Vodr, Verungr, and Nether

A place to share those crazy "out there" theories that staff won't give any official comment on.
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Lexx416
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Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:14 pm

Vodr, Verungr, and Nether

Post by Lexx416 »

This is something that's been rolling around in my head for a while now - at least a year! Bonehead and I ramble a lot at each other in discord about our wild theories, and honestly we could probably start a dozen different threads on the topics we've covered, but the two topics (or one, depending on your POV) that come up most regularly are Vodr and Verungr.

As with all things Crackpot, this is a mixture of gut instinct, late night theorizing, and pulling from info sources that are both public and not-public information - so excuse a lack of direct citations!

We don't know very much about Vodr, or the cataclysm that involved him, so unfortunately my theories are hard to back up with any "concrete" (insofar as players have access to concrete) evidence. But it's my belief that the process by which an Immortal (specifically a non-ascended, and possibly this may even pertain to only Prime Immortals) dies is drastically different to how a mortal dies. I don't believe that "death" for a god is a terminal thing the same way it is for a mortal (maybe it also isn't terminal for mortals? who knows!), but rather a major transition from one form to the next.

I think that whatever great cataclysm was involved with, and prevented by, Vodr's sacrifice "killed" him and in doing so transformed him into a sort of Black Mirror version of himself - the abyssal horror that craves the souls of the damned and unjust. I also believe that Nether is a direct result of this transformation - that Immortals are special not only for their power and capacity for awesome things, but also for what makes up their personage. In traditional Greek mythology, the immortals and gods don't have blood flowing through their veins, but rather they have ichor - which is described as an "ethereal fluid" which is "toxic to humans, killing them instantly if they came in contact with it" - I typically don't like drawing too many parallels between Cogg mythos and Real World Mythos, but this sounds strikingly similar to how you could describe Nether, if you didn't have a very solid understanding of phase states in the modern sense.

Perhaps whatever constitutes as an analogue for blood for Immortals is either Nether, or (when a god undergoes a major transformation, wherein a very large facet of their personage/identity change) whatever vital fluid they have in their body becomes Nether, and leaks out into reality.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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Candelori
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Re: Vodr, Verungr, and Nether

Post by Candelori »

The idea of the nether being a part of the essence of the Immortals is a truly fascinating one. Perhaps the death of Vodr, the most powerful of Immortals, released an excess of this nether and caused its presence in the world as we see now. It is noted that of all Immortals, only Serafina is said to have any affiliation or ability to wield the Inner Light. A being of a completely different sort than the other Immortals, and one repeatedly stated to be relatively weak in power so as to not be regarded as on the same level as the others. She is said to be taking up the mantle of organizing the other Immortals against the nethrim. The others might be hesitant to act in such a way given that nether is part of their own essence, and it is an outsider, or at least an Other, that must convince them of what must be done to keep the world from becoming corrupted beyond recognition.

I am admittedly driving the speculation off into a different direction from Vodr, Verungnr, and the Nether, so I will stop now and consider a crackpot theory thread of my own.
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You experience a sudden flash of insight, as though you have an increased understanding of who you are.
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