"I... am being a dick again, aren't I? I'm sorry. Well, um, personally, my gods are the Hunter and Herder. They're the gods of the Kyri people specifically. Some other nations or people have their own gods. But then there are kind of... general purpose gods? It's specifically Telar who gets mad about necromancy, he's the guardian of the dead."
"No, you're fine," Berit assures him. "So some gods are specific to certain cultures, but some are universal? Do the Hunter and the Herder have a special affection for your Kyri, or is it simply that you're the only ones who believe in them?"
"Believe in --? Dude, this isn't like the hypothetical ur-creator we're talking about here, these guys exist. They do shit. They talk to people -- they talked to me, once, and one of them once did a really tacky and ill-timed miracle to kind of go neener on my ex-wife's brother in front of his men. They are slightly assholes, in fact, but they're mine." ((i know, a barbarian prince who says 'dude'? but if he were speaking english he totally would, so. :D))
Berit finds she's more willing to believe in gods that exist (and, apparently, do things) in some other place than she is in her own. She nods. "Sorry, my phrasing could have been better. That's more or less what I meant - that they are associated with you because they chose you, yes? Not just because your people happen to be the only ones to have passed on the legends about them." She raises hereyebrows. "A tacky miracle? I can't imagine." ((too bad this isn't post-trespasser Berit. post-trespasser Berit has OPINIONS about interfering gods.))
"Well, they were sort of the parents of our people? They weren't always gods. I don't think any gods always were." He's not really sure about that, so he sounds kind of uncertain.
"Most of them aren't, ever. And people still argue that their favorite or their family god was a real one and all the others were fakes, but it's hard to take them seriously, really. I don't really know a lot about the history behind it, but I don't think any of them were real."
"Well, Sharess used to be an elf," Riaa said. "Though she hasn't been around in - hub, must be about a thousand years or so? She used to be the Empress."
"Where I'm from, our gods... Well, we don't call them gods, we call them "Oracles", but with their power levels and their near-complete immortality, it's basically the same thing," Dom said. "Anyway, many of them, maybe most, used to be human -or Onyx, or Chimeras, or other stuff-, and then they, uh, ascended or something like that. There are rituals just for this, but if you mess up any of the steps or you don't have the required skills and mental stuff, or even if you happen to piss off the wrong Awa--" Dom paused. What should he tell them? He doesn't know the impact this would have on the patrons' sanity, and he probably shouldn't take any risks. But then again, he had already said a lot and they didn't seem to react in a negative way. Maybe brains were just more resilient outside of his world? Oh well, he was probably wrong about some of this stuff anyway, better not say too much. "... Anyway, it's really easy to mess up, in a way that will really ruin your day and anyone else's in a two or three kilocube radius."
Kastor squawked like an idiot when the invisible person put their two talims in -- he'd been too focused on the conversation and forgot to keep an inner eye open, so to speak. It takes him a few seconds to calm down, and now he's a little sheepish. "I dunno what happens if ours mess up the process, it's not like I chat with them about it, but yeah, ours are like that. They were human or dragon or mara and then they..." He makes a vague gesture. Regaining a little confidence, he realizes he has a unique bit of knowlege to add to the pool: "Oh, but if they have kids, the kids are their original species!"
"Hmm. I'm... Not sure ours can have children? Their bodies are 'quantum constructs'. Whatever that means. But I'm pretty sure they're not fully material."
"Ours can have bodies if they want to, they just usually don't. Probably their bodies get turned into energy or whatever when they're not using them, like what happens to the extra mass when dragons shapeshift. I dunno if they get their old bodies back or make new ones or what. But they can definitely have kids." There is a slight, private wryness to that last sentence; it takes some willpower to keep from adding, And ignore their grandkids.
