From:     Jason Stephenson
Subject:  Name of the Planet (fwd)
From:     JJSTEP00@UKCC.UKY.EDU

Here's something that came up on the FRPG only list that I though might
interest the mostly Rifts players on this list.  I got permission from the
author to repost it here.

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    It's an issue that bugged me from the very beginning of my
experience with the PFRPG;  what's the name of this world?

    We know what Kevin and Co call it in their books but do we call
our planet the World Of Earth?  Well, very rarely.  I suppose calling
the PFRPG planet the World of Palladium might be a colloquialism on
that world but I have a theory... indulge me for a short time.

    The holy Tristine Chronicles tell of the great war that raged on
this world.  It is sometimes called a magically dead world (not quite
so much as ours is but still.)  The planet is in a dormant stage, a
lull between the Storm of Riftworld and the quietness of BTS-Earth.

    My solution harkens to the name, old Earth legends and a
magnificent scope.

    The Wiccan ways, those pre-druidic Terran pagan religions held
that the very planet was a living goddess; a goddess that was tri-
phase in nature -- maid/virgin, mother/nurturer and crone/devourer.
Keep this in mind please.

    The Greeks worshipped a goddess called Pallas Athene who we know
more commonly as Athena.  This figure was in fact an amalgam of the
legends surrounding two goddesses; Pallas and Athena.  Pallas was a
pagan Earth goddess, a mother goddess.  From her name we get the word
Palladium; both the metal, the company and the statue and
architecture.

    Pallas is a goddess forgotten on Earth.  Why?  Her power is in
fact waning as she, the very World of Palladium, is in her phase
interstice.

    All the worlds of Earth across the Megaverse are sisters and
brothers.  On the planet Pallas, the world of Palladium, it is the
early springtime of her mystical reawakening.  The winter of
destruction is over and the time for planting the seeds of
Civilisation is upon the planet.

    On Riftworld the goddess is in her crone-destroyer phase, wild
with the pain caused by her inhabitants attempted suicide.  Therefore
the very planet itself runs wild.

    I know we're not supposed to mention that other thing here but I
thought it important (IMHO) that I field this matter.

Thank you for your time!



                         ________________________________________
------------------------|      "War is Peace      Have a thought
Steven Carter           |   Freedom is Slavery      today....
the Mad Monk of Metro   | Ignorance is Strength"    And keep
steven-c@aci1.aci.ns.ca |  Gge. Orwell, `1984'       TYRANNY
ah200@ccn.cs.dal.ca     |                            at bay!
------------------------|________________________________________