AEG spoilers - Gid as Timelord?

Dave Tallman · 28 Oct 2008, 15:07 · from 2008-October.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:07:38 -0600
Subject: (urth) AEG spoilers - Gid as Timelord?
Message-ID: <1bf4dd40810280807o55c9693bu2765860bd7430e81 at mail.gmail.com>

Gid cannot be too powerful. A time-traveler with the ability to freely
change the past would not allow himself to be shot and lose a leg, for
example. I don't think he can consciously warp reality enough to account for
Cassie's address changes, for the same reason.  Still, he is very capable:

1) He's strong, since he can break through a door with one lunge (p. 82).
2) He's agile, since he can do professional-level dancing even after losing
a leg.
3) He has a time-sense, though there are places it doesn't work (p. 75).
Perhaps when he's in space?
4) He may have matured more quickly than usual, allowing him to appear older
than he really is.
5) He has a remarkable range of knowledge, including physics, Earth arcana,
and old sea shanties.
6) He can enter a locked room through a one-foot-square hole.

I think these can be accounted for by two factors: his biological father and
his adoptive father. I think we should believe he was born on Woldercan.
Ambassador Klauser saw him there as a young boy (p. 297). Klauser also says
that Wolder males try to seduce Earth females, and Chase tells us that they
can reproduce with other species. This probably accounts for his physicial
traits.

His adoptive father is Robert Chase, who seems to have known Lovecraft (p.
75). If Lovecraft used him as the basis for his stories of Randolph Carter,
we know that he is an "old dreamer" (Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath) who
is well-aquainted with the mysterious beings of Earth (who are aliens, at
least in this novel). Bob Chase was either an old wizard who had some means
of prolonging his life, or a time-traveler. He probably taught his son a
great deal.

There is also the connection to Charles Finney and the "Circus of Dr. Lao"
to account for. Bob Chase became the first ambassador to Woldercan. Is it
too much to speculate that he used some knowlege he gained through his
arcane research to get a clue to the planet's location from the old
space-faring races that are hidden on Earth? He may have collaborated with
Chuck Finney, a descendant of the Charles Finney who wrote a novel based on
his encounter with Dr. Lao and his circus, in order to get the planet
discovered. Lao himself may have come from the planet Woldercan, and brought
some of the humanoid-animal crossbreed monsters from there (there was a
centaur in his circus, for example).
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