NeOlympus: Divinity and Reincarnation

So it has been a while since I did a dedicated, full-on NeOlympus journal. I've got a few ideas for some journals to do: the Broken Book, Heroes, Monsters, and some short story ideas, but I felt that this one was the most important to lay out the foundation to build on and to give readers a functioning understanding of what kinds of gods there are in NeOlympus and what they can do.

So, without much more, let's just jump into it.



Elder God: This is the term used for Zeus and his five spiritual siblings: Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, and Hera. Technically, this is also the race of Aphrodite, Leto, and Thaumas and others, but generally only the six heirs of Kronos and Rhea are given the title of "Elder God" as a sign of respect with the others called anything from "Titanspawn", "Chosen", and more. It's difficult to actually define them as a particular race as each Titan was so wildly different in their metaphysical genetics that each of their respective heirs varied so wildly, but usually they were pretty similar in how they were created so that remains the classifying qualifier of this species.
Elder Gods were born mortal beings who underwent a process known as exaltation in which they were placed in vat in the haven and exposed to the essence of two Titans. One Titan patron was the endowing Titan, who had one of their souls (Titans had multiple souls) taken from them and bound to the mortal soul, giving them some preternatural ability while the other Titan patrons stabilized that essence infusion by transfusing the mortal's blood with the Titans' blood, known as ichor and thus granting them immortality. The exact process for how this was performed known only to the daughters of Gaia and has since been lost, with only a few surviving Titans in Tartarus knowing the secret for creation of such powerful beings.
Elder Gods have physically stronger, faster, and more resilient than mortals. Due to the chaotic and mutable Titanic essence in their bodies, they can shapeshift with practice and can even cause curse lesser (usually mortal) beings to mutate into monsters or beasts if they exert themselves.
Elder Gods are weak against adamant weapons as such weaponry contaminates their ichor, causing them great pain and weakening them if such weapons pierce their flesh. Though not always fatal, wounds caused by adamant weapons do not regenerate as fast and a mortal blow caused by adamantine weapons can fell a god.

God: This is a being born of two immortal parents. They can easily be infused with Titanic essence to make them more powerful, but unlike Elder Gods, they do not have a Titanic soul and therefore can only hold so much Titanic essence, especially when multiple essence isn't complimentary with one another.
Gods are faster, stronger, and more resilient than mortals but typically are not as strong or resilient as Elder Gods. Though some gods can shapeshift, with the right essence infused in them, most rely on an effect known as 'glamour' in which they fashion a magical disguise known as a 'trapping'. Trappings take different forms based on the type of essence used to fashion the glamour effect. For instance, as God of Thieves, Hermes could make a thief trapping in which mortal minds would perceive him to be a stereotypical thief and as long as he did not do anything to make anyone question the validity of his disguise, the trapping would be a perfect disguise and that no one would question.
Like most beings which ichor in place of blood, they are also weak against adamant weapons as such weaponry contaminates their ichor, causing them great pain and weakening them if such weapons pierce their flesh. Though not always fatal, wounds caused by adamant weapons do not regenerate as fast and a mortal blow caused by adamantine weapons can fell a god.
Gods are further different from Elder Gods in that they were never mortal. This is mostly a psychological effect, giving most of them a strange fascination with mortals and making them very curious as to what mortality would be like, often holding much more romanticized ideas about mortality than Elder Gods who usually have a better understanding of the harsh reality of being mortal and vulnerable. This lack of mortality also makes gods more adventurous than their Elder God counterparts.

Nymph & Satyr: These distinctly different beings are actually an extreme example of sexual dimorphism as they respectively represent the female and male biologies of the same race. Further making these beings unique, is that the females come in wildly different races and subspecies, while the male satyrs only come in three forms: the meadow, forest, and mountain satyr. One distinguishing characteristic common to nearly all members of their race is an accelerated libido and sex drive.
Further causing a divide among their race is that Nymphs and Satyrs can be immortal and mortal. While only a single immortal satyr remains in existence (Pan), there are dozens of immortal nymphs. The immortal nymphs are usually relics from the first or second generation, created by the Primordials or Titans, and they are usually highly venerated in Elysium, taking on leadership roles among their kind.
Possessing highly mutable metaphysical genetics, nymphs and satyrs are able to procreate with a number of beings to produce offspring. When they mate with one another or with mortals, the offspring is a nymph or satyr. If they mate with a dominant metaphysical species such a god the offspring can be a demigod or even a new god (if both parents were immortal).
Powers and abilities of these creatures varies by race, but typically nymphs possess elemental powers. So powerful is the elemental power of a nymph is that they can survive simply on the ambient essence of their home biome and do not require any other sustenance. Meanwhile, Satyrs are intuitive psychics that make excellent trackers and guides and have super sharp senses. Satyrs do require sustenance and are actually possessed of rather large appetites and are prone to overeating and other forms of excessive lifestyle if left to their own devices. Satyrs are also typically opinionated and critical, but in a lighthearted way which is where the term 'satire' comes from; meanwhile, nymphs are usually much more free-spirited and accepting of differing world-views.
Nymphs and Satyrs can be felled by mortal weaponry. If immortal, they share the gods' weakness to adamant.
Divine beings born of nymph mothers, such as Hermes, Athena, and Triton, usually have an affinity for manipulating raw elemental essence. This is affinity is something which is worth mentioning as there are a number of artifacts created for the Titans that even most Elder Gods cannot master these treasures as they lack the raw elemental affinity to use these. An example of these relics is the Talaria which require a being capable of making rapid manipulations to the air essence around them to safely fly at rapid speeds.

Demigod: While technically these are usually just categorized as "heroes" by Elysians, these beings do carry a distinction in that there is essence infused into their soul, even after reincarnation that grants these beings a supernatural ability or divinely exceptional skill. Examples of this are Hercules' strength, Atalanta's speed, and so forth.
On Earth, demigods were typically the result of a god or other divine being coupling with a mortal. On Elysium, gods and Elysians' couplings do not create new demigods. Elysians may look remarkably similar to humans, but their metaphysical souls are too different from humans and cannot be joined with the divine essence from Earth. Instead, offspring of gods and Elysians usually just create exceptionally healthy Elysians, but there is a higher chance such offspring will be host bodies to reincarnated heroes, especially heroes whose original parent was the same divine being; but even this is rare. The only new demigods being born are on Atlantis where there are humans still living, but there are very few pure human bloodlines remaining on Atlantis and within the next hundred years or so, such bloodlines would be impossible to retain without resorting to incest.

Heroes: Heroes are the reincarnated souls of exceptional humans whose souls were transported to Elysium. Once their host reaches a certain age, usually in their teen years, they have an awakening and regain fragmented memories from their past lives and develop a personality that is a fusion of their current host's personality and their original mythic personality. Heroes are a fundamental part of Elysium as they act as a sort of metaphysical glue that binds the natural cosmology of Elysium and the foreign Earth cosmology together, enabling the gods to remain in power on Elysium.
Heroes have no other particular common abilities or weaknesses.

Monsters: Heroes alone cannot sustain the unnatural cosmological needs of the gods and monsters were brought back to Elysium to serve a similar purpose to heroes. Monsters come in two fashions, sentient and non-sentient. Sentient monsters are reincarnated into an Elysian body and at the age of awakening, they rapidly mutate into their monstrous form. Willful Elysians are often able to retain their original personality and try to find a way to use their monstrous visage to the benefit of society, but most are usually driven out of civilization by fearful mortals or become feral beasts. Examples of sentient monsters include Asterion the Minotaur and Medusa the Gorgon.
Non-sentient monsters are usually reincarnated into the bodies of Elysian animals that have similar physical structures. These beasts can often mate among other monsters to create an actual species of monsters native to Elysium.


Reincarnation
While I will add more to this journal later, I wanted to hurry and address something I have been asked about. On the matter of reincarnation, can gods or nymphs reincarnate? The answer is difficult and it is both yes and no. For those wondering why Amphitrite or Metis do not simply reincarnate, give me a moment to explain.

On Earth, reincarnation required a soul to be cleansed of everything by being washed in the Underworld River known as Lethe. This stripped it of its memories, personality, and essentially made it a blank slate. Heroes never reincarnated as Zeus liked to keep these souls as souvenirs in his Hall of Heroes, which is what inspired the myths of the constellations. There were some beings who were resurrected, like Zagreus, but death has a cost. Zagreus had to be reborn and did so as Dionysus who may have looked like Zagreus and had some of his memories, but his personality was changed.

On Elysium, reincarnation works differently. Mortal souls are washed in Lethe, but Heroic souls are only briefly dipped in Lethe to give them a 'buffer' that locks away their memories and personality until their age of awakening. If a god dies and their soul comes to the Underworld, a decision must be made.
    A) Some of the soul's essence can be stripped away to create a new spark of life and return the god to the living, minus a portion of their previous power. This can be utilized but is an unfavorable choice as Titanic essence is a precious and finite commodity, and destroying it to bring back one gods effectively weakens the entire Pantheon. So, this is only allowed if sanctioned by the Council of Twelve or the Quorum of Six. The resurrection process usually requires that the soul be brought to the Haven and submerged in a vat of Nektar, Ambrosia, and Ichor to recreate the being's body. This is a substantial drain on the stores of Nektar and Ambrosia and requires several gods to contribute portions of ichor to fuel this, weakening those gods for a number of days or even weeks afterward.
    B) The soul containing the personality and soul can be stripped from essence, creating a ghost of the divine being and giving them an estate in Hades' Underworld. They have no divine ability anymore and only have a corporeal state in the Underworld. Their personality and memory also begins to slowly fade away over time until they are nothing but a lost soul, roaming the palace halls. At this point, Hades usually orders them to taken to Lethe and returned to the reincarnation cycle, usually able to create dozens of new souls from the formerly divine soul.
    C) The god's soul can be added directly to the well of souls to be reincarnated... in theory. This process is usually best applied to fallen nymphs as theoretically any pregnant being receiving the soul of a reincarnating god would have their life essence overwhelmed in a most painful and likely fatal experience. Nymphs brought back in this manner are usually reborn as rather ordinary human-looking nymphs regardless of which kind of nymph they were in their previous life, and are elementally tied to the ambient essence of their birthplace and usually cursed with having to remain in that locale for the remainder of their life.

So, as to why Metis was not resurrected, well Zeus and the Olympians did not control the Underworld back then. The Olympians only gained control of the Underworld after they usurped the Titans. Metis died under the Titans' watch and exactly what they did to her soul remains unknown (in all likelihood it was rendered into more mortal souls - and could be the souls of all those mortals Zeus was strangely attracted to, or at least that's what Zeus likes to tell himself).
What about Amphitrite? She grew too weak under Roman worship (the Romans usually ignored she existed) and died while making the transition to Elysium. In those early days, the gods had not established a strong foothold in Elysium and they did not have the resources necessary to resurrect her and Poseidon did not know if she would want to be reincarnated once the gods established their foothold. Poseidon feared she had been dead for too long and had absorbed too much Underworld essence and so he just let her be, where she "lived" the remainder of her days in Hades' palace until her memory and personality faded, at which time Poseidon paid one last visit and then gave Hades the okay to strip her soul down. At Poseidon's request, the fragments of Amphitrite's soul was marked to only be given to newly born sea nymphs so that Amphitrite would return to the waters she loved so much.

Now, which gods have been resurrected or reincarnated? The answer is only a few have at one point been killed over their long lifespans, and the gods usually only make the sacrifice for those they consider to be too important to the continued preservation of their pantheon.  Of course their possible mortality is a secret they keep from the mortals of Elysium. The most recent example of one such event where a god was killed was just two hundred years ago when New Spartan poachers captured Pan and dragged him back to their home. They figured he was just a normal satyr. The whole city reveled in his torture him for amusement and eventually they killed him. When Hermes came upon Pan's soul in the Underworld and learned what happened, the Twelve ordered that the truth of this event be kept concealed and Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon, and Hephaestus were dispatched. Artemis hunted down every last one of the poachers (preserving for them special punishment at Hades' hands) while her brother Apollo quarantined the entire city with a horrible plague that kept them too ill to travel, Poseidon  turned away any ships that tried to enter the harbor, and Hephaestus caused the nearby mountain to explode in righteous fury, burying the city in a thick layer of volcanic ash... wiping the city of New Pompeii from the map so that none could tell the tale. A single sailor had witnessed the event and escaped the city by ship before the gods lay waste to the city, but when his exclamations of "Great Pan is dead!" began to spread it took but the appearance of Pan at a local festival to disprove that sailor and cause the templars to seize him for spreading heresy. The sailor was given a merciful beheading while the poachers are still housed in Hades' dungeon where death cannot touch them, forced to relive the same tortures they inflicted upon Pan until the end of their sentence, which is essentially whenever Zeus decides to actually get around to informing Hades of their sentence.


Final Thoughts
Lastly, I want to thank any of you who took the time to read and comment on this. I love working on NeOlympus and I appreciate the support in enjoying this last week's break from Earth-27 to focus on some of my other creative endeavors. I wanted to take a moment to ask for your thoughts about dedicating a week once a month (provided I have at least five NeOlympus sponsorships on reserve) to NeOlympus or some of my other projects? I know this would further delay Earth-27's progress, which is already kind of delayed, but I do feel like pursuing my own creative projects is the way in which I stand the best chance of being able to become a full-time creator and writer. Anyway, just wanted your feedback on this and on the rest of this journal. I am also curious to know what you think about NeOlympus. Do you enjoy it? Do you prefer it over Earth-27? On the same level as Earth-27 but for different reason? Do you like it only as a part of Earth-27? Do you prefer Earth-27 to it? Is there another one of my projects you'd prefer to see me dedicate some time to aside from E27 and NeOlympus? Whatever it is, let me know in the comments below! Until next time!