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Messages - megarows

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16
DF Reference Collection / Re: He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]
« on: July 01, 2015, 02:52:39 AM »
If CD was any indication, we need to worry about the opposite. Harry struggles against the Winter Mantle (the 'natural order' personified) urging him to rape and kill. When Mab shows humanity, it is a rare and unnerving thing. The Summer Mantle overwhelms Lily, making her burn the landscape and attack indiscriminately- making her threaten the man her human side loves.
Nature is not the one being (ab)used here. It may not initiate Table rituals, but it certainly dominates their participants.

Those things aren't from nature though.  They arise from the mantle, artificial constructs made by humans with black magic and human sacrifice.  A mantle isn't "nature"... it's a thing created with murder.  Literally, the definition of crimes against humanity.

The fae queens -- humans with stolen power obtained by black magic -- have inserted themselves into at the very least, atmospheric weather, in a manner similar to a human building a dam.

The Hoover Dam is built incredibly well.  Maybe not in our lifetimes, but inevitably even with maintenance, it will fail.  Lake Mead is less transient.  And when Hoover Dam fails, all the water comes crashing down.  Just like in DF when the balance of the fae queens fails.

But yes, nature always dominates in the end.  Because it is eternal.  What men create -- dams or mantles -- may last a very long time, but a finite amount of energy went into their creation.  There is no free energy even for magic in the Dresdenverse.

This is the part of The Dark Tower I was referring to: (Song of Susannah, p109)
(click to show/hide)

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DF Reference Collection / Re: He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]
« on: July 01, 2015, 01:12:08 AM »
The Fae embody dual themes: that of the seasons and that of civilization (or lack thereof). In addition to the ice-and-snow thing, the WK is wrath, the WQ is pragmatism, the WM is fear.
Originally, Hecate was the manifestation of these things- but by overpowering her and killing her, the Fae proved themselves worthy to uphold what she represented. Worthier than Hecate.

Disagree on some of the cause/effect here.  Originally Hecate was a greedy and insane human who gained power via human sacrifice in ascention rituals.  She manifested nothing other than hubris.  The universe didn't coalesce an avatar into Hecate, she was just crazy and murdered a lot of people.

No entity with a mantle created from human sacrifice -- as they all seem to be -- is absolutely anything at all.  They are artificial, synthetic.  They may claim to be otherwise, but so did the Gao'uld in Stargate.

Yet we see the fae queens / balance does have an effect on the natural world.  So we have humans who have stolen power via human sacrifice insinuating themselves into the natural order, such that they can break shit in fundamental ways.  I just don't know how that could ever possibly be a good thing, especially when the mantle's power is probably finite.

Remember Mia's speech to Susannah at Castle Discordia in "The Dark Tower"?  That.

18
DF Reference Collection / Re: He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]
« on: June 30, 2015, 11:08:40 PM »
MW cuts their string and they drift off into the memory of the cosmos becoming outsiders. If you think, MW kinda is the outergate, the final barrier, the supreme unmaker, whichever. I mean there's layers to death in the DF, mortal death, spiritual death, ect. the final one is not being part of this reality at all, but as leah says even the comso's remembers, if thats so then it makes sense the comso has the vast imprints of everything that was ever unmade entirely. as a side note, I imagine this is how/why hell,hades and any other form of afterlife exists, to keep the balance of energy inside and not let it drift off to come back as, whatever the heck is outside. everything that doesn't currently exist and all that hasn't yet?
(theoretically by killing sithro Michael put him outside where he might try to find a reflection back into our world, or help greater the power of the outside in other signifigant ways. Woj dragons are on par with archangels so imagine the sudden void from one of those ceasing to exist, that void is now outside power)

Heh, "Insomnia" + "It"?  But in "It", Pennywise was an old one herself, and had to personally rip the soul out of someone to send it Outside.  Not really what happened with Dragon Slayer Michael.

Mother Winter isn't TWG, just a human hopped up on ascension ritual meth.  She has difficulty traveling spatially, and we saw in GS that souls don't just warp to her.  So I don't think she has dominion over that kind of thing on a cosmic scale.

19
DF Reference Collection / Re: He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]
« on: June 30, 2015, 08:45:59 PM »
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Where did Siriothrax's power go? Where does any power go when one dies who doesn't bear a mantle?

Entropy of some kind, probably.  Were it Dark Souls or Skyrim, Michael could've scored a nice dragon soul though.

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once they lost that cosmic significance

What significance?

If the fae queens got their power from knife-murdering Hecate, and Hecate got hers from knife-murdering humans (well, ascention rituals, anyway), it's just an artificial construct from a lot of knife murdering.  Nothing natural or holy there.

So what's Butcher's point with the fae mantles, anyway?  That weather systems didn't exist before knife-murdering and black magic ascention rituals?  Sounds like one of those "dinosaur bones are 200 years old" arguments.  And if black magic ascention rituals are vital for the natural order and create mantles that aren't inherently evil, why do we keep wasting time in each novel worrying about petty things like morality, laws of magic, or anything else?

Anyway, do we even know for sure if the dragons were natural, or just someone being a knife-murdering tardbeast again?

Moreover, if entities with artificially created mantles of stolen life have insinuated themselves into natural processes in the universe, and the laws of thermodynamics apply to mantles, then they are *not* eternal.  What's going to happen when they run out and fail?

20
DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 30, 2015, 02:08:55 PM »
Or even "Ankle-biting big-eyed mini-primate of God"

"So Tarsiel, I was thinking of rebell-"
"YES!  YES!  Soon, Heaven will be stained red with their precious ankle blood!  And the lacerated skies will drown in a rain of ankle blood the mountains of men!"
"Um... right.  I'll count you in then.  Thanks."

21
DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 30, 2015, 05:32:04 AM »
Also, the Jinn connection is not mine, I don't know who brought it up, but it's misattributed to me.

It was the Samael thing.  Just reformatted everything by hand (ugh) and broke out the lore sections, should be more clear now.

22
DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 30, 2015, 03:30:37 AM »
Added mantle and coin bearers/disposition.  Replaced all combat form summaries with literal canon text.

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 29, 2015, 11:44:40 PM »
Wait, Raistlin was the hero?  I just remember him being sickly, dragons getting stabbed with lances, and Tifa owning a bar.

Anyway, should be enough, thanks.

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 29, 2015, 10:50:49 PM »
Found one source that defines Varth as meaning "A wonder"

Thanks, will add both.

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With epithets like the "Webweaver" and the "Temptress", the spider theme seems to fit better imo.  Raistlin's eyes seem to be more of a symbol for time itself.

Yeah, that's what I always thought it was, the "come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly" thing.

Similarly, Anduriel's sigil being a smudge seemed to refer to his shadow form.

Ursiel's... probably just vague, but maybe a ref to the spinning radar dish "thinking cap" second brain that Shardik in King's "The Dark Tower" had on his head.  But I don't know... Shardik was about the inevitable failure of anything created by man, of technology, no matter how well it was created (and Shardik lasted thousands of years), and with his creators long dead, Shardik eventually begin to break down, went insane and succumbed to rage.  That isn't really Ursiel.  Ursiel is eternal, the magic that the technolgy of Shardik tried to replace, and Ursiel's fall was by choice, not as the inevitable consequence of the nature of his creator.  So a technological reference in that context seems off.

Anyway, I once read Dragonlance a very long time ago but forgot it, so I'll need some more lore info/links to add that as some kind of summary.

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 29, 2015, 06:12:48 PM »
Ok, I really like the work you put into this, and will be shunting it to the DFRC.  Do you want it there soonest or would you like it to mature in the more active regular spoilers section for a while first?  I certainly want to shunt it over before it locks so that it can continue to get input in perpetuity. 

Edit:
You already have a lot of bullets under the "fallen" characters, but might I suggest adding one for the names of the known hosts and or current dispositions of the coins?

Moving whenever you prefer is cool with me.

I'll add hosts for the fallen and bearers(?) of grace for the big four archangels.

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 29, 2015, 06:16:59 AM »
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varth : perhaps a play on Darth Vader?

I actually had a similar thought, but I'm not sure how to interpret that.  What do Darth and Vader mean, and what happens when you swap the first letter?

I also found something here

I'm not able to translate varth with any of the online Old Norse dictionaries I can find, so I'm not really sure what that base means.  I tried translating contextually similar phrases to modern Icelandic with Google Translate, but that failed as well.  Closest-ish I found was svartr ("black").

Anyone have a better Old Norse dictionary/translator?

Sidenote: draugr means tree-trunk?

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 29, 2015, 05:25:00 AM »
Ok, think I added everything so far.  Seems like our mutual friend got popular, so created a new section for him as well.  I had to interpolate names so yell if you don't like them.

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"the Prince of fucking Darkness"

Official title accepted.

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Also, siluriformes is the order of the catfishes (order as a taxon). But I don't think Saluriel is a reference to that.

Shardik, only with a catfish.  It might still work.  A large catfish.

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Akar from Malay3 gets you "plant root".  Akariel is described as dark, big, and furry, but that's it.  There's a possibility that its actually a plant-like form, and the "fur" is actually a lot of root hairs all across the body.  Seems like a stretch, but I haven't seen anything else.

Doesn't really seem any less likely than an inanimate gate that's none of those things.  Named as darkroot for obvious reasons.

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Nam from Vietnamese4 means "man".  Thorned Namshiel is said to look like a human skeleton with bone spurs at its joints.  It could be a proto-man form.

Went with "Prototype of God" but all I could think was "Oohhhh... Skin Man."

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the darkest shadow

I'll file this with our mutual friend's section for now.

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DF Reference Collection / Etymology of Angel Names in DF
« on: June 28, 2015, 07:55:00 AM »
Introduction

This is an attempt to list information about the origin and meaning of the names of the angel-type characters in DF.  (more...)
(click to show/hide)



1. Named Archangels, with Grace
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2. Unnamed Archangels, Fallen
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3. Named Angels, with Grace
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4. Named Angels, Fallen (Major/Recurring)
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5. Unnamed Angels, Fallen (Major/Recurring)
(click to show/hide)


6. Named Angels, Fallen (Minor)
(click to show/hide)

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DF Reference Collection / Re: The Religious Relics: What Are They?
« on: June 22, 2015, 02:46:20 AM »
The swords allow angels to interfere without the fallen being allowed to act as well. A blade of the fallen would allow them to act more freely than before.

I don't think there are some kind of cosmic action points here, at least that we've ever seen.  No matter the affiliation of the divine being, if a mess gets made Uriel gets to clean it up.

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DF Reference Collection / Re: He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]
« on: June 21, 2015, 06:25:34 PM »
These items are likely powered by soulfire, so even the fallen would be very vulnerable to them, as well as outsiders.

I dunno, Anduriel and friends lost soulfire with their little teenage rebellion, and Nicodemus still wanted them.

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Conservation of Energy

That doesn't mean matter is indestructible, simply that mass and energy are conserved, and that mass is converted to a proportional amount of energy.  Literally, E=m*c^2.

eg, an electron and positron combine in an antimatter annihilation reaction.  The matter is destroyed, and converted to energy in the form of a high-energy photon (gamma radiation).

In the same way, a rechargeable battery that has been depleted has very slightly less mass than one with a full charge.  Because some of the mass has been converted into electrical energy to perform work.  (it's nothing you can measure on a scale)

If these laws of physics apply to mantles, then energy drawn from them either decreases their total amount of potential energy, or their mass.

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