>Like all the gods who choose to live among mortals, Corwin can do a
>lot of things that he generally opts not to do, in the interest of not
>jostling people's worldviews too roughly.

As another worldbuilding nerd, I've always also assumed that there are various metaphysical, practical, and political considerations keeping the divinities in check above and beyond not wanting to freak the mundanes.

I invite Blackbird to consider "Futureshock," a short and sweet little story in Exile. Short version: Largo tries to move in on Tomodachi. Skuld decides, mmm, no that's not going to happen. She demonstrates that she can destroy his goons with simple command words, and then defaces his actual soul.

What she DOESN'T do is kill him. Why? Because, metaphysically speaking (and the story is pretty up-front about that) it isn't TIME for him to die yet. The universe has decided that Largo exists for a reason and Skuld doesn't have the authority to contravene that reason just because she feels like it. She can operate around the edges ("Get out of my house and never, ever come back") but can't do more than that.

So Corwin probably has metaphysical fetters on his power. But there are also likely practical and political ones as well.

I sort of figure there are various extremely ancient pacts in place with the Pit that determine the extent to which both Gods and Demons can lay down incredibly ostentatious acts of divine or demonic intervention in Midgard, on the grounds that neither side would really like it to become simply another extended battlefield in their longstanding cold war/hot war.

And even if there weren't... well, a lot of what Corwin does in Midgard isn't, in terms of practical impact, much beyond what various incredibly gifted mortals (like, say, his Dad) can do. There's probably a decent understanding of magic and paranormal phenomenon among the major powers, both friendly and unfriendly. One imagines that both the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar have various psionics and mages on the payroll, for example, before you even get into groups like Big Fire. To the other great powers, Corwin is just another supremely gifted individual who is affiliated with his fathers cavalcade of elite intergalactic badasses. If he wants to call himself a god, well, go ahead. Plenty of people have made that claim.

That probably changes a little if he, or his mother, start doing things like declaring "your entire battlefleet ceases to work" or "that army you just landed that is mostly Destroids? Good luck with THAT" with a wave of their hand. At that point other great powers start thinking "holy shit, we can't possibly stand against THAT. I guess it wasn't a joke, they ARE actual divinities. Fuck. How do we achieve force parity?"

After which very accommodating gentlemen from Muspelheim might knock on your door and offer you, ooo, all SORTS of interesting options for insulating yourself from divine retribution for sale at what are really very reasonable rates.

Basically, to me as a reader, I've always figured that a big part of the reason Corwin and Skuld and various Valkyries don't whip out their divine wangs on a regular basis is that it's a power escalation they'd really rather NOT deal with.

-Merc
Keep Rat