...Charles, I'm not sure you
...Charles, I'm not sure you want to give me this sort of outlet.

There could be deaths.
There could be deaths.

How do you mean?
Certainly, the mythology needs deaths?

I just mean that I'm very exc
I just mean that I'm very excitable when I'm allowed access to this sort of thing, and sometimes people get in the way of my wildly flailing limbs.

And that is pretty much what I hope for...
Started reading it, and that just makes me say, "Ooh, ooh, pretty please start biting yourself off some chunks of Gaetani mythology! I want to see what you do with it."

I was going to say, maybe we should start with a face-to-face session, but that runs up against the old no-game-til early March problem, so I think the better answer is to do some rounds of "What do people want out of Gaetani mythology?" before we start creating stuff, just so fewer eyes get poked out. :) Or we can just start with creating, and see where it takes us.

So what do we want?

I'd like a closer sense of th
I'd like a closer sense of the personal relationships (or lack thereof) that Gaetani people have to the gods. So, like, how would Woochi think about the Pickler versus how Ilba thinks about the Monkey and suchlike. Are they considered absent, or immediately present? In what form? What responsibility do people have towards their gods? Can a god show up on your porch?

And quite honestly, do the Gaetani believe that converting to Love and Reason means that their gods aren't strictly real, or are they just placing their bets on the company with better HR policies?

I assume that every cult has its own narrative tradition and particular take on its patron. It'd be nifty to see that explored.

And obviously at some point I will have some fun with The Adventures of Monkey, A Totally Nice Gal Who Really Is Misunderstood By You Ungrateful Bastards, and about how gender works in that particular sub-culture.

Closer sense
I agree on needing that. My personal take, which is not strong, is that it probably varies with the specific priesthood (and probably relates directly to the story of the god: did they die? retreat from the world? still out there wandering around? In my version of things, in the early days the younger gods walked the Earth, and the Celestial Gods made humanity for them to have something to play with, to teach, to guide, to rule over, so there was a time when the Gods were absolutely a part of everyday life, where the Pickler God himself helped you learn to pickle hazlenuts, and the Lover Goddess herself taught you about sex, and a later time, when you would have eaten pickles made by the Pickler God, that one time, when the old Pickler Master Priest came through town, and shared some of his pickled radishes with your grandmother. Now days? I imagine it varies, but I imagine the Priests of the Judge still expect the Judge to answer when they call out to him, and maybe some of them meet him, or he comes to help them put down evil doers in a particularly difficult town. The others, I don't have a real opinion, but I think a place where the stranger at your door could be a monster, maybe it could be a god in disguise too. It does help to explain why you have to be so careful and respectful about figuring out if they are a monster.

About Monkey, are you aware of the aspect where Monkey is the main revered God of the Voscii, the Gaetani's neighbors to the West, inland behind the mountains? The trickster/protector who tricked the Old Empire into an imaginary world inside a bag?

No, but that's really cool.

No, but that's really cool.

I get the sense that every so often somebody (that is to say, a lesser monkey) gets possessed by Monkey. Most are probably faking it, but generally are given some allowance as the consequences for accidentally blowing off a genuine case are probably very unpleasant.

I'll work on that one.

KW bag wars?
Does this mean there can be Known World bag wars? (a la Knights of the Dinner Table)

The wonders of Wikipedia
"Knights of the Dinner Table, what's that?" I thought.

The bag is hidden away far up in the mountains by a secret order of monks, comissioned with the task of ensuring it is never opened. It has been opened once since it was sealed, releasing Murry into the world. hundreds of years from now, it will be opened again, releasing 4 more characters from the Old Known World.

Or anyway, that's my interpretation.

Oh my god. Knights of the Di
Oh my god. Knights of the Dinner table WAS my early middle adolescence.

A shameful, shameful early middle adolescence it was.

Murry's origin story!
So that's how it worked?

The bag wars are my favorite bit of KoDT (the wikipedia entry talks about it--I almost quoted that darn thing, but then thought that a bit much.) It touches this ludicrous epitome of taking things to their logical natural extenstions. (I have a deep fondness for KoDT in general, too. I wonder if anyones ever used it as an ethnographical text?)

But then, I have been banned from playing Polaris for my wickedly silly ways...

I'm kind of envious.
Which one were you?

Other "Evil" priests
I imagine Crows believe they encounter their god and/or are possessed by him on a regular basis. The crows (the birds, see lower case crow)on the battlefield are such obvious direct representations of their diety informing them of how the next battle should go, who should die and why. When a Crow priest goes into their squawking dance of death though, unless they feel they are possessed which most of them I imagine get themselves into such a euphoric feeling, simply feel they are doing Crows (the god) work and that those who die by their hand were sanctioned by him (is Crow male or female?). In early Gaetan history Crows definitely believed and "knew" that they were guided at all times by the Crow and his servants.

Cows I have been imagining are like Caine from Kung Fu. They walk the earth (Gaetan) until they are either inspired by their diety (through their hunger induced visions) to blight the earth right here or come across common people who treat such a starving individual with disrespect and then those peoples lands are blighted. Then again I view Cow priests as Kafka's The Hunger Artist who are perhaps very close to being Gaetani monsters then real people (and I imagine that's how the populace of Gaetan would view them if my theory is correct). I also imagine where ever a Cow priest dies the land turns to shit. Cow priests I don't think ever thought that Cow (the god) was ever walking around with them. They have always simply been agents, embodiments of suffering.

As for a lexicon game I'd be willing to try and work up some info on a few monster things and perhaps traditional mythology as well.

I WASTE HIM WITH MY CROSSBOW!!!!
Oh, Sara, all the way.

Seeing this in the side bar, I assumed it was related to Murry
In the game that Murry originates with, there was a character, Haven, who once slaughtered a small army of God's soldiers with her rapid-fire, unlimited ammo crossbow, with which she could peg someone in the eye at a range of a few football fields. Her question in regard to virtually every NPC (or PC) ever introduced was: is he necessary? Those that weren't 'necessary' were generally immediately killed.

Weirdest thing? This was a GURPs inflected freeform not that different from our current style (okay, it was GM'd), and the other characters included the accountant from an overthrown despotic government, and an architect.

Also, this was not our late middle adolescence, unless that is considered to extent into the early to mid-twenties.

Sorry, just reminiscing.

Ah the good old days...though
Ah the good old days...though I missed this set of misfit psychopaths & got to add my own ex-serial killer. It's nice that she can still visit from time to time, and good to have Murry here.

But Haven....perhaps not so much. : )

(The pegging them "in the eye" thing always kills me!)

Serial Killers
At least yours was an EX-serial killer! Totally different category! Really!

Sometimes she'd shoot them in the throat, for variety.

There were issues.
If not mitigating ones. —You really think such things are only to be found in mitteladolescence? Oh, would that it were so!

See? The Monkeys are totally
See? The Monkeys are totally benign! Honestly, it's the damn kids you have to worry about. I think Crows and Cows actually give some Monkeys the heebie-jeebies; only the hardest of hard core (read: a few extraordinarily vicious queens) will employ them.

Monkey society is a thinly veiled matriarchy, with a disposable male power game lacquered on top to keep the boys occupied. There was a time when it was almost purely a female organization. The fact that Ilba got knocked around so much by the lads is a testament to the poor state of affairs.

This leads me to think that there is a very nasty generational comeuppance in store for the male Monkeys, where everything is going to be wiped and reset. I suspect Insomnium would know something about this in practical terms, and I suspect that Ilba (both halves) have a vague, ancestral notion about it.

Alright, yammering now. I'll put this in a damn myth post.

Well, the only other major ta
Well, the only other major target is the knees, so two out of three isn't bad. Apparently the knees are mostly good for entertainment, anyway.

Oh, we’ve got the knees covered.
Charles has had some experience with them.

The PIB gods...
It doesn't seem like "evil" priests hire out like those "good" priests. Well Crows and Cows seem like an extreme situation. No one wants either of them around. Wolf and Monkey someone might want the services of, game or hexes as the case maybe. Its hard to imagine in a once unified country people going around seeking the assistance of the famine priest or the homicidal killer priest.

Though it seems that Gaetani priests are servants of the people so perhaps I should rethink my views on Crows and Cows. What could people ask for from two of the four horsemen?

What do they ask from Betrayal and Murder?
One thing they ask is "Please don't hurt me." The other thing they ask is "Please hurt those people over there."

No one asks for a Cow to show up, but if one is around, you treat it very very kindly, and you ask it oh so nicely to go somewhere else. If you're crazy mean, you ask it to bring famine to your neighbors first to get back at them for that time they snubbed your daughter.

Crows, I think, get called on a lot more often up in the war. "Please Crow, come down to this battlefield where I am about to die, and kill everyone." "Please Crow, spare me when you do." Of course, I think that is partly how new Crows are made (sort of like Reavers in Firefly or Chilean torturers).

Well, yes there are those cri
Well, yes there are those cries.

I like the idea that "Please Crow slaughter all my enemies." is the second most said phrase after getting run through on the battlefield.

Lots of analogies between Cro
Lots of analogies between Crow & the Badb.

I do know that, like I mentio
I do know that, like I mentioned above, a seriously, SERIOUSLY vicious Monkey war could involve hauling in the Crows or Cows: kind of the nuclear option. It's considered utterly taboo and a last resort, but any serious Monkey higher-up will know who to call. I'm sure there are some nice stories about That Far-Flung Village That Ticked Off the Monkeys Forty Years Ago And Now Is A Crater Which Renders Infertile Any Man Or Beast Entering Its Circumference.

But it would take a whole big hell of a lot to get the Monkeys THAT mad.

Sonata whistles past the grave
A bit uncomfortably, and continues poking her noise deep into Monkey business.

She'll be okay.
Sonata's the sort of person Monkey could really get to like.

Crow the other white meat...
I see Crows as people you can negotiate, when they are not in their trance to kill all offenders of the Crow. Though not easy people to negotiate with. Also that they may have their own special drug they take before battle and post battle they of course eat the livers of those they have slain.

Cows though I don't think are the sort you can call upon, you can only fend off by showing proper respect. Cows are odd for the Gaetani "evil" priests in that they are very magicaly powerful. Sure the others can make mood altering charms, take drugs that send them into homicidal rages or use rituals to commune with nature, but cows blight areas and I imagine have some sway over disease. They work for and partly are a force of nature and I don't view them as one for hire, just one you appease and get the heck out of its way.

You are of course welcome to call upon it, but I imagine the mythology is such that calling upon Cows gives you slightly worse then even odds that the Cow will destroy who you want then destroying you and your family and friends and your livestock and lands. Similarly if you beguile them to do your bidding then your own suffering will be legendary.

I just can't help but view Cows as people cursed to be servants of a diety that in the end makes them worse than most of Gaetan's monsters.

That's about what I figured.
That's about what I figured. Poor Cows. *pat pat*

Beyond the neat lists...
Beyond those lists Charles made, which seem very thorough, we also have within the mythology in game the Scarecrow King and the Queen of the East I believe and quite possibly more. Well quite likely more monsters, which are found in game notes here and there.

I need to look back over the notes to see what all was said about Scarecrow King, while the Queen shows up in the 20 statements (was it 20?) that Cameron was collecting.