Is it? A person catches a plague and dies of it. While we wish it weren't so, and are not wrong in our struggle to save her, is it an unnatural process that takes her life?
Rule is an interesting word for what they do. It implies a great deal of control that many of them confess not to have. Their dominion seems more that of a child's over a swarm of ants than a tyrant over her subjects.
A plague is still natural. If a world is intentionally infected with a plague created off the back of one girl's life of misery, it's unnatural. Of course, murder and a desire to dominate is also natural, but I'm not above countering like with like.
Of course they don't have complete control. Surely you understand that no tyrant has complete control over their empire? They do not hold dominion over the thoughts and feelings of their subjects. But still, they call themselves our patrons, they assign themselves the role of pantheon... And it is Marina who draws us from the sea and spits us out, telling us escape is impossible.
They are not equal. But they still claim this world as gods. Mother Superior even attempts to claim ranking amongst them, even though they reject her and sneer at her.
But to answer your question.
Anything can be defeated. There is no such thing as true immortality, existence without end. It all comes to an end eventually.
But also, them specifically, yes I do think it's possible for the Sleepers to overthrow them. I would even go as far as to say that it is an inevitability.
Intentionally infected. Do you believe Julia's misery was the Pthumerian Queen's intent and not a tragic consequence?
The worst tyrants I know had complete control over their subjects. Our thoughts, our feelings. [The King of Eyes. The Queen of Locusts.] You met them.
But even a typical tyrant intrudes herself far more in her people's lives than the Pthumerians do. She can't do otherwise. She is nothing without a Court. The Patrons to the contrary don't require our devotion. Some even eschew it.
She created Cynthia to act as a womb to birth Julia Sodder. It was their entire reason for coming across the sea, an experiment in eugenics to perfect the power of the Pthumerian psychic power by mixing it with the raw potential of humanity. And it was the entire purpose for Cynthia's existence. This is not an assumption, this is a memory that I have seen with my own eyes.
She did not do this just the once. It is why the rest of the world is the way that it is, though Sodder was the most powerful from everything we know. Whether the lifetime of abuse Sodder suffered was necessarily planned or not is irrelevant. She was an overheating nuclear reactor of psychic energy given human form. She never had the option of happiness.
You are correct on that count, I'll admit that much. But admittedly, the patrons still make us behave certain ways, don't they? They make us accept their "new start" dogma, without questioning it. It's an idea planted in our heads the moment we wash up on the beach. Every month, they shape us in new and different ways. On the first month that I arrived here, they prompted me to hunt vilebloods and warmbloods, on the next, they prompted me to mingle and make friends. And on the month after that, they forced my secrets out of my throat before an audience of their cultists. They are subtle, like a subconscious thought or memory planted in our heads. But the effect that their mere presence has on us is still noticeable. I don't know if they do it intentionally. I don't know if it matters.
It hasn't happened because the game has only just begun. The mysteries of this world haven't begun to unravel yet. But they will. Soon enough.
[In their defense, they are very used to existing as a force to push the narrative forward. The idea that their coming doesn't signal the end of the world as these people know it is, frankly, alien to them.]
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no subject
Rule is an interesting word for what they do. It implies a great deal of control that many of them confess not to have. Their dominion seems more that of a child's over a swarm of ants than a tyrant over her subjects.
Do you think they can be defeated?
no subject
Of course they don't have complete control. Surely you understand that no tyrant has complete control over their empire? They do not hold dominion over the thoughts and feelings of their subjects. But still, they call themselves our patrons, they assign themselves the role of pantheon... And it is Marina who draws us from the sea and spits us out, telling us escape is impossible.
They are not equal. But they still claim this world as gods. Mother Superior even attempts to claim ranking amongst them, even though they reject her and sneer at her.
But to answer your question.
Anything can be defeated. There is no such thing as true immortality, existence without end. It all comes to an end eventually.
But also, them specifically, yes I do think it's possible for the Sleepers to overthrow them. I would even go as far as to say that it is an inevitability.
no subject
The worst tyrants I know had complete control over their subjects. Our thoughts, our feelings. [The King of Eyes. The Queen of Locusts.] You met them.
But even a typical tyrant intrudes herself far more in her people's lives than the Pthumerians do. She can't do otherwise. She is nothing without a Court. The Patrons to the contrary don't require our devotion. Some even eschew it.
Why hasn't that inevitability happened?
no subject
She created Cynthia to act as a womb to birth Julia Sodder. It was their entire reason for coming across the sea, an experiment in eugenics to perfect the power of the Pthumerian psychic power by mixing it with the raw potential of humanity. And it was the entire purpose for Cynthia's existence. This is not an assumption, this is a memory that I have seen with my own eyes.
She did not do this just the once. It is why the rest of the world is the way that it is, though Sodder was the most powerful from everything we know. Whether the lifetime of abuse Sodder suffered was necessarily planned or not is irrelevant. She was an overheating nuclear reactor of psychic energy given human form. She never had the option of happiness.
You are correct on that count, I'll admit that much. But admittedly, the patrons still make us behave certain ways, don't they? They make us accept their "new start" dogma, without questioning it. It's an idea planted in our heads the moment we wash up on the beach. Every month, they shape us in new and different ways. On the first month that I arrived here, they prompted me to hunt vilebloods and warmbloods, on the next, they prompted me to mingle and make friends. And on the month after that, they forced my secrets out of my throat before an audience of their cultists. They are subtle, like a subconscious thought or memory planted in our heads. But the effect that their mere presence has on us is still noticeable. I don't know if they do it intentionally. I don't know if it matters.
It hasn't happened because the game has only just begun. The mysteries of this world haven't begun to unravel yet. But they will. Soon enough.
[In their defense, they are very used to existing as a force to push the narrative forward. The idea that their coming doesn't signal the end of the world as these people know it is, frankly, alien to them.]