I found weeping far more poetic. Spitting instantly can get one dismissed as a brute, but crying, yes this child of Hades with long black hair, slinky in stardust, (who does write poetry, Aeson, thank you very much), gifts a far more nuanced performance and story. Easily bidden diamond tears into a bowl of dark promises and lies–is it weakness, they must wonder? Have we broken the unbreakable? Many will be unmoved in their glee. And then we smile, positively beaming…
Now that’s gods damned triumph, ladies and gentlepersons.
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Except to give themselves immortality or to prevent themselves from turning into a withered, desiccated husk in less than a year it seems.
The fact that all our previous incarnations either didn’t have the time to find out how to do this, or else found out that they couldn’t do this, doesn’t give me much hope for my mc.
If what you say was even remotely true then our mc’s wouldn’t be in their current incarnation as surely one of the previous ones would have long ago figured out how to do something better.
Like Athena would care.
Whereas mine just took it because it was a free, good quality weapon that he could either get some use out or else pawn off for some quick cash.
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Most, not all incarnations. That part didn’t change. There’s a difference between the two, even when you seem to prefer to forget/ignore that.
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They also couldn’t break the Bearer Bestower links or the re-incarnation cycle, so there are definitely some very nasty limits on our supposed essence “powers”.
If even one of our previous incarnations was able to make themselves immortal then why is our mc here? Unless in that instance someone killed the Bestower, or the Bestower died of old age instead of them.
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You just answered your own question…
But anyway the MC is not like the previous incarnations of the Bearer alone for the fact that they are a demigod and got told what they are, not like the Trojan war incarnation for example, that had no idea about the essence or that they could do magic.
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That was just quoted from the game.
Plus I would assume they were ignorant about the burning out or powers in general.
And we have divine backing this time.
That would just shift the limits to the fact that our powers don’t work on the Bestower so we cannot make them immortal, eh?
Even so the fact that most of them didn’t even get to that point and simply died as withered husks sometime before their 19th birthdays seems to indicate that using our supposed essence powers may either not be as simple and intuitive as everybody is claiming or else that it is, and this is what I believe from having witnessed our “magic” in action thus far, a very random hit and miss thing what use we’ll actually be able to get out of them and when.
So I still won’t give our mc’s good odds of actually being able to figure out and control our full essence powers to any significant degree and with the finesse necessary to make the more pleasant changes to our circumstances.
…you know that immortal and invulnarable don’t have to be the same thing, do you?
Just because the Bestower could end up killed doesn’t have to mean that the Bearer wasn’t able to make them immortal.
Maybe the incarnations of the Bearer that were able to gain immortality/a longer life didn’t want to live forever? That’s also possible. For some people living forever is a very terrifying scenario.
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Don’t have to be, yes, but if our powers are as limitless as is claimed then our previous incarnations who could do anything useful with them ought to have made that so, particularly on the Bestower.
Could be, but why not break that cycle then, why not allow us stay dead, why force the new incarnations to go through the same misery they so feared?
Or maybe they didn’t know the Bestower or know the rules regarding the essence which seems very likely. Heck the gods probably went out of their way to keep us ignorant in some cases.
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Edit: @Sammysam types too fast…
The MC’s old incarnations didn’t know. In the flashback, Korina and Leon didn’t know until it was far too late and they were thrust into war, and that was thousands of years ago. If the Bearer and the Bestower have ever been in a part of the cycle in which they knew they had powers long before their 18th birthday, they would lack the knowledge.
If they happened to get angry, like the MC got at Gale, and levitated a chair…they’d probably be more confused than anything .Maybe they’d even think their powers were restricted to simply throwing furniture across the room rather than bending the very fabrics of time and space.
This is the first time the Bearer and Bestower know about magic, and were aware of it long before their powers manifested. Looking at past examples won’t help, because this situation has never happened before.
Maybe not rare, but not as impressive as you’d think they’d be.
Remember, the MC is the Essence, and the Essence created to primordial gods, who passed a portion of the Essence to the Titans, who passed on a portion of that portion to the gods, who pass on a portion of a portion of a portion to demigods…
Think of it like the consumer/producer food chain; only 10% is transferred each time, until eventually there’s none left.
In my mind, demigods are more valued for their soldier mindset, intelligence, and slow aging than their powers. But being a part of the Trinity does increase the likelihood of gaining a stronger hold on your powers. For instance, a child of Demeter can go into the desert and summon up a single rose, but a child of Zeus can summon up large charges of electricity…if they’re lucky, that is.
I think by my logic only a handful of each generation of the god’s children have true power that the MC should be worried about ( Adonis, Aeson, Calypso, Sage, Santiago, etc.)
…Uh, I think the point of this rambling is that you shouldn’t sell the MC short. The game time is only a little under a month (exempting the childhood scenes) at this point, and we’re just barely scratching the surface! There will be time.
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I feel like you’re going from one extreme to another. Either the Bearer’s omnipotent and can destroy all future misery for themselves or they’re weak and pathetic. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle.
What I meant was when the Mc gains immortality and comes into their powers they can choose to look however they want.
For now I’m settling on weak and pathetic.
Not if that “immortality” freezes us at how we look the moment we got it, then we’re stuck with our current, less than satisfying appearance forever.
In any case transformation seems to have been the part Chronos restricted most heavily and we cannot transform into anything non-human. I don’t know where demigods fall on that scale, maybe they are a loophole, but it could also mean that any attempt to transform, even to alter my mc’s less than satisfactory height or appearance could have fatal consequences.
That’s not at all reassuring because you just gave us the exact list of our current crop of competitors. Which means that at best our mc is more skilled and powerful than all the demigods on Olympus that we don’t actually have to compete against in those deathtraps. And judging by that one training fight we get even then we’re barely more skilled or powerful than a single one of them, if they gang up on us with two or more…
Which we don’t really have due to a chronic lack of training.
Which probably couldn’t stand up to the sheer corrosive power of the (nearly) full Essence.
Technically the bolded word could be an obstacle to making any changes to our human form, at least if we want to keep the immortality as that word seems to refer the exact “human” body the moment we receive the immortality, which is kind of disappointing and not a form my mc is very satisfied with. Certainly not something he wants to spend an eternity in.
Even if we can change it there’s still the fact that I don’t trust our absolutely pathetic control over our powers to make the fine and delicate changes required to change it for the better.
Whereas my mc is not because it is inferior to both of his “brothers”, height wise at least, no matter what we specify during character creation. Apparently saying we’re tall just makes Saint and Aeson even taller and we can never catch up to them.
(I’m sure that’s the third time I did search this exact quote for the exact same question…maybe that should also end up as part of the faq…)
In short as long as the general anatomy stays human the form you won’t fear for your soul suddenly leaving your body, meaning that your MC will get his wish body if you let him.
Just don’t try to become a fox or something. (Expect you use an illusion to appear like a fox. That should be okay.)
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That’s quite a lot of assuming. And for the worst case scenario at that. And one that applies specifically to you, though at least you can’t blame a changed appearance on papa anymore…
My mc is would only be disappointing that he can’t shape shift the whole of his body but he’s quite happy with his appearance (lithe and tall).
And still human just means able to have grand kids with other humans.
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Oh, but he can at least for the height issues, which are now the worst issues by far my mc has with his so-called “demigod” body, since that could easily have come from too much stress and a (relatively) poor diet during those three years we were forced to spend on the run and that came at a pivotal time during our puberty.
A time on the run he mostly blames Hermes and Hades for with a bit of residual anger towards Zeus.
I’m pretty sure we’re in relatively good physical. I mean isn’t your 35 strength enough to lift something twice your weight? And why Hades? He’s not even an Olympian.
There you have your answer, at best we’re in relatively decent physical shape, whereas both of our brothers have likely been kept in peak physical condition for the most part over those years, which could still easily explain our vertical shortfall.
In truth, as @poison_mara previously indicated any of the Gods could have easily tracked and found us at any time, had they really wanted to, but Hades gets most of the blame because he’s his supposed “father”, you know somebody who might be expected to look out for their child, but apparently he was too busy playing family with Aeson.
My mc blames Hermes too, for his likely poor oversight of the Seekers, but considering that Hermes likely did that deliberately…
Which fits the narrative that they want us in those trials as weak and poorly trained as possible, including Hades (with the possible exception of Auntie, because they did lock her away for real, provided what she says is true of course.).
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