15 KiB
Death is Here, Chapter 2: Souls, Secrets and Meeting Joe (2YE spinoff at Chapter 71)
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Author: u/Kishoto *
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Score: 10
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Created: 2015-01-12T07:22:33
Post:
Comments:
u/JackStargazer [+8] Primordial Apologist (5 hours later)
I'm not 100% sure it would be that easy. D&D gods might as well be aliens, at least the ones that did not ascend.
We literally watched Herrun be intelligently designed in the last book. Standard evolutionary pressures and psychology have no reason to apply.
Also, this world appears to have greater than 86,400x our current worldwide death flat rate. This means either there are a whole lot more sentient beings in the world overseen by Death, or they die hundreds of thousands of times more often.
u/Noir_Bass [+3] (8 hours later)
Well, she was pretty much built out of the personalities of everyone who took part in the ritual, so it's not too crazy to think she'd have a reasonably near-human psychology. That said, I don't think it would be that easy to get into a goddess's pants like that. It's still a plausible enough scenario that it didn't break my suspension of disbelief.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (21 hours later)
Well, she was pretty much built out of the personalities of everyone who took part in the ritual, so it's not too crazy to think she'd have a reasonably near-human psychology.
Good point. Although the vast majority of her personality is derived from Loki, who was never mortal. The number of secrets he donated outmasses all others by multiple orders of magnitude.
Of course, all gods are built from the stories told by mortals, so it's reasonable to think that they all have at least certain touchstones to human psychology. I'm not sure that "women dig powerful guys" is one of those touchstones, though.
u/Noir_Bass [+3] (21 hours later)
She could also be playing one level above him and it was all an act. On second thought, this is the most likely scenario.
u/Kishoto [+2] (8 hours later)
There's a reason for that. Don't worry. It'll be addressed.
EDIT: While I didn't do the exact math, the death rate DOES seem unusually high, even for stupid world, huh? ;)
u/eaglejarl [+1] (23 hours later)
High or low, actually. It depends on whether you're having it cover just the Prime Material or all death everywhere on all of the many planes and across all the dimensional variants of the Prime Material.
u/Kishoto [+1] (a day later)
Not sure of how canon handles it, but I'd like to think it covers just the prime material, with appropriate dimensional doppelgangers of the deities in dimensions that are sufficiently separated from the PM
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (6 hours later)
The population density of the underdark might explain it, but I'm guessing this is a did not do the math case. Either way the chapter was fun.
u/bulls55 [+1] (19 hours later)
Also, this world appears to have greater than 86,400x our current worldwide death flat rate.
I assume since he is the god of death that includes the deaths of non- sentient creatures like ants, mice fish etc.
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (19 hours later)
Then it would be much much higher. Trillions of single celled organisms die a second, and likely at least millions of insects.
u/Kishoto [+3] (39 seconds later)
Going to start posting it by its title (like so, above).
This is chapter 2 of the 2YE spinoff I posted a while back.
u/Mraedis [+2] (2 hours later)
I like it. :)
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 hours later)
Pfwahahahawesome.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (16 hours later)
I left you a review on FFN with my thoughts; I'm glad to see you're continuing it.
u/Kishoto [+2] (16 hours later)
Review read. Reply sent :)
u/rtkwe [+1] (7 hours later)
Alright time to brainstorm how to keep secrets from the god of secrets, though it really depends on how the Great DM in the Sky decides to define secret.
My idea is to shatter all your thoughts into N tiny pieces and drop them into the minds of random people/your worshipers. Then they're technically public just really hard to put together.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (16 hours later)
Going by RAW, it's easy to keep your thoughts from Herrún unless she really wants to know them. Here's the skinny:
Portfolio Sense
Greater deities [which Herrún is] automatically sense any event that involves their portfolios, regardless of the number of people involved. In addition, their senses extend one week into the past and one week into the future for every divine rank they have. When a deity senses an event, it merely knows that the event is occurring and where it is. The deity receives no sensory information about the event. Once a deity notices an event, it can use its remote sensing power to perceive the event.
[emphasis added]
So, Herrún always knows that you have secrets and/or knowledge; if she wants to, she can look and see what they are. That's an active thing though -- the secrets don't just spontaneously appear in her brain at all times. Specifically, she's not omniscient.
A more powerful (i.e. higher ranked) god could theoretically use the Block Sensing power to stop Herrún from learning his/her secrets, but in practice that wouldn't work. Herrún can look up to 20 weeks into the past to see the secrets, so they'd need to be using their Block Sensing power constantly for 20 weeks in order to keep something from her.
EDIT: Also, in general, divine ranks only go up to 20 and Herrún is rank 20, so there are no gods that are strictly higher ranked than her.
(Technically there are the Overgods, who are all rank 21+. In RAW they don't interact with the mortal world at all, although nothing is said about their interactions with the divine world. In 2YE they basically don't interact with gods either, except to very occasionally step on one for doing something they don't like, and the gods have all pretty much learned to not do that.)
u/Kishoto [+2] (18 hours later)
So does this mean that Herrún is notified whenever new knowledge occurs? So every thought someone has, Herrun is informed? Even if she doesn't necessarily KNOW the knowledge, she is aware of its existence being spawned? I ask because, if that IS the case, then that must mean there's too much noise for her to really discern anything, since new knowledge is being conceived all the time among sentient creatures. Is that a correct interpretation?
u/eaglejarl [+3] (19 hours later)
You are correct that she is constantly notified whenever a new secret or piece of knowledge comes into existence. She can, however, handle it. By definition a god is a sapient embodiment/representation of a particular aspect of reality. They have the storage and processing power to handle their aspect.
Personally, I don't worry about it too much. Whenever I'm writing her I just assume that she knows essentially everything, since she can get the answer in realtime if she wants it. The point, though, is that she doesn't know your thoughts automatically; she has the option to not know what you're thinking.
u/Kishoto [+2] (19 hours later)
here's my main motivation for asking: If she's anonymously notified every time a new secret/piece of knowledge comes into play, but NOT notified of what it is, this means that the world is, essentially, a field of constantly filled noise for her. Every second, she's being informed of every blade of grass' movement, every squirrel's cough, every new idea in a person's head. This means that her passive awareness is constantly being "pinged" for lack of a better term, making the world white noise to her. This is, of course, assuming each ping is equal in importance and scale, prior to her investigating them. If these pings were to scale by, say, how much they affected other life forms (a blade of grass waving pings like a cricket whisper, Jake's orbital assault pinged like a fog horn), then she could sort of keep track.
Basically, what I'm trying to clarify, is that when Herrún is in a place where knowledge is being constantly spawned (anywhere in nature, basically) she's getting a constant stream of pings that knowledge is spawning. Meaning she can never, really, be passively alerted to things, since things are happening all the time. Unless, as I said, the pings scale.
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (19 hours later)
You are assuming, apriori, that her mind is small enough that it cannot handle the processing power capable of separating the white noise into perceivable parts.
She is literally the embodiment of a metaphysical concept. She's not human.
This is Stupidworld - normal humans can take actions measured in Planck Time. This is not actually that surprising an ability.
u/Kishoto [+1] (a day later)
I'm not saying she can't perceive each part. But based on what eaglejarl said, she has to CHOOSE to look into it. So while I'm sure she CAN choose to look into each single, perceivable ping of knowledge she receives, I'm sure she doesn't, as most of it is trivial. So, unless she can passively* discern the scale of importance of these pings, it's still all just white noise, unless she does choose to perceive each single ping of knowledge. At least as far as I understand her nature to function.
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (a day later)
Now you are assuming that she can only choose to think about one thing at a time, simply because humans can only think about one thing at a time.
There is an inherent assumption that in choosing one thing, she must fail to choose another because her attention is sufficiently limited.
There might be a limit, and it could lie anywhere between "1" and "all", and might in fact be "within X range". I seem to remember a line...
Remote Sensing. a Greater Deity can perceive fully at least 20 different locations at once, in a radius each of !DivineRank Miles with perfect clarity.
So Greater Dieties of Rank 20 for example can necessarily perceive at the very least 20 spheres with a radius of 20 miles each (33510 cubic miles x 20 = 670,200 mi^3) with perfect sensory clarity simultaneously.
u/Kishoto [+1] (2 days later)
I'm not saying she can't multitask and think of many things at one time. Basically, what I AM assuming is that she chooses to NOT look at each individual piece of knowledge that spawns. While she, in theory, CAN do this, I don't think she has the processing power to stay sane and relatable to humans while doing it. Even accounting for her divine heritage, you're asking her to simultaneously process trillions of bits of new information per SECOND. EJ stated that
When a deity senses an event, it merely knows that the event is occurring and where it is
So, again, I say that, unless Herrun chooses to sit there and parse each individual ping of knowledge, the world appears to her as mostly white noise. I assume she'd want to actively parse each ping associated with her godly relatives, and maybe a few key areas of the world, but beyond that, I can't imagine she would bother to do it. Even gods have limits.
u/Kishoto [+1] (2 days later)
So it certainly is impossible to keep anything from her, based on what's here. If she's looking. What I'm trying to ascertain is that, if I, a common peasant in some backwoods corner of the world, started plotting against her, that knowledge wouldn't just pop up into her mind. Now, maybe if I associated with someone she was aware of, say a worshipper, or an enemy, maybe she could daisy chain her way to me. But she isn't passively aware of each individual piece of knowledge's contents. So I could do that and easily escape her notice, although I would assumedly get caught 20 weeks before I made a significant move, based on the way her power works.
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (19 hours later)
It's Portfolio Sense. Her mind is literally structured to take that into account, in the same way that Death can register the ending of hundreds of thousands of lives a second, yet still pick out any one of them and specify.
Also, it may not function on all thoughts, simply ones with meaning. I can think up a line of gobbledegook that has no semantic meaning, and with no stored information, I doubt it could be considered a 'secret' or 'knowledge'. Nor likely would a repeated thought trigger the sense twice.
Most general thoughts of most people likely wouldn't cross the threshold of 'knowledge' or 'secrets' I suspect.
u/Kishoto [+1] (2 days later)
Agreed. But as you said, Death can pick any one of them and get further information. He has to choose the individual death. It's not passive. Hence why, when the world is embroiled in death, the Flobovians could get away with a few things without Neklos being aware of it at the time.
u/notentirelyrandom [+1] (13 hours later)
Not liking Cairn in this chapter, but I guess I'm not supposed to.
The use of the cat was excellent, though.
u/Kishoto [+3] (15 hours later)
I knew it would be a polarizing chapter for people, but this is our first real look at him. Last chapter, all we got were a few wisecracks and some faux politeness. Suffice to say, he's a bit of a womanizer (Also, please note I'm trying to do this intelligently, so Unreliable Narrator may, or may not, be in full effect)
u/eaglejarl [+1] (20 hours later)
Oh, minor nit for you: it's "Time Stop", not "Stop Time".
EDIT: typo
u/Ozimandius [+1] (5 days later)
I found the seduction scene completely ridiculous and it took me right out of the story and into questioning the author. Maybe this approach would work on a woman who was looking for sex already, but the idea that an incredibly powerful woman with an agenda just melts and throws herself at any male with power is just silly.
The idea that someone could predict that putting on a show of their power would seduce a God who could read their thoughts and then have it come true makes the whole thing feel contrived and unbelievable.