❪ ɢᴀʟɪɴɪ : ғʀᴏᴍ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ❫

❛❛

Teaser Gist & Schedule

✱ This specific teaser is a brief history lesson with our resident historian in the form of an interview. It is told primarily to his knowledge on the legends and lore of human history in this roleplay.

You say things began with a contest. Who was involved in it and what was it about?

To make a pointlessly long story short: the contest was to win the affections of sea god Pontus. Both water-breathing thalassans and air-breathing terrans were the display pieces of that contest, the show and tell playthings the gods and goddesses either reveled or rivaled over. And considering who and what we are today, it’s common to assume the water goddess Thalassa was involved, as well as goddess Gaia. Most people know them because they created us, but they aren’t aware of any other major players besides Thalassa’s daughter figure, Galene, and they aren't aware that the gods and goddesses they worship don't care as much as they think.

Originally, Thalassa was just fiddling around with different types of creatures she wanted to make in the ocean depths. She made fish and plants and everything, but her husband figure, Pontus, was like “we’re missing something” and told her to make something better to be the centerpiece of sorts for the ocean. She decided to ask her daughter figure, Galene, about what she should make and together they made what was to be the very first version of thalassans. Only became a contest when her sister Gaia heard about it and wanted to upstage Thalassa to steal her husband... Got tired of being a side piece, I guess.

My colleagues and I figure that the reason it all started was because Pontus essentially had a siscon moment—one outside of his marriage—and Gaia latched onto that despite Pontus being married to her sister and despite him being her actual brother. Out of jealousy, she started this whole sea-human/land-human thing and was one of the main causes behind us hating each other. Not to call the terran goddess a thirsty , but that's exactly what she was. If I cause some kind of natural disaster for that statement, let it be known I regret nothing.

So how did we actually come to be? Where did we come in and why are we separated?

As mentioned, we were first created by Thalassa and Galene to be underwater creatures, hence our original thalassan name. We were made in male and female pairs and looked a lot more like the blue people from avatar but with scales, gills, webbed fingers, and webbed toes. Very fish like until thotty sister Gaia made her own version, and Galene had to make an upgraded version of the Thalassans. Our updgraded versions looked very similar to Gaia’s but had “eyes and lungs of the sea,” as older stones state. Gaia’s version—dubbed Gaians at the time—were closer to your regular land human ancestors. No one knows the details of how we were specifically made yet, and no one needs to, but we started out underwater and ended up split between there and on land. The reason for this, as I've been saying, is Gaia.

During the contest for Pontus’s love, he actually suggested they make more of each human type for other gods to enjoy and let them interact with one another so that they can learn which was the more amiable type, which was sturdier and superior— where they fell in line, basically. To do so, he granted thalassans the ability to breathe on land and ordered our ancestors to get to know their neighbors more. As one would expect, the other gods treated all of our ancestors like dolls and pawns more so, making them battle and waging bets, impregnating the women, letting them naturally mate with their own kind, et cetera, et cetera. Among the thalassans and gaians under those godesses, a male thalassan and female gaian were found to have fallen in love, upsetting the mother goddesses that created them and leading to them literally being torn apart. Any other creations in love with the other kind received orders to stay away from each other, but they resorted to meeting in secret like rebellious teens.

Sweet little Galene remade two new counterparts for the female thalassan and male gaian who lost theirs and found out about the secret meetings between them. She didn’t rat them out, no, but she ended up making it worse later because she allowed them to have a child together. And despite her claiming to have created the child herself to save them, they ended up further emotionally destroyed because Pontus and the bickering es found out. Pontus destroyed the child and made an example of the situation by decreeing any thalassans or gaians in love with their opposite kind would be destroyed and the remaining ones would suffer and/or be punished as well. Our concern for our safety and the safety of our loved ones sparked our tradition of separation and hatred, but even after the gods faded out of our lives, it still carried on and that’s why we are the way we are today.

Where are the gods and goddesses now?

Short answer: I don’t know, but they can’t be very far.

A lot of my colleagues believe that we caused them disappointment after disappointment, so they decided to let us be and go back to warring amongst themselves, committing their regular acts of , violence, and adultery again. Apparently, this disconnect from the gods is why Gaians have changed their name to Terrans and pray to peace goddess Eirene now, but I don’t know too much about that. The churches of both our kinds still believe in these beings, and believe they can speak to them. And they never fail to remind us that the gods are never far... Do we have any proof this is true? Not exactly, but we’ve had enough religious zealots come to us saying and doing eerily similar things because of it, that we’re starting to wonder. And like I sort of brought up earlier, we get sudden natural disasters coincidentally around times when we bad mouth one of the goddesses.

Back to the point though, the thalassan Temple of Galene and the closest servants of it have said to be able to communicate with said goddess through her essence. Essence is commonly just known as our sea fire, but they believe it’s the actual goddess’ heart and pray or speak to it through the high priest or priestess.

With terrans, I believe they have the Serenity Syndicate who prays to Eirene in order to have her act as their messenger. She’s the one they ask to send Gaia their forgiveness and the one who protects over them now by giving them something called Blessings, these little vials and bottles of some weird elixir. I don’t know how all of that works and if it works, but they still have a lot of loyal followers. Something must be going on.

Galene and Eirene seem to be around as they say, but because there is no concrete and entirely believable evidence supporting it, I tend to pass that off as zealots being zealots. Believe me when I say I'd much rather spend my days not thinking about cult leaders with the ability to talk to a creator, but it unfortunately has a lot to do with research and is where I happen to learn a lot of things. Plus, when you consider the fact that it only really takes one person to up with Galene for a typhoon to come swarming the land and sea, you start to stick a little closer to those on her good side just in case.

Where would you say this all starts? And how did we even arrive at the idea of a contest? You mentioned Gaia being a “side piece,” so does it have something to do with that?

Again, Pontus just had another sis-con moment, but Gaia couldn’t really get over that. For as long as we know, Pontus and Thalassa were just an ual married sea couple and Pontus was like the Zeus of the ocean, sleeping with any and everyone he came across—no innuendo intended. Gaia was one of his victims, but she didn’t realize that a) her brother was married to her sister and didn’t really want her, b) that was her sister's husband and her ing brother, and c) she was never going to be any more than a side piece for reasons a and b.

I, personally, just think it’s Greek gods being greek gods and it’s as simple as that. Much like with many stories of past Greek gods, the story behind our origins is one of jealousy, misfortune, greed, betrayal, a hint of and pettiness, and usually some kind of love. This one is no different.

✱ Up next ⦂ A whole new world tomorrow. "Leaders of the Pack" on the 29th, soft opening on the 30th, "A New Era, A New Generation" on the 4th, and opening day on the 5th.