What does a Heroic Spirit make?
Most people would agree that the Throne of Heroes welcomes those who have achieved great things. Those whose lives and deeds have made a definite difference in the course of humanity’s—or the planet’s—history. Those who achieved that which by any means should have been beyond the capabilities of a single individual. Truly, the worth of any living being rests on his legacy: that which he leaves behind on his passing. Whether it is a great work of art, a marvelous invention, a critical scientific discovery, a reputation in the battlefield; that which shows to be so amazing, so awesome it can only be described as supernatural. That is the kind of brand that earns one a place in the Throne.
How about we stop, then, and take a look at how those awesome feats were achieved? Let us do so through this simple example: the story of perhaps the most fortunate man in the world, who achieved incomparable greatness by almost no merit of his own. But perhaps that is an unfair thing to say about Sargon of Akkad. After all, it does take more than memorizing and properly reciting the script to create a truly legendary theatrical performance. For it can be said that Sargon of Akkad’s life, from beginning to end, was a masterful performance as per the script of the gods who showered him with their favor.
The gods needed a new envoy; a new script for humankind was necessary after the failure that was Uruk. They were fortunate that those who came after Gilgamesh could in no way match his immensity and thus could not protect the city-state from its many, properly god-fearing rivals. Uruk was already a hopeless vestige of its golden self by the time the last of Gilgamesh’s dynasty, the homunculus
Lugal-Kitun, was slain in battle against the rapacious
Meshanepada of Ur, who was clad in the myriad blessings of the spiteful gods. Rulership was transferred to Ur. This was a short-lived success for the gods, though; the example set by the Golden King was simply too powerful, too dazzling, too easily misunderstood. Each and every single ruler that followed him interpreted Gilgamesh’s idea of kingship into making the king into a visible object of worship himself, in contrast to the distant, unfathomable gods. Thus, a number of dynasties came and went as the gods gave and took their favor from ruler to ruler and from city to city. At the time of the birth of the one who would be immortalized as “Sargon”, the kingship was back in Uruk, in the hands of
Lugal-Zage-Si. This Lugal-Zage-Si was the ruler of a vast extension of land from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, but Sargon has stolen that claim and to this day is often credited with the first true empire in history.
The divine beings decided that their mistake was making Gilgamesh too powerful: even without their favor, his base stats were already far beyond the common rabble—he had too much to begin with, so he put himself first. This time, they would do better: their envoy would be the plainest, most ordinary of human beings, who would only be able to do the impossible with whatever powers and blessings they chose to bestow on him. And most importantly, it would be a man who wholeheartedly agreed to do nothing above and beyond what was expected of him; a man whose every single thought and action went according to their tune. They arranged for such a man to exist, by making a certain La’ibum abandon his baby boy in a reed basket floating downriver. They led a certain gardener with recorded name Akki to find the baby and raise him in humility as his own. While the young Sargon lived a simple life, they whispered in his ears and appeared in his dreams, pushing him to crave for another life, to thirst for prestige and power. They told him what to do and what to say to climb the social ladder until he became the cup-bearer of the king of Kish,
Ur-Zababa. They put fear of Sargon in the king’s heart, and they protected Sargon from Ur-Zababa’s attempts at killing him. They told Sargon to betray his lord to the superior Lugal-Zage-Si and held Sargon’s unsteady hand as he sunk his blade in the gut of his former liege. They told him when the time was ripe to announce himself to the world as the chosen and beloved of the gods—for they loved him, truly, in the same way a loyal, obedient dog is loved—and gave strength to his legs and his voice as he led the army of the people through the gates of Uruk. When the armies of the many provinces of Lugal-Zage-Si gathered before their lord and surrounded the occupied Uruk, they granted Sargon command over many Noble Phantasms and the magical might to wield them and decimate the allied forces. They crowned him “anointed priest of An” and “great ensi of Enlil”, and Inanna herself granted him the honor of finding succor on her lap.
Originally Posted by Seika
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