text | morning 045 | HE412T

[timaeus]

[Dirk's brief broadcast the day before ended right as it sounded like a fight broke out with no responses anyone, so that probably was a little disconcerting. It's a full day later when his callsign finally makes another appearance on the network, back in his typical text form.]

Got him.
Permanently, I hope, but I'm not taking anything as a given on Respawn Island, particularly not after having just done the same myself.
I don't see that asshole hollering on the walkies anymore though, so I assume shit's quieted down.

Comments

[timaeus]

Ears still ringing, but otherwise remarkably intact for someone who got his chest caved in.
I guess I know what it's like getting kicked by a horse now.

[meadqueen]

Generally the horse is not also running directly at you.

Are you planning to return to the village? I’d like to ask you about it.

[timaeus]

Yes, but not immediately.
I'm pretty close to the Pacairs so I might as well stop by to check in with them first.
Try to feel out whether or not they'll be pissed about one of their demigods dying and all that.

[meadqueen]

It will be valuable to know how they've fared after everything that's happened, but please try not to die again immediately.

[timaeus]

Not trying to make a habit of it or something, but if past experience is anything to go by then I really shouldn't be making any promises.

[meadqueen]

For some it seems to be unavoidable once they start. It's like junior year.

[Sorry for this inscrutable statement, Maddy told her a story once.]

[timaeus]

I've never been to high school, but I'll take your word for it.

[Yes, he recognizes that Randvi comes from vikingland or something and must have picked this up from someone. And yes, he's consumed enough 21st centure human media that he still definitely more more about it than her. But he also thinks it's funnier to frame her as more experienced with that shit.]

[meadqueen]

It does not sound like you missed much.

[No one likes it.]

Perhaps they’ll even be pleased. This demigod did not seem overly fond of them.

[timaeus]

It's possible, but I'm not assuming anything where a mostly unknown religion is involved.
People have strong feelings about their mythologies, and while some are pretty black and white about the morality of the figures involved – not many people would complain about someone killing Satan, for instance – the "bad guys" in many others are more complicated and still revered in their own way.
You're a viking, right?
How would your people have felt if someone claimed to have killed Loki?

[meadqueen]

I’m not a Viking, but I'm Norse. If someone said such a thing I would not believe it unless I had encountered Heimdallr in the flesh, but I understand your meaning. We see how the demigods themselves speak of the whale.

[timaeus]

Right.
We know they revere the shit out of that whale.
Their feelings on the "demigods" are a lot more ambiguous and I don't think we know enough yet to even say whether said demigods actually play a part in their mythology somehow, or if that's just the way they've chosen to categorize these other powerful beings so their own god remains at the top.

[meadqueen]

It’s easy enough for a god to gain that sort of following when they periodically kill their people with crabs, I suppose.

I wonder whether the whale has houses.

[timaeus]

Houses?

[meadqueen]

The god in England has houses that his worshippers cover with representations of the thing that killed him. They fill those places with gold and other materials, but I'm not sure what the god does with them.

[timaeus]

Oh, churches.
Yeah, it's kind of bizarre, but most of ancient Earth culture was in some way.
I didn't explore enough to see if the Pacairs had any kind of temple, but they did apparently make a shrine of some kind out of the airplane wreck near them.

[meadqueen]

Some of them are called monasteries, I think. But yes.

They arrived in a shipwreck, is that right? Of an airplane. I can see why they might revere it if their god touched it.