Arab Annotations

Question: Okay you knew this question was coming. You know your article "All The Fiddly Bits"? Now that they're done, could we get that for the Alihah, please?

Question: Since posting your "Race Relations" article, you have written two more pantheons. Would you mind telling us how the first three and the new two get along?

Someone actually wasn't patient enough for the question box and already asked about the fiddly bits, so that original post has been updated here. Go forth and learn specifics!

As for relations between the pantheons, that's a longer and stickier post! Let me try to break it down a little bit here:

The Apu have little contact with the middle eastern pantheons, which are far away and generally look pretty strange to them, but they have a lot of common ground with the Alihah, who similarly respect the importance of the World and its natural foci of power. They do not get along very well with the Elohim, whom they consider loose cannons with no regard for the damage they cause in their personal spats (but, unfortunately, the Apu themselves are likely to get into those spats with them out of outrage). The Anunna tend to look down their noses at the Apu, who are obviously too wrapped up in the petty concerns of the world to aspire to true power; the Apu in turn mostly ignore the ancient, obviously out-of-touch gods of Mesopotamia. While they tend to express it very differently, the Apu and Bogovi actually have a lot in common in their desire to steward the world and its natural cycles, but unfortunately they usually can't agree on method, and the Bogovi are especially likely to be very intolerant of the Apu practice of being strong divine presences in the world of mortals.

The Alihah, in contrast, are traditional allies of the Elohim, with whom they shared some worshipers and whom they have always considered fairly friendly neighbors. The Alihah recognize that the Elohim can be kind of insane and take care not to upset them by horning in on what they consider their "territory" too much, but the Elohim in turn aren't very threatened by a pantheon that seems largely nomadic to them, and enjoy them as polite visitors who come by every now and then. The Anunna are one of the few pantheons to actually respect the Alihah as a power in their own right, as they remember them at the height of their religion and are so old themselves that they don't consider having no presence in the world any measure of importance. They still think of the roving Alihah as slightly barbaric and childish, but then again, they think that about everybody. Finally, the Bogovi are distantly polite with the Arab gods; they don't have a lot in common and are confused by what seems to them like an unstructured, rootless pantheon that must have trouble functioning, but they're willing to aid one another for the good of the war effort even though they really don't get one another.

I should probably brush both posts up and just put a link to them somewhere in the sidebar, so they're easy to find for those laboring with too many PDFs.