Tiamat wrote:
I believe you are referring to this strip:
http://www.errantstory.com/archive.php?date=2003-01-06It's from waaay back in chapter one, and they don't mention the god-war part again that I can remember, so either you picked it up somewhere else or you just have a crazy head.
Yes! That is what I was thinking of. Thank you Tiamat. And thank you too Impy, but that's the chapter I was just rereading when I got to thinking "hmm Exitialis... wasn't there something about a god dying at some point...".
So, that story I recalled was from the first book of the Lorenzel excavations. I wonder how accurate that book can be considered compared to Ian and Sarine's respective accounts of ancient (pre)history. (Jon's statement of the Veracian take on things is clearly church propaganda, and Meiji's account of magical meteorites is obviously Tsuirakuan devoutly-atheistic pseudoscientific bullshit).
On the one hand, neither of them were familiar with the contents of those books (e.g. neither of them new about the giant magical potato thingy), so the books could contain important information that neither of them knew (and Sarine has admitted that she doesn't know everything there is to know about ancient Elven affairs). On the other hand, the books were fallible human translations of ancient Elven crystals that were apparently missing numerous bits, whose authors/translators weren't necessarily sure what said crystals were talking about in the first place (e.g. temples as opposed to travel platforms), and there are indications that some of the text may have been edited/censored by Veracia.
A possible tipping point: according to <A HREF="http://www.errantstory.com/archive.php?date=2003-10-15">this strip</A>, there are certainly more than three locations in the list where they found Anilis' tomb (that one, in southwestern Farrel; "some", at least two, up north; and unspecified others). This would support the Lorenzel Excavation Vol I's story of many gods buried away sleeping, versus the Elven account of only three gods, one of whom doesn't really matter. On the other hand, the paedogogusi refer to "the old bitch" and "the old bastard" as though the Elven account of Anilis and Senilis is correct; though the Elven gods may have only been a few of the many gods who fought in this war.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out - if the "war between gods from faraway lands" story is more or less accurate than the "one great God who split into three" of modern Elven mythology (or Ian's account thereof). My bet is on something in between. Perhaps Anilis and Senilis were leaders of the opposing sides in the God War / Great Cataclysm, and (as I earlier expected) Exitialis is the one who died in that war (perhaps the head of a third faction?). Perhaps they were all one being initially, as per Ian's account; or perhaps that is metaphor for the division of one unified group of gods into separate factions. I'm especially curious where the gods themselves came from, as the Lorenzel Excavations Vol I speaks of them almost as though they were aliens, coming to this planet from somewhere far away.
I guess we'll find out eventually.