Dios Apate Major

### Goal

To create a child capable of unlocking the pure blood wards guarding the Locked Tomb.

### Result

* The birth of Gideon Nav
* The death of Commander Wake
* The eventual realization of the possibility of perfect Lyctorhood

> *"Good Lord, it all sounds so coarse. I imagine I might be hurting your feelings. God, I hope so. Right now, I find I hope so tremendously."*
>
>

**Dios apate, major** is a plot devised by Mercymorn the First and Augustine the First to break into the Locked Tomb and investigate a number of loose ends regarding the Emperor, the Resurrection, the source of his power, and status of his late companion, Alecto.

## **History**

Following the death of the Nine Houses System, the only living witness to The Necrolord Prime's miraculous Resurrection was his first resurrection—Alecto. The Emperor's disciples were resurrected into an empty but complete world and had no choice but to trust the word of God on the necromancy that had created it.

When the truth of the Resurrection Beasts and Alecto's instability revealed itself a few centuries later, the Emperor's disciples, now Lyctors, begged him to kill his dangerous companion. He reluctantly agreed and enlisted Anastasia, the only disciple who failed to ascend to Lyctorhood, to help him build her a Tomb. Anastasia was eventually locked inside as well and her skeleton remains there, although the circumstances of this are unclear, such as whether this happened willingly or unwillingly, and before or after her death.

## **The Plot**

Some five hundred years prior to the birth of Gideon Nav, Mercymorn and Augustine start work on a plot to open the Locked Tomb. Neither believes what John has told them about killing Alecto and neither understands the source of his power, as Dominicus pulls all its energy from John, and any thanergy bloom that led to the Resurrection should have drained away over time.

While John never revealed to his Lyctors how the blood wards of the Locked Tomb worked, Mercymorn recalls Cassiopeia telling her that blood wards can be "spoofed with a substantial thanergy burst and the blood of a close relative." This information inspires the Dios Apate plot.

Having planned every detail of the night, Mercymorn contacts Commander Wake for help opening the tomb, as no Lyctors can return to the Dominicus system without drawing the Resurrection Beasts. Mercymorn and Augustine, in the same place for the first time in ten years, seduce John. They convey the sample of John's sperm to Wake, along with Mercymorn's ova and several foetal dummies. The ova and dummies all fail to develop, leaving Wake with the final option of impregnating herself with the remaining sample. She does this and carries the foetus for nine months while on the run from Gideon the First, who has been tasked with killing her. She induces labor in the shuttle on route to the Ninth House, the location of which was presumably revealed to her by Mercymorn or Augustine. There, she plans to kill the child outside of the tomb to break through the wards within. Gideon catches up to her and punches her out of the shuttle's airlock, but the infant Gideon Nav survives the attack.

## **Aftermath**

Wake's body and the bio-container containing the infant Gideon Nav drift down and land on the Ninth House. Though a concerted effort is made, the Ninth House nuns struggle to call Wake's ghost back to explain herself. They are eventually able to make contact with her spirit by force, but the only words she says are "*Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!*" before fleeing. Due to this exclamation, the House of the Ninth gives the name Gideon Nav to the infant -- Gideon due to her mother's exclamation, and Nav because it is a "Niner name" -- and she is raised as an indentured servant.

Wake is given a niche on the Ninth House, where her bones are interred before they are repurposed to work for the House. As a child, Gideon would visit this niche to talk to her mother. When Gideon is eleven years old, Harrowhark Nonagesimus catches her talking to her mother and telling her "I love you", leading to a physical altercation between Gideon and Harrow. Gideon later notes that Harrow clawed her face "so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails." After this fight, Harrow writes a suicide note and goes to unlock the Tomb, assuming that this attempt will lead to her death. However, due to the fact that Gideon's blood, and therefore John's genetic material, is under her fingernails, her attempt to open the Tomb is successful, leading to an inadvertent fulfillment of part of the Dios Apate Major plot.

Mercymorn and Augustine assume that the operation failed and that Wake's pregnancy was a result of her affair with Gideon the First and Pyrrha Dve, and remain unaware of Gideon's survival up until the events at the end of Harrow the Ninth. As a result, Mercymorn plans to break into the tomb through alternative means, as she says to Gideon, who is piloting Harrow's body, on the night of the Emperor's murder: "This could have been over eighteen years ago. But now it's *messy*... now I have to take the River *all the way home* and fight my way through Anastasia's horrid tomb cult all because the Commander always thought she was so *smart."* However, Mercymorn realizes upon speaking to Gideon that Gideon must be the result of Wake impregnating herself with John's sperm, and as she looks closer at Gideon's eyes -- eyes she knows as Alecto's eyes -- she realizes not only that Gideon is the product of John's genetic code, but that this means that Gideon's eyes are not Alecto's eyes, but John's. This in turn allows Mercymorn to understand that for Gideon to inherit the eyes that she knows as Alecto's through John's genetic code, that John's black eyes were originally Alecto's, and that he and Alecto must have swapped eyes when they achieved a form of perfect lyctorhood that allowed for the preservation of both necromancer and cavalier, as "there was no way a cavalier could end up with a necromancer's eyes... unless the cavalier failed to die." As a result, Mercymorn and Augustine confront John about his lies, leading to his attempted murder and the resulting death of both Mercymorn and Augustine.

After this confrontation, Ianthe brings Gideon in Harrow's body to John, who is able to somewhat restore Gideon's soul to her original body after her corpse is recovered from Blood of Eden. John renames Gideon Kiriona Gaia, recognizes her as his heir, and crowns her as one of his two Tower Princes (the other being Ianthe the First, now Prince Ianthe Naberius). During the events of Nona the Ninth, Gideon -- now Kiriona -- is transported via shuttle to New Rho along with Prince Ianthe Naberius. Pyrrha, Nona, Camilla Hect, and Palamedes Sextus manage to infiltrate the shuttle and gain access to Kiriona's body. Palamedes plans to take blood from Kiriona in order to assist Blood of Eden in opening the tomb (using the blood sample), waking up Alecto, and using her to kill John. Kiriona then wakes up when Palamedes attempts to draw her blood, and tells him that John made it impossible to remove her blood from her body in order to stop it from being used to open the Tomb. However, she agrees to travel with Blood of Eden to the Ninth House, where she will help to open the Tomb and awaken Alecto. Upon arriving to the Tomb, fresh thanergy is needed to break the wards, leading to Kiriona killing Crux to open the Tomb's final chamber. Nona, who is Alecto's soul inhabiting Harrow's body, makes contact with Alecto's body, which is housing Harrow's soul, and the two switch, allowing Alecto to wake up and swear her allegiance to Harrow. This ultimately fulfills the goal of the Dios apate major plot, twenty years after its initial failure.

## **Trivia**

* The phrase *Dios Apate* is a reference to the Deception of Zeus, a section of Homer's *Iliad*. In the episode, Hera makes love to Zeus in a golden cloud as a distraction, allowing the ancient Greeks to regain their footing in the Trojan War.

## **References**

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Harrow the Ninth," Act V, Ch. 51
2. ↑ "Harrow the Ninth," Act V, Ch. 50
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Gideon the Ninth", Act I, Ch. 1.
4. ↑ "Harrow the Ninth", Act V, Ch. 46
5. ↑ "Nona the Ninth", Act V, Ch. 32.