Storage and convince are definitely the core issues for demigods. They want a weapon they can always have at their side and make use of, not something they go to war with. They don't wear armor when they go on quests after all.
Not everyone wants just a power fantasy, in the medium of anime/manga not everything successful are shounen beat-um-ups with insane overpowered main-characters there also exist shows with fairly weak main characters (World Trigger is an example where the main character proper is one of the weakest people in the whole show, he does have overpowered allies though) then there exist slice-of-life genre things which people enjoy despite the entire mundanity of the setting and characters.
Nothing wrong with wanting to power-trip, but its not everyone's wishes, for example in this specific quest I sometimes vote for just what I think will be interesting and other times I try and vote for options that I think fit the character in particular, based off of how his story has played out so far. The fact that we are a reincarnated individual with memories of future events because of a book series we read is something interesting but we should be using that knowledge to our advantage. The more we stand out the more things could go bad, the more we reveal our knowledge the more the fates will take notice and have problems with us. Eventually we will really show off our strength but I don't think always keeping our foot on the gas is the best option.
You seem to have read something different to what I wrote, because nowhere did I say anything about a power fantasy where we curbstomp our opponents.
This is a quest about demigods, not your ordinary Joes. We are already special, because our mother is a godess, our father a mortal. Add on to that the fact that we are a reincarnated soul and also the protagonist of this quest. In this setting and world, can we afford to be anything but special?
Do we want to sit on the sidelines while the conflict is happening? Or have the strength and smarts to be neck to neck with Percy Jackson? Losing fights and overcoming struggles or falling short of them is also part of our journey and will make the victory all that sweater. Those are the sort of quests I enjoy most where we are special and that's why we are chosen, not where being chosen is special. If this makes any sense.
And I'm pretty sure many of us vote depending on how we think Samuel is like, but not all of us will read his character the same.
I for one see him as ambitious since there's no way he wasted his day playing around like kids his age. I see him as a kid who loves his dad a lot, who wouldn't kill for his friends, just ruin other peoples lives for them.
As the son of a godess who does have a few kids, I also see him going out of his way to stand out, to get attention since otherwise Mom might not look his way. But again, this is how I see him. It's possibly different to you.
Edit: I hate phone writing. Sorry for any spelling mistakes.
Trying to fight every monster that comes their way is far more likely to earn them one.
The average demigod's solution to a large group of monsters is run away and kill the ones that stop them from running away. Armor runs counter to that style. And remember that they can casually fix broken bones, serious cuts, and most other injuries they aquire as long as they don't die right away.
Don't compare demigods to regular people. The lowest among them with a few weeks training are among peak humans.
Percy cuts bullets out of the air with his sword. Sure it's Percy, but that was Book 1 Percy*.
Demigods are bullshit, and acting like regular mortal limitations are a problem for them is faulty logic.
*I don't want to have to find the quote in my books but I will if I have to
[29][Decorations] Tulips
-[18][Decorations] A single color, as everyone else has done.
--[18][Decorations] Blue
[35][Weapon] a saber that was shattered leaving behind a curved jagged edge. (Warscythe, a tool of harvest turned weapon of war)
[47][Defense] Stick with Willow near the flag.
[33][Chloro] Maxima, the forest comes to your aid.
[X][Activities] Train your Chlorokinesis outside of your daily sessions with Cabin Four
[X][Activities] Focus on the Concept of Growth, see if plants so suffused in magic help you at all
[X][Activities] Archery Range
[X][Activities] Arena/Close-Quarters Combat
[X][Activities] Climbing Wall
[X][Activities] Explore the forest.
[X][Activities] Train your Chlorokinesis outside of your daily sessions with Cabin Four #2
[X][Activities] Arts & Crafts
"That one eh?" Justin says as you pick out a saber that had roughly half of it broken off, leaving one jagged edge and another significantly blunter edge from where it hadn't been sharpened. "I won't stop you, but just be aware that non-traditional weapons are difficult to learn and even harder to master."
"This is what I want," you tell him. When you picked it up, the balance just felt right in your hand. Not perfectly balanced like a sword would be, but rather slightly off, but an off that feels right in your hands if that makes any sense. He takes the broken blade from you and examines it. "You'll probably want to use the outside edge for blocks and parries, while the inside edge is for cutting. It doesn't have enough of an angle to it to slip around a shield or crossguard," he mutters to himself. "Not that any of that is relevant to you. I'll set this blade aside for you, as I doubt anyone else wants it. Stick around after practice and I'll show you how to properly maintain a Celestial Bronze weapon. Now, what I want you to do is go out there and hack at a target dummy."
You do as your told, stepping out of the armory and going towards the dummies in the arena. Justin spends about half of the lesson with you, correcting your mistakes, like your posture, or your stance, or the motion you make when you swing the makeshift war scythe. You are not instantly amazing or anything like that, but it doesn't feel too odd to swing it around. You wonder if that's your demigod instincts or if you actually have some sort of connection to this weapon. You don't remember if Demeter had any weapons associated with her, but if she did, a scythe seems like it would be appropriate.
"Sounds good," she glances around the area, before her eyes alight on someone. She points at a stocky camper who probably stands at about even height with Justin. "That's Raj. He's gonna be the head counselor of the Hephaestus Cabin next year. He's also in charge of defenses by the flag. You should go introduce yourself." She then pulls what you now suspect is a common Lily maneuver and shoves you at him. It's not with enough force to make you stumble, but you also can't remain in the same place you were before. When you stand next to him, you have to crane your neck to make eye contact. You're really starting to hate how much taller everyone is compared to you.
He grunts at you to acknowledge your presence.
"I'm uh, Sam," damn you and your extremely withered social skills, you'd thought that maybe talking with Blossom had made you better than that. To be fair, you also didn't talk to her much when she was at camp and you were still at home. "I'm going to be with the group guarding the flag."
Raj mutters something about "even the children," as his mop of dark hair falls over his eyes. He brushes it out of the way. "Ok, what skills do you have?"
"I'm good with plants," you blurt out. Wow, what an incredible way to phrase it.
He glances meaningfully at another Hephaestus camper, who sort of points his chin towards Willow and Lily conversing about something or other. The two have a silent conversation of which you understand nothing.
"You can stick with your sister and make the terrain around the flag uneven," he says.
You nod in what you hope is not an overeager fashion. You want out of this conversation ASAP.
As you make it to your side of the forest, campers start to peel off, heading to their various posts. Luckily for you, your chosen post means you just follow the flag for a bit. Lily was right when she said the Ares cabin was just going to plant it in a clearing, as that's exactly what Justin does. It seems not very easily defensible, but your understanding of the plan is "win before they do," so maybe they're hoping to draw people towards the flag and away from defending their own.
When the flag is planted, you and Willow wander around and make the terrain uneven, mainly by growing a lot of tree roots and bushes everywhere. You discretely apply the concept of durability to the tree roots. Hopefully, that will make them more annoying. You know that the game has begun mainly because of the horn that goes off. You and Willow don't change plans at all, continuing to create an ever-greater area of rough terrain around the flag. It's basically a huge sign pointing to said flag, but from your understanding, it wasn't supposed to be hidden anyway. You don't encounter any monsters, but you do think you see some curious dryads peeking out from in between the trees. You sort of expect your first capture the flag game to end with little fanfare. That sentiment lasts until your plants pick up on people coming towards you.
There are 5 of them, you can feel as the trample the grass and maneuver over the uneven roots. You immediately suspect enemies, as you haven't come across any friendly patrols for however long you've been out here. Your suspicions are proved correct when they burst out from the trees, weapons drawn. Willow draws her sword and smoothly interposes herself between you and them. It's touching how quickly they've adopted you.
The leader of the five invaders is a tall, effeminate blonde teen. He has his long blonde hair back in a half ponytail that somehow works for him even without a beard. He's not wearing a helmet, and his armor is light and gold with white trim, the same can be said about the two ornate swords he's wielding, one longer than the other. He's definitely an Apollo kid.
You note as you ready your own tree root ambush that the roots are attempting to ensnare the invading campers' feet, though they are aware enough not to get trapped. You doubt you and Willow could take care of them in any sort of fair fight, so you're glad she's keeping them occupied while you work on imbuing the tree roots you plan to use with speed and durability.
The Apollo kid sneers. Sneers. You didn't know people did that in real life. "Let us pass and we won't have to hurt you," he says. You don't like him already. It's a good thing all your plants are ready. While you still can't affect as many plants as your siblings, you do have much finer control. You also have an idea for a way you can make it look like you control more plants than you actually can.
"No," Willow says firmly. Blondie looks indignant. You spring your trap.
As opposed to the slow speed of Willow's roots, your own tree roots are lightning quick. They ensnare the legs of 2 campers before they can react. Initially, you went after Blondie, but he managed to step out of the way, so you switched targets. Once they are firmly trapped, you switch plants and have another set attach to the two other helmeted campers. You have no idea who they are, but you guess that at least some of them are from the Apollo Cabin. That leaves only Blondie, who is making a dash over your roots towards the two of you. He is quite agile, and despite your roots, you don't manage to ensnare him.
"I've fought much worse than some shitty tree roots. You're going to need to do better than that!" He yells as he charges.
He clashes blades with Willow, and it quickly becomes clear that he is the better sword-fighter, along with being faster to boot. You continue to try and ensnare him, though it is a bit more difficult without ensnaring Willow as well.
You decide that you can just ensnare both of them and then separate them when you need to, but it seems that Blondie's managed to get around Willow. Your chlorokinesis stops abruptly as you bring your makeshift war scythe up to meet his downward slash. His other blade goes to blocking an attack from Willow. As the tension in your clash eases, you make to retaliate, only to take a boot to the chest. You fall back, winded.
"Hah, I can take both of you on at once!" Blondie crows.
You lay on the ground, pretending to be out as you examine what's going on. Of the four campers whose feet you have bound, three are attempting unsuccessfully to hack themselves free, while the last has drawn a bow and is leveraging his feet using your tree root binding. You cause the roots to grow high enough that he can't properly aim his bow.
Willow is once again losing the sword-fight against Blondie. However, you can see that underneath his feet little growths are sprouting up, trying to unbalance him. It's impressive in that you doubt you could perform chlorokinesis while sword=fighting, especially when she's as much on the defensives as she is. You wait for an opportune moment to strike.
Blondie steps forward, performing some weird double-sword maneuver and disarming Willow. As he does so, he stumbles ever so slightly over a root growing in front of the path of his foot. You take this opportunity to lash out with your roots again. Off-balance as he is, Blondie is unable to move out of the way.
When Blondie is all tied up with roots, Willow takes a moment to catch her breath, then smirks at him. "Got you," she says softly.
Blondie grimaces, then drops his weapons. The other invading campers follow suit.
"You got us, now untie us."
You glance over at Willow, confused as to why you would untie them. She gets your unasked question immediately. "It's the rules, you can't bind or gag a camper outside of direct combat situations."
"Ah," you say. You set about undoing the root ties on the campers. It's a little odd doing it while they're still in there since every monster you trapped in there got turned into dust.
"What did you do to these tree roots?" Willow exclaims. "I can hardly affect them at all."
In your excitement, you may have revealed more than you had initially wanted to. You're going to have a hard time blending in, but then again, maybe you should embrace it. Being the youngest member of the camp was always going to make you stick out, now you can embrace it and become the prodigy, or something.
As you think this, a bunch of cheering erupts from over by the creek. The cheering quickly moves back towards your position. Shortly after that, Justin, carrying a second flag with the Ares boar on it, stumbles onto your scene. He just stops and stares. You do have to admit that there are roots everywhere, as you'd been focused on untying the entangled campers.
You find yourself at a meeting with all the head counselors, Chiron, and Dionysus. Lily is looming behind you, her lips set in a grim line. You're pretty sure it's the first time you've seen her look so negative. Oh yeah, and Blondie is also a counselor. He's the head counselor of the Apollo cabin, Sean Williams, though he does look younger than all the other head counselors. He's also looking at you with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval.
"So the kid can pull a Poison Ivy. I don't see what the big deal is." Once again, you find yourself appreciating the Ares head counselor.
"The problem, Justin," Jordan speaks up, "is that none of the other members of Cabin Four can call upon plants to such a degree. Chiron, Mr. D,' huh, you'd forgo they called him that, "what do you think should be done about this situation?"
Lily places her hands on your shoulders. "I don't see why we should treat him any differently. So what if he's better at growing plants than the rest of us, he's still way too young for any serious responsibilities." You somehow appreciate and resent that at the same time. It's also annoying how they are talking about you as if you're not here.
You get the feeling Jordan is about to make a rebuttal when Dio- Mr. D interrupts them by clearing his throat. He places his can of diet coke down on the ping pong table, then looks you right in the eye.
"You know, dear old dad assumed that the first line of the Great Prophecy, "a half-blood of the eldest gods," referred to a child of him or one of his brothers." Where is he going with this? "Of course, gods could refer only to male gods, but it's also been used as a gender-neutral term before, and that's the thing about prophecy, you can never be sure. I do recall that your lovely mother is older than all three of them." Oh shit. There's a stunned silence as everyone around the table processes what he just implied. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, odds are you'll be dead before you can make it to 16."
As if sensing that Mr. D has said his part, the table bursts out into murmuring. Chiron seems to be reexamining you.
"As if he could be the child of prophecy," you hear Sean mutter to some girl you don't recognize.
Lily's grip on your shoulder tightens. You look up to see her glaring at Mr. D, which you admit has to take some serious balls.
"This meeting is adjourned," Chiron interrupts the murmuring. "I am sure you all are tired, and there is no need for immediate action to be taken. We will continue this discussion at a later date."
You're standing in a spacious room, wearing golden armor. Wait, this doesn't seem like just any spacious room. Another glance around reveals that the edges of the room have chairs. Not just any chairs though, chairs that should seat someone who is ten or fifteen feet tall.
Olympus, you realize, You're on Olympus. A second glance at yourself reveals that your arms and legs are much longer than they were when you went to sleep. There's also another person there, with you in the throne room of the gods. It's a girl. She's holding a weapon out to you. Sometimes it's a dagger, and other times it's a needle.
"You promised," she says, sounding disappointed. You try and make out who it could be. At first, it looks like Blossom, but then the features shift. She becomes a blonde girl with grey eyes. It takes you a moment to recognize the girl you know far too much about and yet have never met in either of your two lives. Annabeth. "You promised," she repeats. The girls' features change again, but not back to Blossom. This time, you don't recognize the girl. She holds out a needle made from Celestial Bronze.
Your body moves, seemingly of its own will, and takes the bronze needle from her hand. You undo the straps of your golden breastplate, revealing a chest that is much more muscular than the chest you went to sleep with. You look up at the girl you don't recognize. Your mouth forms the words on its own.
"I'm sorry."
You plunge the needle into the center of your own chest.
You wake up, sweating and breathing heavily. You're also trembling, you find out as you stumble out of bed. To calm yourself, you tap into the feelings of the tulips growing around your bed. They haven't started budding yet, though you could make them if you wanted to. There's something sentimental about letting them grow on their own though, once you'd gotten the buds set up in the right places. Of course, with all the magic floating around this cabin, they were growing much faster than expected. You would soon be the proud owner of a bedframe covered in blue tulips. The flowers themselves seemed proud, they kind of reminded you of an honor guard.
You take a few deep breaths. You're calmer now. Not calm. Not by a long shot, but calmer. That dream was definitely familiar.
You have gained 5 EXP Points in Chlorokinesis, 6 in War-Scythe-Wielding, 4 in Archery, 4 in Parkour/Climbing, 3 in Social, 2 in Greek Mythology, 2 in the Concept of Growth, and 4 in Art.
Pick three people to hang out with. If you pick the same person more than once, put a #2 by their name. This will signify that you are spending more time with that person.
[][Socialize] Blossom
[][Socialize] Lily
[][Socialize] Willow
[][Socialize] Violet
[][Socialize] Kalina
[][Socialize] Rosie
[][Socialize] Try and track down Chiron.
[][Socialize] Justin Gatlin
[][Socialize] Jordan Yu
[][Socialize] Raj
[][Socialize] Just wander about a bit, meet new people.
[][Socialize] Write-in.
ΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦΦ
Votes for the next chapter:
According to the Riordan Wiki and everyonlinesource I could find that mentions Demeter wielding a weapon, she wielded a golden sword (or sickle). Thus, unless someone has some sources that say otherwise, this is canon for the world of Percy Jackson this quest is set in.
"You know, dear old dad assumed that the first line of the Great Prophecy, "a half-blood of the eldest gods," referred to a child of him or one of his brothers." Where is he going with this? "Of course, gods could refer only to male gods, but it's also been used as a gender-neutral term before, and that's the thing about prophecy, you can never be sure. I do recall that your lovely mother is older than all three of them." Oh shit. There's a stunned silence as everyone around the table processes what he just implied. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, odds are you'll be dead before you can make it to 16."
...did we just accidentally ourself into being part of that prophecy?
We might need to be a year round camper now. Need to see if any of the gods start trying to kill us off.
We might want to start making regular sacrifices to all of them.
We also have some serious parallels to Kronos now that I think about it. His weapon was a scythe. I think his had domain over the harvest in his origins too...
We're gonna end up the perfect host for him aren't we?
We also have some serious parallels to Kronos now that I think about it. His weapon was a scythe. I think his had domain over the harvest in his origins too...
Nah, he had a harvesting scythe (slightly different than a war scythe) and it was a symbol of his reaping of life via age. Heck, he was the origin of a LOT of grim reaper symbology.
Yeahhhhhhhh I thought about us also being a possible child of prophecy back when I was arguing about several things a number of pages back, didn't mention it I believe cause I didn't wanna bring around that possibility but it seems to have sprung up anyway.
Nah, he had a harvesting scythe (slightly different than a war scythe) and it was a symbol of his reaping of life via age. Heck, he was the origin of a LOT of grim reaper symbology.
Yeah, but he went as far as to change it to a sword because Luke was good with swords. War scythe is a lot closer to his than sword.
But I'm pretty sure we're not locked in as part of the prophecy now. We saw one of three ways it can go — us, Canon, and a third unknown way. Possibly a whole lot of others.
But the main issue with the first great prophecy is that there's way to many ways it can go down that it's hard to control for which one it will be. "The child of the eldest gods that reaches 16 against All odds" is the only thing that allows you to control timing. And the only way to do that is to prevent any demigod who fits that requirement from reaching 16* since anyone of them could be the one to set off the prophecy. Which makes it almost guaranteed to be the one that slips through the cracks since the odds were stacked against them.
Aren't Greek Prophecies great like that?
*Remember that it doesn't say that it'll be the next one, just the one that beat the odds to get there... "And see the world in endless sleep"
...could they just blind every demigod that fits the requirement, or do you think that blindness could fulfill that line?
I agree with the sentiment, but we're probably not going toe to toe with Percy.
...did we just accidentally ourself into being part of that prophecy?
We might need to be a year round camper now. Need to see if any of the gods start trying to kill us off.
We might want to start making regular sacrifices to all of them.
We also have some serious parallels to Kronos now that I think about it. His weapon was a scythe. I think his had domain over the harvest in his origins too...
We're gonna end up the perfect host for him aren't we?
Harvest was his domain until he was conflated with Chronus (the primordial) yeah. Most accounts show one of the two. Wikipedia uses harvest, just as an example.
Now imagine if we had focused on time powers with our plants~
[X][Weapon] a saber that was shattered leaving behind a curved jagged edge. (Warscythe, a tool of harvest turned weapon of war)
[X][Defense] Stick with Willow near the flag.
[X][Chloro] Maxima, the forest comes to your aid
On a side note, yeah what did y'all think was going to happen? That there would be no consequences to going max power? Maybe it'll be a good thing in the end, no idea. But this is what was meant about the pitfalls of trying to be uber special all the time.
Also, just what we need after pushing ourselves into prophecy shit-list land. A weapon that's harder to learn let alone master. Because we just needed to be special. We have time, hopefully, but really not making things easier on ourselves here folks.
This is a quest about demigods, not your ordinary Joes. We are already special, because our mother is a godess, our father a mortal. Add on to that the fact that we are a reincarnated soul and also the protagonist of this quest. In this setting and world, can we afford to be anything but special?
Do we want to sit on the sidelines while the conflict is happening? Or have the strength and smarts to be neck to neck with Percy Jackson? Losing fights and overcoming struggles or falling short of them is also part of our journey and will make the victory all that sweater. Those are the sort of quests I enjoy most where we are special and that's why we are chosen, not where being chosen is special. If this makes any sense.
And I'm pretty sure many of us vote depending on how we think Samuel is like, but not all of us will read his character the same.
I for one see him as ambitious since there's no way he wasted his day playing around like kids his age. I see him as a kid who loves his dad a lot, who wouldn't kill for his friends, just ruin other peoples lives for them.
As the son of a godess who does have a few kids, I also see him going out of his way to stand out, to get attention since otherwise Mom might not look his way. But again, this is how I see him. It's possibly different to you.
All of these people are demi-gods thus they are all special, we are special yes but that doesn't mean we need to always be the center of attention. On that note our character doesn't like to be the center of attention very much, a lot of the reasoning behind him skipping forward is because he wants to be somewhat mentally stimulated because he is a reincarnated individual, his knowledge made that impossible for him to get such from most people his own age, and even many people older than him.
He has been consumed by his powers a bit because well that was the new thing in this life, so of course, he revels in it a bit, its the thing that is entirely new that belongs wholly to this new form. He got a lot of attention but it was mostly praise, in school, he has one friend before coming to camp a fellow person ostracized from the group he was a part of (middle school). He is used to standing out but what he likes and needs is deep interactions with individuals and being a show-off harms his chances because he continues to only create further separation between himself and the people he wants to interact with.
I also really don't want to be equal to Percy I'd kinda like to be weaker than Percy in the long run, our character remembers the books he must enjoy them, maybe even idolize Percy a bit, being greater than him isn't something I overtly want because I kinda want that idolization to actually turn out well not shatter and burn.
We already stand out to our mother, we were Day One claimed, that is so rare, she already pays attention to us, she probably rather likes us too, we're kinda an all-around good kid that has been doing basically what he should be doing far too often because he has knowledge he shouldn't have.
Nah, he had a harvesting scythe (slightly different than a war scythe) and it was a symbol of his reaping of life via age. Heck, he was the origin of a LOT of grim reaper symbology.
Really? I'm sorry here, but such a slight difference doesn't make us immune to being possessed by Kronos, he is is the Titan Lord of Time, Evil, and Harvest. You've pointed out that this is a common weapon used when farmers were thrown into peasant levies repurposing the ideas of the Scythe.
This came off kinda rude I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. I was just kinda explaining what I was thinking and it just came out rant like.
I also really don't want to be equal to Percy I'd kinda like to be weaker than Percy in the long run, our character remembers the books he must enjoy them, maybe even idolize Percy a bit, being greater than him isn't something I overtly want because I kinda want that idolization to actually turn out well not shatter and burn.