The Gods of ArrKelaan on The Duck : Consequences

anonymous at 5:02AM, Sept. 15, 2008

In regards to killing followers: As a biologist there's actually an equation for about how fast a population will grow. When there are very few animals in a location they breed pretty quickly but because there are so few it's a relatively low number of total offspring. As they reach the saturation point they breed very slowly so even with so many of them it's still slow. I'll just skip the calculus and jump to the useful bit - you get the fastest population growth right when a population is at half the total capacity. You can "remove" the greatest number of individuals without setting the population back very much at this point. Of course, if there is a particular "penalty" that makes it difficult for people to reach their epiphany at that population size it could shift your optimal point around but with the gods being gods it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to keep a bit of a tally and get a decent estimate of it, what with the long timescale they've got to work with.

Itzal at 3:39AM, Sept. 15, 2008

beyond that the increase in power takes time if you recall the one they're following now has been in the afterlife almost since the beginning. It appears that the souls need to reach an epiphany to pass on and eveyone is different in their own way so the event would occur at different times for different people. In other words if a god killed off a number of their followers they would have no knowledge when they would recieve this power in addition to the fact that to open up new energy paths they have to follow their followers souls and the gods don't seem to spend that much time in their afterlives.

Max Dougwell at 7:30AM, Sept. 14, 2008

And in the case of catastrophe, like volcano, plague or war the God gets a sudden increase of power to deal with/take advantage of the situation.

Dagom at 12:15AM, Sept. 14, 2008

A God doesn't have to kill his worshipers, they all die after a while anyways and while they live they can generate more worshipers.

seventy2 at 12:18AM, Sept. 13, 2008

to follow up on dajb Down the rabbit hole!!

Milky at 5:13PM, Sept. 12, 2008

@ Spaghettios- It looks that way... although a God couldn't just kill all of their followers or they would have no one new to follow them!

Spaghettios at 3:28PM, Sept. 12, 2008

So a God doesn't want worshipers, a God wants DEAD worshipers? [quote]Sometimes it happens you get shown the light In the strangest of places if you look at it right.[/quote]

Steely Gaze at 1:49PM, Sept. 12, 2008

Awesome. Honestly, this may be the most well-thought out and deep comic I read. I'm always enthralled when I dip into this world you've got here, even back when I started it over a year ago. It's not often I come across a webcomic with a mythos as deep as this! It's actually making me think....

Talekyn at 11:16AM, Sept. 12, 2008

It's all coming together. I'm curious as to whether this was all something you planned from the beginning, or if as you were looking at the threads and ideas you'd sprinkled in to stories, this whole background gelled out of that.

toasterpip at 8:16AM, Sept. 12, 2008

Ah, a very neat explanation for how gods 'work'. Interesting that gods do still have a corporeal presence, though I suppose it's largely hidden or overwhelmed by the power/presence of their 'soul'?