[Dolmen 2.0]

I just wanna see Mouse take on Cerberus. Or better yet, should they meet:

'Dad?'

[Aptorian]

Briar King, on 17 December 2013 - 08:33 AM, said:

who is dad? Kronos?

I believe he is making the connection between Mouse being a Fu-dog, which is apparently some kind of guardian demon, and Cerberus being athe three headed dog guarding the entrance to the Greek underworld.

[Dolmen 2.0]

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

Briar King, on 17 December 2013 - 08:33 AM, said:

who is dad? Kronos?

I believe he is making the connection between Mouse being a Fu-dog, which is apparently some kind of guardian demon, and Cerberus being athe three headed dog guarding the entrance to the Greek underworld.

Yep! Mouse is a Demon inside a dog, a Foo-Dog of Tibetan origin. Cerberus being the granddaddy demon dog could have family ties. If Mouse ever gets to talk again I will be the happiest.

[QuickTidal]

Are we at a Denarian book yet?

[Tattersail_]

QuickTidal, on 17 December 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

Are we at a Denarian book yet?

lol

[Aptorian]

The fact that we have Nicodemas/mus? in the book and the story is about stealing the Holy Grail, suggests that this is indeed a Denarian novel.

By the way this leads to an interesting question. Is there an overlap, rivalry or similarity between the Greek and Christian hell? Which one is older? Where are the Underworld and Hell actually located? Are they just another place in the Nevernever or do they occupy their own special pocket dimensions?

Man, I am going to enjoy watching Christian and Greek mythology clashing.

[End of Disc One]

Kincaid has been in the other two Denarian books so far, so hopefully he'll show up in this one.

Granted, his appearance in Death Masks was related to the Red Court and not the Denarians, but still.

[QuickTidal]

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

By the way this leads to an interesting question. Is there an overlap, rivalry or similarity between the Greek and Christian hell? Which one is older? Where are the Underworld and Hell actually located? Are they just another place in the Nevernever or do they occupy their own special pocket dimensions?

Man, I am going to enjoy watching Christian and Greek mythology clashing.

Oooo, a good question!

The Greek one will probably be older, but yeah I'd wager that both are demesne's in the Nevernever.

[Abyss]

Also Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 10:08 AM, said:

... Mouse is a Demon inside a dog, a Foo-Dog of Tibetan origin. Cerberus being the granddaddy demon dog could have family ties. If Mouse ever gets to talk again I will be the happiest.

I could be wrong, but i believe the dog form IS his demon form. 'Foo-Dog', after all.
Different mythology from Cerberus, but not unthinkable there's a connection there given the guardian canine angle and that we've seen Odin at least cross mythologies.

QuickTidal, on 17 December 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

By the way this leads to an interesting question. Is there an overlap, rivalry or similarity between the Greek and Christian hell? Which one is older? Where are the Underworld and Hell actually located? Are they just another place in the Nevernever or do they occupy their own special pocket dimensions?

Man, I am going to enjoy watching Christian and Greek mythology clashing.

Oooo, a good question!

The Greek one will probably be older, but yeah I'd wager that both are demesne's in the Nevernever.

I dunno... NevNev is fae territory, Angels are very different beasts.

[Aptorian]

I believe it has been stated that the fae simply occupy a big chunk of it, maybe the areas closest to earth, but there is more, a lot more Nevernever out there that does not belong to the fae but is instead occupied by... other things.

I think the whole point of the Nevernever is that it is like a more maleable and interactible kind of space/time made physical. Like the Immatirium lying behind the Materium in the Warhammer 40K universe. It is probably damn near endless.

Back to the question of where or when or how the Greek and Christian hells exist, if the nevernever really just is another way of saying a "easily accessible multiverse space foam click your heels and think of what ever you please"-place, then they probably exist there. How ever, if the White Christ is actually seperate from everything, some kind of all powerful deity, then surely he/she/it can create what ever the hell she pleases.

But just the fact there is a Greek pantheon and a Christian god at the same time, does my head in from a religious historical stand point. Who came first? Our Christan god Jehova was just another Babylonian or Mesopatamian god around the time the Greek Gods were popular. Are they the same gods? Is the White Christ actually a sun god?!

This post has been edited by Not Brent Weeks: 17 December 2013 - 04:59 PM

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 17 December 2013 - 04:25 PM, said:

Also Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 10:08 AM, said:

... Mouse is a Demon inside a dog, a Foo-Dog of Tibetan origin. Cerberus being the granddaddy demon dog could have family ties. If Mouse ever gets to talk again I will be the happiest.

I could be wrong, but i believe the dog form IS his demon form. 'Foo-Dog', after all.
Different mythology from Cerberus, but not unthinkable there's a connection there given the guardian canine angle and that we've seen Odin at least cross mythologies.

QuickTidal, on 17 December 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

By the way this leads to an interesting question. Is there an overlap, rivalry or similarity between the Greek and Christian hell? Which one is older? Where are the Underworld and Hell actually located? Are they just another place in the Nevernever or do they occupy their own special pocket dimensions?

Man, I am going to enjoy watching Christian and Greek mythology clashing.

Oooo, a good question!

The Greek one will probably be older, but yeah I'd wager that both are demesne's in the Nevernever.

I dunno... NevNev is fae territory, Angels are very different beasts.

Yeah, I think a few notes in at least some of the books have pointed to the Fae not being the exclusive owners of the NeverNever...I could be wrong though.

[flea]

I have read the entire series, of course, but I am thinking about a re-read since some things have become fuzzy for me.

Any suggestions about where would be a good place to start? I definitely do not want to start over.

[Aptorian]

But you should start over because the first characters show up in later books and there is an evolution there.

[End of Disc One]

flea, on 17 December 2013 - 07:00 PM, said:

I have read the entire series, of course, but I am thinking about a re-read since some things have become fuzzy for me.

Any suggestions about where would be a good place to start? I definitely do not want to start over.

Grave Peril then.

[Dolmen 2.0]

Well Hades is traversible physically in several accounts of the Greek Mythos. We find several protagonists could enter Hades in the flesh and return alive although normally crossing the river styx, A Huge risk. Might be interesting in the Dresdenverse as crossing the veil needs magic and the river styx is running water with souls so in theory anti-magic. Hades could be a neutral ground in the Nevernever, if we envision Styx as some kind of barrier. Hades is not similar to hell. it is actually more accurate to call it more similar to the After-life in its entirety as it contains both the good and the bad souls as one. The Good head to the Elysium fields which we could consider similar to heaven and the bad are tormented in various pocket areas where they are doomed to be lost, alone or attributed impossible tasks. Oddly enough sometimes these souls redeem themselves and pay their penance, moving on to the Elysium fields if so assisted. So Hades has a portion of it that stands as a type of hell but really its interpreted as a correctional facility in several stories. Hades is not the exclusive home of dark demons nor does it attempt to lay any dominion over monsters. its a holding cell for spirits, employing a gate keeper and a torture/cheerleading team to keep inmates motivated and/or rewarded.

This sounds alot like a pocket in the nevernever of the Dresden Universe and I see no reason why Hades could not just be a flip dimension to Olympus like summer faeland is a flip for winter faeland. Just another place that can be physically sited and visited at HUGE risk to the protagonist from the real world.

In other words it would be wrong to imagine Hades and hell as contemporaries. Hell is a cage for the biggest bad in Chritian religion. trapping the bad souls with the biggest bad leads to the complete corruption of those souls. My theology is rusty as to what happens to spirits in hell but the torment and presence of the devil has an effect. Being sent to hell is not really a penance. Its final and its always bad. I see Hell as being a place where he that walks behind features as a "Dark prince". Outside of the Nevernever. The Nevernever in its entirety may be the antithesis for Hell. I think on the war winter Wages with the Outsiders and it sounds like a blend of the apocalypse and Ragnorok.

[Aptorian]

There are no sources as to what really goes on in hell. All we know from biblical texts is that it is a bad place and you burn there. That is really all we know. All the stuff about circles of hell and princes and what not are ideas thought up later. Most famous of which is the Divine Comedy, which, incidentally does have sections of hell that seem similar to the Greek underworld and feature many of the heroes of classical literature.

If we want to go by the greedy, money scheming ideas of the Catholic church in the middle ages, hell can be a temporary thing. You go to purgatory (I believe it is called in English) where you burn for a certain amount of time until you have atoned for your sins, then you get to go to Heaven.

I don't think that there is any connection between the Outsides and Hell, well, other than they may both want the destruction of Earth. But the Outsiders are not Christian demons. They are more like HP Lovecraft demons. Alien in nature, the laws of physics, or indeed even magic, don't apply to them in the same way they do to us.

[QuickTidal]

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 07:48 PM, said:

There are no sources as to what really goes on in hell. All we know from biblical texts is that it is a bad place and you burn there. That is really all we know. All the stuff about circles of hell and princes and what not are ideas thought up later. Most famous of which is the Divine Comedy, which, incidentally does have sections of hell that seem similar to the Greek underworld and feature many of the heroes of classical literature.

Hang on. So an old book written by men about hell trumps a newer book written by men about hell?


ASIDE: If you want the Greek equivalent of Christian Hell....you are talking about Tartarus...the part of Hades where bad people go and get tortured.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 17 December 2013 - 08:23 PM

[Abyss]

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 07:48 PM, said:

There are no sources as to what really goes on in hell. All we know from biblical texts is that it is a bad place and you burn there. That is really all we know. All the stuff about circles of hell and princes and what not are ideas thought up later. ...

Well, as long as we have one accurate text to rely on...

[Aptorian]

Hey now, I'm just referencing the original source material. Even if you want to think about the abrahamic legends as fictional, there is still an original story that the other stories derive from.

Take the Expanded Star Wars Universe. There's a lot of stuff that has been added and expanded upon from the original trilogy. I for one do not believe in Jar Jar Binx. I think he is a fictional evil that somebody thought up as the worst thing imaginable. You know like Gozer the Gozerian.

[QuickTidal]

Not Brent Weeks, on 17 December 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

Hey now, I'm just referencing the original source material. Even if you want to think about the abrahamic legends as fictional, there is still an original story that the other stories derive from.

Take the Expanded Star Wars Universe. There's a lot of stuff that has been added and expanded upon from the original trilogy. I for one do not believe in Jar Jar Binx. I think he is a fictional evil that somebody thought up as the worst thing imaginable. You know like Gozer the Gozerian.