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[sos_pilot]

[ della has a slightly serious look on her face... but for those who know her, there's definite playfulness in her eyes. ]

This is one of those "I can't believe I have to say this" kind of deals, so buckle up, folks.

Guys? I know I'm really amazing, very cool, and all around unbelievable. I'm so many things, it's hard to list them all. But one thing I'm not?

A deity. Yes, I am in fact, 100%, absolutely and truly not a goddess. And no, I'm not a demi-goddess either. Not a single trace of divinity in me. I won't name names, but this has happened about three or four times now. Just thought I'd mention it in case there's anyone else out there with this assumption.

... Y'know what? It's a new month, and that means we're getting newbies. Maybe now's a good time for everyone to sweep any other misunderstandings under the rug. So, if there's anything you wanna clear up about yourself, your world, your species, whatever, go for it.

((ooc: feel free to use the above as an excuse to tag others in this post!))

Comments

[dyingpro]

Than works under my Father, Lord Hades, hence serving the needs of the House. [Hi, remember this crazy idiot? Well turns out he was telling the truth!]

So Than takes the shades of those mortals who are fated to die peacefully, whereas the keres take the souls of those who die violently. [There is a slight pause on Zagreus' end.]

Sorry, er... so once they're separated from their dying bodies, Than and sometimes Lord Hermes if there's a lot of death will take the souls to Charon, who ferries them down the River Styx to Erebus for the price of a few obols.

There he drops them off to await their judgment at the hands of my father, Lord Hades, who is the God of the Dead and a right arsehole. He chooses which Afterlife you're sent to, for the most part, though there's a whole different system for being accepted into Elysium.

[irrationally]

[ Oh god.

It's this guy again.

Alice hardly even knows what to say in the fact of this elaborate explanation. It's just.. It's just so much.

Hence why her initial response is just a very dry: ]

It sounds like your family is incredibly fun at parties. [ PLEASE, ZAG, WHAT ELSE DOES SHE SAY TO ALL THAT. ]

[dyingpro]

Well some of them are. One of my Olympian cousins is the God of Wine and Revelry, so of course you invite him to whatever party you're going to. If I had to pick one relative to bring to a party, it would be my Lord Cousin Dionysus.

... followed shortly thereafter by Lord Hermes, he's great.

[irrationally]

Whenever I talk to you, I'm mostly reminded of the fact that you and I live in very different worlds.

[ And that's coming from the girl who's been to Wonderland.

So it's saying something. ]

[dyingpro]

Well it's common knowledge in the lands of... Greece, I believe Senku was saying it's called now? What used to be the lands around Athens and Sparta and Thebes and Knossos, and the like. I don't know if there's a different Underworld where you come from, where the souls of the dead go when they die.

[This is all very simple, Alice. Thanatos works for the God of the Dead, the Olympians have Wicked Parties because of Dionysus, and souls go to the Underworld when they die. What part of this isn't making sense?]

[irrationally]

I'm not sure there even is one.

[ After all, Alice isn't particularly religious. You're left with very little reason for being that way after you've been completely abandoned by the entire world and any higher power. ]

Certain people believe that people go either to heaven or hell after they die, but I'm fairly sure there's actually nothing at all after death. Just darkness.

[dyingpro]

Those certain people are wrong, in our case. Mortals don't get to go to Olympus unless they're one of Lord Uncle Zeus' many... many children, or they did something so magnificent that even the Gods can't deny them a place on Olympus. Also, there's multiple Hells, depending on how well you did in your previous life.

... that sounds lonely. Unless you mean spending your eternity with the Goddess Nyx, although I don't think that's how you meant it. You don't believe that there's someone, or a bunch of someones, who will take care of you once you die?

[irrationally]

[ She lets out a small sound, like a 'tsk'. ]

There isn't even someone taking care of me while I am alive. Why would there be someone when I die then?

[dyingpro]

[Oh, that makes Zagreus even sadder. It's all too familiar, too.]

... I'm really sorry to hear that. It's a terrible feeling, when the people who are supposed to be taking care of you, aren't. Let alone for Gods, I'm sure mortals have it even harder with the struggle to survive.

And for what it's worth, Alice, I'll support you. If you need someone to check on you, make sure you're all right, listen to your grievances... I'd be honored to. And when you die permanently, I'll make sure your shade is provided for, all right? Doesn't matter how many different worlds I'd have to jump across, every mortal deserves a proper afterlife.

[irrationally]

Why are you so eager to help out someone you don't even know all that well?

[ Granted, it's probably not something one should ask. You shouldn't look a gifted horse in the mouth, after all.

But exactly considering what she just said - the fact that no one ever cared back home.. that's what's driving her to think so strangely of such an offer in the first place. ]

Even if you say it's what every mortal deserves, it's not as if you have all the time in the world to do this for just everyone.

[dyingpro]

Because you deserve a better life than you've gotten so far, if what you've said is true. Why shouldn't I help you, if I'm able to, and I want to?

[And he absolutely wants to. Helping out mortals is basically his favorite thing, in the Underworld, so surely helping them out while they're alive will be just as great!]

But I do have all the time in the world, Alice. I'm not ever going to die, not permanently anyway. If you need my help, I'll always make time for you. I mean it. You can come find me any time, all right? Or call me to come to you, if that's easier.

[irrationally]

[ This is weird. This is so weird!!

Alice has absolutely no clue what to do in the face of all this kindness being shoved at her. Her initial instinct is to shove it right back, but she manages to surpress it before she actually says something dumb - but that instead leaves her awkwardly quiet for a moment. ]

You are such a strange man.

[ .. not that much better, huh. She's trying, though. Not plaining saying 'no' when she's this confused is already A Lot by Alice standards. ]

[mustknow]

[occasionally a lot of eavesdropping answers SO MANY QUESTIONS.]

How many afterlives are there?

[dyingpro]

Well where I come from, there's three. Technically four, but Erebus is mostly used as a holding area for newly arrived souls, rather than an afterlife all by itself. But if you don't have an obol to pay Charon when you arrive, you're stuck for a hundred years waiting for my Father's judgment.

The particular process of where you go is boring and involves lots of parchmentwork so I'll just skip over it, but needless to say: if you do bad things in life, particularly bad things such as murder or breaking a sworn oath or taking from others to benefit only yourself, you'll be sent to Tartarus in Death. Then the Furies get to punish you until your sentence is up. I have a friend named Sisyphus who resides there with his best mate Bouldy.

If you live a good life, but not a particularly heroic one, which is what most mortals end up doing, then you get to go to the Asphodel Meadows. They're usually nicer than I've seen them, but there was a big flood of the Phlegethon a while ago, and Father is still working on fixing it... but at least Eurydice has enough heat to cook all the delicious food she likes to make!

And then if you die a hero, with mortals singing your praises for all the valiant deeds you've done, or if you lived a really, really good life and can talk your way into it, you get to go to Elysium. Although lately Elysium's become nothing but a fighting ground to display your worthiness to be there. Patroclus agrees with me that it's a bit much, even for that crowd. Oh, and my supportive shade lives there too! He always watches when I fight the Champions of Elysium.

[mustknow]

I see. Your sire carries out these judgments? Is he impartial in it, by your perspective, or are lives occasionally sent where they do not belong over feuds or bribes? Your.. friend, Sisyphus, will he be free of Tartarus eventually?

[dyingpro]

He does. Though he and I have had our disagreements - often fatal - the one thing I can say about my Father is he's usually quite fair in his judgments... usually. When a mortal wrongs a God, it becomes an entirely different story. Then the punishments tend to be for eternity.

Sisyphus was one of those shades whose punishment was eternal. I say was, because I used my authority as the Prince of the Underworld to annul his sentence. He seems happy to stay in Tartarus, though, with his friend Bouldy. I've tried to get him to leave a couple of times, but he says he enjoys staying put.

[mustknow]

.... If it's not too rude to ask, how are you and he disagreeing to the point of getting people killed?

[Because that has to be the answer, nobody dies repeatedly!]

What happens if a God wrongs another God? Who dictates their punishments?

[dyingpro]

Oh no, he's not out there murdering mortals, he's only killing me! [Because that clarifies everything.]

... although that has historically happened with my extended family. Gods get caught on different sides of a mortal war and make it harder on both armies. It's what happened at Troy, or so Master Achilles told me.

The God that wins usually dictates the punishment then. I mean, that's what happened to Prometheus, more or less.

[mustknow]

..... Are you considered 'undead' then?

[He sounds very hesitant; how do you ask this kind of thing without being rude?? You don't just ASK someone if they're dead!]

[dyingpro]

Undead... you mean alive? Well, I can't die permanently, due to a decree by the Fates. So I guess that means I'm both dead and alive at the same time.

[Zombies and the like are not exactly a thing where he's from. He's about as close as you're going to get!]

[mustknow]

For this specific terminology, alive is alive, dead is dead. The animated dead, or those who are ....mmm, as you say, 'dead and alive' are usually referred to as 'undead'. If you hear the term, that's what they mean. Other forms of undead are called vampires, some ghouls, zombies... Ghosts do not count, as they lack a body.

Hades spoilers obvs

[dyingpro]

My Father is the God of the Dead, and my Mother is the Goddess of Verdure. I was stillborn, but that was changed by the Fates, so that instead of never being able to live in the first place, I'm never able to die, at least not for very long. So, to answer your question: no, I am neither dead, nor truly alive in the mortal sense of the word, so I suppose that makes me undead.

Vampires, ghouls, zombies, ghosts? I don't know what those are. Are ghosts anything like shades?

[mustknow]

... I believe ghosts are very much like shades, if the word is what I think it is. In this instance, a ghost is the soul of a dead person, that either can't or won't move onto some afterlife, and lingers. Sometimes they can speak, other times they've lost so much of themselves in the dying they can only cause trouble or wail sadly and the like.

[Can't.. ever die? That's an alarming thought. Xehanort didn't want to live forever, but he intended to live for quite a while.. but not being ABLE to stop?]

Vampires are ... ah, undead that keep themselves moving and functional by drinking the blood of the living. Ghouls do similar things but with the flesh instead of blood, and are generally intelligent. Zombies are unintelligent undead, merely animated corpses with a ravenous hunger for the living. I'm not sure they truly exist, Zombies .. but there's stories, so..

[dyingpro]

Then we have both ghosts and shades. But hopefully they don't exist as ghosts for long, and transition to shades once their body has been interred in some way, based on the funeral rites of their city-state. Sparta buries the dead, Athens burns the dead and then buries the ashes, and so forth. If nobody does that for them, they can't move on to their afterlife in the Underworld, much like these ghosts you mentioned. We can't take them, and even the Olympians can't do anything about it, other than go to bury the bodies themselves, but they rarely have time for mortals in that way.

[Sometimes his family is full of jerks. Sometimes his family causes a lot of dead bodies also!]

... that sounds terrible. All of it does. I feel sorry for whoever has to keep going like that. It can't really be called living.