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[Vattic]

or a sky god might have gone underground to fight his brother who was hiding there. and while there he subdued and tamed a cave dragon. I would honestly like to see something like that.

If and ONLY if he either uses his divinity to grant the cave dragon wings, or chooses not to adopt the creature as his totemic animal at all.

I disagree as the connection between the god and his totemic creature is their shared history, not any other similarity.

Edit: Just to make clear I realise Dirst didn't mean totemic in this way; I am just commenting on SixOfSpades comment based on the confusion.

[Bumber]

Also keep in mind yin-yang bombs.

Fire and water, darkness and light, earth and sky,  desert and ocean.  They don't have to oppose.

They do if you have a functioning brain.

More like an unimaginative one.

Oil/alcohol/magma, gray/day cycle/balance, the universe, sand/salt (The ocean is a desert with its life underground, and a perfect disguise above.)

[SixOfSpades]

I meant a DF totem, which is basically just a trophy.

Yeah, sorry, brain fart. I was confusing "carve the dragon's skull into a work of art" with "take the dragon on as a religious icon associated with yourself".

I disagree as the connection between the god and his totemic creature is their shared history, not any other similarity.

A sky god visiting a cavern and walloping a cave dragon is a far cry from the relationship between Bellerophon & Pegasus. Shared history is important, yes, but how the hell are you going to identify with a beast that opposes a good portion of what you represent? At the very least, I think we should declare a blanket moratorium on animals that are horribly adapted to their god's preferred environment (if any such is implied), and would hate every moment spent there.

Also keep in mind yin-yang bombs. Fire and water, darkness and light, earth and sky,  desert and ocean.  They don't have to oppose.

They do if you have a functioning brain.

More like an unimaginative one.

I defy anyone to say that *I* lack imagination, and I can plainly see that there are no lack of equal & opposite yin/yang pairs to be found in every corner of religion and cosmology. Creation/destruction, chaos/order, mind/body, matter/antimatter/energy, etc. Sometimes the two (or more) form a literal yin/yang combination, complementary elements that form a whole greater than the sum of its parts . . . but then again, sometimes they do not. Sometimes, such as the case with Fire and Water, they simply have to oppose. Sure, go ahead and form another weak connection mentioning underwater geothermal vents, and the extremophile bacteria that grow there. But come on--that's pathetic. Do you really expect to convince anyone that Fire and Water don't annihilate each other, argued on the basis of a handful of bacteria? Can you really picture dwarves basing an entire religion on such an idea?

Didn't think so.

[Bumber]

Do you really expect to convince anyone that Fire and Water don't annihilate each other, argued on the basis of a handful of bacteria? Can you really picture dwarves basing an entire religion on such an idea?

Lots of things annihilate fire. Sand. Air. Lack of air. Doesn't make them irreconcilable opposites.

Does fire annihilate water? No so much. It's at a severe disadvantage when you mix the two.

Instead, abstract water to liquid form. Magma contains properties of fire and water (which becomes fire and earth when cooled.) It's no more ridiculous than unrelated combinations such as poetry and salt.

[Detoxicated]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios#Greek_mythology
So this guy was pulled by horses through the ky, pretty crazy, if it wasn't an actual myth...

[endlessblaze]

I meant a DF totem, which is basically just a trophy.

Yeah, sorry, brain fart. I was confusing "carve the dragon's skull into a work of art" with "take the dragon on as a religious icon associated with yourself".

I disagree as the connection between the god and his totemic creature is their shared history, not any other similarity.

A sky god visiting a cavern and walloping a cave dragon is a far cry from the relationship between Bellerophon & Pegasus. Shared history is important, yes, but how the hell are you going to identify with a beast that opposes a good portion of what you represent? At the very least, I think we should declare a blanket moratorium on animals that are horribly adapted to their god's preferred environment (if any such is implied), and would hate every moment spent there.

Also keep in mind yin-yang bombs. Fire and water, darkness and light, earth and sky,  desert and ocean.  They don't have to oppose.

They do if you have a functioning brain.

More like an unimaginative one.

I defy anyone to say that *I* lack imagination, and I can plainly see that there are no lack of equal & opposite yin/yang pairs to be found in every corner of religion and cosmology. Creation/destruction, chaos/order, mind/body, matter/antimatter/energy, etc. Sometimes the two (or more) form a literal yin/yang combination, complementary elements that form a whole greater than the sum of its parts . . . but then again, sometimes they do not. Sometimes, such as the case with Fire and Water, they simply have to oppose. Sure, go ahead and form another weak connection mentioning underwater geothermal vents, and the extremophile bacteria that grow there. But come on--that's pathetic. Do you really expect to convince anyone that Fire and Water don't annihilate each other, argued on the basis of a handful of bacteria? Can you really picture dwarves basing an entire religion on such an idea?

Didn't think so.

look up the tvtropes entry for yin-yang bombs. it mentions that the result is greater than the to parts individually. and if you mix fire and water you might get steam.

good for getaways.

[TheBiggerFish]

And who would worship a god that didn't make a damned bit of sense?

...Most humans?
All the tenuous connections we've made, and we deny the right of anything else to make them.

Fire + Water(liquidity)  == Magma.

Cave dragon is the sky god, locked away for some reason.  Or the sky god cursed the cave dragons in their distant past.

I could probably come up with more explanations anyway.

On a lighter note:
A god of balance someone found:  Symmetry Balancedequal the Symmetric Stability of Neutralization.

[Snukkems]

Also keep in mind yin-yang bombs.

Fire and water, darkness and light, earth and sky,  desert and ocean.  They don't have to oppose.

They do if you have a functioning brain.

Those oppositions, are mostly rooted in our culture rather than something inherent.    A totally different creation myth, with a totally different different pantheon of Gods, could easily see Light and Dark as equal, easily see Earth and Sky as Equal, and easily see desert and Ocean as equal.


It depends entirely on the core values of a given civilization, and the mytho's surrounding it.

However, the point is rather moot, as Sphere's of influence are in the game and wouldn't create directly opposing concepts like this.   

[endlessblaze]

there will be a sphere rework eventually.

so at that point we might get more yin-yang bomb gods.

[SixOfSpades]

Does fire annihilate water? No so much. It's at a severe disadvantage when you mix the two.

Anyone who's seen a still do its work (as I suspect roughly 90% of your dwarves have) knows what fire can do to water. Rather than treating magma as a tertiary state between fire & water, I expect dwarves would treat it as another form of fire, given that they frequently use it to power forges & the like. Toady's decision to make the Fire & Magma spheres friends of each other (and opposed to the Water sphere) reinforces this. It's in magma form that fire has the greatest power over water--realistically, even a heavy rain falling directly onto an active volcano would simply puff into steam without even putting a dent in the churning lava.

It's no more ridiculous than unrelated combinations such as poetry and salt.

Oh, I've never been against gods having different, unrelated domains. Indeed, with over a hundred spheres, each pantheon would need dozens of gods, if each deity was restricted to just 1 sphere & its close relatives. So while it would be a neater package to have a deity of, say, oceans and salt, instead of poetry, having disparate (but non-contradictory) domains seems just the thing to keep pantheons unpredictable, but still quite plausible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios#Greek_mythology
So this guy was pulled by horses through the ky, pretty crazy, if it wasn't an actual myth...

In that link, the very same paragraph that mentions the horses describes them as being affiliated with fire. This is just another example of altering the animal to make it a better fit for its (new) environment.

All the tenuous connections we've made, and we deny the right of anything else to make them.

I'm not disputing anyone's right/ability to make weak connections, only the plausibility of anyone worshiping a deity held together by such frail bonds--especially when they have a wealth of alternative gods to choose from.

A god of balance someone found:  Symmetry Balancedequal the Symmetric Stability of Neutralization.

My favorites are still the god of food, "Garlic Spicymuffins the Brunch of Peppers" and one of my own, a god of fortresses named "Castle Bastionshields the Defended Barricade".

Those oppositions [yin/yang bombs], are mostly rooted in our culture rather than something inherent.    A totally different creation myth, with a totally different different pantheon of Gods, could easily see Light and Dark as equal, easily see Earth and Sky as Equal, and easily see desert and Ocean as equal.

Mostly agreed--some opposing matches can be combined and still make sense, while others cannot. For examples, I can imagine a god of War that at the same time represents Peace, because very often, wars have an almost completely defensive side, for whom the only reason for waging war in the first place is to maintain their peace. But a god that stands for Childbirth and Virginity simultaneously invites far more disbelief: Even if the goddess herself could somehow accomplish both qualities in the same body, her mortal followers surely could not. [The annoying thing here is that it has precedent: Quite apart from the Virgin Mary, the Greco-Roman goddess Artemis/Diana held both domains. One can only presume that she helped her followers through pregnancy while she herself remained virgin, but even so it would make far more sense to hand the childbirth aspect over to Hera/Juno (as many people in fact did), as Juno was already the goddess of marriage & women in general.]

And oh--simply because a desert can be likened to an ocean does not magically equate the two.

However, the point is rather moot, as Sphere's of influence are in the game and wouldn't create directly opposing concepts like this.

The spheres *themselves* avoid creating conflicts, yes, we're just talking about the secondary aspects of the gods--in the current version, that only means their name & physical depiction, but in future it might include other iconic tokens such as garments, tools, attendant animals, etc. Gods' names & descriptions can already run directly counter to their domains (a male god of pregnancy, or a god whose name mentions "rain" 4 times, even though Rain is actually controlled by a different god in the same pantheon, etc.), and I'm hoping to correct this behavior.

[Bumber]

Anyone who's seen a still do its work (as I suspect roughly 90% of your dwarves have) knows what fire can do to water. Rather than treating magma as a tertiary state between fire & water, I expect dwarves would treat it as another form of fire, given that they frequently use it to power forges & the like. Toady's decision to make the Fire & Magma spheres friends of each other (and opposed to the Water sphere) reinforces this. It's in magma form that fire has the greatest power over water--realistically, even a heavy rain falling directly onto an active volcano would simply puff into steam without even putting a dent in the churning lava.

That's through an intermediary material being heated up, and it's not entirely certain if DF stills even use heat. (Isn't the purpose of a still to boil the alcohol and not the water?) Rain, maybe, but a greater quantity of water combines with magma to create obsidian.

And oh--simply because a desert can be likened to an ocean does not magically equate the two.

It can in mythology. Our culture likes to equate outer space to an ocean of stars. That's how we get silly sci-fi stuff like space battleships and spacewhales. (Let's not even mention the Sand is Water trope.)

I should note that I'm not claiming combining "opposing" spheres is good gameplay for DF, just refuting the point that such combinations must be nonsensical.

[Detoxicated]

Well they were changed, yet they were horses in the sky, isn't that crazy and opposing.

I personally would like to see a god of magma in the form of a carp

[TheBiggerFish]

Well they were changed, yet they were horses in the sky, isn't that crazy and opposing.

I personally would like to see a god of magma in the form of a carp

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[SixOfSpades]

Sorry it took me so long to reply, I was off scuba diving in the Mojave and digging for dinosaur bones in the Pacific. It was great, the sand was crystal clear & the perfect temperature for swimming, and of course the ocean's low humidity & erosion are perfect for preserving fossils.

Anyone who's seen a still do its work (as I suspect roughly 90% of your dwarves have) knows what fire can do to water. Rather than treating magma as a tertiary state between fire & water, I expect dwarves would treat it as another form of fire, given that they frequently use it to power forges & the like.

That's through an intermediary material being heated up, and it's not entirely certain if DF stills even use heat. (Isn't the purpose of a still to boil the alcohol and not the water?) Rain, maybe, but a greater quantity of water combines with magma to create obsidian.

True, there's an intermediary, but as nothing can happen without heat, I think it's safe to say that dwarves should be smart enough to realize that the vessel is of trivial concern--the real reaction is between the fire & the liquid. (And yes, for distilling booze, the alcohol would boil off & condense out well before the water would. But ideally, a still would be present in the Kitchen, too, so Cooks could make things like bouillon and condensed milk.) Stills currently use no fuel, yes, but neither do Forges if they're operated by a moody dwarf (the theory is that the dwarf simply glares at the metal until it spontaneously assumes the desired shape). As for magma, water shouldn't be necessary for obsidian at all--the lava will simply cool into basalt, or dacite, or whatever, all on its own, no water required. Dwarves would rightly recognize that magma is an intermediate stage between Fire & Earth, not Fire & Water.

Yes, I'm discussing real-world physics & game improvements as if they were already implemented in DF. This is the Suggestions forum, wherein we discuss how the game is supposed to be, not how it currently IS. Unless you *prefer* your magma to be able to simply evaporate into thin air.

I should note that I'm not claiming combining "opposing" spheres is good gameplay for DF, just refuting the point that such combinations must be nonsensical.

Only some of them make zero sense (like pregnancy & virginity), while others can make perfectly valid dual-aspect gods if they happen to combine that way. Between those two extremes is a fairly wide "plausibility spectrum", suggesting that in future versions, certain combinations might carry percentage weights, so that pairings that make little to no sense could be unlikely, but still possible. (Or perhaps even more likely, if "paradoxes" was added as a sphere.)

Well they were changed, yet they were horses in the sky, isn't that crazy and opposing.

They were Fire horses in the sky. Fire is aligned with the Sun, the horses pulled the sun. So if you're okay with the sun being in the sky (which I am), you should be good with the horses too.

I personally would like to see a god of magma in the form of a carp

As long as it's some kind of fire carp, sure.

[XXXXYYYY]

Don't forget Thor and his goats. Just normal goats, disregarding the whole "regenerating" thing and the drawing a god's chariot thing. Not fiery or stormy or whathaveyou, just goats.

And I don't think that spheres can truly render each other nonsensical.
Even pregnancy & virginity, which you pointed out, don't render each other meaningless. They render a different meaning to the god(ess), of course, but not cancel. One ends the other, yes, but they don't cancel for the same reason death and life don't cancel. They might belong to a god presiding over children growing and becoming adults, perhaps. Both halves are there, and both would be needed for the god to perform their duty.