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Thread: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
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2021-03-26, 02:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
As a Mythic Theurge, Tsukiko has levels in a divine spellcaster class, which I presume it would be cleric (or something like favored soul). If that is the case, did she worship any god? Is there any indication in any strip about which religion she followed, or otherwise where did her divine spells come from?
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2021-03-26, 02:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
She worshipped The Twelve Gods.
This is also supported by panel 13.
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2021-03-26, 04:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Probably Rat, given some indications. There are rules for being a follower of a Pantheon, and, so long as your alignment matches one member, they'll keep granting you clerical powers.
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2021-03-28, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Followers of the Twelve Gods worship the whole pantheon at once. Rat is shown as the "evil" one, but it could be any of them. I wish they could have been developed more, but they weren't. In our world, the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac are assigned to you by the year of your birth. For example, it's the Year of the Bovine right now (sometimes translated to "Ox" or "Bull", but the Chinese character means a larger category. For example, Year of the Rat is better understood as "year of the mustelid".
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2021-03-28, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-03-28, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
"Mustelid" is definitely wrong; perhaps they meant "muroid" instead? Not that words in natural languages have neat mappings to phylogenetic clades anyway (look at the English-language uses of "bug" - even when talking about animals it's usually not "correct" in a scientific sense).
But it makes sense for it to mean, say, "rat, mouse, similarly shaped creature" instead of being ultra-specific. Lots of words work that way. Honestly, I think the better example within the eastern zodiac would have been the goat (or sheep, or ram, or... you get the point).Last edited by Gurgeh; 2021-03-28 at 06:12 PM.
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2021-03-28, 06:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Yeah, murid is confusable, but at the level of Mustelid, it would be Rodent, and that doesn't seem so confusable. The chinese word probably is a portmanteau of small creatures, possibly Rodent isn't a good fit, but I can't believe that if rats and mice are included Mustelid is a better fit.
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2021-03-28, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
I don't get why everyone assumes Rat is the only Evil Southern god. I like to think there is at least 1 per alignment.
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2021-03-28, 07:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Is there direct evidence he's evil at all? He's shown to be a friend of the newly ascended Dark One, but that doesn't prove he's evil.
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2021-03-28, 07:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Mustelidae and Muridae are both taxonomic families, the same Linnaean rank. Rodentia is an order, way higher up the chain (and casting a far wider net); the mustelids' equivalent order would be Carnivora. The idea of strict ranked taxonomy is somewhat on the way out in favour of cladistics (groupings that consist entirely of organisms that are more closely related to one another than to anything not in the group), at any rate.
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2021-03-28, 07:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-03-28, 07:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Same. It seems similar to assume that Loki is the only Evil God of the North because he's the only one that associated with the Dark One.
The gods who associated with the Dark One were explicitly said to be some of the evil ones. So even if you don't want to call that explicit confirmation it, it's definitely evidence. Then again, Loki is the stand out and you still had some people arguing that he might not have been evil either.Last edited by Rrmcklin; 2021-03-28 at 07:21 PM.
I'd just like to point out that saying that something unsupported is the case unless someone else can prove that it is not is an utter failure of logic. - Kish
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2021-03-28, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
The explicit mention of the evil gods taking the Dark One's side in Start of Darkness only depicts Loki and Tiamat - but Rat is standing with them in what may be an alternative depiction of the same event in 1143, so it's a reasonable association.
Beyond those three, it's pretty hard to argue against Hel and Fenrir ("Tear down the world! Murder everyone! Piss on their graves!") being evil. Some other gods in the Northern pantheon are open for debate, and we haven't really seen enough of the Southern and Western gods to judge.
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2021-03-28, 08:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Fun fact: names for cats and various mustelids were often interchangeable in ancient times, and the very word "cat" might originally have referred to any domesticated mustelid. I don't think this is ever going to be more relevant than in this thread.
ungelic is us
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2021-03-28, 11:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Well, here I was trying to show off when asked if it was the Year of the Rat or the Year of the Mouse, as it gets translated as both, and I was informed it was a higher classification that included both. Maybe this comic about the "Year of the Goat" will help it make more sense.
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2021-04-05, 08:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
The problem with that comparison is the North have had more of the members fleshed out, so we can be pretty sure Fenrir and Hel are evil.
But the South hasn't. We know very little about any of the individual God's personalities. They are worshipped collectively, so they may not even HAVE distinct personalities."Besides, you know the saying: Kill one, and you are a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." -- Fishman
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2021-04-05, 02:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-04-05, 09:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
I mean, that doesn't actually address my point. People were talking as if Rat was the, as in singular, evil god of the Southern Pantheon before we got exploration of the North.
And going "they're worshiped collectively so they might not be distinct from one another at all" just sounds faulty on its face because they have been talked about and shown in individual roles, even if not to the extent the Northern Gods have.I'd just like to point out that saying that something unsupported is the case unless someone else can prove that it is not is an utter failure of logic. - Kish
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2021-04-06, 03:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Put me down for "Although I imagine she counted herself among the worshipers of one or more gods, the main one she worshiped was the one between her ears."
It can be funny and/or a bit sad to give pet names to other parts of yourself (e.g. the "Trouser Titan")... but it's almost always really sad to give your ego the name of "Odin", "Rat", or what have you.
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2021-04-07, 08:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
If they're the balanced-oriented kind of people, maybe there's 1 apiece, followed by a second for each of NG, NE, LN and CN
EDIT: Let's say NG, NE and TN because I had one too many. Blame Peelee.
Well, based on Malack's statement, we can probably guess Nergal is Neutral with an Evil...Malack was the high priest, right?
In any case, we haven't seen much of them, and probably won't.
As for the South...
If I had to guess, Monkey is probably a god of forging or craftsmanship, while I think Rooster was mentioned to be an "oracle" style god. I'd guess Ox is a god of fertility and harvest because, you know, oxen, but I don't think much about the rest has been mentioned in the comic.
It's possible Tsukiko specifically worshipped Rat among the 12, but for all we know Dog is an Evil god of magic and necromancy (dogs dig up bones, right?) who appreciated Tuskiko's take on using undead. There's probably not much to be gained from wondering about it.Last edited by Squire Doodad; 2021-04-07 at 08:55 PM.
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
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2021-04-07, 08:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-04-07, 08:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
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2021-04-07, 10:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Malack's statement explicitly casts doubt on Nergal being evil, though given his broader deceptions around his vampiric condition I wouldn't fault anyone who takes it as an attempt to make doubt for doubt's sake rather than an assertion that Nergal is not evil.
With the very limited information presented to us, you could probably make a reasonable case for Nergal fitting any of the LE corner alignments (LN, LE, NE). Malack himself was the high priest of the Empire of Blood, but not necessarily Nergal's principal servant (I feel there's some semantic collision there).
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2021-04-07, 10:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
...OK, you remember that trick Tarquin pulled where he said he’d send forces to the Free City of Doom, but not what side they’d be on? I think that’s basically what Malack was doing when he said that death gods and their Clerics aren’t nessicarly evil. He’s not technically saying anything untrue, but he’s concealing the truth. All of which is to say that I do think Nergal is just as evil as Malack.
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2021-04-08, 01:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
My theory has tended to be "One for every Outer Plane that isn't at least Mildly Evil".
So -
Outlands (N)
Pandemonium (CN to CE)
Limbo (CN)
Arcadia (CN to CG)
Arborea (CG)
Beastlands (CG to NG)
Elysium (NG)
Bytopia (NG to LG)
Celestia (LG)
Arcadia (LN to LG)
Mechanus (LN)
Acheron (LN to LE)
The OOTS versions of these, at least.
That's 12. Rat would be LE, mildly, and live in Acheron, same plane as the Dark One, hence Rat's being painted as one of his few "allies among the evil gods" - sharing a plane meant coming to some kind of truce.
It allows for there to be clerics of all 9 alignments (N deity in the Outlands can have NE clerics) while still keeping the emphasis on them being biased toward Good, with Azure City's being strongly afflilated with Good (albeit falling down in some specific areas).Last edited by hamishspence; 2021-04-08 at 01:09 AM.
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2021-04-08, 04:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Personally I'd err on the side of extra neutral alignments instead of extra good and evil ones, since that seems less prone to conflict and more able to cover followers of all moral dispositions (at least as far as good and evil go), so my personal bet for the 12 Gods would be 1 for every alignment, plus an extra CN, TN and LN.
This makes both the evil and the good gods outvoted 2 to 1 and almost guarantees the neutral gods will go unimpeded as a voting block, since even if the good and the evil gods team up, that still merely deadlocks them 50/50.
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2021-04-08, 04:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
I know this is pure headcanon, but I always suspected the Southern Pantheon has a Lawful slant to it, but that's mostly because we have seen more Azurite paladins than non-paladins and that colours my impression of them a bit.
There being a Neutral slant also makes sense, though, especially if the multiple Neutral gods act as bridges between the extremities of the alignment axis, allowing the Pantheon to function as a cohesive whole and ensure all worshippers are granted equal representation.
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2021-04-08, 05:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
Could the Gods have chosen to strip Tsukiko from their patronage for cooperating with Team Evil and the goblins? I don't imagine any of them (even Rat) particularly happy about losing Azure City, and even less about the destroyed Gate.
Again I don't know the rules they must abide regarding clerics, much less their inner politics.""Jeez, this dress! i look like a dominatrix""
(self-loathing): ""Actually , you look like a sorceress or something""
""Hey, no need to get cruel""
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2021-04-08, 07:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
In 3.5e, clerics do have a paladin-like fall system:
Ex-Clerics
A cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct required by his god loses all spells and class features, except for armor and shield proficiencies and proficiency with simple weapons. He cannot thereafter gain levels as a cleric of that god until he atones (see the atonement spell description).
We don't really know how "on top of things" gods are in the OOTS world. Durkon complains that Thor "always ignores Communes" even though Durkon has been on a mission of world-important proportions for months, and we know that Hylgia has been praying to Loki to find Durkon for a very long time and despite her being a high-level cleric of him, he hasn't seen fit to keep her in the loop about anything, even though it would have actually been useful for the OOTS to have some clerical help to take vampire!Durkon down before he actually made it to the Godsmoot and deadlocked the vote.
So it's possible that whoever was giving Tsukiko clerical power just wasn't too on top of what she was actually doing.Last edited by Shadowknight12; 2021-04-08 at 07:20 AM.
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2021-04-08, 07:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Did Tsukiko worship any god(s)?
It's almost like there was a god-wide conspiracy to suppress information about certain rifts in reality.
I think we can basically chalk it up to the gods internal politicking means they are very hands-off lest they kick off new Snarls. I get the feeling stripping a cleric of their powers of the combined pantheon, will be a very politicky situation. And the 12 definitely seems to be working as one in such cases, that is you don't really pray individually to the 12. So it's simply quite hard to strip someone of their powers in such a system. You have to really be directly and specifically working against all the gods of the pantheon as a whole. And the Northern Gods show us fulyl half are prepared to let this world go. Say you want that new idea for a seacoast then letting some mortal push the rest closer to pulling the world's plug is a perfectly reasonable course of action. So you grant powers to the cleric.
Or have easy rules (not as in D&D rules) based mechanics for it such as the Paladin class. You don't have to discuss or argue whether a paladin did wrong.
And I think especially in the Snarl-rifts-gates blackout scenario the gods are more reluctant to start stepping on toes lest they draw more scrutiny on it.Last edited by snowblizz; 2021-04-08 at 07:51 AM.