Video

[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

[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.