Prior to today, this page made the assertion that there were only two types of centaurs - normal centaurs and onocentaurs. Classical Greek art is full of ichthyocentaurs, and the myths made various subdivisions as well. Cyprian centaurs had horns. Lamian centaurs were water spirits (but were distinct from ichthyocentaurs, if I'm understanding things correctly). So I'm updating our page to match and recognize that reality.
Recent Forum Posts
I'm about to start a campaign set in the Old West, and I wanted to know which "Indian Wars" were ongoing in the era of my game. Since I was looking that up, I figured I'd quickly add a little section to this page listing all the wars the US had been in. I naively thought this would be about 30 entries.
I have rarely been so amazed at my own ignorance. Two days later, I had over 120 wars. So I moved them to their own page.
If that is your weapon of choice, then it certainly does reveal something about your personality. ;)
Isn't this a euphemism for penis?
Yeah - not a problem from my POV. I've just done the web check myself and was surprised that it wasn't common knowledge - the only obvious reference I could track down was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_and_Rhea_Silvia
…which is a Reubens painting of the myth…
Still, even if we typed the whole article contradicting one another in l33t it would make more sense that the religions in most fRPGs.
in discussion Meta Forums / Per page discussions » Fantasy Religions
As I said, I'm no expert, but I don't remember there being anything along those lines. A quick check of Wikipedia (not the best source, I know, but it's quick) shows that neither the "Rhea Silvia" page nor the "Founding of Rome" page nor the "Mars (mythology)" page make any mention of him raping anyone, nor any stories of him lying about having sex. The Mars page there does relate the the Ares & Aphrodite sleeping around behind Hephaestus' back factoid, and says that there are several instances of Roman art of Mars and Venus together, with the implication that the Greek version of that tale had some traction in Rome. And someone added their Mars page to the category of "mythological rapists" on wikipedia, but whoever did so didn't put any actual mention of who he may of raped anywhere on the page. …but then the "Rhea Silvia" page says that she was forced into being a Vestal Virgin against her will, and the "Founding of Rome" page says that the father of Romulus and Remus may have been either Mars or Hercules. Clear as mud.
Anyway, like I said I don't really feel like the page needs to me rewritten or edited. I am fine with it the way it was, because even if my understanding is correct (and I might well be completely wrong about it), your write-up was interesting (I mean that in a good way). I just kind of wanted to append the contradictory view point to the discussion section so that if someone was puzzled by this page disagreeing with the content of other related pages, they might be able to read up on a possible explanation of the contrast without having to search elsewhere outside of arcanawiki.
Let's face it, it's classical mythology: there's bound to be contradictions, apocryphal variants, gnostic inner-mysteries, and bisociation a plenty. We are, after all, talking about public domain characters with over 2,000 years of history (and fan-fic), not a single official canonical version that one can honestly refute definitively.
Heh. It was in a footnote already. Mind you, didn't the Roman Mars knock up a vestal virgin and then lie about it (hence Romulus and Remus)? Or is that post-interpretatio modification of a later myth?
Yeah … I guess that in itself gives us a new layer of complexity: do we look at a primitive, numenistic Mars or the post-interpretatio one (bloody thing keeps autocorrecting me to interpretation)? I've found it difficult in a lot of cases to get anything about Roman history to acknowledge the historical changes … I'll take a crack at one of my dreadful footnotes.
in discussion Meta Forums / Per page discussions » Fantasy Religions
The ideas/suggestions/inspiration this page gives in regards to Mars (mythology) and how you might make a complicated deity for your campaign world are pretty great. I really like this page. That said, the actual factual information the page lists about Mars (mythology) is sort of wrong, I think. I'm no expert, so I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that Mars as the Romans worshipped him before annexing Greece into their empire was NOT a rapist or bloodthirsty. He was a god of duty, patriotism, and protection, with a minor agricultural theme due to his parentage and his role as stable provider, but was for the most part totally lacking in mythic tales of his deeds. Mars was originally a more or less just a disembodied ideal to be aspired to. Many of the Roman gods were like this in their earliest incarnation.
Ares, on the other hand, was a hot-headed, violent, sometimes craven, jerk from pretty much his inception in Greek myth. He was mostly a disruptive figure often doing immoral or unfortunate things throughout the body of Greek myth.
It was only after the Romans spread into Greece and were exposed to both the Greek's significant body of myth, and the Greeks existing habit of assimilating other's myths and gods into their own beliefs (see Interpretatio Graeca) that the Romans said "hey, we could do that, too". So they ported over the already highly-successful mythic tales of Greece and ran a "find & replace" algorithm to swap Ares out for Mars. (Take that with a grain of anachronistic salt.) This effectively rendered many of Ares disruptive traits onto Mars thereafter, but my understanding is the Romans still made some sort of distinction between their Mars and the Greek version. Like "this is the real Mars" and "that is what those silly foreigners think Mars is like. They're wrong, but their stories sure are a good read!" At least, that's my understanding of the situation. It's not like I was there, and I certainly don't have a degree in any of this. It's just a thing I read in a couple of books.
Anyhow, I'm not sure that distinction really matters in the context of this page. I may be just splitting ares here, if you'll forgive the pun. You could not know this factoid about Ares and Mars, and still get tons of cool inspiration for your game based on the version of things said on the page. It's fairly pedantic of me to even point it out, but seeing as how this page disagrees with some of our other pages on the topic, it seemed like a caveat worth at least mentioning in the discussion section of this page. So if anyone read several conflicting pages on this wiki and wondered "what the heck is actually going on with this Mars guy," they'd be able to dig a little deeper and get some perspective. The pages contradict each other, and I think it's the other pages rather than this one that get those finer points correct… but the broader point made on this page that "real-world myths and religions are complicated and nuanced, and mostly-good Gods can be still sometimes be kinda evil" is spot-on, so I don't want to excise those excellent bits from the page. This way we get the best of both worlds, as befits the subject matter.
</ soapbox rant>
Not sure this is worth changing? (Maybe I'm just splitting ares here) by 
r_b_bergstrom, 30 Aug 2019 07:32
in discussion Meta Forums / Per page discussions » Foods Of The Old And New Worlds
Now we just need someone who knows Australia well enough to create another "New World" entry for them … not as big as the Columbian Exchange but certainly interesting.
Read a bit more to refresh myself. The L4 and L5 points (where a Trojan Planet would exist) are generally considered much more stable positions than the L3 where a Counter-Earth might potentially exist. Trojans are most likely relatively common in our galaxy, but counters are probably rare and somewhat self-destructive. At least that's my understanding.
I'm no astronomer either, but it appears that is the case. It's certainly related enough for the purposes of our little wiki. I just googled "Lagrange Point Diagram" and the classic "counter-earth" position is typically labeled L3, while the Trojan Planet positions are L4 and L5. I will adjust the Trojan Planet page to reflect this information, and include a link. Thanks for pointing it out.
(Extra credit: L1 and L2 are in a line with L3 and the Sun and Earth, but much closer to the earth than the other higher-numbered Lagrange Points.)
Does this relate to the idea of a counter-earth (or equivalent)? As I understand it, it's possible for two planets to occupy the same orbit on opposite sides of their primary as well as the 60' ahead and 60' behind … but I'm no astronomer…
(and yes, I know there's not actually a counter-earth out there in our own solar system…)
Added the extra categories - in summary anyway.
Might be missing something, but it feels to me like we are reasonably well tied to the wiki article.
When de-stubbing the article I tried to aim it at a fairly objective position - that rioting was an often understandable but almost never productive response to social stress. We had an attempted drive-by politicisation from someone who seemed to like the idea of rioting, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to find the "whiff of grapeshot" tendency turn up eventually as well.
Certainly for gaming purposes the "rioting makes things worse" would seem to be the most viable position - but then I have been on a Deus Ex marathon recently…
I'm not sure I particularly have the time or interest to tackle this one myself, but I think it would be a good idea for someone to rework this page some time. There are a few statements that are bordering on political, and not necessarily supported by the wikipedia article listed as the only source reference. Plus, we're missing out on covering sports riot, police riot and prison riot, all of which seem like they might have interesting gaming potential. So it would be cool to see some changes here. If anyone wanted to try to give this page an expansion, clean-up and referencing, I'd appreciate it.
I don't want to do it myself, mostly because I know my personal bias would creep in and run it toward the opposite "eat the rich" end of the political spectrum. I may find it hard to be objective, and I don't want to accidentally start a revision war on the page.
in discussion Meta Forums / Per page discussions » Elephant Of The Bastille
Ideally, I think we should classify this as a Monument, but I don't think we have a category for that yet. Where sould we put it?
At the moment the best solution I have is to put it under Unclassifiable Places.
"All the World's a Stage and Everyone's a Critic" — Mervyn Alquist
Aren't the evil clowns in that picture on the wrong side of the country? I thought Derry was in Maine, not Washington…
I made a brief addition to the Morning Star (weapon) page to note that the name is also applied to the Planet Venus. But the previous note about The Devil reminded me that "Morning Star" has also been used as a metaphor and a descriptive name for Jesus. And for that matter it was also Eärendil's star in Tolkien's Middle Earth.
Hm. Maybe I should work up a page for "Morning Star (Mythology and Theology)"
Except that I have a big heap of pages I've been meaning to write/finish/add to already. Maybe someday…
"All the World's a Stage and Everyone's a Critic" — Mervyn Alquist
Hm. Perhaps if we had a page for "Culture". At the moment we have an unused link for it under "Society", but no page.
"All the World's a Stage and Everyone's a Critic" — Mervyn Alquist
…now how to parent this page? Fictional Characters doesn't seem to suit a whole culture (or race or whatever) Cthulhu mythos perhaps?
