Stony on 21/6/2006 at 05:02
Quote Posted by jtr7
"Borning" = Birth = New
Life, the opposite of which is...
"Death.""Leaf,"
for a Pagan, would be an example of all things working together in harmony, thus, nature in
balance.
Including Light/Life and Darkness/Death works as another pair of opposing forces. I'm not sure what Green/"Leaf" could be. In elemental systems, an element is a thing of itself, derivable from nothing else. To be an element, Green has to be a thing unto itself with its own irreducible nature, not a balance of other things. Even an ideal balance of parts is still reducible to those parts. Having said that, I'm not sure what "Leaf" could be. Unlike the other elements, it doesn't seem to have an opposite. The game designers may be breaking with traditional elementalism and making a "balance" element, but it's a bit mysterious, to say the least. Maybe we should go dig up Constantine and ask him. :cheeky:
Stony
Stony on 21/6/2006 at 05:13
Another idea: my wife (who is normally above such things) has suggested that the Maw ritual may have been deliberately unbalanced. In his way, the Woodsie Lord was trying to tip the balance of the universe towards what we're calling chaos. If the Green is Chaos, then there may be an eighth element, Order, which he deliberately omitted. That would return symmetry to the elemental system, though I know of no evidence for it in game.
Stony
jtr7 on 21/6/2006 at 16:33
Thanks Stony.
Yeah, since he's trying to bring back darkness--his "dark project"--to bring humanity back to an age without artificial light, I was thinking somewhat along the lines of what your wife said. With The Eye, and the Leaf element, there are two strange ingredients involved.
jtr7 on 25/6/2006 at 20:23
Back to the Hand Mages, for a sec':
mg2lar_2: "An intruder has brought Chaos to our Order."
mg2sma_2: "There is disharmony here."
mg1sma_2: "I see disharmony."
mg2telr3: "I see the source of the disharmony!"
mg1sma_1: "The balance is uneven here."
mg2sma_1: "The balance has been disturbed."
Thanks, deadman, for your transcripts!
Now, this also brings to mind that the Trickster is about Chaos, so naturally, his ritual would be unbalanced, leaning towards nature overcoming technology. Extra greens on his plate.
Vogelfrei on 25/6/2006 at 21:56
Chaos is not necessarily the opposite of balance. In fact, I would say it is the opposite of order (pagans - hammerites) and balance is what the keepers seek: A compromise.
Seeing that the mages use the same word the keepers do makes me think that their idea of magic has nothing to do with the two factions' ideas. They are outside/over/not touched by the opposing forces and use the elements instead, rather quality-less factors (from a chaos-order-point of view) just in order to gain power from them. Although the elements have certain qualities, like fury for fire or stability for earth, they are not bound to a faction, since pagans, hammerites and keepers can use them all alike for their purposes.
In this context it might also be intersting that the keepers have some kind of magic (glyphs) but the Trickster does not even attempt to gain it for his goals. So either he does not know about it - or it is so focussed on not disturbing balance that he can not use it (which, especially after Dealdy Shadows, seems unlikely to me).
june gloom on 25/6/2006 at 22:33
since the trickster's plan was to essentially tip the balance in favour of the pagans, we can safely assume he did not know of keeper magic.
and why would he? the keepers have managed to, for the most part, remain above the concerns of the city or its factions, only coming out when something occurs that may tip the balance (such as the zombie rampage at the cathedral). and even then they didn't really reveal their true identities.)
ZeroFlight on 26/6/2006 at 20:01
Ah, but if the Trickster is a kind of god, he should at least know something about them. He knew enough about their restrictions on the cathedral to know he couldn't (or maybe chose not to?) enter and take the eye himself.
Vogelfrei on 26/6/2006 at 21:15
As far as I know there was no glyph-magic involved in concealing the cathedral. It was element talismans which we had to find. Another hint to the elements being 'outside' of the battle, they can serve anyone in their purposes.
The Trickster may be a god but he is far from allmighty, a rather proven fact.
Caer on 26/6/2006 at 22:36
I may be wrong, but I think I saw some kind of banner in the Mage Towers (I couldn't find it later in the files though, so I am not entirely sure what I saw and where ;)). It was an outstretched hand on a green field, something I tried to reconstruct (
http://80.55.143.106/~gildiaoswieconych/Gildia/Gesta.html) here, bookmark: Gildia Oświeconych). Has someone seen it or am I making it up?
jtr7 on 28/6/2006 at 00:08
I'm sorry, Caer, the link's not working for me, but I hope I can get an answer fairly soon. Especially if I have to wait another seven years to purchase a used Thief Gold, like I had to for Dark Project and Metal Age. "Thank you for your support!"
