god(s) and gods

Jane Delawney · 28 Nov 2010, 02:49 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: jane_delawney at sky.com (Jane Delawney)
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 02:49:35 +0000
Subject: (urth) god(s) and gods
Message-ID: <4CF1C33F.9020801 at sky.com>

Not at all sure what this means but anyway ...

Why is Typhon known as Pas on the Whorl?

(btw, I am sure there was a thread regarding this question on the list  
fairly recently, but I'm darned if I can find anything on it in my 
archive, so apologies if this is a Previously Solved Problem.)

The noxious kind-of-canines which roam the Whorl's ventilation / 
heat-exchange system are known by the Whorl's chem soldiers (and also by 
Vironese convicts consigned to the Pits) as gods, because they are the 
exact reverse of what one would normally expect a domesticated dog to be 
(ferocious instead of benign, unmanageable rather than obedient, and so 
forth). Silk is a little leery of this designation for obvious reasons, 
but uses it none the less because there is no other name for them.

'Pas' is Serbo-Croat for 'dog'. And Typhon/Pas is in most ways the exact 
reverse of what many would expect a father-god to be; he's a 'dog' 
rather than a 'god'.

Would not be at all unlike GW to introduce this kind of bilingual pun 
... just because. It gets all of us scratching our heads, and is pretty 
amusing once one has figured it out - yet it has no deeper significance 
at all, it's just Typhon (or rather GW through 'Typhon') having a laugh.

Any views?

JD

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