Each year, the gods host a contest in which the worthiest mortals can ascend to immortality. However, the gods are a fickle bunch, and each year they host a contest among themselves -- where the losing god is cast down and destroyed.
Atop Olympus, the mighty gods looked down on man and felt pity. His toil was great, but his works were small; the greatest of marble temples, with the finest artwork and the most moving orators, were but a pale imitation of what the least among the gods' numbers could do.
They showed such promise -- Orpheus' golden voice had beguiled the ears of the divine, though it rang tinny sometimes; Daedalus soared with the birds, though his machines were less elegant than wings.
Jupiter, in an uncharacteristic act of nobility and grace, pronounced that the gods would hold a contest each year. Mankind would bring its greatest works forth, and their chief architects would be granted eternal youth and godly vigor. Eventually, the gods thought, with eternity and might, man could build works worthy of his heritage.
However, the gods are nothing if not fickle. Years later, his magnanimity exhausted by godlings peopling Olympus, Jupiter -- now thoroughly in his typical humor -- declared another contest. The gods would compete each year in a contest of skill, wits and ingenuity. The loser -- selected by a vote of the assembled divine host -- would be dashed on the rocks; if that didn't kill him or her, then it was off to Tartarus, with its accompanying terrible, eternal trials.
So it's been. The younger gods, terrified of having their livers eternally pecked out, or being condemned to fruitless labor for all of time, or suffering eternal thirst and hunger or any of the myriad tortures Jupiter is fond of inflicting, strive to better themselves. Intrigues flourish, and the famously petty gods are just as often drawn into the fray -- and each year, another mortal ascends to godhood, while another is cast out of the heavenly manse.
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