Reincarnation

On Earth, reincarnation required a soul to be cleansed of everything by being washed in the Underworld River known as Lethe. This stripped it of its memories, personality, and essentially made it a blank slate. Heroes never reincarnated as Zeus liked to keep these souls as souvenirs in his Hall of Heroes, which is what inspired the myths of the constellations. There were some beings who were resurrected, like Zagreus, but death has a cost. Zagreus had to be reborn and did so as Dionysus who may have looked like Zagreus and had some of his memories, but his personality was changed.

On Elysium, reincarnation works differently. Mortal souls are washed in Lethe, but Heroic souls are only briefly dipped in Lethe to give them a 'buffer' that locks away their memories and personality until their age of awakening. If a god dies and their soul comes to the Underworld, a decision must be made.

(A) Some of the soul's essence can be stripped away to create a new spark of life and return the god to the living, minus a portion of their previous power. This can be utilized but is an unfavorable choice as Titanic essence is a precious and finite commodity, and destroying it to bring back one god effectively weakens the entire Pantheon. So, this is only allowed if sanctioned by the Council of Twelve or the Quorum of Six. The resurrection process usually requires that the soul be brought to the Haven and submerged in a vat of Nektar, Ambrosia, and Ichor to recreate the being's body. This is a substantial drain on the stores of Nektar and Ambrosia and requires several gods to contribute portions of ichor to fuel this, weakening those gods for a number of days or even weeks afterward.

(B) The soul containing the personality and soul can be stripped from essence, creating a ghost of the divine being and giving them an estate in Hades' Underworld. They have no divine ability anymore and only have a corporeal state in the Underworld. Their personality and memory also begin to slowly fade away over time until they are nothing but a lost soul, roaming the palace halls. At this point, Hades usually orders them to be taken to Lethe and returned to the reincarnation cycle, usually able to create dozens of new souls from the formerly divine soul.

(C) The god's soul can be added directly to the well of souls to be reincarnated... in theory. This process is usually best applied to fallen nymphs as theoretically any pregnant being receiving the soul of a reincarnating god would have their life essence overwhelmed in a most painful and likely fatal experience. Nymphs brought back in this manner are usually reborn as rather ordinary human-looking nymphs regardless of which kind of nymph they were in their previous life, and are elementally tied to the ambient essence of their birthplace and usually cursed with having to remain in that locale for the remainder of their life.

So, as to why Metis was not resurrected, well Zeus and the Olympians did not control the Underworld back then. The Olympians only gained control of the Underworld after they usurped the Titans. Metis died under the Titans' watch and exactly what they did to her soul remains unknown (in all likelihood it was rendered into more mortal souls - and could be the souls of all those mortals Zeus was strangely attracted to, or at least that's what Zeus likes to tell himself).

What about Amphitrite? She grew too weak under Roman worship (the Romans usually ignored she existed) and died while making the transition to Elysium. In those early days, the gods had not established a strong foothold in Elysium, and they did not have the resources necessary to resurrect her and Poseidon did not know if she would want to be reincarnated once the gods established their foothold. Poseidon feared she had been dead for too long and had absorbed too much Underworld essence, and so he just let her be, where she "lived" the remainder of her days in Hades' palace until her memory and personality faded, at which time Poseidon paid one last visit and then gave Hades the okay to strip her soul down. At Poseidon's request, the fragments of Amphitrite's soul were marked to only be given to newly born sea nymphs so that Amphitrite would return to the waters she loved so much.

Now, which gods have been resurrected or reincarnated? The answer is only a few have at one point been killed over their long lifespans, and the gods usually only make the sacrifice for those they consider to be too important to the continued preservation of their pantheon. Of course their possible mortality is a secret they keep from the mortals of Elysium. The most recent example of one such event where a god was killed was just two hundred years ago when New Spartan poachers captured Pan and dragged him back to their home. They figured he was just a normal satyr. The whole city reveled in his torture him for amusement, and eventually they killed him. When Hermes came upon Pan's soul in the Underworld and learned what happened, the Twelve ordered that the truth of this event be kept concealed and Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon, and Hephaestus were dispatched. Artemis hunted down every last one of the poachers (preserving for them special punishment at Hades' hands) while her brother Apollo quarantined the entire city with a horrible plague that kept them too ill to travel, Poseidon turned away any ships that tried to enter the harbor, and Hephaestus caused the nearby mountain to explode in righteous fury, burying the city in a thick layer of volcanic ash... wiping the city of New Pompeii from the map so that none could tell the tale. A single sailor had witnessed the event and escaped the city by ship before the gods lay waste to the city, but when his exclamations of "Great Pan is dead!" began to spread it took but the appearance of Pan at a local festival to disprove that sailor and cause the templars to seize him for spreading heresy. The sailor was given a merciful beheading while the poachers are still housed in Hades' dungeon where death cannot touch them, forced to relive the same tortures they inflicted upon Pan until the end of their sentence, which is essentially whenever Zeus decides to actually get around to informing Hades of their sentence.

## Links and References

1. ↑ NeOlympus Divinity and Reincarnation