001; video - un: t.challa

[kumkani]

[T'Challa does not put on the Panther Habit for his first post to the network, preferring to keep the two identities separate for as long as possible. For the duration of his stay, if he can manage it, though it's not he who would tell the others. He cannot vouch for the people from his own world that are here. Not all of them, at least.

He angles his device to capture his face and very little of his surroundings.]

In my culture, death is not the end. It's more of a stepping off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into the green veld where... you can run forever.

[He'd been told upon his arrival, after many questions, that he was here because he'd felt displaced. While that had not necessarily been true, the thought that this place was something other than what it seemed had crossed his mind. The afterlife possibly, though he did not recall dying - his beliefs dashed that notion rather quickly.]

So this cannot be life after death. Do you accept the answers you have been given or do you challenge them? What was the outcome of such action?

[The feed ends there. It's enough of a start to generate conversation.]

Comments

[northerndragon]

My father's gods don't have names or faces, but they're in every rock and tree and stream. Some must favor grace and affection, some must favor destruction.

In all, I think they favor balance.

What other gods do your people know? There's another faith in my country, the faith of the Seven, the new gods... new because they were brought from another land. Might be that they're more like your gods.

[There's nothing in any of this to suggest that he sees these new gods as invalid: they're simply not the ones he holds to, as much as he holds to any god at all.]

[kumkani]

The Ennead are our ancient Gods. This is where we learned the arts of medicine and technology. Though our people now focus on the Orisha of Wakanda. Bast, the Panther God is our deity and protector.

[Wakandan's believed something closer to this man's old gods, so he didn't think they were of the Faith of the Seven. The terminology was different but he couldn't make any assumptions.]

Are your father's gods your own?

[northerndragon]

They are. He believed that no man could tell a lie in front of a heart tree... a sacred weirwood tree. I haven't seen them here, I couldn't show you one, but the wood is white and the sap and leaves are red, and long ago, faces were carved in the bark. That's where we find the Old Gods... the closest thing we have to a sept.

A panther... that's a big cat? To take that for your deity, your people must be fierce. Yet not only fierce, if their gods value balance. The sigil of my father's House is the direwolf. It's not a god, but it represents the Starks, and the Starks hold our country, the North.

[Notably, Jon Snow is not "Jon Stark"; he has no right to that name, King in the North or not.]

[kumkani]

Your father's beliefs are not so different from my own. We do not have a heart tree but we care for all trees, the earth beneath our feet and the animals that give us life.

It is. You must be strong and yet compassionate. Balance is not easy to attain but it is important to strive to obtain it.

[He assumed a direwolf was in some way similar to a regular wolf in his world. T'Challa couldn't truly know unless Jon showed him but that might not be possible.]

Are your people here with you?