Lady_Sadako

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It'd be like someone finding it offensive if they created a giant monster named Cthulu.

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OMG. I worship Cthulhu. You called him a monster. I have been disrespectz0red. You insult my relidgin.

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I'll look forward to the evil Jesus, Mohamed and Buddha monsters in a future publish.

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Oh, come off it. The Tuatha de Danaan were myths *first* and got turned into religious figures by neopagans. Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha were religious figures *first*.

Cryptic are basing their monsters on the original myths, not on your adopted myth-derived pantheon.

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As to CoH, I just feel that they are continuing the misinformation culture that demonises us and the Gods we work with.

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You're wrong.

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In the end I feel that someone needs to state that what they are preparing to put out in CoH is just fiction and should be taken in that context, we are not the villans.

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Yeah, it would be great if you could make heroes with, I dunno, a Magic origin.

The 'just fiction' thing is hilarious. The myths of the Book of Invasions, where the stories of the Tuatha de Danaan came from, are themselves just fiction. You're the ones acting as if they represented some sort of reality.

If you want to decide that they are really Gods that you believe in, then that's up to you, but nobody else has to change what they do to accomodate your preferences.

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Actually, it is theorized. There isn't any conclusive evidence that the bog bodies were ritually sacraficed.

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There's extremely strong evidence to suggest the same - and in the Boudiccan revolt that you mention, hundreds of human sacrifices took place to Andraste, so it's hardly the best source to cite.

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What urban legends?

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According to Caesar, the Druids used to burn people in wicker figures. (There is plenty of evidence that human sacrifice did go on, such as the famous Bog Body, 'Pete Marsh'.) It's not an urban legend at all. However, modern people who want to identify with the Druids don't like the idea.

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Yet still, it is the path that I and in the UK some 10,000 others follow.

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I know, I'm from the UK. I don't care how many neopagans there are, they still don't have the right to object to how other people interpret the same mythological source material that they are interpreting. Give States and Cryptic a break.

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I still find myself having misgivings about the way the Gods I work with, as a real world Druid, are being represented in I5.

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With all respect to your religious beliefs, the Tuatha de Danaan weren't Gods. They were mythical kings and queens. There's a theory that these might represent pre-Christian deities, but it's still only a theory. The fact that one can 'work with' them means nothing - as any chaos magician can tell you, you can 'work with' Bugs Bunny, Cthulhu or the Invisible Noodle Monster if you want to.

For that matter, the real world Druids aren't historically authentic. They are no more representatives of 'real' Druidry than the Antediluvian order of Buffaloes is representative of Native American beliefs. The modern Druids may be *spiritually* authentic and sincere (which is a whole different debate) but there isn't any Pagan tradition that has its roots in anything older than the last century. Even the most heartfelt Paganism is still an interpretation of history, not an authoritative statement.

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I'll take that bet.

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*eyebrow*

Okay, but if I win, you have to take your armour off and run a lap around Steel Canyon while the Benny Hill theme plays in the background.

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Yeah, we really do...

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...

BAD DEV. NO COOKIE.

Edit: Oh, I just BET there's a 'witch hat' temporary power. That would so rock.

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I don't get any missions to go to Striga either...In fact, I don't remember getting an introductory mission to Striga, I just went and saw Stephanie Peebles to start it off.

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If you hadn't already done that, you would have had a mission to go to Striga and see her. It's much like the way you get sent to talk to Wincott if you haven't done so already.

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sooooooo, the hellions? what the heck? they are weak and pathetic, only lvl 1-13 will get any exp. so how is that a good thing?

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It has to do with something called 'fun', which takes place at the low levels as well as the later ones.

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I just never got over my outrage at the "Mystic Knights of Tyr Nan Nog" show that turned Irish myth into Power Rangers and it's ranckled me ever since.

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Well now, THAT is fair enough. That show was... like bargain basement Xena with a dash of phoney Baileys.

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no written record perhaps, but a very fine oral tradition

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One of the great things about oral tradition is that it assimilates things and then claims they were always part of the tradition, such as the gypsies assimilating Euan McColl's song 'The Thirty Foot Trailer' and claiming it was traditional, or the Irish folksingers claiming that 'She Moved Through The Fair' is an old traditional song, when in fact it was written by Padraic Colum.

In this case, anthropologists writing in the 19th and 20th centuries came up with some theories about the Tuatha de Danaan, and these were assimilated. It happens all the time. Someone makes your history sound more interesting, you're bound to pick it up and run with it.

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I don't? There's not? Gee, maybe somebody should tell my granparents that the things that were handed down to them and then to me are completely invalid.

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Yes, they are invalid, since all the evidence is against there being any such a convenient transmission. People have been making up hereditary lineages since the neopagan movement began.

Given the choice between believing in an oral transmission from beyond the year dot that just happens to match what a bunch of 19th century anthropologists thought, and believing that people make stuff up, I'll take the making stuff up explanation.

You don't really have any right to complain about Cryptic's interpretation of Irish legend just because you happen to believe that you have some hereditary right to a different, supposedly authentic interpretation.

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And amongst my ancestors they WERE regarded as dieties.

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Um, how would you know? Have you spoken to your ancestors lately?

With all respect to your personal beliefs, there simply is no record of what people believed back then, and it's mere conjecture that the Tuatha de Danaan might have been gods re-rendered as heroes. Check out any half-decent history book on the subject. 'The Pagan Religions of the Early British Isles' is excellent.

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hmm... well... I guess that perhaps some of us of Irish decent are tired of seeing what our ancestors held precious presented in a manner that is degrading to our heritage.

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Unfortunately, you don't really have very much of an idea what your ancestors held precious, because there's no contemporary record. For example, the Book of Invasions dates from the 11th Century, and to quote Wikipedia 'might be described without exaggeration as a mélange of mythology, legend, history, folklore, Christian historiography, political propaganda and barefaced lies.'

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The Tuatha deDannan were the Faerie Folk of Ireland, not big shaggy monsters.

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No they weren't. The Tuatha de Danaan were the People of Danu in Irish legend, not the 'faerie folk' - that's a contemporary prettification, and about as genuinely Irish as a bowl of Lucky Charms. The Sidhe, the underground remnants of the Tuatha de Danaan, were more faerie-like.

Furthermore, it's by no means certain that they WERE the Gods of Ireland. They are portrayed as kings and queens, not as deities. Some think this is a 'Christian reduction' of the original, but there's no solid evidence either way.

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It gets a bit tiresome seeing the religious beliefs of my ancestors ground up and spit out in a totally outrageous form.

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Hey, I'd welcome the chance to get a chip on my shoulder about MY ancestors. Nothing makes a pagan happier than a bit of genuine repression to whine about!

But in fairness, they weren't the religious beliefs of anyone's ancestors at all. They were much more like Arthurian legends than Gods and Goddesses. If Cryptic want to interpret mythical figures as shaggy monsters, then well done Cryptic. I trust the Statesman (and the Manticore) to know their mythology inside out. Maybe the Tuatha de Danaan created those heroic legends as a way to mask their true nature? Who knows...

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What you want is for Defenders to be meaningfully better at using their primaries than a Controller.

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Yep. That's exactly it. It's not the powersets, it's the degree of efficiency with which each AT uses them.

Who knows, maybe Defs will get better buff/debuff numbers than controllers with Trick Arrow, in much the same way that electric blast Defs get better End Drain results than electric blasters in the Arena.

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Blaster changes are in I5. I PM'd Statesman specifically about that two days ago.

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Any ideas on how blasters are going to get FRENned?

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What? The Arrows for Defenders probably do damage, debuffs and slows; while theTrick Arrows for Controllers allow them to do their Holds and Immobilizes.

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No, it's not like that. There are two arrow based sets, Archery and Trick Arrow.

Blasters get Archery only (ranged dmg).
Controllers get Trick Arrow only (buff/debuff).
Defenders get Archery and Trick Arrow.

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Is that on Test in August, or Live?

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Can't see it meaning anything but Live.

As it's got new powers in, they've probably tested the heck out of it on their own servers already, so it shouldn't be on Test for long. I doubt there's much left to do...

I wonder if all this Celtic stuff means the boys will get kilts...

For all of those who quit over the Arena or the HO nerf:

SUCKS
TO
BE
YOU.

Even with all the stuff we knew about, there is so much sweetness in here... and the villain wave / hostage escort stuff is the icing on the cake.

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o Ermeeth wants to teach secrets to humans and make them “magically empowered beings” who are not dependant on the gods. Ok: Ermeeth… good? (sounds a bit like Prometheus to me)

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Even the names are similar. Ermeeth - Prometheus.

I think the problem with Ermeeth from Mu's point of view was that he wanted all humans to have magical powers - perhaps learned magic as opposed to inherent, bloodline-derived magic. Tielikku was already teaching magic, but one suspects she was only teaching it to certain people. (Perhaps she was only teaching it to WOMEN?) Individual Muvians presumably had magical powers - perhaps they were the ruling elite.

So, with the fall of Mu, the concentrated magical 'blood of Mu' is diluted into humanity's various descendants, giving them inherent (if dormant) magical abilities.

And making anyone with Mu blood a threat in the eyes of the CoT. Even if they are from Ohio.

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The CoT (old school Oranbega) have gone bad and the descendants of Mu have flipped over to being the good guys?

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Not necessarily. Some of the descendants of Mu are heroes, but by no means all of them. As Azuria says:

'To this day, these pantheons and their followers—the Banished Pantheon, the Oranbegan’s Circle of Thorns, and the descendants of Hequat’s Mu—are in a deadly struggle for earthly preeminence and they will use any and all resources, even other villain groups, to achieve this end. We at MAGI are dedicated to defeating them all.'

Dedicated to defeating THEM ALL. So, the Mu line has baddies involved as well as heroes. I'm convinced that the Hequat/Hecate link means that the Muvian villains are the Coven. They would be the 'pureblood' Muvians, the ones in whom the blood of Mu is strongest.