All Father, The: Was Thurin Greater?

The All Father: Was Thurin Greater?

I think we can be a little kinder to the All-Father than all this...

First off, I don't know that its fair to blame the All-Father for the faults of His children.

His biggest fault, as I see it, is His short-sighted streak.

He did wake the Dragon - bad move. From that one act, arguably, sprang most of the evils of Aerynth. It was the Dragon that soured the souls of the Elves, and the destruction of Volliandra and the Silver Moon that led Malog to his fall. The Dragon was also the root of the Irekei, who opened up the Chaos Gate.

But, look at it another way - He woke up Braialla too, and that's pretty much responsible for all life on Aerynth. Perhaps He figured the Dragon might have been responsible for something new like that...

Note that there are some good things the All-Father did, too - He invented Time (sure it robbed the Elves of their immortality, but it also kept Aerynth from incinerating) and He forged the Gates to Heaven and Hell (stopped a nasty plague of Undead back in the early Age of Days), and He beat the legions of Chaos at the end of the War of the Scourge. So you see, every mis-deed of the All-Father's is balanced by a time when He flat out saved the world.

He did all of that - admittedly, all of these things were done to solve unexpected problems that arose from the Dragon, or even from the solutions to those unexpected problems (that undead plague, for example, was likely caused by the invention of Time).

The All-Father certainly isn't a Judeo-Christian deity, all-powerful and responsible for everything.
The Holy Church no doubt likes to paint him as one, but it's not really so.

The All-Father is made much more in the mold of the Classical God monarchs - he's Zeus, or Odin.
In fact, in my head the All-Father is probably inspired more by Wagner's Wotan out of the Ring of the Niebelung than any other single source.

He has the mind and wisdom to imagine wonderful things, and to percieve perfection. He also has the power to make His dreams manifest. He doesn't have the omniscience, however, to see the consequences of His own actions.

Also, His creations have souls of their own - He cannot make Men or Elves behave any certain way. It's up to them. He can only lead His children by example.

In that way, I suppose He's the most Human of all the Gods. He has a lot in common with Western Civilization...