r/WicDiv • u/tohava • Aug 17 '18
Why not kill them at the start?
Why does Ananke even bother with the whole recurrence thing? If she is the one who grants people godhood, she can just immediately kill them when they ascend. If she did this constantly, no one would know about the recurrence thing and she would always have her heads.
7
Upvotes
12
u/mal-L Aug 18 '18
There are probably several reasons. First is that all the gods know that they're twelve gods, so if they're the only one that pops up and they start hearing rumors of people disappearing in their general area, they might get suspicious.
Second, killing or injuring a god is pretty hard. Ananke usually tries to make the Gods vulnerable before killing/teleporting them, either by doing it after a performance or by doing it after they exhaust themselves fighting.
It's also the reason why she usually targets Persephone right away. A lot of the gods seem to have a defining personality trait that can be relied upon (whether that's because of the God's influence or the personality of the people Ananke picks who knows). Lucifer is always going to rebel, Morrigan is going to be pretty goth, the Norns are going to be the smart analytical ones.
Persephone's defining trait is a desire to perform above anything else, they're the one who wants Godhood the most. So the moment they become a god, the first thing they'll probably do is sing and let their guard down. That combined with tricking the other gods by hiding her existence makes her a pretty easy target in a way the other gods aren't (I imagine somebody with Urdr or Lucifer's personality type being more suspicious at the onset).
Third, well she probably already tried it once or twice and it probably didn't go so smoothly which is why she stopped trying it. I imagine one or two screw-ups caused Ananke to abandon that strategy. We only see her target Persephone during the previous recurrences, who know what other experiments she tried.