Something that’s been bothering me:
At one point in ToA Riordan describes the Germani as having been raised from Erebos (the underworld) by the emperors. He later describes them as turning to monster dust when killed. I’m? Excuse me?
How are we supposed to read this? Is it just a decision Riordan made for convenience, so that there aren’t dead bodies?
I’m just super confused because the Germani...are regular people. I mean, legacies in many cases, but human. Did the way that the Triumvirate raised them from the dead somehow change their essence, make it monstrous? Do the Germani reform in Tartarus? If not, how can you justify that? Do they return to Erebos? I’m just really uncomfortable with the implication that these Germanic / Roman legacies are somehow monsters.
Are there other people in Riordan’s books that have been raised from the dead and re-killed, to use as comparison? Has there been a precedent set for this? Anything at all that might explain the way this works?
And that’s not even getting into how the emperors raised people from the dead in the first place. Especially with the focus on the Doors of Death and underworld security in HoO, what’s the deal here? Are the emperors just that good, that powerful?
All of this is important because it also touches on what happens to the emperors when they die. Caligula and Commodus sort of just...disintegrated. Ceased to exist. But, as I’ve mentioned before, they can’t just be destroyed. Apollo expected them to end up in the underworld, if I’m not mistaken. Is that true? Or is it like what happened to Kronos, where their essences are so broken up that they can’t reform anywhere, underworld or no?