Gods in SF deathmatch - 10 Jovember 2010 ===================== I'm pleased to announce that much blood was spilt, but in the end we had a winner! Candidates were vaguely ranked on a variety of criteria, presented here with their units of measurement: Coolness (Kelvin) Intelligence/Processing Power (flops) Fear/Awe (lumens) Worshippers (kg) Magic (thaums) Survivability (ms) Lethality (M skull-and-cross-bones [there was some debate as to whether this was "megadeaths" or "mega-pirate-deaths"]) Apocalypse Factor (Cowells) The winner of a given round was decided by a simple vote, with more or less discussion depending on whether we could be bothered. ROUND ONE: Google vs Zeus: Google Close run, but Google was thought to edge out on a number of features, and Zeus was disparaged for pretty much just raping people. And Hephaestus made his thunderbolts, anyway. Hiro (from Heroes) vs the archetypal Crowbar: Hiro + Crowbar We figured Hiro would probably just pick up the crowbar Yog Sothoth vs The Doctor: Yog Sothoth Yog Sothoth is, you know, THE END OF THE UNIVERSE. GSD (Global Standard Deity) vs Navis: Navis GSD wins on worshippers, but is otherwise too bland God (from Dogma) vs Cthulhu: Cthulhu Cthulhu is an ancient horror. As for God, well, she does handstands. The Auditors vs The Shrike: The Auditors The Shrike is pretty chaotic, so prime prey for the Auditors, who are themselves sadly not susceptible to being impaled on a giant tree of steel spikes. Loki vs Morgoth: Loki Two gods of fire, but Loki is cleverer! Also he is going to usher in Ragnarok, which includes a giant wolf eating THE MOON. Melkor vs Hecate: Melkor Melkor, as in the one who taught Sauron everything about being evil. Yeah, him. Dream (Sandman) vs the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Dream Dream is much more awesome. Sorry Pastafarians. DEATH vs Dr. Manhattan: DEATH A tough one here! Two strong contenders. Can Dr. Manhattan actually die? Doesn't really look like it. Bit of a stalemate, so we speculated that DEATH could just kill people Dr. M cares about. But then Dr. M could kill Susan etc. DEATH took it by a small margin. Yoda vs Uru: Yoda Apparently Uru is Morgoth's brother or something, so we put them in as a lover pair. Bad luck Uru! The SSE (Solid State Entity, from Neverness) vs OM: SSE It's a solar-system spanning entity of moon-sized brains. Hard to kill, even for a god. Also, in the Discworld, belief has power, and the SSE should have a lot of belief-power! Arioch vs the Soup Dragon: Arioch He's a duke of Hell. So pretty badass. We compromised by having the SD escape to be ridden by Yoda. Set vs Glados: Set He's a god of death. Go figure. Akatosh vs Athena: Tag Team! We had a draw, so we compromised by having them become lovers and team up. Sam (Lord of Light) vs Thor: Sam Sam can control energy! Sucks to be a god of lightning. ROUND TWO: Google vs Hiro + Crowbar: Hiro + Crowbar I iz teleporting in your data centres, crowbar-ing ur servers! Yog Sothoth vs Navis: Yog Sothoth END OF THE UNIVERSE Cthulhu vs the Auditors: Auditors Cthulhu is pretty chaotic! Loki vs Melkor: Loki Wolf eating THE MOON. Also, cunning. Dream vs DEATH: DEATH Tough one here. Alas, even in the Sandman, Death is Dream's older sister, so we had to acknowledge the primacy here. Motion to morph DEATH into Gaiman's Death and have a brother-sister team was rejected. Yoda + SD vs SSE: Yoda + SD I don't know how this happened. Something about the SD tunnelling into the moon-brains and turning them to soup. Go figure. Set vs Arioch: Arioch Arioch is a Duke of Hell, Set is pretty much the doorman. Sam vs Athena + Akatosh: Athena + Akatosh She's the warrior goddess of wisdom riding the dragon god of time. Seriously. ROUND THREE: Hiro + Crowbar vs Yog Sothoth: Hiro + Crowbar Apparently Yog was too boring to win. The Auditors vs Loki: Loki Passed narrowly on the grounds that Loki could perhaps trick the Auditors into each thinking that the others were messy. DEATH vs Yoda riding the SD: DEATH riding the SD The SD must survive! (Sorry, Binky) Arioch vs Athena riding Akatosh: Athena & Akatosh GODDESS OF WISDOM RIDING DRAGON GOD OF TIME. ROUND FOUR: Hiro + Crowbar vs Loki: Loki + Crowbar Again, narrowly passed in favour of Loki doing something tricky, with a bonus motion to suggest that he nicks the crowbar. DEATH on the SD vs Athena riding Akatosh: DEATH on the SD Even gods can die! ROUND FIVE, the FINAL ROUND: Loki + Crowbar vs DEATH on the SD: DEATH with the Crowbar! There's really not a lot you can do against DEATH. As a compromise, we allowed that the Soup Dragon might die in the melee. After all, after the moon gets eaten, what is it going to make soup from? Obviously, the crowbar survives, to be taken up by DEATH. There you have it. Your champion is Terry Pratchett's DEATH, wielding the archetypal Gordon Freeman crowbar. - Michael Peyton Jones