agoge | >>FROM:@AEGONNER

[Strangely, no! Just omniscient, occasionally psychologically aggressive trees and suspiciously chatty birds. And ice zombies, apparently.]

Gods more like people? How did they gain dominance over the titans?

[You know what these trees sound great after Zeus existing.]

It's slightly sordid, you'll find. The father of most of the gods had no desire for children, out of fear of being overthrown. As a result, when his wife bore him a child, he ate said child whole.

The process repeated itself until Zeus was born, and his mother hid him away. She gave Cronos a rock instead, and fooled him. Later on, Zeus then came in, was able to rescue his siblings, and murdered his father.

There was then a war between the other Titans and the new gods. Upon their loss, the Titans were then sealed away under the earth.

Edited 2018-01-10 02:10 (UTC)

We don't have stories like that about our gods. The Old Gods don't have names or faces, only the New. Zeus wasn't cursed as a kinslayer?

[But who would curse him, if Cronos was dead and the other Titans sealed under the earth?]

Edited 2018-01-10 02:23 (UTC)

He's the most important god in the group. Patricide is irrelevant, and the gods do plenty of morally questionable things. Zeus is also legendary for his infidelities.

His kids are generally good though.

What stories of your gods do exist?

They were the gods of the Children of the Forest, who were there even before the First Men, and they were also the gods of the First Men. There aren't many stories, and there are no septs or clergy, but people who hold to them believe that they're in every leaf and rock and river, and that they watch men through heart trees — weirwoods that the Children carved with faces. A lot of Northerners believe that men can't be false before a heart tree. That makes it the place to make any sort of vow or to take an oath. I'm sure that a man can be false no matter where he makes a vow if it's a vow he doesn't intend to keep, but at least it matters to some people.

<font face="courier>I suppose the stories told less and less? It's a strange thing for me to have something so passive in the way of deities, I will admit. There are tree spirits in my own time, but even they are active things. Does a man who swears falsely usually have some sort of comeuppance?

I know there are some stories that have been told less and less, until no one believes them anymore, but they're as true as anything, stories of things I was fighting until the day I joined COST, and will have to fight again. It stands to reason that there might have been others. It's said that the Old Gods are unforgiving. Still, my father held to them, and he was the best man I ever knew. He was beheaded on a false charge of treason. Goodness and honor didn't save him from his enemies, and some who seem dishonorable go unpunished, even in places where the Old Gods still have power.

Not having an active and persistent presence in the world does cause men to forget powers that be. If there are others, I hope they appear after your time, so you're not faced with more surprises.

[Meanwhile, apparently the Olympians have made some terrible life choices with the Regency. According to other Chiron, at least.]

It pains me that things unfolded for your father that way. Having gods that long slumbering is far too strange to me.

In this case, they built a wall to keep them out. It worked to an extent, but north of the Wall is a different story, and what do you do if the Wall comes down? Or what if some people are trapped there with the dead, and forgotten or hated, because people south of the Wall think it was put there to keep them out? It's what we've faced. These powers slept until people forgot who the real enemy is. I don't know that the Old Gods are slumbering, though I don't really know how the two are related, except that the Children and the First Men fought the threat together a very long time ago. Maybe the Old Gods are just more reluctant to put their hand in with mortal men. Not like yours, and not like the Lord of Light. What sort of god is Apollo? I'm in the mess hall if you'd rather talk in person.

It is so very strange that you speak of gods being forgotten and stories passing out of knowledge, and others being trapped here. Let me finish writing responses to other things, and then I'll meet you in the mess hall. This first part is something I've noted as a reoccurring theme.

Your Old Gods might have wisdom in some of their decisions though. I cannot say with any confidence.

Apollo was...complicated. He raised me, whereas my birth parents did not. Under his purview were the arts of prophecy, prophecy, music, the sun, poetry, and health. One of his temples, the one in Delphi, held an oracle that those from seemingly everywhere went to in order to make decisions both personal and at a state level. He can be as flippant as the other gods, but I also cannot mask fondness for him.

I'll see you presently.

[It is definitely easier to talk in person, and so Chiron does just that. He didn't think to alert Jon he'd be back in human mode again. He takes it for granted, and just finds Jon's table.]

Shall we continue?

[Jon looks up at Chiron with cautious pleasure. They've met and they haven't -- isn't that the way of it? A strange dream, but he knows now that it wasn't all a dream. He might have said too much, but he can't remember enough to be sure.]

Well met, Chiron. It's good to speak in person this time.

Apollo sounds as complicated as any god might. A little like the Lord of Light, but not much. Did he -- does he demand sacrifices?

[Something in his face goes flat and distant for a moment, but with a tiny shake of his head, his attention returns.]

[The in person statement may not be a joke, but there's a smile on Chiron's face that makes it clear that he saw humor in the statement. It's a light thing, matched with a sparkle of amusement in his eye.]

Easier to get a measure of me, I suppose.

[It is a jab at his own height compared to his centaur form, but Jon's question sucks any lightness that remains.]

Of animals, yes, sometimes. Most gods expect burnt offerings. But you're...[ah.] That isn't the kind of sacrifice you mean, I take it?

No.

[His expression shifts back inward.]

A burnt offering of an unbeliever, or a living girl. The Lord of Light isn't a god much worshipped in my land. I can't say I know whether or not he's real, only that I knew a priestess who insisted upon it, and who did -- wonderful and terrible things, but for the terrible things, I banished her.

Your Apollo sounds better. It's hard to imagine any of the gods I've heard of, named or not, raising the child of another -- or any child. It's hard to imagine them putting such a hand into the affairs of -- mortals.

[He nearly uses the word "men" there, but that wouldn't be strictly accurate, would it?]

[In different times, Chiron would have agreed with that evaluation of Apollo. But from the words of other Chiron, well, it seems that there have been changes there that Chiron can only label as a deep disappointment.

It's sad when human sacrifice is the more enjoyable thing to contemplate.]

Don't mistake me. It has been done before, but there is always a due paid out to whoever has taken that action. Or done something even more foolish, but those are deeply unpleasant tales.

[No one wants to hear about Lycaon.]

I'm not sure what they gain by being so remote, but I suppose it must work for them. They're still worshiped, correct?

Aye, they're still worshipped, though it's said they have little power in places where their worshippers are few. The weirwoods of the Old Gods were chopped down in the south to make way for the Seven after the Andals came to Westeros from Essos, and the Seven don't have much sway in the North. No sway at all north of the Wall, actually -- though you must understand, the Wall doesn't divide the North from the southern kingdoms. It protects the North from the White Walkers that come from the Land of Always Winter.

There was a man who sacrificed to them, too, though I don't think many others would worship them as gods. They fear them as monsters.

[Chiron nods to show that he is following along. There is migration, which was nothing he experienced in life, but the idea of competeing gods is something familiar in all of this.]

There has been no true conflict between the Old Gods and the Seven though, unless I am mistaken? Or their respective believers? I'm happy to leave the matter of the Wall and the practical purposes it has aside from the question.

[Layering too many things into a discussion of new and unfamiliar gods is hardly a wise decision.]

No. Southrons have never ventured far into the North -- it's not hospitable territory to them, and our bonds of loyalty run deep -- and most Westerosi call the gods "The Old Gods and the New." They coexist, as far as it goes. There's not much to keep anyone from worshipping all of them. There's also not much to keep someone who worships the Seven from thinking that someone who worships the Old Gods is a savage, or to keep a Northerner from thinking that someone who holds to the Seven is a southron fool.

But there was the Faith Militant, long ago. The North is one of seven kingdoms, but it wasn't always; it used to stand alone. About three hundred years ago, a Valyrian man, a dragonlord named Aegon Targaryen, came from his home on Dragonstone and conquered five of them with his dragon Balerion the Black Dread and his sisters' dragons, Meraxes and Vhagar. My ancestor, Torrhen Stark, bent the knee to him, so the North was never attacked, and we were allowed some of our ancestral rights.

The Targaryens adopted the Faith of the Seven, but they practiced... well, they often married brother to sister. The Faith didn't like that. The Faith Militant were those who fought against the crown for a while because of it.

[The fairly low level of conflict is something that Chiron finds impressive. It shows not just in his raised eyebrows, but at the faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. There's a luxury to gods not behaving badly, and he'd like to luxuriate in it for a moment before things take a turn for the serious.]

I presume that the use of the past tense and the crown having dragons meant that their fight was completely and utterly unsuccessful.

[He...is leaving the incest alone, mostly because the gods of his own time have made it so funky that he gets to pass zero moral judgement on the matter.]

You'd think the dragons would have deterred them, but that isn't why, though Aegon's son Maegor the Cruel did attack them with Balerion more than once -- something about the succession, and about him having more than one wife. They all fought ordinary battles too, with men on the ground.

Maegor's successor Jaehaerys made peace with the Faith Militant by pardoning the ones who would lay down their swords. The Faith only had to acknowledge the Targaryen marriages, they didn't have to approve of them.

[He shakes his head, blinks, and half-chuckles.]

My old Maester would be pleased that I can remember all that. I had other heroes as a boy, not Maegor or Jaehaerys.

Consider me truly surprised that the dragons weren't the end of the matter. [It's a messy business, in the end. That does have a patina of the familiar, the gods knew men could be fools over successions and crowns.]

Knowing history is always a useful thing. Consider me pleased in his place, it's fascinating to hear.

[Chiron pauses, before asking his next question. It could be a bit too personal.] May I ask who, if it isn't a private thing?

Oh, my greatest hero was the Young Dragon. Another Targaryen, Daeron I... the real dragons were dead by then, but a three-headed dragon is the Targaryen sigil. He conquered Dorne, the southernmost of the Kingdoms, when he was fourteen years old, but he only held it for a fortnight.

He lost sixty thousand men. Not a hero now.

[His expression becomes thoughtful again, lips pressed lightly together and brows drawing down, and his next words come out more slowly.]

You get older, and it's less the men in stories and more the men you've known who you look up to, at least if you've been lucky enough to know good ones. I have been. The Young Dragon was brave, but no one should lose that many men, least of all in a boy's failed attempt to win glory.

Edited (minor improvements.) 2018-01-24 04:28 (UTC)

Feats beyond one's age always encourages the term to be bandied around. Regardless of failure, it is an impressive thing to have accomplished. A shame it ended in a catestrophic loss.

[It is pointless when there is death for the glory of only one.]

Are your nobles raised with the concept of κλέος?

[He quickly adds:] In my time, it means accomplishing great tasks so that others will hear of your works and add to your renown.

When the Targaryens took Dorne and kept it, they took it another way... a marriage alliance, with the first Daenerys and a Dornish prince. Not the Daenerys who's here now.

[He doesn't understand the word κλέος as it's said to him, but as it's explained, he absorbs it, nods, and considers it before speaking again.]

Not in the North, though there are heroes. The southrons have their knightly virtues, winning glory in tournaments and battle and such, but there are few tournaments or knights in the North, because so few follow the Seven. When Northmen fight, we want to win and to live.

Most Northern boys seem to want to be heroes of some sort when they're boys, but it's a childish thing. I did, because I'm a bastard. There was small glory to be found in the Night's Watch, as it happened, yet the Watch is necessary to the safety of the Realm. Most have forgotten that.

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horsepowered - 2018-02-01 03:42 (UTC) - Expand

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northerndragon - 2018-02-01 04:45 (UTC) - Expand

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horsepowered - 2018-02-02 00:46 (UTC) - Expand

[ AUNT FUCKER, BOW CHICKA UNFF UNFF ]

[THIS CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE. HE'S NED STARK'S BASTARD, OKAY? IF HE WERE RHAEGAR TARGARYEN'S SON HE WOULD BE KING OF ALL SEVEN KINGDOMS AND HE IS DEFINITELY NOT THAT, DANY!

but also who cares what the Faith of the Seven thinks. sounds fake. probably Cersei trying to break our alliance again.]

>>FROM:@AEGONNER

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in which Aegon Targaryen talks about Aegon Targaryen without knowing that he too is Aegon Targaryen.

This is definitely the New and Improved version of Who's on First

Aegon Toast

The noise I just made

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not here not ever here

[EVEN MORE ABSENT]