Taking a step back, if anyone remembers that little incident with the Trojans and how Troy made a big oopsie when they forgot to look a gift horse in the mouth. And sure, the human phrase is usually the opposite but it doesn’t take a human with a high intelligence stat to tell you what this little turnabout of phrase means.

Honestly, if John had to look at the argument from a completely objective view. The Greeks had a really dumb idea that by some miracle, not of his power, worked. Like how pompous do you have to be to think that the people you’ve been in battle with for years would happily grant you a gift and peace out. Just for that, Troy deserved to fall. Death by stupidity had never been truly illustrated till that day.

It didn’t mean that John was cool with the Greeks ransacking and burning everything to the ground but Paris should have never gone for a married woman. Sure any romance, drama or playwright will tell you that love will conquer all bla b la bla but it doesn’t. One might say that Paris really should have been more discreet about the kidnapping but you steal someone’s woman literally or figuratively and heads will roll. We can thank Michael Jackson for that reference. May his soul be bathed in light the darkness of the void or you know reincarnation. As John, Big AL and Brahma like to say, this is a progressive universe, there are options for how you experience your after mortality.

Also Big AL would always point this out when the discussion devolved into a he says - she says spat between the gods, one does not simply get Hera, Athena and Aphrodite involved in a contest without expecting things to blow out of proportion and by that we mean death and war. Usually, one would think these two things would go hand in hand but then we wouldn’t have the niche list of wars where there were no casualties.

And by no casualties, the immortals really do mean NO CASUALTIES. Ergo, no one was injured including civilians and soldiers. Example, the British and Dutch war wherein both parties just forgot they were at war and only declared peace many many decades later when people thought, ‘hey didn’t we declare war on this country a long time ago. Oh yeah, crap, we forgot to call that off. We should go do that.’

Now back to the matter at hand with the privilege of foresight, all the deities figured that Eris must have been pissed because she didn’t get invited to the wedding, which is fair. After all, nobody likes to be left out of agood party. On the other hand, whether or not Eris was invited was inconsequential because something was bound to have happened simply because of her presence. You don’t get all of the immortals together for a celebration without something going wrong. Murphy’s law and all that.

Taking everything into account the battle surrounding the Trojan War was truly a cacophony of when idiots unite.

At least if one were to look at the Egyptians and the Battle of Megiddo, you could understand their reasons for wanting to fight against foreign powers encroaching on their land. In that battle Pharaoh Thutmose III, let's just call him Thut for laziness sake, led a group of 10 to 20 thousand men and marched until they reached Megiddo hence the name.

And this is where the, ‘so dumb that it worked’ plan actually happened. You see Thut was given two options by his advisors: go through the south route which was safer in order to enter the city or go down the straight narrow mountain path, which would likely be protected by the enemy's infantry that could leave them stuck in between the narrow cavern to be possibly exposed to enemy attack.

Thut in all his glorious stupidity decided to go down the riskier route, why he did shall always remain a mystery but lo and behold there were no infantrymen to be found. His enemy,the King of Kadesh basically ignored the direct mountain path because he thought that no smart tactician would be stupid enough to choose that option. It is at this point, all the historians with their mugs can take a sip as whatever stone plaque they found this story on spill’s the tea of how this king’s ass got beat.

Basically, John had never screamed so loudly into a space time vortex until he saw this happen. It was like someone had slowed down the time structure pacing, which he later realised was in truth not his mind malfunctioning but maintenance was being run on the earth harddrive that day. Whoever levelled up the luck status on Thut really worked hard because our dear Pharoah decimated the enemy one after the other. The moral of this story is do not fear smart people, fear the lucky ones or so was agreed upon by the immortals because…..

“I refuse to believe this is a situation where Thut thought ‘I know that you know that I know that taking the straight route is suicide’ BUT ‘I also know that you don’t know that I know that you would think this way’” Brahma deadpanned causing several confused looks all around.

John blinked owlishly at the explanation, “What?”

“I believe Brahma is simply stating that the King of Kadesh may have either underestimated or overestimated Thut’s intelligence and logic,” Nuwa explained, using a fan to blow away the smoke erupting from John’s head.

Brahma stomped his foot causing an avalanche somewhere in the arctic to come crashing down as he grumbled out, “I refuse to believe that it’s a situation where he underestimated Thut. That sort of foresight can only be gifted by the gods…”

A number of coughs and heckles echo through the room.

“.......and goddesses. And as far as I’m aware everyone has been too busy to create an avatar in Egypt. Right Thoth” Brahma said looking at his fellow immortal dead in the eye, who nodded in agreement.

“Ok ok, there is no need to be so angry about it. No one is challenging your version of the story so why don’t we just have it recorded and move on” Big AL stated, already standing upright from where he floated to go back to his control centre.

So once that Battle of Megiddo was won, Kadesh fell as quickly as a house of cards you accidentally breathed too hard onto. The city was besieged for seven months and somehow the King of Kadesh escaped leaving his citizens' fate to the hands of the enemy, which was a dick move on his part but as any good story goes that’s not where things ended.

After the King yeeted himself away from the disaster zone Thut built a moat, yes a moat, presumably with water and maybe some predatory creatures in the middle of a desert but do not quote us on that; and a wooden palisade,which is basically a lot of stakes joined together to make a wall to force the rest of the occupants of the city to surrender. In simpler terms, the occupants were essentially imprisoned in their own city, unable to do trade and attain important resources. Like a much nicer and arguably less deadly version of Left 4 Dead. So remember folks, if you ever want to win a war, lock your enemies in and starve them.

Later, at Karnak it was recorded that the victorious army took home 340 prisoners, 2,041 mares, 191 foals, 6 stallions, 924 chariots, 200 suits of armor, 502 bows, 1,929 cattle, 22,500 sheep, and the royal armor, chariot and tent-poles of the King of Megiddo. This also became the first reliable battle record that actually survived because the winners of a war are always the one who records it so props to them and the historians who can read hieroglyphs because after not using the language for a few hundred years, many of the deities had completely forgotten how to read it till the point they were forced to take classes again under Thoth and Big AL.

“I don’t understand why I have to learn this again,” Apollo whined.

“Because you deal with foresight and we can’t have to gifting people under my rule if you don’t even understand the language” Big AL replied, turning around to write on the blackboard in chalk. You know, the old school way of teaching.

“Then may I ask why I am here. My powers are that of hunting and the moon, I do not gift most males my blessing either” Artemis grumbled angrily from where she was sitting next to her twin.

“But you are the Goddess of Childbirth and Women, which surprise surprise exists in the middle east” Thoth replied sarcastically.

Artemis looked away, clenching her jaw before relaxing it with a simple, “touché.”

Big AL turned to look at John who was glancing between his classmates and the two ‘teachers’ of the class, “John is there something you want to ask.”

John looked long and hard at the Greek twins before shaking his head, “noooope.”

When Big AL turned back to the board, John muttered “who even needs to know how to use a dead language anymore. I’m not a human grave robber.”

“What was that ?!” Big AL said, spinning their head around.

“I’m good, nothing to see here. Glad to study haha” John faked a laugh.

It was truly amazing to the deities that instead of burning everything to the ground like what most humans would do, Thut had the losers of the war send their sons to join the Egyptian court and get an Egyptian education before being sent home to govern their territories. In one word it was ingenious. By indoctrinating their young high-ranking members of society, Thut would secure future rule over them therefore quelling any possible thoughts of rebellion in the future.

Once Thut passed away, the immortals had to hold back Athena from trying to get him to reincarnate as a Greek. The amount of propaganda she used was almost obscene. And when Thut turned down the offer, graciously mind you, and instead decided to proceed to the after life. Let’s just say, many of the gods still can hear her wail ringing in their ears.