Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Mountains Totter, the Sea Convulses

Question: The Poem of Erra and the Seven is some pretty crazy stuff, but Erra doesn't show up in your Anunna Pantheon, even as a Titanspawn. How would you handle him and the Seven?

We're actually big fans of the scholarly theory that Erra is just another name or title for Nergal, making "Erra and the Seven" an exciting tale of Nergal blowing everyone's shit up and then not being even slightly repentant about it afterward. Considering his general behavior and temperament, this falls right in line with his usual modus operandi, and gives us a great example of a Chaos/War god's idea of good clean fun.

The Seven, on the other hand, are distinct creatures of their own, and I'd assume they're all Legend 9-11 minor gods with very specific functions, similar to Phobos and Deimos and their ilk over in the Greek pantheon. They're not given individual names, but you have one in charge of terror, one in charge of flame, one in charge of looking hideously scary, one in charge of strength, one in charge of blasting wind, one in charge of flooding and one in charge of venom. You could easily slap names on them by just calling them the Akkadian words for those things they do (so, Anunu, Ishatu, Melemmu, Emuku, Askulalu, Abubu and Shamtu, something like that?). They'd be considered children of Anu, so therefore part of the pantheon and legitimate, but probably not much liked by anyone else (much like Lamashtu).

Or, alternatively, you could run with the idea that the Seven are super badass Follower birthrights belonging to Nergal, given to him by Anu to get his ass moving when he was trying to go back to bed instead of helping out around the Overworld. They certainly exacerbate his bad behavior, I imagine, as they're all apt to encourage one another to mayhem.

Oh, Nergal, you are just terrible to be around, aren't you?

No comments:

Post a Comment