The Divine is certainly incomprehensible. Jesus was not God. Jesus was God. That's cannon Divine, also incomprehensible. On top of that it seems outright malevolent to mere mortals. It shattered the Tower of Babel, its personally responsible for aging and death. If the Divine is benevolent, it is benevolent in much the same way as a heart surgeon might be in Mythic Europe. (And we're in the middle of the surgery for a new heart.)
Now there are reasons why the interpretation of infernal=freedom isn't wholly correct, but that's besides the point. Sure demons may be always chaotic evil, but what about demon blooded characters? Their infernal, but they aren't evil.
More to the point, the characters don't actually need to be right. That's what spin is for.
There's incomprehensible, and then there's incomprehensible - even within Catholic canon, there are explicitly-stated incomprehensible truths (I believe they're called "mysteries", actually). Going to an extreme, Gödel has shown that pretty much all sufficiently complex logical systems have inconsistencies. As such, while I acknowledge that the metaphysical system that Mythic Europe has going for it contains incompatible truths (as you point out), so does everything else.
Within the context of Mythic Europe, the Divine is arguably the easiest Power to comprehend - there are lots of books on it, and you can pretty much walk into any major town and learn about it from someone who is more than happy to teach it to you. Can you find inconsistencies? Sure. But they're considerably easier to find due to the scholastic path that had already been made for the serious investigator.
In contrast, I would argue that the other Powers are just as incomprehensible and fractured, and they're a lot harder to learn about. Consider how many Magic Theory Abilities there are, or how many different pagan pantheons there are (all claiming to have created the world), or how many lies demons will tell you. We know the limits of understanding the Divine because they've been pushed so hard. The others? Not so much.
Of course, if you wanted to put together a more comprehensible (and consistent) Divine meta-theology as laid out in Mythic Europe, you'd likely have to go somewhat Hindu - and start talking about Paths to the Divine, or some such. Which, I would argue, is what the RoP:D book actually implies. However, I'd also argue that doing so would make it feel like some weird alternate of D&D's take on religion, and you'd end up loosing out on a significant portion of the flavor of Mythic Europe. As such, leaving it in its current (perceived) shattered state probably works better for the setting.
That argument goes both ways: it's also the Power that is actively sustaining every good and pleasurable activity in existence, and striving to keep evil to a minimum, while allowing for the greater good that comes from free will. (At least if we go by Augustine/Aquinas.) A number of classical and medieval theologians addressed the Problem of Evil, so it's hardly an unknown issue. (But from what I recall of it, their interpretation was never "we need to explain this." Rather, it was more akin to "Here is my humble offering to God, to try and understand Your ways."). So while it may look malevolent to uneducated folks, to an outside observer (ie, those of us that have read RoP:D), we know that it's not.
Portraying the Divine as malevolent goes against the explicit stated goals of the game. In contrast, casting Magic entities as uncaring, mind-shattering, unknowable aliens actually fits quite well.
They have infernal power, but they can choose whether or not to use it - just like a black magician can. So I'm not quite sure what your point is, here. Yes: demon-blooded characters have been granted a supernatural power at birth, and in doing so has prevented any other Realm from planting such a power in them - at least while they still live. (After they die? Yeah, they can probably become a Saint, if they went that route.)
And of course it's your game, so you can do what you want - my main point is that this line of argument goes pretty heavily against the stated goals and metaphysics of AM - the Divine isn't malevolent, it's relatively easy to at least partially comprehend, and it's intensely caring regarding the health ad benefit of humanity. As such, it doesn't map well to Cthulluesque horror. Magic, if you either town down the Cthullu a bit, or remove the PC's ability to comprehend magic with a skill roll, actually maps quite well.
Errg, no. He showed they were not complete, not that they were inconsistent. If he would have shown that logic is inconsistent, he'd be even more famous....
On point - since theologians are actually quite wrong about major aspects of the Divine (Trinity - whether it's true or not, either Christian or Muslim theologians are deeply mistaken), the major obstacle raised to associating it with Mythos entities seems to be that the Divine is good. But if you ditch that assumption, and emphasize the alien and mind-shattering nature of angels and the Divine (especially at the higher echelons) - it could work.
That said, I think the Divine fails simply because it's so involved in the setting already. And it's cult is nothing like what a Cthulhu-esque cult should look like. So, I don't think it works. Not simply, at least. You'll might be able to pull of Divine Mythos by going the dualistic way mentioned in the other thread currently running. If the earthly religions actually worship the Demiurge and the one true god is above that, then you might indeed posit him and his satellites as truly alien beings that will, one day, end the world.
Still, I think much is lost by associating the Mythos with God. The Mythos isn't divine; it's alien. It isn't the One True God, it's an assortment of unimaginably powerful beings. You can squint hard enough to make the Divine work, if you really want to, but Magic really does work so much better in my opinion.
As another option - I don't really like the way the Infernal metaphysics works in ArM5, as it boils down to Rebellion (against just authority) and Incompetence (demons can't freaking plan, sheesh!). A common (in other games) alternative take on the evil power is that it's the power of Destruction, seeking to undo Creation rather than win petty souls. If you adopt such a dualistic view, then you can use the Cthulhu Mythos as demons - truly alien beings not created by God and thus out of this world, who seek to enter it and destroy it.
I think this works better than the standard Infernal approach, but Magic still works better.
Oh yeah, I hate the infernal cosmology with a passion. "Don't make demons comical. Also they are cartoon villains that have a defining traits of incompetence." But yeah, I think that redoing the cosmology could make some seriously cool incomprehensible demon types who are trying to undo reality. Magic doesn't seem like the undo reality type. Magic is more like "idealized" alien reality.
The Divine element of the Mythos I was thinking of was the guy who was dreaming the world. It couldn't be all of the Mythos stuff, just some. It might seems to go against canon Divine, I point you to the Son that God doesn't have.
Hm. I was under the impression that Gödel showed that for any system that has addition in it, you could inevitably derive the "This statement cannot be proved true within this system" statement. Thus, you were left with the option of either acknowledging that your system is inconsistent, or else create a metarule that said "ignore that internally inconsistent statement". I suppose then that technically, the common response will be the latter. However, if you are prohibited from creating a metarule (ie, if you're talking about entities on the far edge of metaphysics, above which there isn't anything) then you're left with inconsistency. Of course, at this point we're talking about the relationship between logic and the supernatural, which... is Theology, actually.
I thought Demons could blow Confidence to repress that. (Don't have my book in front of me - I know they had some attributes that they couldn't go against, and ones that they had to spend Confidence in order to repress). Thus, I simply take that to mean that the best Infernal plans work through mortal agents - that is, the true mastermind of any evil plot will be, at its heart, a corrupted human. The demon could spend the Confidence, set up a solid corruption scheme that focused on getting a human to do its bidding, and then simply "ride it out". The issue being that the Demon can't change its plans on the fly, and as such can be caught up when things deviate from that original plan.
If you're interested in having the Divine as a Cthulu entity, the RPG to look for is Kult (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult) - which has been described as "Call of Cthullu, but without the mindless optimism".
Magic: The epitome of Essential Nature, the powers of Chaos. The world once was the material manifestation of primeval powers, a world of Chaos of wild elements and utter lack of order.
Faerie: Then the Faeries came from Outside, through the dreams of humanity, and established Order where there was Chaos. The sky was separated from the Earth, the world of the living from the dead, the stars set in their orbits and the sun and moon in their cycles, fire was tamed, the earth plowed, earth turned to shackles and swords. Civilization arose with their Faerie gods and chained the Titans, forging the mundane, regular, world much like it is in 1220.
Magic is what is, it is something's true, essential nature; Faerie is what things can be willed to be, it is nature tamed and conformed to thought.
Divine: Then rose a new power, the Divine, the power to Transcend what is or what can even be imagined. The Divine pulls things outside of their true nature, to something beyond it, beyond even existence itself.
Infernal: With transcendence came Corruption, the power that seeks to make things less then what they are, to destroy and decay all.
This lends itself to a nice metastory - as the Dominion strengthens the last holdouts of pagan worship fall, and with them the chains of the Titans grow loose. The PCs, aligned with Magic, can help free the Titans from their chains and usher a new age of magic - or else can strive to stop the terrible (Cthulhu-esque?) powers of Chaos from shattering the world. But I never could fit the Infernal too well into that tale.
As far as I remember, he showed that there is a statement whose truth cannot be proved from within the system but that can be shown, from outside the system, to be true. Thus - the system is not complete. But he didn't show you can derive a contradiction from the system, you don't need to invent any metarule to save the system's consistency. You do need to invent new axioms to save the system's completness, i.e. to be able to prove the truth of that sentence - but that's rather futile, as then you'll have yet another Godel sentence for that extended system...
This is certainly one way to go, but I hate that this is mold of all demons. And then there are all the other Virtues you need - he can't pay with Confidence for all. What you're left with it either basically ignoring that all idea, or else making demons rather poor villains.
I much prefer my demons to be scheming evil dudes with great supernatural and perhaps physical powers. And goals that go way beyond the "I'll tempt you to betray God and die before you confess your sins". The best demon-bestiary I've read is "Armies of the Abyss"; it's full of deliciously evil demon-lords brewing nefarious plans and strategies, and wielding bizarre and horrific resources and powers.
Hmm, no. Inconsistent means that you can prove a statement is both true and false. Incomplete is when you cannot prove either.
Bertrand Russel and his gang were trying to find the ultimate axioms from which all mathematical truth could be derived. Gödel used basic set theory to demonstrate that no matter your initial axioms there will always be some statement whose value remains indefinite, you cannot prove it true or false.
In the Cthulhu Mythos, generally, the various entities are either mindless like Azathoth, or are intelligent but simply don't care about humanity, like Cthulhu. Although there are exceptions like Nyarlathotep, who apparently seems interested in humanity. And then there are alien races like the Mi-Go who have their own interests and just coincidentally have colonies near humanity, or alien races like the Deep Ones who seemingly exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship with humanity.
Divine, Faerie, and Infernal are all much too interested in humanity to map well to "Cthulhu". So, FWIW, I think that Magic is the best map to a "Cthulhu" realm. Although it is obviously not exactly right, as it wasn't written with that in mind.
Again, I'll have to look at my RoP:I book - but I was under the impression not that they couldn't plan, but that they couldn't plan for part of their plan not working. So, you can have your incredibly complex, byzantine plots going, representing a demon lord's long-term corruption of (say) a town, where the demon has bifucating strategies ("if the townsfolk do this, then I will react with X - if they do something else, I will react with Y"). which he's spent a couple of Confidence points on refining over several years - and then the PC's come in and somehow mess it up, because they were the one thing that he didn't plan for. And while he can spend a confidence point to refine the plan further, that gives the PC's a chance to beat him in the short term.
To me, I don't see the Confidence point thing as something to prevent planning - rather, it puts a cap on the demon's ability to quickly react to the PC's - as otherwise the demon would simply stomp all over the group. (I find infernal powers, with a magi's inability to percieve them in action, to be WAY more powerful than they tend to be played at.)
Yeah, there is a point about that. A Deluder for example can mimic hermetic effects. While invisible and untargetable in spirit form. A battle between the deluder and magi would go a little something like this
"So you walk into the Church? The building collapses. Everyone take +15 damage. Who is still up? A beam is chucked at you. You failed your defense? Take a heavy wound. No one else is up? Church is set on fire. Everyone burns to death."
Thanks for all the feedback and dialogue. Very interesting discussion.
It does seem like to me on reflection that Magic is the closest it - I'd originally wondered about Dark Faerie but I think it's too dependent on humanity.
I think Dark Faerie could look to a mortal like a Mythos type being. Ultimately the Mythos was the creation of Lovecraft. A human. Someone in Mythic Europe could make similar stories. Sure it wouldn't really be uncaring, but the humans can't tell.
I did start writing up stats for Deep Ones (and some ideas for Shoggoth as Corpus Elementals) as an extension of an official project Story Seed, I could try and dig it out I suppose...
Originally the Cthulu reference was meant to be an Easter Egg but David was wise to me and we ended up cutting it with the intention of it appearing in Sub Rosa or via my blog.
Having looked at Cradle & Crescent, I've had the idea that Abd Al-Azrad, author of a dubious book beloved of cultists, could in fact work as a Sahir - specialising in Solomonic Storytelling (He really can tell stories that will drive people without supernatural abilities insane) and Solomonic Travel (travelling through the Twilight Void to far-off stars, riding a jinn that looks mysteriously like what you imagine a byakhee to, expert in realm lore).
Some are magic, some are faerie. The Divine has no place in Lovecraft, so neither does the Infernal. That leaves Magic and Faerie.
Nyarlothatep is Faerie. Azathoth is Magic. In a similar way, other elements divide nicely between those that don't care about humanity and those that are all too interested.
I agree that it is important to know why one is gibbering mad.
FWIW, back in the early 90s, I had readied a campaign in which (unknown to the players), R'lyeh == Atlantis. Talk about journeying too far from the safety of a Dark Age.
I think AM nails (Christian) demons dead on. Satan is waging a rebellion against an omnipotent, omniscient opponent despite being infernally clever. This needs explanation, and AM does a good job of it.
I might have more to say about demons in November.
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