@James @Green So I had a couple thoughts after we stopped last night. It might have been because I was hopped up on cough syrup that I didn't think of them before hand, or that it came to me at all...

I kinda want to do the initial write-up for gods in our world now

@AndyD273 It's all you man. Send it to me when you're done.

I've no disagreement

@AndyD273 Art and Drugs have a long, happy, mutually beneficial relationship.

Heh. I dunno about that, I kinda feel slow today. But at least I didn't forget the ideas I was having, so that's nice.

@Green So from our talk, there is "power space" and "idea space", and there are gods that oversee those realms. Lord of Power sounds pretty good, but Lord of Idea is a little 'eh'. In my doc last night I started referring to them as the Lords of Chaos and Order, but I'm not really sure that's right either. Any thoughts? These would be the highest gods in those realms.

@AndyD273 Just because they are the lords of chaos and order doesn't mean we have to call them that. Granted, our little group is horrible at naming things (re: new australia) but we don't have to call them that.

I know. I'm just trying to come up with titles. They can be changed later, or whatever. I was just hoping to get your thoughts on what kinds of titles make sense.

Lord of Power, Lord of Mind?

hmm

Lord of Knowledge isn't to bad

Or are you thinking that the Lord part isn't right?

I think I also had god king in the running for a while

God King of the realm of Power...

Ditch that Lord stuff, man! Go with C'tango or Shuggrimanath or something like that. The meaning of the name will be built up later.

Dread Lord... Fluffy

;p

I mean, Zeus the word has nothing to do with lightning. That association was built up later.

true

ok, I'll get back to that.

And don't forget

sometimes languages evolve faster than names

there's so many places with names that don't make sense in today's language

or gods I guess

@JourneymanGeek I support this.

That may actually be one of my alter ego's

...I feel like the answer to this being "no" is a travesty.

shrug

just mangle real languages

worked for tolkien ;p

@James What do you think of bringing Glarnak into it? Possibally as the Original that started everything

Which does actually make sense

So.....I am thinking of something.

@AndyD273? When do you consider the most realistic period for the Cold War to escalate into a conventional WWIII?

@FutureHistorian You're pinging people again.

I only asked him on account of him helping with the Cuban Missile War thing.

Speaking of which......

facepalms

Anyway, pinging people aside, at what point could we consider the Cold War could have gone hot without any nuclear exchange occuring?

For example: how do you start a NATO vs Warsaw Pact WWIII in a realistic fashion without a nuclear exchange?

peacekeeping mission gone awry. There are a lot of steps between "Crap my rifle went off by accident!" and "The launch codes are..." You could easily have a misunderstanding that gets blown out of proportion, but falls well short of lighting off ICBMs.

@AndyD273 Absolutely.

But I think he'd be a later god.

Being a god of vengeance and all.

Could Dread Lord Fluffy be a nom de plume for Glarnak...I feel like it works.

@FutureHistorian I think you have a belief that everyone was super trigger happy and wanted nuclear war. Conventional warfare is bad sure...but Nukes are real bad. An accidental armed conflict isn't that big a stretch to imagine.

@James Ohh! Linx people are furry, but also fierce. They could be worshipers of Glarnak, also known as the Dread Lord Fluffy. Fluffy is considered to be a very powerful name among the lynx people.

@James Yeah, if the body count isn't in the billions the story probably isn't worth creating.

@James Is the Dread Lord Fluffy a writer?

@AndyD273 Thankfully there are a lot of steps, now. In the 50s and 60s, there wasn't as many steps.

@Green Dare I ask... "why do you want to know?"

@James 'cause if he ain't a writer, a nom de plume is a bit silly. (I get why you used it though. I'm just messing with you.)

@AndyD273 It doesn't translate well into common, its a bit of a joke to the other races, but in the Lynx tongue its very terrifying.

@Green Oh doy...I can't believe I didn't get that off the bat. SAD!

@James More coffee for you?

@Green Apparently.

Pseudonym would probably have been a better choice.

I think the word you want is Pseudonym.

@James beat me to it.

Synonyms are fun!

@JourneymanGeek Congratulations you have unwittingly contributed to the world Andy, Green and I are creating.

@AndyD273 Perhaps because the only lynx people who can afford to be fluffy are the ones so crazy good fighters that no one wants to fight them. Being fluffy is how you say "I will end you by tapping you."

This conversation sort of begs the question. Would animal tendencies, for example fluffing up your fur to appear bigger, still be a thing in a world where they are humanoid and intelligent?

@JourneymanGeek Now listen to our podcast so you can grasp the full import of what you have done.

@James I really don't see why not. Humans can even do it by puffing out your chest, standing taller, showing an angry expression. We just don't generally have as much fur, or the control to use it the same way

Are they called hackles on a cat? or is that just dogs?

Hmm, apparently yes. Also known as "Piloerection".

"Cower before the might of Dread Lord Fluffy, who's hackles rise above all others. Vengeance is his!"

I'm getting snippets of dialog running through my head now... Not sure how to turn it off...

Beer can help...

"Hehe, the Dread Lord... Fluffy? Really?" "Hey, you ever see an angry Lynxian fluff up? You haven't, or you wouldn't be laughing."

@James Eh, I kinda like it.

@AndyD273 We'll have our one listener!

@AndyD273 Yeah that's pretty fantastic.

@AndyD273 @James I want to have a character who's superpower is to twist tilt their head sideways and see into power and info space.

@Green info space, idea space... I wonder if there is another name for it that sounds less computery. More mystical...

@AndyD273 I'm sure we could bullshit a name for it. Since these planes won't be discovered only one time, we can come up with lots of names for it.

The Lynx people will call it one thing. The Rhino people won't even know it exists.

and while we're at it, I guess coming up with a name for the energy in idea space would be useful... power from Power Space is fine. but idea from Idea Space doesn't work as well...

"will" might work for now.

@AndyD273 psych space??

@AjnatorixZersolar Implies some kind of human intelligence. There aren't any humans on this world. No ape descended creatures. We've got rhino people, otter people, lynx people and owl people too.

@Green looking at info and idea possibly thought or consciousness, but souls and spirits keep popping into my head for some reason, which makes me think aura

@AjnatorixZersolar We have an interesting way of getting to the supernatural. There's no spirit plane...though I guess you could think of info space as the spirit plane. There's no ghosts that inhabit a person's body.

@Green i was thinking of it as the soul being the personality, the thinking, the body being the physical, and power is the workings and energy side.

@AjnatorixZersolar we haven't worked out whether info space leaks into a person's skull and that's what makes them smart. If we decided that it does then info space could certainly be the space of souls.

@AjnatorixZersolar that's not too bad. I think the hard part is the baggage some people attach to the word.

@AndyD273 i get that issue a lot because i think of a name then go "that sounds too [insert problem here]" and it happens over and over. it drives me crazy.

Any traditional human culture that was exposed to info space would certainly think of it as the spirit realm

It kinda works for power space too. The important bit there is to get across that it's not an "evil" place while info space is the "good" place.

@Green Is it ok to use Spirit for right now instead of Idea, at least until something else comes along?

@AndyD273 I'd rather not. Spirit is a really overloaded term and as we are still hammering out what all that stuff does, I'd rather stick with a less loaded term.

@AndyD273 I'm very happy to change it when we have a better term....and maybe we don't need to change it. Our view as the designers of this world will be different from the view of those embedded in the world.

@Green @James I shared my writeup for how gods work. Most of it is from the podcast. Some is from my post cast thoughts.

True

I welcome any thoughts/corrections for stuff I am miss-remembering. :)

@AndyD273 And a culture that lacks any kind of formal mathematics isn't going to view info space the same way that we computery nerds/programmers do.

@Green I'd say most people would view info in a academic way.

@Bellerophon perhaps but everyone on WB has already self-selected for smart and tends toward more generalist. They also tend to be highly academic. That perspective is to be expected here.

I still think info has connotations of academia that over words don't.

@Bellerophon I'm open to suggestions

@Green Obviously.

@James It's so freaking powerful. I wanna write up that person's story real soon.

@Green I can see it being a twitch, like he is slightly insane from being able to see what he sees.

@James It feels like that place where the Bene Gesserit can't look, but the Kwitzach Hadarach can look.

You really don't want to but the power is insane when you do.