D&D 5E It's Dwarfy McDwarferson from the Player's Handbook!

[Dannyalcatraz]

No, but she has a tempest inside her...

 

[Thaumaturge]

No, but she has a tempest inside her...

O, brave new world
that has such people in it.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Umbran]

Interesting thing about most real-world myth: it has no canon.

Actually, it kinda does. It just isn't strictly enforced by someone in the Writing Room. King Arthur has Excalibur, there's a love triangle with Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot that ends badly for everyone, and so on. There are variations with region, and also variations with time, and the names change, but there are still common threads and structures.

People just made up words and creatures without much rhyme or reason or care for what might have gone before or what some scholar somewhere decided to put into writing.

Nobody worried about a scholar somewhere, but they did pass the same story around from region to region. And occasionally two versions of a story come around and meet each other, and someone gets to ask these sorts of questions. The name is just a name - you can figure out whether they are the same thing by looking at the role and qualities of the thing in the story.

I mean, none of these things really existed, so it's not like someone go check. "Guys, no, this is a brownie, and this is a booka, and this is a dobie, and this is a goblin, and this is a domovoi, and they are all totally different things, because look, they are not the same!"

The creatures are not real, but the *story* is a thing, and it changes and develops and reproduces as it gets passed around. So you can build a family tree, and eventually find out that the guy some folks called "Uncle Ted", was the same guy another group called "Robert Hastings". Or ou get to ask if Dagda's and/or Ceridwen's cauldron is the Holy Grail, and so on.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Actually, it kinda does. It just isn't strictly enforced by someone in the Writing Room. King Arthur has Excalibur, there's a love triangle with Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot that ends badly for everyone, and so on. There are variations with region, and also variations with time, and the names change, but there are still common threads and structures.

Not always. That telling of the story considered his dog more important than any queen or sword. That ain't just a variation.

Saying "King Arthur has Excalibur" is kind of like saying "Werewolves are killed by silver bullets." Or "Vampires hop." In certain traditions and re-tellings, sure. In others, nope.

Nobody worried about a scholar somewhere, but they did pass the same story around from region to region. And occasionally two versions of a story come around and meet each other, and someone gets to ask these sorts of questions. The name is just a name - you can figure out whether they are the same thing by looking at the role and qualities of the thing in the story.

Two versions of the same story often just exist alongside each other as if they are about completely different things or might each have some version of the truth. There's a reason the Bible tells the same story four times with significant variation.

The creatures are not real, but the *story* is a thing, and it changes and develops and reproduces as it gets passed around. So you can build a family tree, and eventually find out that the guy some folks called "Uncle Ted", was the same guy another group called "Robert Hastings". Or ou get to ask if Dagda's and/or Ceridwen's cauldron is the Holy Grail, and so on.

You can ask that, but it's a pretty reductionist question. They have similarities, they have differences.

I'd be like asking if Hogwarts is the same place as under the Fairy Mound and if that's the same place as the land of the Lotus-Eaters and if that's the same place as the top of the Andes mountains where the Inca left their mummified dead. On some level, yeah, those are all the same place (the Otherworld). On other levels, no, those are all different places (they each serve unique functions in their own worlds).