val Holryn wrote:
We know there was some kind of mysterious Celestrial [sic] shake up around the time when the First Imperium was collapsing. That's when the Mourners n Silence formed. And when Anshar (Yig) got dropped from the Kahlindrul. And when the Pantheonist priests went out of style. All more or less congruently.
I presume that the attitude towards Anshar in the Kahlindrul is because Khitan's Valinor leader knows "the truth" about Anshar's being Yig and not one of the original Twelve. That doesn't seem connected to the rest of the changes Eric cites.
It would be interesting for us players to try to trace down the formation of the Twelve as best we can guess. My guess is that the supposed "family relations" are actually "friendship connections" between Gods; though I'd at one point surmised it was maybe "international relations" between countries that worshiped each God separately. There are some indications, like the story in "Sacrifice of Generations", that mention only a few of the Gods and may be from early work of the Pantheon in forming itself. How much to trust old myths I don't know since myths can be complete fabrications by humans or changed by humans over the millennia even if based on reality. Myths of the rivalry between Neroth and Illiir are common enough that I put more trust in some veracity there. In "Secret of Semar", we learned that Althares was originally a god (orisha) from a distant continent (maybe other world? players never got confirmation whether it was on world of Arcanis, but characters should have known from stars and moons) which was also the home of the Abebi tribe. Some players have speculated that the Gods were originally an adventuring party; and I have one past PC who intentionally aimed to be ready to become or replace a particular God if it were necessary.
Without consulting sources, my intuitive feel is that the core Gods of the Pantheon were Illiir, Cadic, Hurrian, & Nier. Then Saluwe. Then Neroth. Then Larissa. Then others. My educated guess is that some of the core Gods found others and formed a club with eventual common goals. They didn't all start out together as one big happy family, and thus not a big deal to add Yig to the club when a seat became vacant after the Other "consumed" Lianni [sp?], Goddess of the Mind. Time travel makes it all messy, especially since we don't know the rules of time travel (e.g., can the past be changed?) in Arcanis.
Also, 5 points for Akira.