Quote Originally Posted by Ellye View Post
I don't think that the Stereotyped Big Game Hunters actually had a clue about what the MitD was. Remember, they are Stereotyped Big Game Hunters, and Stereotyped Big Game Hunters will never admit that they don't have a clue about some big game - specially not in front of another big game hunter.
Do you have some evidence for that? Because I've read quite a few stories with some variant of "the great white hunter" (Quatermain & co.), and they don't strike me like that at all. Indeed, there is two arguments why we can trust the SBGH's clue:

1) In-universe, SBGH are, precisely because they are stereotypical, all-knowing about the things they catch. By D&D rules, they have maximised knowledge(nature), if you want to look at it that way. Knowing everything in a jungle is what a SBGH is all about, regardless of your assertion.

2) Beyond the comic itself, Rich has stated that there are a lot of clues about MitD in SoD. If the one chapter dedicated to MitD turns out to be misdirection, i.e. the guys that are confident they just got hold of an extremely rare and valuable creature are wrong about what it is, then Rich is basically toying with us, and his promise that MitD can be "guessed" is empty, since there is no way to tell what is a red herring from what is a real clue.

Quote Originally Posted by Ellye View Post
Another thing to mention about the Deity idea is that Rich says that the line between what is his creation and what is not is a blurry one - this applies very well to the OotS deities.
I don't see how that applies to deities any more than it applies to anything else. He said that he did not invent MitD - and then admits that someone else did, and that's where the "blurry line" comes in - MitD will turn out to be something like "a therblewurkersaurus", i.e. completely made up, but he chooses to separate what he made up from what everyone else made up, and that is a fine line to draw in the vast expanse of fiction creatures, but he chooses to draw it nevertheless.

Does that discard a God? No, but then, the classic twist of "fallen God that has lost its memory" is more than a little overused, it's not the kind of trope you can use on a secondary character, and in general doesn't really fit the clues - most importantly, the father clue, or the horrible appearance clue (unless the avatar of some D&D diety happens to be the dream larva - but from what I remember, they tend to be far more mundane animals: monkeys, cows, etc).

Grey Wolf