accusing mr. bob of this, just simply saying that this is a very, very touchy thing. shiva as one of the hindu trinity is also a vital aspect of brahman, the pure everything (I think . . . hope i'm getting this right). living religions, i think, should be treated differently than dead ones.
-murmur
hmm . . . a bit too lecturey, that

[robkelk]

If it's any consolation, Hinduism isn't the only extant religion mentioned to exist in the O!MB continuity. Quoting from Oh My Brother Book I, chapter 9:
"What Indra is trying to not say," Thor added with great amusement, "is that most of the people up here have a problem with your name."
"Oh really?" Chris replied irritatedly. "And just what's wrong with my name?" he asked Indra.
"Well, it's just that..." he trailed off, and then shook his head. "It's considered to be in poor taste for you to go by a name that is based on one Brahma uses in another pantheon."
"Odin," Thor replied to the curious look 'Niichan sent his way.
"And let me guess," my brother added disgustedly. "My last name is used as a designation for an enitre class of deities in that pantheon too."
"Well, somewhat," Indra agreed. "But the Angels don't like it when we call them deities."
So, while some folks may get upset by the mention of a current religion in this work of fiction, it isn't confined to just two religions.
(What? Didn't you know that there are still a very few people who worship the Norse gods? Religions rarely die out completely...)
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[HoagieOfDoom]

On a related note, I find the presence of seperate Hindu gods in OMB and, thus, DW V, interesting because in Hinduism, every god (and there are over 18 million) is an aspect of ONE god.

[Bob Schroeck]

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(What? Didn't you know that there are still a very few people who worship the Norse gods? Religions rarely die out completely...)

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More than just a "very few", Rob. Just Google on Asatru.
(I once commented to the Line Editor of In Nomine that the pagan deities probably have more worshippers today than they did in their supposed "heydays" centuries ago, simply by virtue of the Law of Large Numbers.)
And while I'm at it...

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"Well, somewhat," Indra agreed. "But the Angels don't like it when we call them deities."

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...has always reminded me of a line from another fic:

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Susan: The Endless are a group of seven...umm...sort of personifications of abstract concepts.Kasumi: Typical anthropomorphic gods?Susan: They get mad when you call them that. Anyway, there's Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair, Dream, Destruction, and Destiny. I've heard rumors of an eighth one called Donuts, but they get mad when you ask them about him too.

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(which is from John Biles' "Furinkan Summer #9").-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[Bob Schroeck]

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just simply saying that this is a very, very touchy thing. shiva as one of the hindu trinity is also a vital aspect of brahman, the pure everything (I think . . . hope i'm getting this right).

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Just as a point of information, the Shiva of OMB is in fact a character from some video game somewhere, if I remember correctly. (Chris, care to clarify?) Which leads me to such characters as Raiden from "Mortal Kombat". It seems to me that no one's particularly upset about him, and his pantheon isn't exactly extinct.

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living religions, i think, should be treated differently than dead ones.

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Then I shoud stop writing right now, out of consideration to followers of Asatru.-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[Bob Schroeck]

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On a related note, I find the presence of seperate Hindu gods in OMB and, thus, DW V, interesting because in Hinduism, every god (and there are over 18 million) is an aspect of ONE god.

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I wanted to post something silly about how pointless it would be for one player to run all 18 million characters in a campaign with no one else on hand, but I couldn't make it come out both comprehensible and funny at the same time. -- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[Murmur the Fallen]

that's some ontological viewpoint there, mr. bob. god/brahman/whatever as the great rpger.
eh. it makes about as much sense as the puritans viewpoint.
-murmur the fallen

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, the player-character dichotomy is the number one metaphor I use to describe how a god's overself interacts with the local avatar...-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[jpub]

Look, if I'm going to deal with existing religions in my fanfiction, I might as well go for broke and come up with something to offend *everybody*, if someone was so anal as to actually *be* offended.
Bob has, knowingly or not, decided to continue with my technique.

As a point of fact, Shiva actually has several aspects in the classical representation - the Destroyer angle is one of many, another is an ice goddess. Only a couple of those aspects is actually *evil*. Heck, most of them are male.
Shiva was actually the only choice for her role I could come up with (at the time) that would work. I needed a goddess, to allow Paradox and Thor play the overprotective male angle. I needed her to be evil in popular literature (preferably someone ambigous). I also wanted to make an extension out from the Norse pantheon I was playing with. I also wanted to make the point that the celestials, good or bad, had enough humanity in them to take such a fall - to give up being a king in hell to be a pawn in heaven.

My personal vision as it ties into the God's Toy/DW/Legion works is that in each universe, the deities that interact with it do so in a method that's appropriate.

And just because I'm writing random thoughts....
The Hinduistic idea that all gods are, in fact, connected to/aspects of/representations of the ultimate God is probably the closest to my vision. It's a subtle thing though.
If you want to *really* get a headache, think on this: If Kami-sama is the ultimate god, creator, etc of the universe in OMB - in other words, if he's essentially the Judeo/Christian omniscient/unlimited God - then why does he have any of the celestials in the first place? Why does he have Yggdrasil? Where does Kami-sama stop and Yggdrasil begin?

And for a fun exercise....
How about some parallels for Yggdrasil in other pantheons? For example, in the Greco/Reoman it'd probably be Mount Olympus. With the In Nom base of the J/C pantheon, it's the Celestial Song. What about other pantheons?

[HoagieOfDoom]

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Look, if I'm going to deal with existing religions in my fanfiction, I might as well go for broke and come up with something to offend *everybody*, if someone was so anal as to actually *be* offended.

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Was anyone offended? Hell, if you think you're being offensive, then I'm a blaspheming heretic since I do not belong to any of the religions I'm writing about here.

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If you want to *really* get a headache, think on this: If Kami-sama is the ultimate god, creator, etc of the universe in OMB - in other words, if he's essentially the Judeo/Christian omniscient/unlimited God - then why does he have any of the celestials in the first place? Why does he have Yggdrasil? Where does Kami-sama stop and Yggdrasil begin?

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Let's put it this way: Kami-sama is copy-protected code that only lets us see what it wants us to see. Yggdrasil is the pure machine code that a computer interprets from Kami-sama. And the various gods and goddesses are external debugging programs that catch the occassional hiccup or mistake. We could even take it a step further and say that the gods/goddesses are part of a self-evolutionary software that keeps the celestial system constantly evolving to keep up with the current era/demands on the system.

[Bob Schroeck]

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If Kami-sama is the ultimate god, creator, etc of the universe in OMB - in other words, if he's essentially the Judeo/Christian omniscient/unlimited God - then why does he have any of the celestials in the first place? Why does he have Yggdrasil? Where does Kami-sama stop and Yggdrasil begin?

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My answer -- which is not necessarily congruent with Chris' answer, should he have one -- is that Kami-Sama isn't pan-universal. It's a position, a job, like a team leader, and different Overselves take the role in different universes. As for Yggdrasil, well, in the OMG skein of universes, the "game rules" the gods play by have them throttled back a whole lot. Yggdrasil is a prop or a tool that lets them be that close to mortal and still have access to their usual level of power when they absolutely need it.
Note that this is just my interpretation, and Chris' Mileage May Vary. Then again, by the terms of my own cosmology, both of us can be right without either of us being wrong -- everything about the gods which is understandable by mortals is nothing more than a convenient converter/filter/metaphor for an utterly ineffable truth that is so far beyond human comprehension that it doesn't blow your mind Cthulhu-style, it can't even be perceived.-- Bob
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Chaos isn't really chaos if it isn't Lawful part of the time.

[jpub]

In my view (and this ties into my own personal religious worldview somewhat), there *is* an ultimate creator somewhere. That ultimate creator is in part connected to *all* celestials, in *all* their aspects, in *all* universes, including their 'oversoul' as it were.
This is why I said the Hinduistic view is probably the closest to mine.
What's fun about this is we don't really have to go into this in the work - what does it really add/substract from the work anyway? I can have my view, Bob can have his, Ed can have his, etc. This discussion is mostly just a fun philsosophical/comsological discourse.
Suffice it to say, the answer to my question about Kami-sama in the OMB uni goes something like this:
-Kami-sama and Yggdrasil *are* the ultimate creator. He just chose to present himself in that dual fashion, splitting up the vessel of his will from the vessel of his power.
-As to why have the other gods - why not? Kami-sama as presented in OMB and God's Toy has human foibles too. He doesn't have to explain himself (which gets me out of trying to). Suffice it to say, he wanted lackeys and foils, and he made them possible. Maybe he was bored.