"The Primordials were concepts imbued with life using the power of human belief, and their personalities were reflected as such. They were exactly as humans thought of them; they had no independent personalities, they just existed as the humans thought of them. And as primitive belief changed, so would their personalities and actions. That was until the Titans were born."
"They were not created entirely from belief but were instead independent beings capable of independent change and thought. Unfortunately, seeing as they were not fueled by the faith of humans, their authority was thus extremely limited in power, even though they were immortal. They were, in essence, similar to the nymphs and demigods of today, capable of the supernatural inherited from their parents but limited in its scope due to lack of the proverbial fuel required," Circe continued while Nick's head was whirring from the revelations.
"Wait, but if that was the case, how did they manage to overthrow Uranus? If their powers were so limited?" Nick asked, barely managing to form coherent thoughts from the shock.
"Ah, yes, how did they do it? Well, it was quite a tragic tale; the humans of that time were completely at the whims of Uranus and the other Primordials, the monsters formed from their own beliefs. The sky at the Mediterranean was one of the biggest dangers that could harm humans, floods, hurricanes, droughts, all governed by the sky, and so it was given the inherent quality of anger."
"This quality then, through human belief, infected Uranus, causing him to be irrational and angry, which affected the concept of the sky, causing even more natural disasters, which caused the humans to believe him to be even more angry and thus a vicious cycle was formed," Circe said, her eyes reflecting ancient tragedies lost to time.
"This continued until Uranus was barely more than a mass of undiluted rage and irrationality. However it was once his children, the titans, which identified more with humans than their irrational semi-insane parents, went down to assist the disaster stricken human tribes that the turning point came."
Nick nodded, already seeing what Circe was leading towards.
"As you can probably imagine, this immediately got them fanatical worship by the tribes that were clinging to their last hope. This in turn led them to an increased level of authority, now that they finally had fuel of human belief; however, this came with the same proportional decrease in Uranus' power due to a decrease in human worship."
"Unfortunately for them this decrease was felt by their father who, in his irrationality decided the way to handle this affront to his authority was to stuff them back into their mother Gaia who was now becoming increasingly rational and kind due to the fact all of the human tribes alive now were finding solace and hope within the earth and projecting all of the anger towards the Sky."
"Seeing what Uranus did, Gaia couldn't bear it any longer, so she used her authority to create a great scythe made from the deepest parts of the Earth and gave it to her children in her womb. Then once Uranus came to vent his primitive desire with Gaia, Chronos found the courage to leap from his mother and sever his father's genitals."
"This caused a contradiction to his nature as Father Sky, which almost immediately drove Uranus fully into madness and from that his consciousness descended into a deep sleep from which he still hasn't awoken, nor will he ever." Circe finished the story and immediately observed Nicholas, who was stuck deep in thought.
Nicholas then said, "Wait, let me guess, now that their father was dead, they shortly started feeling the effects human beliefs had on them, which inevitably led to them again having children and a similar process repeating. It's just what I don't get is why that process isn't happening now? Zeus seems pretty rational if a bit lustful, and he ruled for at least a couple thousand years while also being the God of the Sky?"
Circe nodded, "Indeed. As for why they weren't experiencing the same issues as their father and Grandfather, the answer is pretty simple. They learned from history."
"They saw what belief did to their father, uncles and aunts and thought of a solution, they created tools, mighty artifacts built by powerful magic, to do one thing and one thing only, take in the human belief and filter it, making the artifact absorb most of the tainted human faith with the Gods themselves only taking in a miniscule amount of the total taint."
"They were the first magic users. They figured out that human belief didn't just create Gods, it brought life into magic; the belief that symbols and spells would grant supernatural effects, in fact, brought that belief into reality. And thus, magic was born, and they used it to create their tools."
"And so with them, they finally overthrew their father, and once they did so, their every subsequent moment was spent in scheming on how to maintain their sanity and their grip on power."
"As their first order of business, they created the underworld, the place for the dead souls to rest, and provided them with belief to power their vast repertoire of powers. Of course, they first created the river of Forgetfulness, Lethe, to cleanse the souls of all of their memory and allow them to provide belief almost completely untainted by their own thoughts."
"It was also around that time that the Gods cooked up the demigod system. Given that the Gods were immortal and were born from concepts, they didn't age and had an innate ability to take in faith to expand their power. Demigods, however, were entirely corporeal beings and thus their ability to take in faith was entirely limited."
"And they used and abused the hell out of that fact. Creating Myths and Legends surrounding demigods and using them as a sort of in-built filtering system for Faith. Since demigods were entirely incapable of using faith, the Gods would then take the purest faith directly through the demigod as the demigod was in fact an extension of that God's domain."
"Their true biggest masterpiece, however, was Rome; they created the Roman Empire through war with many other smaller pantheons that were much less developed than themselves and were practically irrational beasts in comparison."
"And through Rome, they created another image of themselves, Zeus became Jupiter, Aphrodite became Venus and so on. Then, when the faith of humans in that image became strong enough, they created a second personality within their own bodies to share the burden of human belief and stamp down their own irrationality."
"Which is how they spent the next thousand years patiently reaping souls, creating demigods and growing progressively more powerful each day."
"They thought it was going to last forever; unfortunately for them, their clever plans would soon come down on their heads, as the dead demigods turned out to be not as dead as they hoped."
"Though human beliefs were impossible to absorb as corporeal bodies, it was an entirely different story once they died. Their power in death increased to incredible heights, and some of the most powerful and famous demigods grew to rival the powers of the Olympians themselves. Demigods such as Dionysus and Hercules rose up from the underworld, almost completely driven mad by human belief, the river Lethe almost utterly powerless against their now extended authority."
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