Wait, do we know Santi is rich? I don’t think you have to pay to attend the Institute. Are you inferring?
Probably inferring? He is Apollo’s son after all (if my brain is remembering correctly). Idk if he grew up rich however or if Apollo was an active parent
[Generally again if I am remembering things right]
Presuming that every god who is an active parent (i.e Ares) ensures their children live luxuriously seems a little hasty to me. Especially since given everything we know abt the gods, they aren’t going to win any awards for their parenting. By tht logic, wouldn’t every demigod on Olympus have grown up wealthy just by virtue of their godly parent? Perhaps they can ensure financial comfortability, to a degree. Maybe @Rohie can clarify? Otherwise, this is the way I’m going to picture every god looks: 
Cally did say that she had a close bond with Ares that not all Demigods themselves experience with their parents, so it’s safe to say that not all the Gods play active parents roles, Aphrodite being one of those inactive parents. Adonis even admitted he’d had preferred that she hadn’t tried to be part of his life, saying ‘he’d rather had had no parent than half of one’.
Ironically, Hades actually could fill that role himself, which gives a Hades Bearer some reasons to be frustrated with him: not only did he never tell them that he was their father as a child (for arguably well-meaning reasons) when he had years to do so, but he was part of half of the Bearer’s life and then up and leaves them without a explanation and gives them a promise that ultimately proved to be empty and worthless. As Damon would probably say if he had a chance to confront Hades about the words he said before leaving “I wish you had told me the hard truth; to let me feel that pain of losing you so that I could move on from it faster. Instead you gave me that f-ing lie that made me believe that you would actually come back 
”.
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LMAO, in the event that someone decided the gods needed parenting awards (the gods decided, probably), Aphrodite would suffer a spectacular loss regardless. She’d win the equivalent of a participation award; thanks for having sex with a mortal, I guess.
Demigods and parental relationships make me so miserable, lmfao.
My Hades!Bearer: it’s O.K, I’m over it
Narrator: she wasn’t, in fact, over it @ all
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Demigods are traditionally raised by their mortal parents, if they’re still alive. Gods are busy; it may seem like all they do is sit around smiting people, but they do make the world keep spinning the way it does. Besides, most demigods only spend summers with their family, and the rest of the year on Olympus.
I think the very few demigods that do have their godly parent in their life (I think it’s only Demeter, Hades and Ares who are that involved. Poseidon is more laid back and Zeus will only get involved if there’s something to gain from doing so) aren’t automatically spoiled. I can’t imagine Demeter, for instance, decking out her child in Yeezy '16.
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Yep, Inferring as Apollo always seems one of the more indulgent and luxury loving gods (not that any of them live like beggars but Apollo seems like he would live an especially over the top luxurious lifestyle and he may pass some of that down to his offspring).
True and Apollo’s parenting may resemble the sort of parenting befitting the lonely rich kids trope. It would certainly explain Santiago’s ice prince personality as that is a common byproduct of receiving that kind of upbringing. Still while rich kids have problems too, my character having lived the way he did the last three years is absolutely not in the mood to deal with them or Santi’s antics, which is a shame because he’s definitely the cutest guy besides Aeson and probably the more interesting of the two.
Hades does fill that role himself.
A point I and my mc definitely have against him as even if he didn’t want to have more than a distant, uncle-esque relationship with us he should have at least come clean after we discovered magic anyway and the whole muggle jig was more or less done for anyway. He wouldn’t even have had to tell us that he and “Auntie” were gods, just that he was our father, but no he wasn’t even man enough to do that.
To be fair before the whole kidnapping and being brought to Olympus thing I think that for his own sanity if nothing else my mc would have chosen to believe those Seekers killed or disappeared uncle Henry too, as at that point he doesn’t suspect either him or “auntie” of being gods themselves, witches/wizards most likely, but not Gods.
So what my mc would say is more along the lines of “I always assumed “uncle” Henry was dead, but to me he will stay that way forever and I don’t know nor do I want to know this stranger wearing his face !!!”
Really as far as my mc is concerned he doesn’t have a father.
What really hurts most for mc’s having Hades as a “father”, or at least it does for mine is that he really had no problems playing “happy family” with Aeson all these years, particularly the ones when we were being chased for sport, maybe he even spoiled the kid as we don’t know how much of Aeson’s seeming wealth is from his quest “rewards” and how much may be from Hades spoiling him, but my guess would be a little of column A and a little of column B.
Well maybe Apollo did function as Santiago’s personal ATM (as Apollo doesn’t seem like he has many kids), or else maybe his mortal family are just simply billionaires, as that would seem like the sort of crowd Apollo would be attracted to in the first place.
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Wait, Aeson’s wealth? I must’ve missed something, or are we inferring again 
? Hasn’t Aeson grown up on Olympus? How might we know that he was wealthy? It isn’t as though demigods have to pay for anything on Olympus, or that Aeson comes to class in Gucci FW16 ready to wear, aha (or tht any demigods do, for tht matter)? Are we even certain he has a veritable life off of Olympus? If we don’t take the quests off of Olympus into account, hasn’t he spent most of his life in the Institute? Do the gods reward him financially for ‘successful’ (it seems to me an unsuccessful odyssey is one wherein you die, or sustain grievous bodily harm lmfao) odysseys? I don’t think they do? I think it’s expected of him, as their hero.
I don’t think we know enough abt Santiago thus far, TBH.
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Well the golden armour certainly isn’t inferred and he generally does seem to have much nicer things than the mc, but then again pretty much all of the other demigods do, so that last point may not count, that overly fancy armour and sword of his are definitely not inferences though.
True, it’s mostly my inference from his personality that leads me to suspect that as it is the kind of personality extremely rich kids tend to have quite often in fiction (which is why it is a trope in the first place).
Still his supremely arrogant “ice prince” personality does have to come from somewhere.
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I think If I had to choose which my current Bearers (because I know I’ll be making more of them eventually) I would hug first, it’d be Damon. Poor guy needs a big bear hug after all he’s been through.
He was so hurt when Uncle Henry left him and ended up breaking his promise to return. But after some of his anger and sadness had passed, he decided to justify his uncle’s disappearance with the fact that the man was simply his uncle; he had who had his own life to live and maybe even his own family to look after, so it’d be too selfish to ask him to always be a part of Damon’s life. When he saw that uncle Henry was Hades all along, Damon didn’t hesitate to hug the man. He was ready to let go of the hurt from the broken promise and simply be happy to be able to see his Uncle again.
But then he learned that Hades was his father.
Suddenly that broken promise didn’t belong to a uncle that had his own life to live: it belonged to his FATHER, a man who was supposed to be a part of HIS life to being with. A man who had years to tell the truth to him, but does it after he had let go of his childish dream to be part of that man’s life. To say Damon feels conflicted between feelings of love and hate toward Hades would be a understatement; the fact Damon was able to simply say ‘he needed more time’ was a miracle in and of itself, when he was feeling a great sense of betrayal from the newfound knowledge.
Of course, Damon doesn’t hold anything against Aeson himself and will try to bond with his brother as much as he can (yes, he’s aware that there’s no technical blood relations between them, but sharing the same father is enough for him to view the Hero as his family and someone else he needs to look after). But for the sake of keeping his emotions in check for the time being, Damon will refuse to think of Persephone as a potential second mother (as far as he’s concerned, Athena already filled the role of mother-figure a long time ago…and didn’t drug his drink) and won’t even consider Hades anything beyond being his uncle until he can sort out his own feelings.
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So forgiving towards Hades (and Aeson) your mc is, as far is mine is concerned he doesn’t know them and doesn’t want to, as it is abundantly clear to him he will never be part of the family, not after all he’s been through and not after all these years, nor does he have or wants to have a live “father” at this stage. He just wants to find a way off Olympus and to get rid of that cursed essence, sadly neither of those seem easy, or even possible. 
No, we really, really can’t as we’re very much limited by our human (or demigod) brains and bodies, bodies I’ll have you not are not designed to handle the sheer essence power of the essence so most Bearers have just burned out in less than a year on average previously. Of course that immortality we can supposedly win may prevent that to some degree, but only at the trade-off of being stuck in our teenage body as it is at the second we receive that immortality, which would presumably also prevent my mc from tinkering with his body’s height and appearance with the essence in the future. So we really can’t do anything actually worthwhile with the essence.
Besides our control over it, going by the current mage character seems rather bad and limited at best.
Was this confirmed :~0? I don’t remember reading anything abt that.
More or less that immortality freezes our body as it is at the moment we receive it so it stands to reason that any clumsy tinkering with our body on our part in an attempt to improve it could easily strip away or otherwise undo that “immortality” too, particularly since his body’s (visual) age is a characteristic my mc would want to tamper with in order to jack it up to late twenties or even early thirties. Which in turn would again allow the essence to take its full toll on our bodies again, so it’s pretty much a shitty situation either way.
Nothing much is confirmed about the potential use of the Essence at this point; @idonotlikeusernames just has the most pessimistic headcanons that I think I’ve ever encountered. Which is totally cool after all; it is his understanding of the universe, but don’t expect any positivity towards your circumstance.
Based off of what Rohie has given us, we have an incredible natural aptitude for the Essence as well as a supernatural rate of learning. It’s my opinion that even a short amount of time would allow the Bearer the skills necessary to alter your physical human form, since even now with no training we can manipulate the laws of physics, which is a damn sight more complicated. You may need a lot more finesse to alter your form, but it is certainly not unreachable in my opinion. It’s likely something you’ll be able to do flawlessly without even giving it a second thought once you’ve spent a fair amount of time developing your Essence skills.
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You forget that whatever Cronus did was designed to make the essence as useful as possible for himself and as worthless as possible for the Bearer (and Bestower).
A “weapon” of mass destruction is probably all we can be with it, but that is exactly the kind of use my mc is least interested in.
Isn’t that the mirror that does the invisibility effect?
Exactly the sort of finesse the “mage” mc doesn’t currently seem to possess even an ounce of.
Particularly after that coma when all our spells backfire and don’t do exactly what we want to any longer. 
Brute force, which seems to be our current “magical” approach to anything isn’t actually going to work to get my mc anything that’s actually desirable.
yes rohie said essence Has to be in a Human body and soul. that means you have to be human so with that limited to human capacity.
@Alexodia If you have to remain human you are limited to human DNA possibilities. you can’t have the storage capacity and speed of thoughts that a super computer. Or you can’t float in deep space and radiation still affecting you. Magic of essence helps but is not omnipotence
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Exactly, we’re not ever going to become Q of Star Trek, because of the frustrating limits placed upon our “use” of the essence and our potential.
Why does Aeson need forgiving anyway? He’s never met you before.
We haven’t even met Kronos, we don’t know what he designed us for, or when. Besides if I wanted a weapon I certainly wouldn’t turn it into a human. Especially one that dies every 18-19 years so I have to retrain them. Plus you make claims of weakness which defeats the purpose of a weapon. I’d turn it into a pet or a machine. Or an immortal human with a messed up brain.
We can do it ourselves now during the same scene. Which could be altering our body.
The human thing still is vague to me, especially when all it says is human body. Besides try surgery if your not happy with your looks and can’t find/ don’t trust a magic way.
And yet? You either become immortal and have all the time in the world or you die and hope your next life does better.
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I forget nothing. But assume that is true; what good could the Bearer possibly do for Cronus is their power is as weak as you purport it to be? A weapon of mass destruction is possible, but we’re only 17 with little to no experience wielding the Essence, and Cronus knows this. It makes less sense for him to restrict our powers to destruction, since the prophecy dictates that the Essence will end up on his side; given how zealously the characters in this universe pursue prophecies and how much stock they set by them, it makes no sense for the Essence to be worthless to the Bearer, since that would hinder how much we could help him; with much more power available to us than destruction, we could help Cronus even more. Useful for us means useful for Cronus.
All magic technically manipulates the laws of physics, but we were able to make the light and the magic take shape in our bedrooms in either a light or a dark fashion. After no prior training at all, save Alice maybe possibly telling us how to go about it. Rohie has said that the things we’ve been able to do with no prior training would take legitimate inhabitants of Olympus years to do.
Yet. Yet. [quote=“Alexodia, post:9048, topic:15482”]
once you’ve spent a fair amount of time developing your Essence skills.
[/quote]
YET.
Human DNA possibilities or merely a human form? Either way, we can do some incredible stuff.
There are savants who can be literal human computers with their raw mathematical processing speed. There are people with eidetic memories who can remember everything they’ve ever seen or heard. There are people who have been recorded to have I.Q.'s in the 190-200 range. There are the fastest people in the world and the strongest people in the world. And there are quite a few other feats considered superhuman well within human capacity.
You can’t enhance your human DNA, then just make yourself Captain America instead of Superman. You’ll still be far superior to everybody else, even Aeson if you wanted, @idonotlikeusernames. Even with your human DNA limiting you.
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