by Ethan "JB" Goldman
"Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat." –Laura Ingalls Wilder
"Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood.
You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die." - John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota
While her followers may seem little, her power is the least to be argued with, one can mock the light, one may spit in darkness…
But if one were to question Gaia one must only look down.
You are stepping on her.
I oft draw comparisons between myself and Gaia, and of all words I have spoken, this is the one that draws the most confusion from people. When I disparage others people find offense (Rightly so, as I AM offending) but most people see the veins I cut, how can they not, when their rage is so visceral a flow of their spirit’s blood? But Gaia is hard for others to see, in many ways we are opposites.
Gaia hates undead, whom I often shepherd, Gaia is of nature, healing, and the land beneath. I however am born of artifice, am of gluttony and sensation, and am most comfortable among the artifice. However these misdirections bely a kernel of logic that lies in Gaia’s manifestations.
Gaia’s most known quantities, her healing and her hatred of undead, can often form a cage to her understanding. She is of nature, but many of her chosen are predators… actually that’s probably the wrong term now.
They are meat eaters, she claims both the lamb and the wolf as children and yet the wolf still wishes to kill her meeker sibling, to sustain herself on his viscera. Counter-wise she hates the undead for their unnatural creation, man made entities who consume but do not rot, draining the circle in perpetuity… However with healing magic so many of her chosen are immortal, rising from the dead and consuming without ever rotting, a perpetual drain on the cycle… A cycle she does not even particularly like.
One has to realize that Gaia, in her age, has developed the same jaded pragmatism her detractors have. She is the goddess of the living, the more living there are the greater her duty and means to protect them, the spell raise dead creates more living, animate undead does not.
The undead are competition, wolves who eat the sheep without giving back… as per the actual wolves… Gaia’s rule is not absolute, hunger is outside of her domain, and a consequence she’d gladly be rid of if she had the power to do so…
To see this in greatest effect, one has to look only to her hunts, games of combat without death (At least not intended). She seeks to extol nature, even in its flaws, in ways that do not contradict her own creed. She loves all life, even the smallest, and seeks to maximize the living in any way she can.
Indeed I have frequently boasted about the fact that, with heal limb, I can nourish myself entirely out of my own flesh, never truly needing to hunt a single soul for my appetites (Admittedly i did that in Chimeron anyway, but shhhhhhhhhhh). It's not impossible that this is, indeed, the spell working as intended, where one can eat and then raise the sheep after consumption, or sheer the flesh like a sheep’s wool.
Or maybe I am seeing far too much of myself in her. However the power to heal creates a hunt without harm… only pain. But defying entropy is never free.
When the knight of chaos tells you that Papa Nurgle loves you, know that love has always had a name, and that name is Gaia…
Probably not literally true, but those who love the rotfather will find that Gaia is very similar, valuing resilience and love in her children. She just, showers?
I think. I hope.
Why we are getting into weirdness, she apparently created Meatball out of my butchery in reward for my sacrifice of a vegetarian diet for a year (long story). Meatball, my reddest child, is not undead, and appears to be a sentient bacteria culture that moves meat around to house him… He's nice but I mean she then goes on to murder Pilpus that one time because he was undead so…
I will be honest… I have no clue anymore where I stand with Gaia, are we friends? Enemies… married?
Gaia, if we are married let me know.
Of course a god is not mortal, nor adventurer, they act in absolutes, when they throw off the horde of dead they do not pick and choose based on situational alliances. No Gaia leaves all buried and simply returns the corpses of those she does not bear ill will. The wolf never apologized to the sheep and the shepherd of wolves would not either, she can only ensure that the sheep are brought back to life.
Ultimately, Gaia is not a creator goddess, she is a preserver, a farmer who maintains the cycles and does all she can to keep the world away from collapse. In this effort she, not Aurora, is the Dark One’s greatest threat. Hope always changes, always brings entropy as purity sheds corruption… but nature adapts in such vastness, such slow methodical numbers… that it stands still. Before she is a planet, or even a mother, she is a Parent.
Those who love this world, and want to keep it in its form, should find comfort in the Mother of Many. Those who seek to stay away from violence can find her domain goes outside the cycles of battle, and one can say grace to her before every meal. The latter is done not to thank her, but to ask for her forgiveness as you contribute to the consumption that ravages her peace.
Personally I feel there is… shackles on her. Among all the good gods. Expectations really, demands that, as they are kind and gracious gods, they behave in the kindness we do. The Dark One is called evil so when his forces ravage the land, there's a mystique there, because we do not see ourselves as evil. We can not claim to understand destruction fully, not unless we are to admit ourselves as monstrous as It is, so we can not lecture the void on its work. Not unless we expose ourselves as Its grandchildren at least.
But goodness is different isn’t it. We are healers, we are saving Norlund and Voraness and all these good things… surely then, we can condemn a goddess for failing to assist in her duties to assist us? These are some of the complaints that even I have expressed when Gaia left us to defend Blackwood on our own…
We do not see the work they’ve done, that all we have is already from Gaia working as hard as she can, that maybe Gaia knows the risks if Roman were to reveal some ridiculous red light super rope to capture her. Or worse, the risks to life itself if Gaia were to simply fatigue herself on felling Roman, leaving Dionin to push his work through while she's winded.
That’s the thing about Good isn’t it… it’s always moving. We become used to the privileges of circumstance, then blind to them. The sacrifices of the past become the tepidity of tomorrow. What was once worthy martyrdom becomes the least she can do. Virtue it seems, is never kind to the elderly.
And Gaia is the oldest of us all.
Maybe call your grandmother once and a while, look at a tree and just ask her how her day’s been?
It won’t be weird.
Mantra 2: The value of gold is not determined by its banker, only its buyer. Do not let the faith of others define your own faith in a god. Do not use the worship of others to scare you away from, or pressure you towards, your own faith. The gods are beyond us and without us. You do not need Voraness’ blessing to look at the moon. You do not need mine to seek skulls in Khornes name. You only have 3 masters, yourself, your lord/king, and your god, and that is masters enough, you do not need to add a priest in the list. Oh and um, you might have a knight so you have 4 masters until you have 3, unless you're independent in which case its 2?
Look: Faith is not a CLUB, don’t feel gatekept by old people who happened to believe in someone first, you're not worshiping THEM… right?
R-right?
Send me a message Gaia, Meatball misses you.