# Sphigx, etc. *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 25 Feb 1997* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Alice Turner *25 Feb 1997, 13:32* Heh, heh. I hate There Are Doors too, Patrick. Kipling's Jungle Book is one of the right-out-front sources for the Brown Book in NS, but I can't see much of a connection to LS, and I know (or used to know) my Kipling pretty well. The story mantis mentions is, I think "The City of Endless Night" (not at home to check). "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" is, I understand, bleakly autobiographical. It's a fine, wrenching, realistic story, but how does it relate to Wolfe's work? > How do you square this with the claim by the Trivigauntis that they talk > to Sphigx all the time? I get a little worried when _everything_ isn't > what it seems. I think only Viron has had its gods turned off. Dave, they talk to her, but she doesn't talk back. Sort of like Owen Glendower summoning spirits from the vasty deep in Henry IV. I think the gods were turned off everywhere till Mamelta turned Echidna, Scylla and Tartaros back on. 'Cept for cunning Kypris, who hid. And Pas, who is dead. Nice rundown, Henry, with especially good observations on Oreb. I remember that Heinlein two-headed character, Joe-Jim or something like that---he played chess with himself. He wasn't a tyrant...but your title is too good to resist! > [Kypris] and Tartaros worked fulfill the Plan of Pas > by getting a lander launched from Viron. Why Viron? > Because it's a godless (in both senses) city -- no > theophanies for 30 years. > > That's great! Finally an answer for "Why Viron?" > > But if Quetzal wasn't primarily responsible for this > shortage of gods in Viron, um, who was? Er, um, I don't think this argument will wash. The only other city we actually know of, Trivigaunte, doesn't get theophanies either. And, judging from the Fliers' responses, the Trivs are operating under a surprising (to the Fliers) feminist heresy by chucking out the other gods. I think Pas & Co. were originally programmed to be the gods of the whole Whorl. And that Trivigaunte gets away with it precisely because the gods have been deactivated for more than a generation. -alga- Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com ---