abraxasnet | @everyone

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Yo, it's ya girl, Gideon.

So I kinda wanted to just bounce this off a bunch of people, you know? To get an impartial perspective. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but I wanna hear other takes on this please and thanks.

Say there's this Empire of necromancers, right? The Empire stretches over a whole bunch of planets, nine home planets and then lots of others that act as necromancy fuel or some shit.

The Empire is ruled by this one guy, who is God. He was also just some dude at some point before the resurrection but now he's God. For reasons. Don't ask me about the reasons, I don't know the answer.

Like 10, 000 or so years ago there was some catastrophe that wiped out all life on all these planets, and then God came along - he's also a necromancer, by the way - and resurrected everyone.

So now he has this Empire where a bunch of people are necromancers and some are just regular folk with no aptitude for necromancy. And he's got like, this huge military force made up of necros and soldiers and battle ships and weapons and stuff. And this military force fights to protect God and the Empire from his enemies who wanna destroy him and all his people for like, no good reason at all. Jealousy, maybe.

This is a very condensed version, but yeah. What I wanna know is, what does this sound like to you? Totally reasonable behaviour or like...something else?

Anyway, come at me.

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Beats me. Obviously at the time it just seemed kind of normal. Shitty, sure. But normal.

I mean, you don't know any better. I understand that.

But to genuinely answer your question: this sounds like basic human nature when someone has too much power.

Well I guess he was a man once? It's not something I've ever really understood. Or bothered to think about, if I'm being entirely honest. But like, what does that mean, you know? He was a man and then he turned into God? If he wasn't always God, was there another one before that?

It's a mind-fuck. But it’s just another one of those things that everyone knew, like oh okay sure. I just didn’t think about whether it made sense of not.

I personally think religion never makes sense, but I'm biased and have not had the best experience with it in the past.

There could have been a god, there could have been no god. Apotheosis - becoming god or godhood - is a useful way of framing this. It seems like it is something that can be attained in your world.

I dunno, not just anyone can become God. It's hard enough to become a Lyctor and I reeaaally wouldn't recommend that shit to anyone.

But like, he is meant to have been a man once? So I guess he attained it somehow.

But he achieved godhood before the rest of that stuff existed, yes? So maybe it was easy and he made roadblocks for others.

Look, one of the dominant religions in my world has a god that's both father, son, and spirit, the son was divine became human then became divine again after being murdered. There's never any real sense involved as far as I'm concerned.

It always sounded kinda nonsensical to me, but I guess I just rolled with it. Like, it was never the main thing at the forefront of my mind. Not even when we were taking part in the Lyctor trials. All I was ever really thinking about was getting the fuck out and signing up for the Cohort.

I just have a lot of questions, now. After seeing how messed up and convoluted everything is here and we're talking about people all living on the same damn planet. We could practically throw a rock and hit Thorne but still they struggle to get along?

It just makes me wonder what he might have done.

When you swim in the water, you're not going to realize it's polluted, so to speak.

Well....you're not wrong about Thorne, but I also think that your sense of scale is different than many of us as well. The idea of nations sharing the same planet and not getting along is normal for many.

...What do you think he would have done?

The necromancy. All that mucking about with life and death and bones and shit. Like, people here are from a whole bunch of different worlds, but not one of them think my system sounds anything even close to normal.

And like, back in the pit. With those cultists. What they were doing was fucked but like...they really believed in it. They thought they were doing a right thing.

I'll admit, the necromancy is the most clear and obvious abnormal part of the whole matter. Disturbing the dead is seen as something that You Do Not Do in a large number of cultures, be it for reasons of religion, of respecting natural life cycles, or the fact that it often smells very bad to be dealing with corpses in various states of decomposition. Given how much your world centers around it, the differences only then multiply.

In my experience, belief can make someone do some deeply awful things if they really stick with it. It applies outside of religion to particular leaders or nations too, faith is just the easiest and most obvious example. The religious individuals that murdered my mother or otherwise watched her burn alive believed in their god and that their scripture said that they shouldn't permit a witch to live. Look how much damage that caused.

[It gives her more to think about, that's for sure. She tries to imagine what it must look like from the outside, unsure as she is of who the King Undying's enemies even are of where they came from. But if it was from anywhere like here, what might it be like to see a bunch of people manipulating the dead and spreading out into the universe, searching for more thanergy to fuel their necromantic endeavours?

Not great, is the answer.]

Yeeeaaaah. What happened to your mother was fucked and I am so sorry for that, mate. I guess that's the part I just can't know. Were the Nine Houses and the Emperor being persecuted because we did shit that went against their beliefs? Or like...was it us? Was it our god who thought other ways of being shouldn't be permitted to live?

I know you can't answer that question for me. But the whole necro thing...it's not exactly a good look, is it.

[Death Imperialism is real fucked up my dude.]

It could very well be a little of both. A little godly arrogance combined with disturbing other people's dead? Yeah. That'll make people angry. And they'll be willing to pick fights on behalf of their dead.

It's a very bad look, especially from the outside. There's no kind way of saying it.

[Yeeeeaaaah, she's very much having a belated 'are we the baddies?' moment.]

Yeah. I've been here way past long enough to see that out of all the different worlds people are drawn from here, none are anything like mine. Like, not even close. And then the shit that went down with the cultists, it was just sick you know? Like totally fucked up. But at the same time it felt really familiar. More familiar than anything else I've experienced here.

So I kinda suspect that the Kindly Prince wasn't quite so kindly after all.

[At least she's having it.]

I don't think I've heard anything more damning of recent events than you saying it felt familiar.

And probably not. Maybe he was also being manipulated by your death god?

Oh, the Kindly Prince is another name for the death god. Which...yeeeaaah, sounds kinda weird now that I think about it.

No, no. That part checks out. There's a mythology that calls their spirits of vengeance the Kindly Ones as to not anger them or catch their ire.

Huh. I never thought about it like that before.

Did he have any other similar titles?

Oh, yeah. Like a shit ton. His Celestial Kindliness, Gentle Emperor, The Emperor All-Giving.

He also had Lord of the Sharpest Edge and Ransomer of Death which were a bit more ominous, though.

The last two are more accurate, you mean. Not euphemisms or wards against him.

It's kinda weird how I never thought of it like that before.

Not really. You weren't at the point where you were thinking in the terms you are now.

I guess. It kinda blows though, trying to put all the peices together when all of that shit's so far away.

You needed to be far away to get perspective.

And I'm here to talk whenever you need it.

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