Okay, so. I was rererererereading the Vernal Wars. Aaand, under Juliana, it says..



Okay! Fairly easy. Zenos was lured up into the northern pole, where they tricked Zenos (or perhaps beat him into) a misty form. There, they froze Him, and sank it into the depths.

HOWEVER, later on the page, under "Towards the end of the Vernal Wars", it says..



So, who was frozen? Illith the Leviathan, or Zenos the Insubstantial? Were they both frozen, and someone made a mistake? Or were three different Vernal God's bits wrong, and they actually trapped Zenos in a mountain cave?

I'd go with Zenos being underwater and frozen, though imagining a one-eyed Illith being frozen is cool. Personally I think the second quote should be totally rewritten in the history anyway. Despite the Zenos thing, it really negates the first one by the order mentioned.

There's no mistake. He was frozen in a cave by great magicks.

Well besides the fact that it says "force Zenos into a misty form that were able freeze and sink into the depths." and "Zenos the Insubstantial was lured to a mountain cave where he was trapped inside by great magicks."

The latter doesn't actually say anything about freezing or sinking while the first does both, i think that in the first one they confused Zenos with Illith, though it would be kind of cool if instead of Kethuru one of the other Souless escaped.

What's especially great about this question is when you take this into account. Well, post #62, second on the page, at least.

i'd say ones in an ice cave and the others in the ocean

See, I was looking in the histories for an idea as to what Zenos looked like, as well as a few of the other Soulless. I kind of have a feeling Zenos DOES have a corporeal form, as they forced him into a mist, which sounds more ethereal, and what good would Justice, Healer, and Nature have done against an ethereal Soulless?

As to Illith - The First's bit under the Vernal Gods make it sound like Illith was constantly in the seas. I imagine Illith was well named - I picture one of the bloated sea-dragons from the Deathgate Novels, which were basically long bloated sea-snakes, oily and gross, and smelled of decay and dead fish. Except Illith was bigger, obviously.

I think it was just a slight over-look on the side of the author (Estarra?). It makes sense for them both to be bound in ice, really.

That said - how big WERE the Soulless? Could they change their size? Kethuru was able to make Himself so massive, he could cover all of Lusternia with His flesh. Illith was so massive, you only saw Her jaws coming - god that had to have been horrible, seeing a massive set of teeth coming from the distance, and knowing exactly what it was.

Doesn't it mention somewhere that Illith was long enough to encircle the entire world? I imagine the other Soulless were all quite massive as well, perhaps the size of the Basin or Magnagora, although none as big as Kethuru.

If demigods can change their size from half a foot to twelve feet (about), I can't imagine a Soulless god changing their size would've been much problem. What I don't get is how Illith FIT in the waters if she could, like, eat cities. The oceans must be titanic...if you can see her jaws, and still have months to prepare a giant...obelisky...edifice, whatever. Makes the Inner Sea look like someone's sink.

Yes, and how big does that make Illith's jaws? I imagine the idea for Illith came from a mixture of *gasp* the Leviathan, and the Midgar Serpent.

Well, it's kind of meh-ish from my perspective...if the Inner Sea is someone's sink, that makes the Basin someone's bathroom surface-thingy. We have four fairly large cities, two fairly large forests, two fairly large seas, and one fairly large mountain range (if you take the cities to be any smaller, then the mountain range is like two mountains thick or something). That makes it TINY. That makes "the rest of Lusternia" more unimagineably massive than, uh...other things on earth. So all this stuff coming from "outside the Basin" must be either like 5' outside, or be extraplanar, or otherwise it would have like hundreds of years of ETA to get anywhere. (I'm just thinking about it taking Illith months, and she's a giant soulless, so I don't think she moves slower than a mortal somehow.)

Which makes the idea that so little else survived that the two closest-to-omnipotent beings focus on and reside almost entirely in that little bathroom surface a little weird. Then again I'm tired and am probably missing things.

I think the Basin would be better described as someone's sink (Ahahaha - I made a funny!). And when you're talking about what's in the Basin, you have to realize the cities are physically there - we can see all four of them. Two of them, however, can't be touched.

So, four fairly large cities, three large forests, two large sees, An encircling mountain range and a smaller one off a desert.

As to life being outside the Basin. Figure it out IC! *sounds like Lisaera*

I said four large cities the first time.

EDIT: Ahh, but I did say two forests. Okay.

Anyway, I don't care about finding out IC, the scale just bothers me, that's all. See. When you have a roleplaying world like in D&D, having it as massive as possible is probably awesome, because there's the hope that one day you can get to all these places and explore their uniqueness and whatever. But this is a MUD, and if anything does happen outside of the Basin it won't be anything like as major. So it kind of feels bad that we're restricted to the world's bathroom sink. Does that make any sense? Not important, anyway, just rambling. Going to sleep now, I think.

I don't know about that, Shiri. I kinda think that Estarra and the others will some day put in areas outside the Basin on the grid, after we finally reach the point where we can sustain the four cities and the three communes.

I've always figured the Basin is to Lusternia as Rhode Island is to Earth.

Yeah, but not major ones. It's just not feasible. So it means the rest of it is unexplored, unless we learn someday that the rest of the world is completely obliterated.

i think its silly for you to assume there will never be anything major outside the Basin.

Its already been stated that 3 tribes of humans came through with Estarra - 2 of them settled in the Basin, and one left. So, we'll more than likely be acquiring villages outside of the Basin, and i'm also betting if the playerbase ever got big enough, that we could even see a player-run city existing outside as well.

Its not at all a matter of "this isn't gonna happen! I'm so sad!" its more a matter of "We just need to get the playerbase to support it, and then anything is possible."

Huh? Where is this stated?