correlon and gruumsh

as i mentioned in a prior post, i have long envisioned corellon using a bow to pluck out gruumsh's eye, and i was happy to see wotc change the story from a sword to a bow. but now, i am having some trouble with this new rendition of the story. i will explain.

d&d has long associated certain races with the favored weapon of its creator god--for example, dwarves/hammers/moradin and gnolls/flails/yeenoghu.

in 4e, gods do not have official favored weapons, however, i believe that the tradition of certain gods being associated with certain weapons persists. we still have dwarves/hammers/moradin and gnolls/flails/yeenoghu. here is where it gets tricky: in 4e, eladrin are proficient with swords and elves are proficient with bows. if we assume (and i know, we are assuming) that these proficiencies have something to do with the favored weapons of their patron deities, then that might suggest that corellon, in fact, favors the sword (wotc has not yet done a write-up for corellon). now some may say that elves and eladrin were of the same race. but i say that eladrin remained closest to corellon. elves moved to the natural world and adopted the bow over the sword. so i deduce that correlon favors a sword rather than a bow. and if he favors a sword, then most likely, corellon was wielding a sword when he fought gruumsh, and used a sword to pluck out gruumsh's eye.

sadly, i do not like this sword rendition of the story. i believe that gruumsh is the greater melee warrior of the two.

so, what am i to do?

well, i have considered reshuffling the god/primordial rivalries (in a prior post, i mentioned that gruumsh should be a primordial). perhaps melora, who i see as the elves' patron deity, favors the bow among weapons and perhaps she plucked out gruumsh's eye. replacing corellon with melora as the eye-plucker would be killing a sacred cow, but hey, new editions of d&d are precisely when such changes are best considered.

another hiccup is the fact that melora already has a rivalry with baphomet, just as the raven queen has a rivalry with orcus. i want to maintain the rivalry between elves and orcs, two natural races, so the patron deity of elves would be a good choice, but i do not want to clump too many rivalries onto a single god. also, who then would serve as a foil to corellon? perhaps demogorgon. that would be a wonderful myth/story to create. yum.

mual-tar was fought by three gods: pelor, moradin and bahamut. perhaps, in similar fashion, melora assisted corellon in his battle with gruumsh. perhaps, she plucked out gruush's eye with her bow, thus giving birth to the enmity between orcs and elves. baphomet's rivalry with melora, on the other hand, pertains to the power over nature.