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  • What separates Atticus from the Tuatha Dé Danann? Atticus has stated they were originally regular druids before people started worshipping them as gods. They use the same magic as Atticus with the only difference being some of them know things he does not just like he knows things they do not. They use a drink to live forever just like him. If they originanited on Earth then at some point they migrated to Tír na nÓg like he could. Aside from being older and worshipped at some point, is there anything that really makes them different? If Atticus were ever to be worshipped by enough people, would that make him a god?
    • Probably, though Mannan Mac Lir seems to suggest they've got extra juice from the Earth.
    • They are druids from the age before Atticus was born. It seems being worshipped gave them extra power as Atticus implies them to be stronger than him, and that they could kill him if he didn't have his amulet. It also seems that they gained extra power over what they were worshipped for. As in, The Morrigan is the chooser of the slain because that is what she was worshipped as. Also, we are seeing them in the wrong age. When they were actively worshipped, they would have been much, much stronger. How we see them at the time of the books is their strength when they are barely remembered and have one true priest left.

  • Why did Atticus participate in the battle against Thor? He said it was because he gave his word, but his promised only to transport the party to Asgard. Thor had never done anything personally to him. Three of the party he had just met and owed nothing too. Leif had not been completely honest and admitted to having done horrible things over his life. Plenty of other gods have been massive jerks and Atticus leaves them be. The Morrigan, prime example, gave him a way out to fulfill his vow and not get involved. He stated to her he did not intend to kill all of the Aesir only Thor. By his own admission he has for the greater part of his life avoided whenever possible situations like this unless he was forced into it or it involved defending the Earth. So why was he so dead set on trying to kill Thor in such a way that it would involve a major battle against most of the Aesir?
    • Don't know if you've noticed, but Atticus isn't exactly the poster child for making good decisions.
      • For me the issue is the first and second books go over and over again how Atticus does not stick his neck out unless it is for the Earth or he really cares for someone. If he can avoid a dangerous battle he does. Neither Leif or Gunner struck me as being close friends of his. The Morrigan gave him a perfectly acceptable way out. I guess that is why I consider Hammered to be one of the worst books I have ever read. It reads like Hearne had a story he wanted to tell regardless of how much sense it make within the universe he had built. Hammered is the worst at it, but the other books shared the same problem.

  • Why was Thor such a massive jerk to put it mildly? In a universe where belief has a very strong effect on shaping gods why was Thor so anti-heroic even a thousand years ago when he was still venerated as a hero? The excuse given is he is an embodiment of turbulent weather and is too weak willed to control it. Why then is Perun so friendly?
    • According to Hearne, Thor is a jerk because he's a jerk. It's just the kind of guy he is. Doesn't mean he's not ALSO a heroic defender of man, we just never see that side of him. Not really sure how much I believe it but there it is. Presumably Perun is the same way, though I can easily imagine at least some of it comes from Perun being more humble than Thor, due to more humbling experiences. Going from Top God to a documentary where some guy asks "Who was he?" in a dramatic voice.
      • If I have to choose between Word of God and what is written I go with what is written even if it contradicts Word of God. In a fantasy universe full of Jerkass Gods for one to stand out as much as Thor does with no one saying one good thing about him I do not buy that he was a heroic defender of humanity at all. Thor here strikes me as one of those guys who is a complete a-hole to everyone, but you put up with him because he is powerful. I figure Odin held something over Thor or maybe it was the Norns limiting Thor that may have kept most of his Jerkass tendencies focused on outsiders instead of his own group of gods or kept him from killing Odin whenever Odin might have stepped in. That and how even back in Leif's time Thor was thought of as a hero which in theory should have helped shaped his behavior, but apparently didn't is an issue for me.
    • The fact that there are apparently quite a few Thors running around may have impact on it. Thor is described as the strongest and original Thor, but far from the only Thor. It's possibly that he's not even the Thor Lief was actually worshipping - he might be an older, more Bronze Age version of the thunder god.
    • When Thor reappears from Valhalla, essentially rebooted by his death in Ragnarok, he thanks Atticus for killing the previous him because he'd picked up so much Jerkass baggage. So, perhaps he just became more of a jerk over time. It's also possibly down to timing: most of the incidents targeting the Thor Revenge squad happened around the time of the Christianisation of Europe. Väinämöinen was on the move explicitly because his people had turned Christian, Perun's slight was explicitly about the time the Eddas were being written, both around the 13th century, Leif is about 1000 years old (with Scandinavia in the midst of Christianisation), and Thor and Zhang Guo Lao communicated in Russian - going by the by then Christian Kievan Rus' expansion, that was probably about the same time, if not later. Then there was Gunnar, who was later than all of them. During that time period, the Norse Gods were being actively demonised by the Church, and as one of the most prominent gods, Thor would have been a particular target, while simultaneously being remembered as a defender of humanity thanks to the likes of the Eddas. Hence, Jerkass.

  • Just something that bothers me: while there's a lot less active worship going on, the gods may actually be getting MORE 'worship' in the modern day. Think about it, back in their age, the population was a lot lower, and they don't need actual worship to gain power from it, only to be thought about. While far fewer people are running around beheading cows for the gods, there are still a LOT of people who have at least heard of them and read stories about then, and look at statues of them... even if they aren't stronger now, thanks to this glorious new thing called 'Wikipedia', they won't be forgotten any time soon, so their power should be slowly growing...
    • For gods, being remembered is not enough. That only keeps them from completely fading and is remembered enough can continue to exist in their divine realms. To manifest on Earth or grow in power requires direct worship. That is in short supply in modern times.

  • The Tuatha De Danann are gods now because they were worshiped for centuries, leading on to millennia. And as we all know, in this universe, gods are powered by worship. BUT, what would happen to them if they were totally forgotten? Hell, what happens to the other gods? Do they simply... fade? And even if the others pantheons do, the Tuatha were human, once. And Atticuw made it clear that it takes more than a mortal lifetime of worship to accumulate divine power, so they were almost certainly immortal before... so, what? Do they go back to being 'mere' immortal druids? Would they be freed from the Chains of Faith and retain their divinity, albeit at diminished power? Or would they simply die off?
    • In Hunted we hear about the Wendish gods, whom nobody worships anymore because the Wendish people have all but died out. These gods still exist, though they are much weaker than the Tuatha De Danann, who at least have some worshipers left. So, they stay gods, they don't lose the status and, more importantly, as Shattered tells us, they cannot come back from their own afterlife if nobody is left to believe they can.
    • Thanks. Important note though: the Tuatha De Danann are a horrible standard for a god's level of power based on their level of worship. They have access to the nigh-limitless power of Gaea as well as their divinity. They're druids as well as gods. Kinda messes that up.

  • Is Perun immune to iron? His fulgurites only protect you if they're in contact with skin somewhere - placing it right in the middle of Atticus's magic-eating iron aura. Yet we've seen him use the fulgurites multiple times. Either the author forgot about that or the fulgurites are somehow exempt from the aura. I don't remember Atticus somehow changing his aura to make the fulgurite immune, so the answer must be in the fulgurites. I can think of three logical explanations: Perun is somehow immune to iron (Chekhov's Gun), he used some for of special method that made them immune while making them, and he just used enough power to overpower the iron, like the Norns proved was possible. The thing is, the Norns are three goddesses who reign over fate, in a much more famous pantheon. And it still seemed to take them some time to pierce his aura, and they only did so minutely. Perun having that much power to spare seems unlikely to me. Him using a special method seems a bit more likely, maybe something like what Loki did to Granuaile later, but that might not have worked on an iron aura. So... what? Is Perun simply immune for some reason? Is it because he's a weaponry god? A thunder god? Just that awesome? Does he have a deal with an iron elemental or something(which seems fairly possible to me: "You Ferris, I'll throw you half my magic monthly and in exchange you'll not eat it any other time and tell your friends to do the same, k?" /Yes/Gratitude/)?
    • Hearne is at times inconsistent if not outright contradictory in his writing when it suits him. Iron is supposed to negate magic and working the two together is next to impossible with Atticus' discovering how to mix the two making him so dangerous. Yet somehow magic iron weapons like Atticus' sword or Thor's hammer exist. So I chalk it up to writer error.
    • The pre-existence of iron magic weapons would seem to indicate that Atticus didn't invent iron magic so much as re-discover it / develop it independently. As to how Perun's fulgurites interact with Atticus' aura, I don't know why that's even in question. Atticus can use magic, and magic items as much as he pleases, so clearly he has a way to choose which magic he interacts with gets negated by iron and which doesn't. Perun doesn't enter into the equation beyond crafting the fulgurite in the first place.
  • Not much of a Headscratcher, but do we have any idea how powerful the gods really were during the height of their power? Because currently, most of them seem like they're 3s on the Super Weight scale, though to be fair we haven't seen much too god action outside the Aesir(who are capable of dying and fight more with weaponry than magic), Tuatha De Dannan(who are very much not normal gods), and the Huntresses - whom were forbidden to actually cut loose at the time. And Bacchus, the "weak echo of Dionysus". However, its constantly stressed that they are much weaker than they once were, which begs the question: how strong were they? 4s? 5s?
    • No idea. The Tuatha don't work because they can to some degree draw upon the Earth for power. Jesus is a poor example because he has more followers than any god in history. We also don't know how power is divided up. There are a half a dozen or so Coyotes running around based on tribe. So if you worship Coyote is the power divide up between them evenly or does it go only to the Coyote you specify. What does it take to create multiple copies of a god? Is there a Catholic Jesus, Baptist Jesus, and Mexican Jesus running around? Aside from presumably being more powerful we don't know anything else.

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