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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9754803" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Is it? I have always understood it as being individualist, where Lawful is collectivist. You can have a non-anarchic yet Chaos-favoring society. Some might argue that that's precisely what the United States is, for good and for ill.Again: Why? You're talking about someone abusing others through the system. I'm talking about things like--for example--a player of a naval wargame realizing that teeny-tiny boats may frequently die, but they almost always still do something even to "properly-built" fleets, and thus creating a fleet that is nothing but the absolute maximum number of minimum-size boats they could field. I don't remember which specific game this was, but some naval wargame permitted this, and it ended up being seen as a huge faux pas, but not breaking any rules. (IIRC, new rules were introduced to patch this hole.)Likewise, Anansi most certainly is not any flavor of Evil--though he is selfish and sometimes cowardly--but he does defy social order and uses cunning and misdirection to defeat much more overtly powerful opponents. He is an example to be followed in many cases (particularly given...history, I'll leave it at that), but also held up as a "good bad example" of why you shouldn't take things too far or the like.I also mentioned other extremely important, and often tutelary, deities like Maui for a reason (though "deity" is...complicated when it comes to Hawaiian spiritual traditions). That is, you are essentially projecting one specific archetype--Satan--onto all tricksters. That is...simply not correct. Numerous other approaches to trickster-ism also apply. Consider, for example, the story of Utgard-Loki, and how he used illusions and manipulation to try to one-up Thor, only to accidentally reveal that Thor was actually INSANELY more powerful than he had any right to be, and thus Utgard-Loki came clean...and then said both Thor and (regular) Loki would never be allowed in his territory again. 100% trickster--0% "destroying hierarchies" etc.Or, in simpler terms: You've just done exactly what I said it sounded like you were doing. You are starting from "Trickster always means Chaotic, and Chaotic always means violent anarchism." Neither of those conclusions are true overall; they may be common patterns, but they aren't guarantees--not by a long shot.I was speaking of augury; I thought that was the spell being used? I guess I got confused.If commune is the spell in question, you can only cast it three times a day (normally) anyway, and that, too, has the built-in "random chance to just get no answer" effect that would make casting it four times in a given day pretty damn pointless.So, for real, even if you managed to get real lucky and get all four castings in a single day without failing the secret check...twelve questions. Twelve questions, is making a "servant" out of your deity? Seriously? That's all it takes. Twelve questions.Maybe the gods do need to be taken down a peg, if they throw a hissy fit over something so utterly ridiculous.</blockquote>

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