Re: Fanwankin' Time
The problem with that theory remains that Urzkartaga is not that deliberate or sentient. He *is* basically an object - he's not something you can negotiate with or convince. He's low-grade, primitive, impulse and spirit, not mind or thought. You can see it in his rituals, in his punishment of Minerva (the disease/wrath distinction I mentioned before), in the fact that his own priests are unable to communicate with him and misjudge his impulses and desires...
...and you can see it in the Cheetah, too. Urzkartaga is a god that lives inside a plant. The Cheetah is a god that lives inside a human. They are mates, matches, wedded spirits, two of a kind... and the Cheetah is absolutely nothing like sentient. It's a pile of impulses, to hunt and kill and feed on the enemies of the tribe. That's all it is. Minerva doesn't have a split personality or a dual nature, there's no second mind inside her that she argues with, there's no Ghost Rider stuff happening here. There's just Minerva. The thing she overcomes when she asserts her own personality over the Cheetah's influence is a basic, instinctive assortment of drives and desires, not a thinking mind that can be spoken with and convinced of anything. Why would Urzkartaga be different? How can instinct and impulse share a pantheon with sentience? How can a personality meaningfully be married to an idea? How can Chuma's tribe have worshipped as a matched set two such completely disparate forms of deity?
If you're going to let Urzkartaga negotiate a new bargain with that kind of sapience, you've gotta give Cheetah a personality separate from Minerva that has its own interests too. It's that much of a distortion of what Perez presented.