(no subject)

[death_gone_mad]

This morning the grey kitten version of Gielinor's goddess of Death and Rebirth left Milliways the same way she entered just before the version Milliways is more familiar with descended from room 60 carrying a grotesquely oversized lobster pot.

She might bump into people with it on her way to the Caribbean inlet, but it might be more likely to find her on the jetty that was built for docking boats there. There are some nice rocks to sit on, and on one of them, she relaxes and enjoys a marrentil cigar, with a bottle of the unsanitary swill called Braindeath 'Rum', an axe, and rope leading out to the submerged lobster pot nearby.

She's going to catch whatever has been smashing her lobster pots up before, she can feel it. But in the meanwhile she's botherable.

Comments

[death_gone_mad]

"Ah, that would make it very valuable." It bewilders her that pirates would rob tin ships, or that tin would be transported by ship, for that matter. "Sea trade isn't as important as it once was where I am from but I can see how a nation with a good navy could extort its neighbors"

"So, do you know why their gods demand a bull dance?" This is either ███████ trying to find out the gossip on the gods the next world over or her finding inspiration for awesome religious rights incase she ever gets popular again. If she is ever allowed to become popular again.

[gryphon_leaper]

"Oh, it's the Earth-shaker," says Thalestris. "They call him Black-horned Poseidon, Lover of Bulls; when they offer him animal sacrifice, it's either bulls or horses. The bull-dance used to be just putting a person in a pit for a bull to gore, and they grew to like watching people try to outlast the bull, so they made it bigger and added more people, but it was always because the Earth-shaker's sacred animal is the bull."

[death_gone_mad]

Meanwhile, her sacred animal was the... ugh.

Filthy beasts.

She needs a new sacred animal.

"That's the way of things, ceremonies tend to get more complicated with time. At least a person put in the bull-dance has a better chance of survival." And more time to worry about the bull getting lucky the next time.

Those cruel Cretans. It's just not right.

[gryphon_leaper]

Thalestris nods. "A good bull-dancer lasts six months in the ring; a great one more," she says. "The Cranes- that's the oldest team in the Labyrinth, they're all of Athens- have been here the better part of a year, and not one has died. It's fourteen dancers, now, seven youths and seven maidens, and it keeps the bull busy enough to grow tired, most times."

[death_gone_mad]

"Oh, there are established teams? Ahh, now your talk of gryphons makes sense. How many are on your team?"

[gryphon_leaper]

"Fourteen," says Thalestris. "All the teams are so. The Cranes are unusual because they all come of one city only, all taken at once, instead of being made up of people from here and there."

[death_gone_mad]

"I wonder if they practice for the bull dance there, then. That sounds quite unusual."

[gryphon_leaper]

"Not to my knowledge," says Thalestris. "Their leader Theseus swore them to an oath, and says that keeps them alive and together, that's all."

[death_gone_mad]

"An oath, hmm?"

The rope jerks a couple more times, but Sarah ignores it. if there is something crawling into the trap, she best not disturb it.

"So was your native country very different from Crete, beside the buildings?"

[gryphon_leaper]

Thalestris nods. "Crete is an island, all sun and fields and hills they like to think are mountains," she says. "A very warm one; the women wear their bodices open until they marry, and the men wear hardly anything unless they are very old or infirm. My country is at the back of the northeast wind, and we live in the real mountains, following our herds and flocks. Hardly any of the men of Crete are fighters at all, except Minos' guards, and none of their women would even think of such a thing. But among my people, a woman cannot marry until she brings the man the head of an enemy slain in battle by her own hand- and my mother brought my father three. They are a very soft people, the Cretans."

[death_gone_mad]

She smiles widely at that. "That sounds like a fun tradition, but it makes it nescessary to keep and cultivate an enemy."

Which admittedly, is easy if a goddess of friendliness and sociability doesn't interfere.

She then turns wistful. "My country is mostly desert. It extends out into the sea so there are beaches like surrounding it, but I live in the interior, near the foothills of the mountain range that divides the continent. The old stories say that our country was covered in grassland and forest full of very valuable and prized timber, but that vanished long ago along with the ships that used to visit our shores. There is a corner that is still lush and green, but it is too full of ghosts and memories. No one dares to live there."

[gryphon_leaper]

"Generally there is someone willing to start a feud," says Thalestris. "Over grazing land or a stream to drink from, if nothing else. And that's enemy enough, for most clans."

One hand comes up briefly in an old sign against misfortune at the mention of the ghosts. "What became of the rest of your country?" she asks. "Was some god angered, or was it a war?"

[death_gone_mad]

"Many gods were angered, it was a God War. When the Death goddess of my country was betrayed and defeated by her own mortal worshippers, with the help of a foreign god of justice," she tries very hard to hide her disgust at the memory, "it wasn't long until the other gods became fearful and started conspiring against eachother. Soon a mortal used the same weapon the god of justice used against the death goddess to betray and steal his god's power to grant himself godhood. The entire world went to war after that."

A bitter chuckle escapes. "By trying to defeat Death, they only betrayed the world to her madness."

"It was the newly risen god's fault that my country dried up. The only green part of my country now was one of the grandest cities in the world, Ullek. But now it lays partially under the sea, partially under a swamp. For their part in destroying Ullek, the new god rewarded one of his people with the ability to cover their land with clouds that only part during the night. But to do it he diverted the clouds that blessed our land with rain. Our people prayed to the Sun so that he would shine less brighty to spare us from his heat, but he couldn't do it, lest the world die of starvation."