On Mon, 13 Jun 2011, Eronarn wrote: >> Makhleb the Destroyer is a fearsome God of bloodshed and mortification >> of the flesh. Followers are expected to cleanse others by inflicting >> suffering and death on them in Makhleb's name, and can gain further >> favour by ravaging the freshly dead. Dedicated followers may also access >> the raw energies and demonic servants of chaos, so that they may better >> break the impure world and its false laws for this evil God's glory. > > I dislike the path this redescriptioning has taken, and I don't think > we should use it. Here's my rationale : > > 1) Most native English speakers will have no idea what 'mortification > of the flesh' means. > > 2) Cleansing others by making them suffer is very flavorful terrain > for a god. For example, it is the polar opposite of Elyvion. > > 3) The flavor in the above description has no particular association > with Makhleb's current flavor. It is a pretty significant departure > from a god of destruction. > > 4) The flavor in the above description has no particular association > with Makhleb's current powers. I don't see what killing someone with a > lightning explosion or a summoned demon has to do with 'bloodshed and > mortification of the flesh'. > > 5) "gain further favour by ravaging the freshly dead" may as well read > "oh and he accepts corpse sacrifices". It doesn't mesh with the flavor > of the new proposal. > > I think a god with this flavor should be cool. He should get powers > related to pain, bloodletting, scarification, and what have you. I > don't think Makhleb is this god, or should become this god.
Since Makhleb is a very simple god design-wise (piety rules, god effects), there is absolutely no reason why he couldn't be refined in any of these directions. As a flavour text, the new version works well. I really like Adam's proposal of merging Sif and Vehumet. Removing not so interesting gods is good. If the removal prompts us to come up with something new, then all the better. Makhleb is not being removed, but just re-themed and ideas for how to change the god will arise. I don't care if native speakers know what "mortification of the flesh" means. (I have been accused of looking up words like "incunabulum".) Among religiously interested people, which certainly includes at least some members of the devteam, familiarity with terms like "mortification", "transsubstantiation", "eucharist" does not strike me as odd. If players learn something new, all better. (And there is always the Australian Christian death metal band Mortification, which is how I got to learn the word.) David ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Crawl-ref-discuss mailing list Crawl-ref-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crawl-ref-discuss
