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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Pixie in the Playground
     
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    Default How did gods survive before mortals?

    If gods need those four things from mortals to continue existing, how did they get them originally before mortals? And if they're made by belief in the first place, who made them?

    Could their origin be the planet in the rift?

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    Last edited by Mister Biffo; 2020-09-07 at 03:52 PM.
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Wozniak View Post
    If gods need those four things from mortals to continue existing, how did they get them originally before mortals?
    Presumably, they didn't need mortals before there were mortals, for whatever reason.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    ....the fact that the gods are the way they are now does not preclude them having existed in some other form in the past—one that we might not have thought of as "gods." It's just that the mechanism for change isn't reproduction and evolution. Or rather, it's memetic evolution, not genetic.

    EDIT: I also think you're forgetting that the gods originated "from beyond the chaos." Their initial creation and/or ascension would involve how things work in that other place, wherever that might be, and has little bearing on the story.
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    I like to think of it as sort of like the Keto diet.

    When you're on the Keto diet, you focus on ultra-low carbs and high fats. When you're on the diet, your body actually functions slightly different then when you're not, it digests things differently. When you first go on this diet, or if you stray from it, you'll have a chance of going through a "Keto flu", a state of transition between Ketosis and not-ketosis in which you feel ill.

    At one point the Gods were Not-keto, and could survive on Not-Keto foods. When they became as we know them now though, they went on Keto, and their bodies changed how and what they can digest. For them though it's more extreme, if they stray from their new diet, rather then getting sick, they could outright die.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Gods live off souls.

    Say the gods were somehow made out of the chaos, but unlike e.g. the sun, the gods are free willed. Like the sun eats the hydrogen it is made of (later the leftover helium, etc.), the gods most likely also ate something, given they later depends on souls.

    Since the gods made the planet which in principle is a soul factory (souls create more souls), I imagine whatever process the gods used to create the first creatures of the planet is the same process that they lived off in the first place. Perhaps like an ancient sea bed, the bigger gods ate the stuff that potentially could have turned into new gods, similar to how some mortals become gods themselves, in stead of being used for soul energy.

    I don't know if the gods had a sustainable way of getting food before the first world, given the risk of the Dark One not making it, and previous gods not making it between worlds, I kind of doubt it. Also I don't know how big of a gamble seeding the planet with e.g. 1000 creatures was, but since then, except for the occasional Snarl attack, the gods have had plenty of food, and some of this food has also become gods themselves.

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    They probably had far less power than now, but without a Snarl and without the "cycles" threatening their destruction, it was ok.

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    There wasn't a before. Making the world was the first thing they did.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    SolithKnightGuy

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    A) Power reserve
    B) like pandas they become dependent on worship
    C) the loss of the 4th pantheon makes the worship etc they get less real which is why they can starve
    'Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered, crying:'Auta i lómë!" The night is passing!"

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    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    At first they didn't need mortals to survive. Then at some point, the mortals believed the gods needed them to survive. And so they suddenly did. The end.

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    Default How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheAuthor
    I also think you're forgetting that the gods originated "from beyond the chaos." Their initial creation and/or ascension would involve how things work in that other place, wherever that might be, and has little bearing on the story.
    Rich isn't trying to narrate the alpha and the omega of OoTS world. He's taking a particular place in time and writing about "whats' the most urgent/exciting thing taking place now?"
    (He mentioned something about that idea which he gleaned from a writing workshop a few years back).

    His goal isn't world building in the sense of building a cosmos. All he needs to tell us about is enough of the cosmos as it relates to the story he is telling about ... The Order Of The Stick... this six characters who, in all of their imperfections stumbled across the urgent and exciting need to save the world that they live in.

    Asking for a diversion to satisfy a craving for "a comsos that makes perfect sense" is asking for effort to be expended on a low value, collateral concern when the major concern is the story of the six main characters and their world.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2020-09-08 at 06:53 PM.
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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Asking for a diversion to satisfy a craving for "a comsos that makes perfect sense" is asking for effort to be expended on a low value, collateral concern when the major concern is the story of the six main characters and their world.
    While true and I don't expect Rich to answer a lot of questions that are entirely irrelevant to the narrative, there is a reason that fan theories exist. Looking for plausible and sensible reasons for why things happen does drive a lot of people.

    Granted, it is on us to find the answers that we like. Rich feeling compelled to have answers to everything would be a lot of pointless intellectual busywork that just detracts from his ability to make progress on more important things.

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anymage View Post
    While true and I don't expect Rich to answer a lot of questions that are entirely irrelevant to the narrative, there is a reason that fan theories exist.
    Sturgeon's Law, squared, and possibly cubed, applies to fan theories. I've tossed out a few, to include the green sword / green quiddity match up, but the value of that one, as with most others, is either very small or zero.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2020-09-08 at 07:59 PM.
    Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Works
    a. Malifice (paraphrased):
    Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
    b. greenstone (paraphrased):
    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
    Gosh, 2D8HP, you are so very correct!
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    If we apply occams razor and remove unnecessary entities then they weren't gods, they were just the vaguest possibly quiddity barely existing in the astral plane. In the process of making the first world, and the snarl they created beings which believed the gods into shapes. And from there on they grew in complexity. Some gods didn't make it. Other gods were created over time. There was no "before" that and nothing existed besides that.
    Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Also, Shojo's story might well be incomplete.

    We know that it left out the 'oh, by the way, the current world isn't #2, might want to add some digits to that number,' thanks to the Astral Graveyard strip, and apparently even the gods themselves are in the dark about the possibility of planets inside the Snarl's current demiplane-prison (though apparently the exact amount of time it took for the Snarl to rip the very first planet apart is known to be 27 minutes, which is...interesting).
    "Come play in the darkness with me."
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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    (Gross oversimplification for rhetoric purposes ahead)

    Bees require flowers to sustain them and (eventually) reproduce, while flowering plants require bees to fertilize them and reproduce. So how did these two co-dependant things come to be, what was going on when only one of the two existed?

    I have no issues in my head-cannon about the gods both pre-dating and requiring mortals. The gods simply formed differently than what they turned out being "now". Mortal worship made them what they are now, and depriving them of this would change them beyond recognition. Perhaps to extinction. Nature is full of examples of specialist species requiring a very specific environment/food/host/etc., which would not be able to survive without it, and yet still they necessarily had an ancestor which lacked this requirement because none of it was around "at the dawn of time", when the first living organism emerged.

    That the gods are so deeply affected by worship further supports the theory that, if "natural selection" and evolution does not apply to the current OotS prime material plane, it does apply to the gods themselves. Odin and Hel have suffered from changing environments, Odin was lastingly modified by one stint, death is mentioned as a menace, and yet new arrivals also exist to possibly fill in the voids left by dying or changing gods, like the elven gods and TDO. For example, maybe the elves wouldn't have been so quick to promote their own elven god of magic if the incumbent god of Magic (Odin) hadn't been so handicapped from prior nutritive stress. A world where not only elves, but more magic-wielders decided to switch to a new arrival rather than the old loon could plausibly have led to an utter replacement.
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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    You should use MST3K mantra In circumstances like this.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Yeah, if the first dozen or so worlds they made after the snarl awoke only lasted a few years, there probably weren't many souls to give them sustenance then either

    I just don't think about things like that
    To find in order to lose; To fall in order to stand up
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    To die in order to be reborn to the new world

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    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by mjasghar View Post
    B) like pandas they become dependent on worship
    When did pandas become dependent on worship?

  18. - Top - End - #18
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    When did pandas become dependent on worship?
    Since most of their natural habitats were destroyed and they became dependant on WWF publicity.

    Quote Originally Posted by JSSheridan View Post
    Yeah, if the first dozen or so worlds they made after the snarl awoke only lasted a few years, there probably weren't many souls to give them sustenance then either
    "In hindsight, maybe we didn't think this through."
    Last edited by Precure; 2020-09-10 at 06:06 AM.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Everything in the OOTS multiverse is made out of ideas. Even gods.
    Clearly, gods were created by ideas from other people.
    My conclusion: gods started as a a creation -a conglomerate of thoughts and ideas- from people of another dimension. A completely different one.
    Maybe these people worshipped them, maybe for them the gods were only comic characters. Whatever.
    When that other dimension's people came to extinction (or their universe died of enthropic death) the gods started to lose powers slowly, courtesy of theologic particles escaping from their singlualirty horizon.
    At that point they tried to create people able to worship them again, this time in their (OOTS multiverse) dimesion. It worked well enough, if not for the Snarl.

    The rest is known.

    (Of course, this is only my personal theory)

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Zero View Post
    My conclusion: gods started as a a creation -a conglomerate of thoughts and ideas- from people of another dimension. A completely different one.
    Maybe these people worshipped them, maybe for them the gods were only comic characters.
    And then oots will end with Elan and Haley coming out into the real world, like Sophie's World style, leaving that crapsack story world behind of them.
    Last edited by Precure; 2020-09-10 at 08:02 AM.

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    And then oots will end with Elan and Haley coming out into the real world, like Sophie's World style, leaving that crapsack story world behind.
    Seriously, even if OT: my pet theory about the end of oots is that we will end up seeing the players behind and the group starting another campaign.
    I believe this since, like, ever

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Zero View Post
    Seriously, even if OT: my pet theory about the end of oots is that we will end up seeing the players behind and the group starting another campaign.
    I believe this since, like, ever
    Based on everything Rich has said (like “there are no players” and “we will never see the real world” I doubt that, Summon Banana V for the quotes!)
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    Quote Originally Posted by Schroeswald View Post
    I recognize that Conservation of Detail is Overrated, but I find the event that I am using as evidence for my theory above important enough/given enough focus to qualify for what I call Elan’s Exception, “Who wastes perfectly good foreshadowing like that?”. Also I have never correctly predicted any event in any piece of media so take this theory with a grain of salt (I call this Peelee’s Ye Old Reminder).

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Zero View Post
    Seriously, even if OT: my pet theory about the end of oots is that we will end up seeing the players behind and the group starting another campaign.
    I believe this since, like, ever
    Considering how many times the author denied that there is any players (despite of constant references to PC races and player characters) I would count that ending as a cheating. Himym finale comes to mind.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Schroeswald View Post
    Based on everything Rich has said (like “there are no players” and “we will never see the real world” I doubt that, Summon Banana V for the quotes!)
    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    Considering how many times the author denied that there is any players (despite of constant references to PC races and player characters) I would count that ending as a cheating. Himym finale comes to mind.
    Fun fact: I think I asked this myself and some user even posted me some quotes. But either they were not definitive or my subconscious didn't want to accept them!

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Zero View Post
    Fun fact: I think I asked this myself and some user even posted me some quotes. But either they were not definitive or my subconscious didn't want to accept them!
    Sometimes it's better to listen your subconscious.

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    Since most of their natural habitats were destroyed and they became dependant on WWF publicity.
    Heh, better than the WWE publicity, or at least more tasteful. (And by the way, spot on!)
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Zero View Post
    My conclusion: gods started as a a creation -a conglomerate of thoughts and ideas- from people of another dimension. A completely different one.
    That would in fact be this dimension, and this world. Which means that, from an in-OoTS perspective, you are correct.
    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    And then oots will end with Elan and Haley coming out into the real world, like Sophie's World style, leaving that crapsack story world behind of them.
    While I'd like to see that as the ending, I am pretty sure that isn't Elan's idea of a happy ending, and he gets a happy ending. (Unless the oracle is bigger lying sack of feces than I suspect ...)
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    And then oots will end with Elan and Haley coming out into the real world, like Sophie's World style, leaving that crapsack story world behind of them.
    Even in this unlikely event, I'm guessing they'd be even more disillusioned with our world than with theirs.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    When did pandas become dependent on worship?
    Ever since they created the world, of course. It’s pandas all the way down.
    "You are what you do. Choose again and change." - Miles Vorkosigan

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    Lizardfolk

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Crusher View Post
    Ever since they created the world, of course. It’s pandas all the way down.
    Only in the expansion pack, before then only one or two were ever recorded.

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    SolithKnightGuy

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    Default Re: How did gods survive before mortals?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    When did pandas become dependent on worship?
    Pandas are naturally omnivores and survivor better on fruit and meat
    But once they start on bamboo they become dependent on it even though they need to eat masses more in weight.
    'Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered, crying:'Auta i lómë!" The night is passing!"

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