On the River of Forgetfulness IIPosted by Quill Dragon on August 28, 2002 at 11:55:06: But if it is not the waters of Styx, which cause forgetfulness, which river is it then? Let us look to Nonnos and his work "Dionysiaca" for the answer: "Lie there, you corpse, in foreign waters; and may your father Hydaspes cover dying Deriades. I will destroy you both, goodfather and goodson, shaking my Euian thyrsus with point wreathed in vine, instead of bloodstained spear and wellsharpened sword. But you killed yourself with gory steel, and so you never drank the luxurious water of the honeyd-distilling river; a river has covered you, but you missed the delicious wine. Drink up the whole river alone, if you like; but you shall have river-water enough when you drink the fatal water of Acheron. Your belly swells already with the bitter water of a murdering stream, and teems quick with Fate; buttaste of Cocytos, and drink Lethe if you like, that you may forget Ares and the bloody steel." (Nonnos Dionysiaca 17.292-305) The river of forgetfulness, according to greek mythology, is thus not the river of Styx, but the river of Lethe. But why has Styx been confused with Lethe in PS:T? As far as I see it is not very likely, that the PS:T team knew the difference between Styx and Lethe in greek mythology. Why should they on purpose make implement a lore error in the game? It is therefore more likely, that the lore error stems from the original Planescape rulebooks, which the computergame PS:T was based on. It is an error, however, which has no bearing on the PS:T's overall plot stability. Should an updated version of the game be made sometime in the future the name could easily be changed from Styx to Lethe, thus correcting the lore error.
|