I just woke up from a dream where I had to deal with Deathmaster Snikch. For some reason he was mouse-sized, yet still a deadly assassin with that green blade of his.
I had spent most of the day in bed before deciding to go to the cinema with a friend of mine and some random older dude who was apparently from my village. Then I find out that (under circumstances I don't remember after waking up) my friend had acquired Snikch (or just his knife? dream logic alternated between the two) bound into a pocket-knife like contraption. I took it from him my friend and either woke Snikch up or called him on the phone (I think it alternated between the two) to negotiate his freedom/the return of his knife in a way that wouldn't end up with everyone involved having their throats slit with poisoned knifes. So for some reason I had this whole long spiel where I compared Skaven childhood with Human childhood using only impressions and emotions, starting with the warmth and softness of the womb that both experience (warm and soft are apparently the closest words Skaven have to the emotion "love" according to my dream wisdom). I think I am trying to turn him to the good side at this point? At the end Snikch isn't all that impressed, but at least he isn't angry anymore. By this time I either managed to free him in a way that made sure he isn't close to me or someone I know (I think I dropped him on a boat?) or I dropped his knife somewhere he can get it. I pivot and ask him what I can pay him to not be assassinated. He says "it depends". "Well, what does that mean" I reply and he explains that it changes based on how much someone that wants me dead would pay and who that contractor was. I am worried that he'd kill me on his own initiative, but he says he wouldn't do much more than tell me to go fuck myself if he encountered me at random. I don't quite believe him and ask that surely there must be a general price tag to prevent random murder. He trolls me by by acting like he forgot, but each time instead of telling me a number he plays back garbled backwards sound from the phone. And then he breaks the fourth wall by saying that he also wants a Marvel Movie where he chooses which Marvel heroes are in it because, *wink wink* that's already organized, coming soon to cinemas near you. I sigh, apparently being a Marvel movie actor now and try to tell him that if anyone wants to assassinate me he should let me bid against it. Before I can I wake up. Other stuff happened before and in between all this, but I don't remember the details and it wasn't really relevant to Snikch.
Yeah. Dreams and stuff. I don't know if this was the right place to post this, but I couldn't think of a better one.
So, I wonder, if the foe keeps killing your magicked up dragons, what's the rate at which the monolith could pump them out if you went all in on sacrificing and drinking as fast as possible, plus whatever other magic you can spin into it.
Now i'm trying to imagine what a serious, peer siege of K8P would look like, with them throwing burning firey darkness, gigantic amounts of cannon, and every few days or hours another dragon at you. What do you even need to bring to crack that?
Re-reading our conversation with Cython on divinities having children for the millionth time, and I'm still trying to figure out what they could mean when they talk about having an explanation for Shallya and Myrmidia's parentage if we assume the Classical Gods are Cadai, and I noticed something that I'm kind of embarrassed for only noticing now. When giving example of elven Gods having children, Cython fails to mention Lileath, who in canon is said to be Isha'd daughter:
"Of the Elves, the Ellinilli are easily the most numerous, even after Their culling. And then there is Nethu, born of a dalliance between Asuryan and Ereth Khial. Already we have a strong contrast, as Ellinill sired a hundred alone, budding them off from his individual facets, while Nethu's origin is very biological for beings lacking in flesh."
Much later I asked Boney about Lileath, and if Lileath is believed to be Isha's daughter in quest-canon then Mathilde is unaware of it. What is known to Mathilde, however, is that She is part of a triumvirate with Isha and Morai-Heg.
She's part of a triumvirate with Isha and Morai-heg, as with Lileath being Goddess of fortune, Isha of the natural order and Morai-heg of fate, between the three of them they're supposedly able to achieve perfect foresight
Canon was apparently not clear on whether Isha is Lileath's mother or the other way around, and it seems that Boney has settled on "neither", at least as far as public knowledge goes.
Cython told us their take on the Classical pantehon: Morr, Shallya, and Verena are Morai-Heg, Isha, and Hoeth respectively, and Myrmidia is "a novel addition" so possibly not a God known to the elves at all. Therefore, I believe Cython might be thinking that Shallya being Morr's daughter is human misunderstanding of the triumvirate relationship of Morai-Heg and Isha, or alternatively the Gods presenting this relationship to the humans in a way they can understand. It's easy to misunderstand the Maiden-Mother-Crone relationship as a daughter-mother-grandmother relationship, and so believe that Morr should be Shallya's father. I think Cython's comment on how this thing is an extension of metaphorical parentage fits this reasonably well:
To me this can only be an extension of parentage as metaphor, either from the Gods themselves or from mere mortal theologians stumbling across poetry too beguiling not to incorporate.
While the elves have a story of divine asexual reproduction (Elinill and the Elinilli) humanity has no such myth and so would expect a child to have two parents. Verena being Shallya's mother might just be a matter of picking the major female Goddess that fits best - it was either Her or Myrmidia. It's not completely obvious why Verena is a better fit than Myrmidia: Myrmidia is also said to be a daughter of Morr, which of course rules Her out as a possible mother, but it's still not entirely clear why Myrmidia is said to be Verena and Morr's daughter. I would love to know what Cython thinks Myrmidia even is.
Notably absent from this analysis is Lileath. Perhaps humanity mistaked Lileath and Isha for the same being; some of the domains attributed to Shallya are a good fit for Lileath, so this makes some amount of sense.
One last point. I'm actually not being accurate when I say humanity has no story of divine asexual reproduction. Humanity does have such a myth - in the Ulrican story "Lord Ulric and the Making of the World", the one that has the Gods fighting Chaos and Ranald running away and all that, Shallya is born to a single parent. Bizzarely, that parent is Verena rather than Morr, with Shallya being born out of Verena's tears. Morr and Verena are implied to be married in the same myth, so you could interpret this as Verena being Shallya's "biological" mother and Morr being Her adoptive father, which is entirely backwards to the theory I offer above. In all likelihood Cython is not aware of this myth at all, so I'm confident ignoring it when attempting to suss out what they are thinking, but I wonder what they would make of it.
I have been staring at the Pantheonic Mandalas way, way too much, and I can't tell if the authors were trying to hint at some deep truths with some of the things they did with the runes of the Gods or if they just made them slightly wrong as some sort of sick joke.
I have some questions to any and all loremasters who are present in the thread, especially anyone who has access to source books with information on elven religion.
I understand that the Cadai-Cytharai division is fairly new. Does it predate the pantheonic mandalas as they appear in the wiki?
Can someone please confirm that Loec and Ladrielle are Cadai?
Is there any information on Eldrazor beyond what's in His wiki page?
Are the pictures of Eltharin runes that appear in the wiki all that was published, or are some runes missing?
How does the mandala say Ladrielle is Cadai? She's in the Asur's outer ring (and in the Druchii's inner ring).
I suppose being patron Goddess Yvresse is kind of indicative of Her being Cadai.
I have been staring at the Pantheonic Mandalas way, way too much, and I can't tell if the authors were trying to hint at some deep truths with some of the things they did with the runes of the Gods or if they just made them slightly wrong as some sort of sick joke.
I have some questions to any and all loremasters who are present in the thread, especially anyone who has access to source books with information on elven religion.
I understand that the Cadai-Cytharai division is fairly new. Does it predate the pantheonic mandalas as they appear in the wiki?
Can someone please confirm that Loec and Ladrielle are Cadai?
Is there any information on Eldrazor beyond what's in His wiki page?
Are the pictures of Eltharin runes that appear in the wiki all that was published, or are some runes missing?
IIRC the Mandala and the Cytharai/Cadai split was made by the same guy, Matt Ward, in 6th Edition and beyond. It was a massive restructuring of the divine lore of the Elves. The general distinction between Cadai and Cytharai is whether they're in Mirai (Black Pit or Underworld) or whether they're in heaven. Morai Heg is the only one who I'm unsure of her position, as she seems to fluctuate if not unaligned.
Far as I know, Loec and Ladrielle are mentioned in the High Elves book as positive gods. Mathlann is venerated by the Asur of Cothique and Eataine, but the rest of the Asur look at him askance because he's Cytharai. The same blurb isn't used to refer to Ladrielle and Loec, so I assume they're Cadai.
The Eltharin runes in the wiki is all that I use. There is probably more runes if you go looking for stray ones in source material from novels to 4th Edition books and even to Age of Sigmar Books. For example, there is this:
Senlui, Senthoi, Ylvan, and Yngra are old runes from WHF, but Ydriliqi, Alaithi, Oreali and Thalari are new to Age of Sigmar, representing the Four Elements of Hysh in AoS. Obviously, this is beyond dubiously canon, but that's where my brain's at so, y'know.
Sorry for the double post, but I was watching Loremaster of Sotek's interview with Andy Law and I felt genuine pain when I heard Andy Law, Warhammer OG who did a whole bunch of writing and wrote a good portion of Tome of Salvation, straight up saying that he had to cut out 15,000 words from the book because GW didn't want to be bound by the lore he made on the cosmology of the setting. This portion also included sections on how the Dwarves made their calendar.
I also felt super bad because he also lost about a million words in a mid-2000s hard drive crash. Also lost 250 maps, of which 120 or so were published. This man had the Warhammer Library of Alexandria in his hard drive. Either way, there's something so odd yet bittersweet seeing Andy Law talking about his creations. I didn't know this, but he's the guy who made the entire star system for WFRP, which is relevant because Dragomas is named after one of those constellations.
Cython
What first motivated me to set off on this ill-conceived journey was a comment made by Mathilde during the investigation of the Cult of Karnos. In the course of that investigation Mathilde described the Rune of Kurnous:
"Yes, that definitely looks like a scythe," you say, frowning at it. "And even blood dripping off it, if that's what you're looking for. But that's Eltharin, really badly-drawn Eltharin. It could be Verdan, or Volroth..." you turn it over. "Or Drathro, if they have it backwards." You flip through the pages. "And that could be Kurn-ath... so if we assume that first one was Verdan..." you flip through the rest. "That's it? No Cadai? That five-pointed crowny-looking one?"
"That's all the ones they were using."
"Verdan, Kurn-ath, but not Cadai..." Two of the three parts of the sigil of Kurnous, Elven God of the Hunt.
This description of the rune of Kurnous made me want to look into the runes of the the other elven Gods. The way the runes of the elven Gods work is by combining several runes in Eltharin (I think the idea is that most elven words work that way). Combining runes isn't as simple as superimposing them on one another; the runes seem to change their shape when combined, as is typical of cursive writing. In general I can find at most one canonical rune in most God runes, and there are enough extra lines in most symbols that it's easy to believe there's another rune or two hiding in there. In addition, there's a symbol that appears in every rune in the mandala, and presumably denotes Godhood itself (or maybe it's just the rune that says "this is a proper noun" or something of the sort, who knows): at the top of each symbol is an oval, its long side horizontal, with a line going out of its center (usually) and all the way to the bottom of the rune (usually).
Going back to the rune of Kurnous and the Mathilde quote, it's pretty easy to spot Kurn-ath in it if you know what you're looking for. Boney is taking some artistic liberty in saying that Verdan is in there - even if I squint really hard, there's nothing resembling Verdan in the canonical sigil of Kurnous. As for the third rune, as far as I know canon does not define the "five-pointed crowny-looking one" as the rune of the Cadai, but if you look at the Asur's Pantheonic Mandala you will indeed see that rune above the head of the runes in the inner two rings which does indeed look a lot like a five pointed crown. Boney has decided to interpret this as the Rune of the Cadai, which is a perfectly sensible interpretation.
Like most attempts to make sense of the pantheonic mandala, it only mostly works.
All I wanted to do was understand what the symbols at the heads of the runes mean. This seemed like a fairly modest goal, you know? There's pretty much just two symbols, one for the inner ring and one for the outer ring. It probably just means Cadai and Cythrai, since in the Asur's mandala this division is mostly identical to the division of the inner and outer ring. There are a few exceptions, sure, a few weird edge cases, but I'm sure they all make sense if you think about them. Right?
Drome
The basic rules for the symbol at the head of the runes seems to be the following:
-In the outer ring, the sigils have little devil horns
-In the inner ring, the sigils have five-pointed crowns
-At the very center, Asuryan has a five-pointed crown, and also five dots above the crown, one over each point
There are a number of exceptions to those rules. Starting from the center and working our way out, there are a few minor inconsistencies in the inner ring: Vaul has a horizontal line going through his head Isha has a single point above her crown Hoeth has five points above his head
But these are all relatively minor differences in comparison to the last one, which is Mathlann has nothing above his head. No crown, no horns.
My attention was immediately caught by Mathlann's sigil. It actually makes perfect sense that it would be different - after all, Mathlann is the only God in the inner ring which is Cythrai. A bit odd that Mathlann doesn't have the Cythrai symbol, but there has to be a reason for that, and after a moment's thought I realized that this must be because Mathlann is an Elinilli. Sure enough, when I turned my eyes to the outer ring I found the same blank head on other runes, specifically on the runes of Estreuth, Hukon, Elinill himself and...Eldrazor. What?
There are two more inconsistencies in the outer ring: Addaioth doesn't have a crown or horns but he does have three lines which look a bit like sparks above his head (and two more lines near the base of his head) Ladrielle has horns, but instead of an oval head she has a semioval head
Finally, there are sigils that stand out for not standing out. Drakira just has the regular horns despite being an Elinilli Morai-heg has the regular horns despite supposedly being neither Cadai nor Cythrai
I believe that exceptions to the rules should themselves be expected; these are words in a language, and any language has many exceptions to its rules. Thinking about it, I quickly found an explanation for some - but not all - of those exceptions. I said at the start that there's a line coming out of the oval and down to the bottom of the rune, but in many cases this line is cut somewhere before reaching the bottom, or it curls at the end. While most runes seem to just add elements on or around that line, some modify it directly. It's impossible to know for sure which runes act in which way - figuring out exceptions to grammatical rules from two dozen examples is an impossible task even in a non-invented langauge - but once we note a break in the rules we can make some reasonable guesses as to why it happened.
Avalu, the rune for the mark of Vaul, has at its top an oval with a horizontal line going through it. The sigil of Vaul doesn't have two ovals in it, so we can postulate that the oval in this sigil serves both its normal role and as a part of Avalu, which explains the horizontal line.
Something similar might be happening with Addaioth. In this case the rune responsible is Varinor, which seems like a rune you would expect to find in the sigil of a combative fire God. That rune has three sparks coming out of the top, so we can postulate that the sparks above the sigils head are due to that rune. If this is true, Addaioth "should" have a blank head, which is fitting for an Elinilli. Ladrielle is a bit more puzzling. Isalt, the mark of Ladrielle, has an oval at the top which seems to have different proportions than the oval in the God sigils. Maybe when you combine two differently shaped ovals you get a semioval for some reason? Or maybe Ladrielle is different because she's the only Cadai in the outer ring?
This still doesn't explain what's up with the dots above Hoeth and Isha, and it definitely doesn't explain what's up with Eldrazor and Drakira. But so far I have limited myself to only one pantheonic mandala, that of the high elves. It's a sensible starting point, since we only have pictures for a decent number of Tar-Eltharin runes, but perhaps there's something to be learned in the other two mandalas?
When comparing God sigils between different mandalas it's easy to see that the runes are mostly identical, except that Druhir runes are more angular and Fan-Eltharin runes are more...wavy? What does change drastically between tha mandalas is the symbols at the head of the runes. In all three mandalas there's one symbol for inner Gods and one for outer Gods (with exceptions, of course) and different mandalas put different Gods in the rings. Therefore, I thought to myself, there might be a way to confirm my theory regarding Vaul, Addaioth, and Ladrielle. If the inconsistencies that were present in the Asur's mandala are still present in the other mandalas, even when that sigil is in a different ring, those inconsistencies are probably due to the runes incorporated in the sigil. If not, perhaps those inconsistencies have something to do with their placement in their rings.
Sure enough, Vaul has a horizontal line going through it in all mandalas. Addaioth has sparks above its head only in the dark elf mandala, but in the wood elf mandala it still has sparks around the base and in that mandala Addaioth has a crown so maybe there just wasn't place for the top sparks. A decent start! Perhaps there's hope yet. Surely this will all make sense in the end.
Kindra
In the Asari pantheonic mandala heads are sort of oval spirals. The inner sigils have a four-branched crown above their heads, the outer sigils have unadorned heads. The exceptions are:
In the inner ring, Lileath and Hekarti don't have crowns of branches but instead have some sort of vaguely crown-shaped pile of three polygons which I think are diamonds but honestly it's too small to tell.
In the outer ring: Vaul has a line going through its head (though that ilne seems to be cut in half, but let's not quibble) Ladrielle has a semioval spiral for a head
In the Druchii pantheonic mandala heads are sometimes diamonds and sometimes stretched pentagons. The inner sigils are pentagons with horns, with Khaine at the center instead being a diamond with horns. The outer ring has unadorned diamonds and pentagons. The exceptions are: Morai-Heg in the inner ring has some sort of tiny-trident-inside-huge-horns thing going on for a head, no pentagon or diamond at all. Lileath in the outer ring has a crescent within a crescent for a head, and also the outer crescent has horns Addaioth has sparks above its head Vaul has a line going through its head
As mentioned before, some sigils have diamonds and some have pentagons. In the outer ring, the division is:
Diamonds: Nethu, Mathlann, Estreuth, Kurnous, Hoeth
Pentagons: Addaioth, Eldrazor, Asuryan, Vaul, Loec, Isha, Ellinill
Dear reader, I want you to take a moment and digest what you just read. Go over the descriptions of the mandalas, ideally with pictures of the mandalas themselves in front of you. I want you to really take it in and fully appreciate the pantheonic mandalas for the complete fucking bullshit that they are.
Vaul and Addaioth make sense, barely, but everything else is a fucking mess. Ladrielle almost got explained away in the same way but then the Druchii had to ruin it by making her sigil normal. None of this is any help with explaining what's up with Hoeth and Isha in the Asur mandala, nor does it help with the Elinilli/Eldrazor thing. Instead, we now also have weirdness around Lileath in two out of three mandalas, and Hekarti and Morai-Heg in one mandala, and if there is any rhyme or reason behind the diamond/pentagon divide in the Druchii mandala it is completely beyond me.
It occured to me that some of the strangeness around the Lileath and Ladrielle sigils might have meant to be foreshadowing for the Lileath=Ladrielle twist. Does that make any sense? Since the heads of the sigil differ so drastically between mandalas while the rest of the sigils mostly sort of mantain their shape I think we can assume that this part of the sigil is more cultural, as opposed to the rest of the rune which might owe more to the DEEP TRUTH of the Old One script, so I actually don't think it makes much sense. Or perhaps when the sigils were being written those doing the writing knew something that the general public doesn't. Perhaps the other exceptions hint at some other twists that never got written when it came time to write the End Times. Perhaps the writers are a bunch of hacks and I have been wasting my time.
Kenui
I just can't bring myself to dismiss the pantheonic mandalas. It's obvious a lot of work has been put into this thing. Someone set down and drew twenty two beautiful intricate shapes, at least some of which obviously incorporate Eltharin runes. The Druchii and Asrai mandalas perhaps required slightly less creativity, since the basis of the sigils there was "take the originals and make them angular/wavy", but if the writers were being maximally lazy when drawing those mandalas we wouldn't have all those changes from the original sigils like Hekarti's rune in the Asrai mandala and Lileath's rune in the Druchii mandala.
Maybe the five points above Hoeth's crown are saying something about Hoeth's importance to the Asur, which is comparable to Asuryan's, and likewise with the single point above Isha. Maybe. This still leaves Eldrazor, Drakira and the Elinilli, and I can't help but think that there might be something in there, some deeper meaning that's being hinted at.
Starting from Esteruth and going clockwise along the outer ring of the Asur Mandala, we have:
Esteruth, Addaioth, Eldrazor, Ellinill, Hukon, Drakira
An unbroken streak of Elinilli, two Ellinilli to the "left" of Ellinill, two to the "right", and His fifth son Mathlann "in front" of Him in the inner ring. Or at least that would be the case if not for that piece of shit Eldrazor inserting himself in the middle.
I am tempted to say that someone just got confused and mixed up the runes for Drakira and Eldrazor, but if that's the case then they made the same mistake in all three mandalas. And if it's not a mistake, what could it mean? Drakira is responsible for the slaughter of the Elinilli, which is kind of odd since she's an Elinilli Herself. Maybe that's a hint that she's not like Her siblings? What little information exists on Eldrazor says that he "constantly redefines [His] arena's bounds in the mortal realm"; is that a hint that Eldrazor walks the mortal world, just like the Elinilli? Why is there a unique symbol for Elinill and His children, but only in the Asur Mandala?
I don't have an answer to those questions. I am not sure such an answer even exists. But I can't help myself; like a sailor lost in mists, all I can do is keep sailing those unseen waters, and pray that I eventually reach safe shores.
Elui
the pantheonic mandalas fucking suck
the high elf mandala is like someone worked for fifty hours making a work of art and then got bored at the last five minutes and just splashed some paint on the canvas at random
the wood elf mandala is just the high elf mandala but with like two changes made for no reason
the dark elf mandala was purposely made bad, as a joke
Quite some time ago, I belatedly sat down to closely scrutinize the Pantheonic Mandala and try to wring meaning out of the similarities to existing runes and commonalities between them. It had been something I'd been kind of dreading because it was one of the last theological deep dives I did and by that point I'd built a pretty encompassing grand unified theological model from fragments of scraps of secrets hinted at in a hundred different books, and I was worried the mandalas would kick holes in it. But, weirdly enough, though I found all sorts of patterns and meanings, none of them contradicted what I had already built. All the meaningful inconsistencies already had very clear answers, perhaps by sheer chance, or - and perhaps I'm flattering myself - because all of those inconsistencies had actual underlying truths that had been hinted at elsewhere and I'd already worked it into the model. I doubt what I've come up with is the actual Secret Deep True Lore, but at this point I'm halfway convinced it's at least shaped very similarly.
The reason you think you're lost, @mathymancer, is because I haven't even started dropping plot hooks for half of the islands you just managed to plant a flag atop.
some artistic liberty in saying that Verdan is in there - even if I squint really hard, there's nothing resembling Verdan in the canonical sigil of Kurnous.
Minor comment, but there is a vastly simplified Verdan at the bottom right. It lacks the two spikes, and the curling line stays below the divider, but the vertical line intersects and the divider leads back into Kurn-ath. Looks close enough to me, assuming it's the mandala on this wiki.
Quite some time ago, I belatedly sat down to closely scrutinize the Pantheonic Mandala and try to wring meaning out of the similarities to existing runes and commonalities between them. It had been something I'd been kind of dreading because it was one of the last theological deep dives I did and by that point I'd built a pretty encompassing grand unified theological model from fragments of scraps of secrets hinted at in a hundred different books, and I was worried the mandalas would kick holes in it. But, weirdly enough, though I found all sorts of patterns and meanings, none of them contradicted what I had already built. All the meaningful inconsistencies already had very clear answers, perhaps by sheer chance, or - and perhaps I'm flattering myself - because all of those inconsistencies had actual underlying truths that had been hinted at elsewhere and I'd already worked it into the model. I doubt what I've come up with is the actual Secret Deep True Lore, but at this point I'm halfway convinced it's at least shaped very similarly.
The reason you think you're lost, @mathymancer, is because I haven't even started dropping plot hooks for half of the islands you just managed to plant a flag atop.
The reason you think you're lost, @mathymancer, is because I haven't even started dropping plot hooks for half of the islands you just managed to plant a flag atop.
Minor comment, but there is a vastly simplified Verdan at the bottom right. It lacks the two spikes, and the curling line stays below the divider, but the vertical line intersects and the divider leads back into Kurn-ath. Looks close enough to me, assuming it's the mandala on this wiki.
Once you allow yourself to ignore that many elements in the original rune it's hard to justify Verdan spcifically. You may as well say that its Yennla or Lacoi, for example.
The most you could argue is that Verdan makes sense in context - the rune of woodland fits the God of forests - but Yennla makes some thematic sense as well, and I could even justify Lacoi.
We can imagine that runes can get really simplifed when combined, and perhaps this says something about the importance of their meaning in the word or something, but without rules telling us how different runes gets simplified (which of course do not exist) we can't really draw any conclusions and can only make guesses. I think the only runes we can speak with any confidence about are the ones that are fairly close to their original shape.
The crowned gods are the gods the Asur are the "good" gods. The horned ones are the "bad" gods. The ones with no crown OR horns are generally neutral, mostly gods of natural disasters, with Eldrazor thrown in because he's the not good or evil god of duels.
Storms, drought, earthquake, disaster... None of these things are moral actors, simply things that happen.
Addaioth is crowned, I believe, because fire is associated with Asuryan and because he's is opposed his father the god of disaster as the only Ellinilli to fight rather than run, but he's not really good so he gets a lesser crown. He is not good, but opposed to a greater not good, and thus potentially good if he could ever overcome his own nature.
Because the Asur would rather burn than have the ultimate disaster befall Ulthuan - Chaos winning.
So you're saying that I should stare at the mandalas even harder? Got it.
(does anyone have a short synopsis of the hundreds of different books Boney read? 400 words or less please)
Once you allow yourself to ignore that many elements in the original rune it's hard to justify Verdan spcifically. You may as well say that its Yennla or Lacoi, for example.
The most you could argue is that Verdan makes sense in context - the rune of woodland fits the God of forests - but Yennla makes some thematic sense as well, and I could even justify Lacoi.
We can imagine that runes can get really simplifed when combined, and perhaps this says something about the importance of their meaning in the word or something, but without rules telling us how different runes gets simplified (which of course do not exist) we can't really draw any conclusions and can only make guesses. I think the only runes we can speak with any confidence about are the ones that are fairly close to their original shape.
I... can't really see where Lacoi's coming from, sorry. I understand what you mean, but all the elements of Verdan are there except for the spikes, and Lacoi's curl goes entirely in the wrong direction. Yennla *technically* works, but it's missing the dividing line that otherwise ties Verdan into Kurn-Ath. While I understand being cautious about deciding what fits as a simplified rune, for the purposes of this quest it explicitly does work like that. Verdan has its core three strokes in the mandala, and Mathilde notes Verdan, so we can assume some method of simplification that allows the distinction between the two.
I... can't really see where Lacoi's coming from, sorry. I understand what you mean, but all the elements of Verdan are there except for the spikes, and Lacoi's curl goes entirely in the wrong direction. Yennla *technically* works, but it's missing the dividing line that otherwise ties Verdan into Kurn-Ath. While I understand being cautious about deciding what fits as a simplified rune, for the purposes of this quest it explicitly does work like that. Verdan has its core three strokes in the mandala, and Mathilde notes Verdan, so we can assume some method of simplification that allows the distinction between the two.
That this is how it works in the quest goes without saying, I'm merely saying that this isn't something that's in the source material but an addition by Boney. It's something that doesn't necessarily contradict the source material, you can justify it - and you did! - but I don't think it's "really" there. Note that Mathilde's comments about Verdan actually mention dripping blood, so in the version of the rune Mathilde is looking at the spikes are present, which definitely isn't the case in the mandala.
Lacoi's curl goes in the wrong direction, but if moving the line in Verdan around is fair game why is changing the direction of the curl not? You could also achieve the shape in the mandala with the strokes of Volroth, which is unsuprising since Volroth and Verdan are very similar, as Mathilde herself notes in that same quote.
The crowned gods are the gods the Asur are the "good" gods. The horned ones are the "bad" gods. The ones with no crown OR horns are generally neutral, mostly gods of natural disasters, with Eldrazor thrown in because he's the not good or evil god of duels.
Storms, drought, earthquake, disaster... None of these things are moral actors, simply things that happen.
Addaioth is crowned, I believe, because fire is associated with Asuryan and because he's is opposed his father the god of disaster as the only Ellinilli to fight rather than run, but he's not really good so he gets a lesser crown. He is not good, but opposed to a greater not good, and thus potentially good if he could ever overcome his own nature.
Because the Asur would rather burn than have the ultimate disaster befall Ulthuan - Chaos winning.
This doesn't really line up with what's said about the Asur's beliefs, and I find it very hard to justify the idea that the Asur consider Elinill natural rather than evil but consider, for example, Atharti and Morai-Heg and Ladrielle evil.
Quite some time ago, I belatedly sat down to closely scrutinize the Pantheonic Mandala and try to wring meaning out of the similarities to existing runes and commonalities between them. It had been something I'd been kind of dreading because it was one of the last theological deep dives I did and by that point I'd built a pretty encompassing grand unified theological model from fragments of scraps of secrets hinted at in a hundred different books, and I was worried the mandalas would kick holes in it. But, weirdly enough, though I found all sorts of patterns and meanings, none of them contradicted what I had already built. All the meaningful inconsistencies already had very clear answers, perhaps by sheer chance, or - and perhaps I'm flattering myself - because all of those inconsistencies had actual underlying truths that had been hinted at elsewhere and I'd already worked it into the model. I doubt what I've come up with is the actual Secret Deep True Lore, but at this point I'm halfway convinced it's at least shaped very similarly.
The reason you think you're lost, @mathymancer, is because I haven't even started dropping plot hooks for half of the islands you just managed to plant a flag atop.
My main issue with the idea of Secret Deep True Warhammer Lore is that the company in charge just does not actually seem well-organized enough to pull it off. Like, if all the relevant works were written by the same small set of heads within a short timespan it could have existed as their own canon-headcanon, I guess, but anything that requires a proper knowledge-transfer through personnel changes or long stretches of time just kinda seems unrealistic for them.
Long version: there's a long running subplot buried in the background of Divided Loyalties that can be summed up as "the gods are weird", and many of us have been trying to decipher the clues Boney is carefully drip feeding us through Mathilde's interactions with the divine.
Understanding this subplot (or even just being aware of it) isn't necessary for enjoying the quest, and it'll probably never come up as a major plot point, only remaining a weird quirk of the world building that'll slowly drive those of us who notice it to insanity like a Lovecraftian deity.
I want to add a couple of more banal observations.
For one, there's the actual numbered order on the Pantheon Mandala. The positions and order of the outer gods change from mandala to mandala. Mostly it's just switching to free spots due to the different inner gods, but not always. Mathlann doesn't make the inner cut with the Asrai and the Druchii, but he only drops to 11th when the other demotions drop quite a bit further. The Asur put Estreuth before Eldrazor, while the Druchii do not. The Druchii also order the Cadai differently, putting Loec up to third, Isha after almost all other Cadai, and Lileath dead last below even Ellinil. The Asrai put both Morai-Heg and Ladrielle quite a bit higher than the Asur.
Strikingly, when you look at the positions of the symbols on the Asur Mandala instead of just whether they are inside or outside, you can see that all the ones that lack both Cadai crowns and Cytharai horns are all next to each other. They are the gods from position 17 to 21 with Mathlann sitting above 20 and 21 and Ladrielle's weird head being at 16. Drakira at the bottom has horns again, but is physically next to Khaine who also has horns.
If I take into account what I know about the culture of the various Elves, I feel like there's an additional pattern other than just outers and inners. Like, I found it very surprising that Mathlann was so low for the Druchii. But if you cut the Mandala in half based by numbered position then you get 11 more and 11 less important deities. Like that the Druchii still honor Nethu (son of the very important Ereth Khial), Addaioth (aggressive fire deity) and Mathlann (should be very important to corsairs). Similarly for the Asrai and Morai-Heg (exemplar of keeping contact with both sides), Vaul (who plays a major role for one faction in Total War) and Mathlann (generally not of minor import). Although I don't know what to make of the Asur under this model. Khaine is important to them, but why place Ereth Khial and Nethu over all other Cytharai?
Anyway. I don't know if any of the above is helpful. Also, I am curious if we will ever get to see what Cadai worship looks like among the Druchii. And why they shit on Lileath.
Quite some time ago, I belatedly sat down to closely scrutinize the Pantheonic Mandala and try to wring meaning out of the similarities to existing runes and commonalities between them. It had been something I'd been kind of dreading because it was one of the last theological deep dives I did and by that point I'd built a pretty encompassing grand unified theological model from fragments of scraps of secrets hinted at in a hundred different books, and I was worried the mandalas would kick holes in it. But, weirdly enough, though I found all sorts of patterns and meanings, none of them contradicted what I had already built. All the meaningful inconsistencies already had very clear answers, perhaps by sheer chance, or - and perhaps I'm flattering myself - because all of those inconsistencies had actual underlying truths that had been hinted at elsewhere and I'd already worked it into the model. I doubt what I've come up with is the actual Secret Deep True Lore, but at this point I'm halfway convinced it's at least shaped very similarly.
The reason you think you're lost, @mathymancer, is because I haven't even started dropping plot hooks for half of the islands you just managed to plant a flag atop.
I mean you too didn't start from zero and worked what's there into your own canon. So there's still yet hope for mathymancer. Even if only insofar he could arrive at his own grand unifying theory that, in the context of this Quest, would get him a "very cool and very plausible but dead wrong nonetheless". It would also give him a beautiful sledgehammer in any WHF discussions outside this Quest.
That could just be, uh, whatchimacallit... either pareidolia or confirmation bias or... what was the phrase, interpratio imperium? kicking in a bit. Once you've built up a theory, or set of theories, that feel good enough to explain things... it could start to feel less like a theory and more like the truth, or just like how things-make-sense-like-this. A convincing-enough-to-yourself theory could just mean that eventually when you start reading new information, you parse it through your gut-feel theory. You no longer start to find or feel holes being poked in your theory by new information, because you start interpreting new information through the lens of your theory, or start rejecting obviously-torpedoes-your-theory factoids or trivia as "Well, this obviously doesn't really fit" or "This doesn't work with what I have (and also it contradicts itself in like 3 different places because of course it does)", or you accept the occasional exception as just being an exception in your general rule.
Being fair, it's probably not a bad idea to build up "a general 'vibe' of the setting" until you feel like you have a handle on "So what exactly defines warhammer fantasy? What makes warhammer fantasy, warhammery-fantasy-y?" and then, once you've gotten the feel or the shape of it, just accrete or build up or expand on that foundation using factoids or lore or fan-theories or ideas or whatnot. Rejecting or accepting, or interpreting or ignoring, things as you go. It's almost inevitable or almost necessary really. Not just because there's been a lot of information built up over the years. But also because everybody's vision and interpretation and approach will differ. And because some people will just want to try something different just because.
(One possible theory for how or why you can get weird stuff in warhammer like how you have one book say that Ulric just used to be war and winter and took over the domain of wolves from some other god, and how you can have another source referring to Ulric as having always been a wolf? Well, it's possible it's a Doylist explanation. It's possible that Ulric was established as "the wolfy god of wolfiness right?" in the warhammer fandom for a long time, such that future writers would only remember him as the wolf guy, and so they, too, would run into "Ah yes, the obvious place to put in a mention of Chamon Elementals. Ah yes, the obvious place to put in a mention of an orrery that can predict Morrslieb's orbit. Ah yes, the obvious..." when they write an ancient story about Ulric and forget he wasn't supposed to be a wolf god yet.)
(Alternatively, you can apply interesting ways to try to solve such weirdnesses or contraditions. One way might be that Ulric was a wolf -- like an Old One creation as a celestial wolf being -- but he wasn't a god of wolves or a god over wolves, and had to wrest the domain of wolves away from some tribe's wolf god. Bam. "But Garlak, how could a divine being who is wolf shaped, not be a god of wolves?" "Well, presumably it's the same way that Morr, Myrmidia, Sigmar, etc, can all be human gods or gods-that-are-humans but not be 'the god of being a human'. Just because you're a wolf doesn't mean you're a god of wolves. Like how a human may not be a god of humans.")
(Or you can have the sources be wrong or mistaken, one way or another. Or you can go "Well, that source/story/myth doesn't exist in my version of the setting, I guess.")
(In this quest? It could be the case that long ago, Ulric "let go" or "loaned" or "leased" or something'd the domain of "god of wolves" -- hell, perhaps it was stolen by somebody! -- to a spirit, subordinate, child, or a formerly-mortal champion. And this god eventually turned against Ulric, or Ulric turned against him. And Ulric had to fight to get back "wolf" back.)
(Like Mathilde's conversation with Cython about Ellinill and the Ellinilli, and about the Empire and Marienburg and territory.)
(On another note, does anybody think the "Norsca, a broken prison" reference that Borek made might be referring to the Gods of Law? Some, or a few, who might have been recaptured or transferred to be imprisoned in Kislev instead? Or maybe it's unrelated; maybe Norsca just had some big scary godlings in there, while a god of law is trapped somewhere in Kislev. Or maybe that play about a lady trapped in a diamond coffin in Kislev is just that; a play. An in-universe story that eventually got followed up and expanded upon by writers to mean more than it is. Or to become connected to other deep lore stuff over time.)
(Or maybe Norsca was the prison of beings like Necoho, Malal, Zuvassin, etc. Or maybe beings like Angkor, who went on to roam in the Kurgan chaos wastes, before eventually being betrayed and trapped. Because why would you willingly be a god and stay near the chaos wastes where that shit can happen, instead of heading further south where the humans are less of a run-of-bad-luck away from turning to Chaos, unless you were a godling unpopular with other godlings. ... Or maybe Angkor stuck around in the far north because he had a duty and a job to do, an important job, and somebody had to stick around and be a bulwark against Chaos and to support humans against Chaos and keep them from falling to Chaos. Because if he left, then they surely would turn to Chaos.)
(Or maybe Norsca was where the Ellinilli were stored. Until Loec and/or Ranald... led them against Chaos, and got many of them killed, with a few coming back to settle in Kislev, and a few others wandering in the north like Angkor. Or something. Maybe the Ellinilli had nothing to do with Norsca. Though it did feel clever to combine the stories/mention of Loec and the Ellinilli, and Ranald and the Widow's fellow gods, in some kind of "... Maybe Ranald-and-or-Loec (or Ranald, a chosen or champion or subordinate or sub-spirit of Loec or...) convinced the Ellinilli to go fight on the front lines, partly as a real thing and partly as a trick or maybe it was a fake-it-till-you-make-it victory-needs-no-excuses situation except then a lot of people died and it wasn't much of a victory, and then wound up either going 'Oh shit, need to take care of the Hedge, just realized it's being invaded' or bailed on them and used an excuse, or something, or...")
(On another note, more theories; so, there's stories about Morr having been greatly wounded, right? And we learned that the Dwarfs severed the Glittering Realm from the Aethyr and turned it into their afterlife, into the Underearth. So... ... Well. The "Forge of Souls" that gets mentioned in warhammer fantasy sometimes comes to mind. The Forge of Souls is a thing. And the name is pretty evocative, no. What if "Morr/the afterlife got wounded" is related? What if back in the ancient past, the afterlife or the flow of souls was one of the things being fought over, and the battle was... inconclusive or a defeat or something? And the various gods had to step up and finagle solutions. Hence the Underearth and hence various afterlives. Because Chaos got the realm or machinery or tools or magics or places that were most applicable to modifying/capturing/whatever'ing souls; the Forge of Souls.)
(Another fun/wild-mass-guessing theory. So, remember me bringing up the prophecy of doom thing, about Nagash and Malekith, and linking it to Kislev, and going: "Hmm, I wonder if it's an after-echo formed by Be'lakor's shittyness? That, because the First of the Damned did something to, well, damn the world... it cemented that type of ur-betrayal as a ritual or an echo in the Aethyr."
Well, here's another possible or plausible theory; maybe Bretonnia is also somewhat at risk of that sort of thing, like the way Kislev is. That is. It was theorized that maybe there was something different or weird about the Waystones of Nehekhara -- one poster theorized that Nagash building and putting a big tap or top to his pyramid, did something to poison or change things -- and... well, one of my theory on what that might be, is that maybe before Nagash, you did have Gods being able to manipulate Winds directly, to some extent or in some way, but that after Nagash they couldn't anymore. (I don't quite think this is the case, but.) Anyway. Another land that seems to be a "land of the gods" might be Kislev. So... what if Bretonnia is also another land where the Waystone flows are governed by a divinity or something? If so, maybe that's why all the magic-capable male children wind up missing or something. Maybe the Lady picks them up in order to make sure none of them wind up pulling a Be'lakor/Malekith/Nagash. Or maybe she raises them all to be uber-grail-knights and to serve as a reserve force or something; I can't recall if that was a KnightErrant theory, or if that was a End Times theory.)
(Some of this was also in the middle of people trying to work out "Wait, so... when did Khsar/Khesar/Kavzar flee Nehekhara. When exactly did the Great Horned Rat do his thing? Did the GHR do his thing before or after Nagash? We know the Skaven existed before Nagash's defeat, because they helped defeat him, so... Whut?)
(As for why I don't think the Gods of Nehekhara were able to touch or manipulate the Winds... I think they may just have been regulating the Waystones maybe? In which case, they would not have been touching the Winds directly; they just would have been the system admins. Able to direct the flow of Wind to this area or that. In fact, maybe some of the ancient Nehekharans magic was a bit Dwarf Rune Magic-y; in the sense that it was incredibly precise and formed a "If you create this exact pattern/form/essence, then, if you fill it with the Winds of Magic? It will do precisely the same exact thing every time." Just, maybe partly divine magic too. Or maybe the gods of Nehekhara acted a bit like the Dwarf's Ancestor Gods; in that they entered the Aethyr and then just ran the systems or watched over things, in some way. ... I dunno. Doesn't quite fully work out.)
(Heck, frankly, it could be the case that you could just say that the Nehekharan's had weird ideas about what the practice of magic was. I mean, maybe the Gods taught them how to work magic -- after all, the Hedgewise claim to have gotten their stuff from Haletha or from Ranald or whatever; and the Light College had something with Tahoth Trisheros right -- and so the Nehekharans considered magic to be a divine thing, a divine practice or art, for the simple reason that their gods taught them magic.)
(Anyway! On to the Gods and Winds thing! ... I think "a god" mixing with "a Wind of Magic" just gets you Dhar, and results in a Dark Lore. i.e. We already have theurgy. It's sorcery. Maybe the Lore of Tzeentch is "the energy of the god Tzeentch" combined with "the Wind of Fire, the Wind of Metal, or both." Or maybe the Lore of Tzeentch is "Tzeentch+Dhar." ... Or maybe the Lore of Tzeentch is just Tzeentch's essence alone; it just happens to be Dhar-y because, well, Tzeentch is a cosmological or local force of evil or corruption or chaos. So, e.g., Tzeentch's lore/energy comes preloaded with Dhar because Tzeentch is a dark god.)
(Some other interesting theories; what if the master mutaters of Clan Moulder might be Dhar+Ghyran, or Dhar+Ghur like the Beastmen's Lore. Or maybe it's Great Horned Rat + Ghyran. Maybe Clan Skryre's Warlock-Engineer stuff is Dhar+Azyr. Or who knows. Probably Dhar + a Wind, as I think it's probably the Grey Seers and Pestilens guys that are the Divine Spellcasters alone; leaving the other spellcasters to be spellcasters but not divine miracle-workers.)
(The reason for why a God's energies mixing with a Wind gets you Dhar? ... Well. Similar reasons as to why two Winds of Magic mixing ((improperly only?)) gets you Dhar. Because they're both in, or of (? ???) the Aethyr, but they are incompatible. It could then be the case that two Gods can't mix their powers... unless they are very very careful. ... Or, well, maybe the Gods can mix their powers. Maybe it's just their human priests that can't channel two gods. Presumably the reason for this would be because the human isn't doing all the work in harmoniously making sure the two energies don't interfere. Whereas if the two gods were acting in the Aethyr, they could synchronize and harmonize their efforts such as to make sure that any leakage or joinage is proper and forms no Dhar. But for a human to manage that, he'd have to be able to channel or manage or organize divine energies (which he is probably not in full control of to begin with, because it's divine magic to begin with, it is implied that half the job is being done by a god!) to perfectly make sure that they do not mix badly.)
(... And now that I put it that way, I just realize that if that is true, then the implications could be that Elves? Elves could. Maybe Elves could wield the spells of 2 or more Gods in such a way that they create no Dhar. Huh. Interesting thought. In fact, hypothetically... hypothetically, if you got a range of Gods that holistically covered the entire range of the conception of reality or the Aethyr -- such as, say, via a Pantheonic Mandala? or maybe just with a God of Magic, or just with several Gods -- maybe you could then weave them together such that you would combine their energies into Qhaysh again.)
(High Magic achieved through the lens of combining divine magics. Rather than combining the Winds of Magic. And interesting theory. Probably not true. But maybe there's something interesting to that theory or idea. I mean, I think I recall some quest recently mentioning world-building that the Blessing of Isha was needed for pulling off High Magic? That could have been citing 4E stuff though, which is new stuff, sooo.)
(Other, final, thoughts. Dhar is a path to immortality/eternity, while Qhaysh isn't, and why? (Well, Qhaysh is, but, not Vampire-tier immortality. Well, maybe...) Well, maybe because Dhar is 'static' in a way; maybe Dhar is a pathway to immortality or eternity... ... if you don't mind being static to some degree and also being radioactive too. But the Qhaysh or Aethyr form of immortality requires a constant upkeep of energy? Why? Well... because in order to not be static, you need a constant intake of energy; of thought. i.e. Energy = thought. Energy and thought become, or are, one and the same here.
In other words; life and thought is complicated. Life requires constant maintenance, in the physical sense, to fight off disease and wear and tear. So too with the mental sense and mental health. Constant intake of mental energy too.
If you were willing to cheat or take dirty shortcuts though, you could throw some of the safety rails away and just use or become part Dhar. It's an 'improper' way to get longevity. It sacrifices "Well, you have to play the game; you have to maintain your body, and maintain your mind and soul" for "Fuck it, what's a little mutation or insanity or evil in the face of longevity?")
(Or, well, maybe... otherwise, maybe immortality requires some form of stasis or being-computer-like-ish. i.e. It requires some amount of "this system will keep going and acting and thinking in this way, and not really change." Hence, Slann, maybe? Or maybe Slann are only part computer; another part of them being more free willed. I've mused on the possibility that Slann spellcasting is computer-like; and this is why they're so slow and pondersome. That, maybe their depth and power of magic, and their slowness, are related. Maybe they don't fuck up their spells because... because they calculate until they achieve 100% accuracy. And that after the disaster of the Warp Gates, and the creation or spreading of Dhar, all calculations got thrown off amount. In perpetuity. Hence mindfog; maybe the mindfog is just the constant necessity to keep calculating to be able to achieve 100% spellcasting accuracy, or something like that?)
(Anyway. Back to Vampires!
Vampires. Encroaching insanity and weird weaknesses. Why? Maybe because... because by absorbing energy through the blood, what they are absorbing is bits and pieces of the Realm of Souls. And the Aethyr, the Realm of Souls, is, uh, well... ... It's full of thoughts. Spirits. Ideas. Emotions. Which means that Vampires grow insane and get weird weaknesses because... well, because they are absorbing, at least partly, the thoughts or emotions of others or the energies of the Aethyr. And if you are drinking Aethyr/thoughts/emotions/ideas/Winds-of-Magic like that? Well, eventually, some of that is going to accidentally get "stuck" in your head like that; hence, insanity and weaknesses to garlic. Maybe Vampiric insanity is 'just' due to them drinking people's souls or energies or emotions or thoughts, and occasionally some of that just gets stuck in their head/soul/Dhar-reactor eventually. And maybe Vampiric weaknesses are, in part, due to them "catching" some random bits of magic and it getting "stuck" on them.
Or, about the growing weaknesses... Maybe it's because Vampires can't wield all 8 Winds, or can't eat all 8 Winds, which means that they can't get a holistic helping of full Aethyric energies. Which means they can't eat the full thing. Which means they get the equivalent of weird glitches and bugs. Hence, weaknesses.
But maybe if they could eat or drink the Aethyr directly, maybe they'd avoid racking up weaknesses? And/or insanities too? ... Or maybe not. Maybe the problem is the Dhar reactor. Or maybe the problem is their initial vampiric template. Or maybe the problem is Nagash cursing them. Or maybe it's a combination of those things.
This does imply that if some Vampires knew the trick to feeding "properly", or alternative ways of feeding, that... ... maybe they could avoid insanity. Maybe they could avoid grafting more thoughts and emotions onto themselves. Neferata and friends might know. Or maybe they didn't care about insanity. Or maybe they noticed and cared, but too late.
Or maybe not. Maybe this theory of insanity is just one theory, maybe even a wrong one. Maybe there's even multiple reasons why Vampires go insane. Maybe isolation and pressure is one part of it. Maybe all the Dhar is another. Maybe my theory -- "you are what you eat... and you eat a ton of random people, and some of that rubs off on you" -- is another, third, aspect. Maybe a fourth theory is a more foundational one; maybe there's a vampire 'template', set by Neferata or Nagash or whatnot, which asserts itself or influences the vampire. Or maybe Nagash altered or cursed that template.
Still. Vampires. Maybe draining a Dragon gets them from "Like a Powerstone, which holds a set amount of energy and can be expended" and become "Like an Orb of Sorcery, which is stable or meta-stable, and is no longer something that holds energy and can be expended; instead, the Orb of Sorcery warps the laws of reality a little bit to make their Wind of Magic a bit easier/better/however-you-describe it."
IIRC I think it was said that you can expend an Orb of Sorcery but, uh, it's kind of fatal. I think somebody asked if you could expend an Orb of Sorcery to cast Cataclysm Magic. And the answer turned out to be "... Well. Yes, but... You Dead, bro."
It could also be the case that vampires who drained a dragon, become stable or meta-stable, because they are a creation of Dhar -- which gives them static-ness -- and also reach a critical mass of energy too. Lucky for them I guess. They still had to live centuries being a Dhar reactor though. And possibly a bit nutty.
... It could also be the case that they don't become stable at all. They just add +10,000 years to their bloodbank. An amount long enough that vampires would think they've reached immortality.
Or maybe it's more-or-less-stable-ish, but if somebody sticks a straw in you and steals your meta-stable energy block, then you lose your no-longer-need-to-feed immortality again. Soo. No more thirst unless somebody ganks you, maybe. Or if you get damaged badly enough or in an esoteric enough way.)
For one, there's the actual numbered order on the Pantheon Mandala. The positions and order of the outer gods change from mandala to mandala. Mostly it's just switching to free spots due to the different inner gods, but not always. Mathlann doesn't make the inner cut with the Asrai and the Druchii, but he only drops to 11th when the other demotions drop quite a bit further. The Asur put Estreuth before Eldrazor, while the Druchii do not. The Druchii also order the Cadai differently, putting Loec up to third, Isha after almost all other Cadai, and Lileath dead last below even Ellinil. The Asrai put both Morai-Heg and Ladrielle quite a bit higher than the Asur.
I think the number is just like a map legend thing? afaik there's nothing in the source material saying that the numbers denote decreasing importance, just that inner ring > outer ring.
There's definitely stuff we can say about the placement of Gods within the rings, most notably that each inner God has two corresponding outer Gods touching it, and Boney has gone on record saying that
There's two on the outer ring for every one in the inner ring, and every now and then I think I can see a hint of some sort of pattern to which outers are associated with which inner, so I'm not going to mess with that ratio. So the alternative to swapping someone out for Ulric would be adding two new Gods along with Him and deciding who gets to be the new inner.
