The Order of the Stick

So then it doesn't adequately work as explanation for an apparently completely unseen phenomenon before hand?

What do you mean "looking" for new quiddities? That the Dark One is a different quiddity is apparently obvious to every god who sees him. There's no reason to think if other gods with different quiddities showed up it wouldn't also be obvious. There's nothing to look for.

The Western gods don't believe he's a differnet quiddity because most of them have never meet him in person, and think Tiamat is just lying about it.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2019 at 11:41:10 AM

If you don't look at the monsters, you don't see what's happening with the "monsters".

You don't need to look at the monsters; you look at any god the monsters end up raising. They know the Dark One is a different quiddity because he has a very obvious purple aura surrounding him. If anything else happened like that with any other god, in any other iteration of the worlds they've made, they would have noticed something like it.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2019 at 11:42:22 AM

To get a god, you probably need to build enough belief (the quidity pool) to focus into the shape of a god.

Different cultures seem to be the key to the colours.

Banjo is a case in point (Elan has a lot of imagination, plus made a focus straight away)... as is the Dark One (that was a lot of frustration and faith packed in one place). Who knows how many small gods of new population centres have formed here and there? How many make it long enough to start getting oomph enough to maybe get noticed and then maybe incorporated into existing pantheons, thus losing any newness they initially had (like the elven lot seem to have managed)?

How many independents can't even make it long enough to last to a break between worlds?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 22nd 2019 at 5:57:28 PM

Okay, if we're taking the Banjo thing seriously, I don't even know what we're talking about now.

All of those things, are questions the story has not asked to ponder on or even implied. At least not from where I'm reading.

It's very clear and plot -relevant that the Dark One is the first case like this, and I don't see a point in trying to go "Actually, he's not, you all just happened to miss all the other examples in the billions of years you've been doing this."

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2019 at 12:02:38 PM

Wait, I thought the implication or even outright explanation was that the Dark One has a unique quiddity because he reached godhood without the support of an existing pantheon. Banjo would have joined the northern pantheon and thus would have had a blue? quiddity.

Thor mentioned something about a sponsorship and how the Dark One ascended without one.

Banjo was created before the author even came up with the idea of quiddities, probably before he envisioned the Snarl. We may form our explanations for why he doesn't count as a fourth-color deity unlike the Dark One, but in the end, he just doesn't work well with the rest of the world and that's all there is to it.

Edit: Redacted because I misread something.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2019 at 12:47:49 PM

Elan is from a culture with an existing quidity.

However... Banjo has branched out. Well, Giggles has, at least — those two should technically still be linked (as should Banjulu, if that even managed a day's worth of collected imagination to get started). Who knows what colour they're acquiring these days (particularly as the Northern Pantheon declined to take one of them permanently)?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 22nd 2019 at 7:08:35 PM

I feel like we should bring up "How seriously are we supposed to take Banjo as a possible deity?" on the Broken Base clean-up thread.

The Northern Pantheon didn't refuse to take Banjo - one of their mortal representatives did and Odin and Thor were kinda unhappy about that.

Yeah it’s clearly established that the Dark One is the first belief concept to turn into a god without being sponsored by an existing pantheon.

Now yes it is possible that there have been other belief concepts in the past that didn’t make it to the god stage, but they couldn’t have been aided by other gods or missed by them.

I suspect that a big part of the Dark Ones rise is the length that this world has existed for, it takes time for independent cultures to form and for big cultural events to occurs that could create a great enough outpouring of belief to make a god.

Not to mention this is one of the longest lasting worlds ever.

Other possible assentions of a different quiddity probably couldn't get off the ground in previous worlds because the cultures involved just couldn't build up enough of the belief, let alone get the focus to channel it properly, in the often very brief time a particular world existed before the reset button was hit and different themes started being rolled out.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 23rd 2019 at 9:36:43 AM

It wouldn't be out of the question for new quiddity deities to have existed in previous worlds. That this is the longest-lasting world and the Dark One still wouldn't have any hope of making it to the next implies that any such past deities wouldn't have made it beyond their respective world.

However, the story has given us no reason to assume the existence of such a deity. It wouldn't be unthinkable if Rich declared that one existed, but the official story right now is that the Dark One is the first new quiddity ever.

As for Banjo: as noted earlier in this conversation, he wouldn't have been a new quiddity. He had divine sponsorship in the Northern Pantheon and therefore would have ascended with blue quiddity. Nothing about Banjo's near-rise to power directly contradicts the new lore.

Now it’s worth noting that Giggles has started to connect with a separate culture, the orc island doesn’t seem to be connected with any wider cultural group that’s represented by the existing pantheons.

Now for out of story reasons Giggles isn’t going to become a 5th pantheon, but I suspect that given enough time and influence over a slowly growing unrepresented group Giggles could get the power that a sufficiently large enough theological event could ascend him.

For a god to be created it seems like there needs to be a large group who build up a mass of divine energy though their actions, that group also has to have no existing outlet to feed that divine energy into, if enough energy is built up quickly it can basically crescendo into making a diety out of itself, but that takes a huge amount of energy over a short (on the divine scale) amount of time.

Nitpick; Banjo would have a Yellow Quiddity not Blue. Blue is the South color not the North.

Anyway I assume other Quidities are possible but the Dark One is definitely the first one. If he wasn't the other gods would have noticed at some point. I am curious about what colors are possible though. If the Orcs, for example, managed to deify Giggles would he also be Purple since he was uplifted by a monster race? Or is every new god unconnected to a previous pantheon getting a new color? Is it possible a deity could tap into the Green Quiddity that we know exists?

I doubt most other gods did notice... Or, at least, not enough of the more prominent, permanent ones.

Note how both Thor and Loki are convinced few other deities would take their word that the Dark One is rocking a true, not-a-mistake, independent purple. Any who have looked at the Dark One for even a short time should have seen that for themselves. And, Tiamat, Rat and Odin (when he's lucid) agree.

But, other gods weren't willing to see what this purple means. Because they genuinely don't think new quiddities are even possible with the rules they've been working with all this time. It's a mistake. Or a mix of existing properties. Or something minor. Resets fix bugs like this.

Which begs the question: how many times has a god tried to get the group to see a new colour they've noticed, just to be shot down and unable to convince anybody else to look properly at it before it fizzled out due to the power issues?

Odin seems to be recovering from something akin to what Hel is going through... But, what if the reason he got hit with the reduced belief stick is because he got sidelined by other gods in an earlier World for poking at quiddity questions?

Which would go further to explain both Thor and Loki being on the same page now: they feel extra guilty for messing up before by not listening back then, too.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 23rd 2019 at 1:49:44 PM

I doubt a new Quiddity has ever existed. Thor makes it very clear that this is the first time he's ever heard of such a thing. It's not like he sees the Dark One and suddenly thinks back to that time Loki was telling him about some guy with an Orange Quiddity a few thousand worlds back.

Yeah — he hadn't heard. Doesn't mean nobody mentioned it to others. Or that an emergent deity didn't actually have something new... Just to go *poof* before they could be taken seriously by the community.

Odin knows something (well, yeah — that's his portfolio, but I mean about this particular issue). In short, if anybody has seen and noticed, it'll be a god like him.

Who almost nobody will listen to, now.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 23rd 2019 at 2:12:53 PM

Other people seeing it before would remind them of previous times and raise the credibility.

Yes-no; if you get told that so-and-so had an idea about something that's got to be bogus because that's not how reality works, but you get no details and don't really look into it to find any because you already have a pressing To Do list a mile high... That's all you get to know about whatever that fluff was about.

Or if, say, a scrambled relative talks about what sounds like a mashed-up conglomeration of theories for world building that were held once and which make no sense now because... Well, they're not all there and many of those theories didn't pan out, so...

Yeah. You've not heard about any other quiddity before. Except... you might have. Without knowing or caring that you did — until it hits you that you maybe might have, perhaps. But, you can't get more info because you can't go back and kick yourself for not asking more questions at the time when you might have been able to get answers.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 23rd 2019 at 4:25:46 PM

Thor has a good enough memory to remember every single world they've ever created and every follower. I think he'd remember someone mentioning a new quiddity before.

That's my point.

He remembers stuff. But maybe doesn't have the context to realise what it is he remembers.

If nobody said the word "quiddity" about something, or didn't describe it in a way that connects the dots to being about such... How is he supposed to find those miscategorised memories?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 23rd 2019 at 4:34:21 PM

He's a God. With a capital G. He doesn't have mortal limitations. If he says he remembers every single thing he has ever seen in the eternity he's lived, I see no reason not to take him at his word.