I am not saying we are weak I only saying we can’t beas powerful as some of you think the essence itself is omnipotent but we aren’t the total essence. But I think there should be a way to destroy Chronos safety measure and regain all or godhood.But for now we are really limited with our own killer switch
1 Like
The problem is that there seems to be no middle ground; half of people think we’re going to be an omnipotent God, and the other half seem to think we’ll be practically worthless.
We may very well easily surpass the Gods in power as to what we can do with our magic, but it would be dangerous to assume that there are no limitations.
8 Likes
I think all that’s been said with regards to what Cronus did to the Essence is that he halved it. Rohie hasn’t mentioned him doing anything else, and frankly, I doubt he could do substantial damage.
Knowing this, Cronus collected all of the Essence from himself and his siblings, then killed them. Cronus turned the Essence into two sources (now known as souls). Both sources would hold the power of the Essence, but only one of them could be used as a wielder of the Essence.
If Cronus was capable of damaging the Essence to such an extent that it might be described as worthless, then why would he go to such great lengths to hide it? Moreover, Cronos is aware that the Essence is going to end up ‘by his side’ in the war, as a consequence of which a great divide will be created. The Essence is acknowledged as having been the turning point during the War of the Titans, why would Cronus want to compromise having that sort of power available to him? IMO, Cronus fears the Essence, which would explains the pains he took to ensure that the Gods would have difficulty locating it. Why hide it if he was capable of altering in a way that would make it of no use to all save him? He could’ve mangled it when he had the chance, if he’d been capable of doing it.
No, I’m fairly certain Rohie mentioned that we bent the laws of physics in a manner that takes seasoned mages that have been aware of the existence of magic their entire lives to even come close to doing. Given that this is something we’ve been shown to be capable of doing, mightn’t we be able to alter our form the way Alexodia suggested? Granted, I agree with you in tht we’ve got little to no training, and the Gods are responsible for our ineptitude to a certain extent, but the Essence is literally what we are. It’s the basis of our existence, and if we were able to accomplish something of that nature with the limited understanding/resources we had (which is indicative of a much shallower learning curve, imo) what might we be able to with a little more time and understanding? Of course your opinion is yours to keep :~)!
We do circle this conversation like clockwork every other week, though.
What do y’all think Ares’s trial will be like, since we know it’s going to be a blatant attempt to make the Bearer look as incompetent as some of y’all seem to feel 
. I’d really like to see a chariot race during the trials, regardless. I want to light a chariot on fire, is what I’m getting @.
1 Like
Technically? nothing, practically?, making my mc feel really bad and inadequate, as the favourite always does to the unfavourite. Also possibly the Scooby Gang’s treatment of us, since they’re his loyal minions.
In case of our body if we don’t want to undo that “immortality” perhaps, ever.
And then of course we’re back to how long it’s gonna take to get the appropriate finesse, where your estimations will be far more optimistic then mine as mine are in the order of decades under favourable circumstances, whereas to date our circumstances have been except that. which means that might easily stretch to centuries under our usual, unfavourable ones.
How much understanding of human genetics do we need to ensure we don’t inadvertently break the limits imposed by Cronus (and thus kill ourselves) I’m guessing a whole lot, to the point where we may need to become a 23rd century master geneticist to be able to even begin to safely do those things. So that would be centuries then. 
I don’t think so, not while being limited to our human or demigod brain, but I guess we’ll see.
He wouldn’t, I guess he has some mystery technique, device, magic whatever that the Gods don’t know about to use us as some sort of “battery” or power source so he can safely harness the essence to his own ends. But that doesn’t exactly help us, now does it?
Perhaps eventually (but I’m guessing the order of time that takes will definitely be outside of the scope of the game).
I’m also of the opinion that altering our physical form is one of the most difficult things for us to accomplish, both because it would require a great deal of finesse to implement actual beneficial changes and secondly because we have to ensure we don’t actually go beyond “human” capabilities and thus kill ourselves. That would require such a great deal of finesse and understanding (we possibly need to know a whole frigging lot about human genetics and medicine) that we simply do not possess, since we’ve got absolutely zero finesse at the moment and probably a non-existent understanding of genetics and medicine. Again gaining both is going to take a very long time indeed, since our learning is still limited by our current demigod brain and the required finesse in using the essence probably won’t come quickly either.
Also @Alexodia if we’re truly limited to human forms and genetics then there is likely going to be one attribute of our body we can never alter anymore and that is our insufficient height (compared to Saint and Aeson).
O.K, I humbly concede and suggest waiting it out to see whether or not the Essence will be explained in greater technical detail. Regardless, Rohie said there’d be other ways to avoid internal combustion :~), though she hasn’t given us any hints.
1 Like
Us being the Essence we’ll obviously surpass the gods as for control if we win the trials we’ll have centuries to learn how to control our powers.
1 Like
Of course if they still trap us in Pandora’s box that will all be useless.
Just my opinion but I don’t think we’ll need fine control of our powers to stop anyone from imprisoning us.
1 Like
Is height part of your genetics? Yes? Then it IS something that we can alter. We can’t develop our I.Q.'s to genius level if we aren’t there already same as how we cannot alter our height, so why is I.Q. apparently fair game while height is not?
It may be more difficult to alter something that cannot be altered through training, but if you can alter your genetics, then in regards to said genetics, there is nothing that is not fair game; not even your height.
2 Likes
Well They’ve still got the Aeson kill-switch, however in case they don’t that just means centuries of working dead-end low paying menial jobs while slowly gaining the requisite training and knowledge in my mc’s scant time off, not exactly an enticing prospect either.
Well from conversations with my MD friend even if I were to somehow substitute my current limited height genes/genetic instructions, it wouldn’t do me any good since I’m already past childhood and puberty, I could pass them on to any daughters I may ever have, but that would be it.
Height requires tampering with so many things in our bodies, particularly past puberty that it is likely one of the most difficult things to do and would require a great deal of external assistance, assuming we ever find a way to achieve growth after puberty.
According to the teachers and peers from our human school we’re considered prodigies working low paying menial jobs would be a choice rather than the only thing we can get.
In more prominent jobs or careers people would easily notice we never seem to age beyond the ripe old age of 18, courtesy of that “immortality”, so we’d need anonymous jobs that require little to no paperwork, sadly those are also uniformly either criminal (which indeed my mc doesn’t want to do) or uniformly shitty jobs.
But you’re right in that it would be a choice in the end, and one my mc would rather take than staying on Olympus or accepting anything from “daddy” Hades or his wealthy “brother”.
1 Like
Dude, I’m aware of all of that, remember? I know we can’t alter height in real life. But guess what we don’t have in real life?
The Essence. With the Essence, we could alter all of those things if we wanted to, since we’d be able to circumvent cutting-edge science in favour of magic. If you have to know exactly what you would have to change? Then find out; we do have eternity after all. We can’t alter height with cutting-edge science, I understand that. But that’s the entire reason why I’m explaining how to do it with the Essence rather than advising you to contact the hospital.
8 Likes
The Essence, the frigging essence is the source of my mc’s problems and misery, without it he could at least find a way to put himself through (community) college and work himself up from there, assuming he’d age normally. Not the most pleasant of paths through life to take either, but at least he’d have a life, with the essence he merely has an existence.
We’re still limited to being human though and therefore I maintain that we first need a better scientific understanding of what the limits of “human” potential actually are so we don’t accidentally go beyond them with anything we do with the essence and thus inadvertently kill ourselves.
What the essence possibly allows us to skip IMO would be the actual hospital procedures, not the understanding of human potential and how to utilize and alter it.
“Finding out” is always easier said than done, but in this case it would mean that all that power is absolutely useless to my mc for decades or centuries on end.
Assuming the Gods didn’t lie about that “immortality”, even so we’d be back to centuries of not so fun learning and waiting. Not to mention the crappy jobs to support ourselves in the mean time. I mean the Gods could probably tell us the exact limits of “human” potential but somehow I doubt those asshats are going to do so.
In the future the hospital may be the safer bet though, assuming my mc could ever get the requisite money and paperwork together, since he really wouldn’t trust his non-existent finesse with the essence to to an adequate job at absolutely anything. And it very much remains the question if his finesse with the essence will ever be enough to trust it to perform nanoscale alterations on himself.
Either way essence or hospital it will likely require centuries of waiting.
Well after puberty anyway as he told me there were some studies that might lead to gene therapy for children with growth disorders currently in the very early or “seeking” funding stages.
1 Like
Then learn the skills and genetic know-how it will take in order to find out. And hone your skill to the point that you can do it effectively. It may take centuries, but if it’s so important to you…why the fuck does that matter?
Nothing worth doing is easy. This less so, because of the complexity. But if this is something that would truly bother you to the extent it apparently has, complaining about it taking too long wouldn’t do jack shit; if you really wanted this, then take centuries to learn how to do it rather than complaining that it would take centuries to do it.
All of it may be much, much, MUCH easier said than done, but when was that ever a legitimate excuse to not do something? You may be stuck in shitty, dead-end jobs for hundreds of years, it may take you hundreds of years to learn all of the info and/or go through all of the education courses, and it may take hundreds of years to develop your powers to the extent that you could alter such things effectively, but at the end…you’ll have done it, won’t you? If something matters to someone enough, they find a way to do it, regardless of how difficult it is. Some may already be privy to those privileges, but you’ll earn it just the same. And you won’t be an asshole to a short person the way Saint or Aeson may be, because you’ll know what it’s like to be as short as them.
Sometimes the strongest people aren’t the people who were strong before, but the people who know what it’s like to be weak themselves.
Well we can alter height to grow taller, it just involves some broken bones. 
@idonotlikeusernames your appearance won’t really matter for the first few years, you just need something to prove you were born when you were born, as you grow older maybe fake some plastic surgery. Plus it’s obvious there are demigod specific jobs which you’ll be fine with age wise. I’m surprised you’re not more optimistic with your wit we’re geniuses after all, even “dumb” bearers have at least average intelligence supplemented with Athena’s teachings. Plus why would you want a job as an immortal anyway? And your a son of Hades, you probably have money powers.
All it said was human body. All you need to be human is to be genetically able to have fertile offspring with humans, which our height will have little impact upon.
2 Likes
Says who?
We blink, breathe, and our hearts beats in our chest. We swallow, we sneeze, we yawn when we are tired. So many little things our body does because it knows how to keep us alive, how to send us message about our well-being. We control none of those innate reflexes and yet the body does them with a stagerring precision.
What if our soul is no different? In this case, what if the essence simply knows where the magic goes without having to look? What if is knows all the possibilities for power to bend and shape the world (or more simply our body) without breaking it?
I don’t think we know enough about the Essence itself to presume anything.
Edit: My MC would probably still be very careful and advise caution. But sometimes you have to take a leap of faith.
11 Likes
@idonotlikeusernames brings up some valid questions. I never explicitly defined what resides within the realm of “human,” and should (eventually?) do so to avoid confusion. I started the history behind the Essence with the thought that if the transfer isn’t limited to human vessels, then what’s stopping a common koala from inheriting the power of the Essence? (This is assuming you believe animals have souls, which for this story, they do).
At the time, it made sense to create such a detailed requirement for an Essence vessel. Cronus needed something that would die out quickly; he knows having the Essence (something much more powerful than him) isn’t the smartest idea. So how could he accomplish this? Humans, whose bodies weren’t made to hold such power (with the exception of demigods and magicians). This is my reasoning behind having human bodies being inheritors of the Essence.
Though this question keeps arriving; once the Essence made inherited, why can’t you change the vessel, especially if immortality plays a role in preserving it? I’ve been wrestling with this idea, but it doesn’t fit into the lore of the story to be able to change the vessel from a human to some unknown creature, when it was explicably stated that only humans can contain the Essence. The only solution would be to change the conditions of how the Essence is contained, so that it more resembles “Only humans get the Essence, but once they have it, all gloves are off.”
Some players may want to isolate themselves from the world and become incorporeal beings that watch over it, much like the Essence originally was. Others may want to be large feathered dragons that sit on gilded thrones. Who knows.
23 Likes
RL me has actually looked into that “procedure” that Kim Jong-Il purportedly had and at best it adds about 3cm to your lower legs, resulting in an unbalanced appearance. So I just stick to having my good shoe repair guy replace all the standard 1cm male heels with 2.5cm ones and he does that with such skill that most people don’t even notice and that about gives me most of the benefits of that particular procedure already. I just have to hope higher heels for men don’t come wildly in vogue again within my lifetime or I’d lose all the benefits I currently derive from them.
To my mc it probably doesn’t, to me as the player well finally getting to rub it into Aeson’s smug face will be so ridiculously far beyond the scope of the game it probably isn’t even funny anymore.
It won’t prevent my mc from actually complaining while doing it you know, which is about how I do some of my worst paperwork too.
Again true, but my mc will still curse that shitty immortality and not being able to alter his body’s apparent “age” in the mean time for not being able to really profit materially from all his decades and centuries of accumulated knowledge that could at the later points probably win him multiple Nobel prizes ten times over.
True, but if my mc succeeds at anything it will be in-spite of, rather than because of the worthless “essence” flowing through him. Since in the end if we’re talking about the far future he may rather take his chances with hospital assisted (or in his case more likely to be back-alley) nano-surgery rather than trusting in his control over and finesse with the essence with being able to make the requisite genetic and nano-scale alterations to his body to effect all those beneficial changes. Of course there is still the added complexity of working around the Gods “immortality” that might again make performing the procedures on himself orders of magnitude more difficult than performing them on any other human and may in the end require him to steal anyway in order to assemble his own hospital and thus force him to become the criminal he has always sought to avoid becoming in the first place.
I wonder what a world with an all-powerful koala would look like 
4 Likes