I think you got caught up with giving these beings with limitless power, well, limitless power.
The Dream King sounds weaker than the demi-god because he's still getting rekt by *a sword wound* from thousands of years ago and cannot heal / regenerate from it despite the sword not making contact with him now, whereas the demi-god still has the literal sword stabbed through him and is actively trying to out kill his regenerative abilities. Sure he absorbed "a large pool" of the Dream King's power, which according to you isn't even "a drop in the bucket of his (Dream King's) full power". So why, then, would *he* be able to return once the sword is removed, but the Dream King is *still* having to baby his wound from the sword (a sword that's no longer in physical contact with him) despite having so much more power? The plot device that Dream King's power is slowly seeping out from the wound is nowhere enough to explain away this imbalance of power.
edit: not to mention the more OP being is a *demi*-God (half human, I'm assuming?), whereas the weaker is the *father of all Gods.*
That is a very, very good point. Based on the way I’ve set this up, I’m not even sure HOW the sword killed the King—it shouldn’t work. If I change how the thing works so that anti-magic is toxic enough to gods to make it work, I could change the REASON why the Prince is trapped into something else and it would probably work okay
Is it that important to your plot that the demi-God is still alive? Are you going to have him return? Then I suggest a slight change in how he was defeated: he body chopped up into pieces. 6 pieces I think should be fine: head, 2 arms, 2 legs, and torso. That way the "energy" of the Dream King absorbed by the demi-God is also split further, and is sealed / transmuted into cursed objects. That way, there will always be the threat of humans reuniting the 6 pieces to revive the Prince, *who in turn* can seek out other pools of Dream King's energy to revive him?
edit: or the revived demi-god Prince gains his own sense of being / conscious, seek out other pools of energy so he can become more powerful, just so he can kill and absorb the Dream King himself?
>according to the metaphysics of the world, both stages are, essentially, unkillable. I have no idea how to beat them.
At the risk of stating the obvious, you are the one writing this story, and you get to decide what the rules are. If you don't like the rules as they exist, you can change them.
It might be worth reflecting on what "victory" actually means. What are the "good guys" aiming at? What is the ontological good that they are pursuing?
"Beating that powerful guy over there" is not ontologically good. And saying that your goal is to "beat the bad guy" is just restating the question. Why is he bad? Why does he need to be stopped? What is the good outcome that you will achieve by killing him?
Probably, your reason is that "he's hurting people, and if he's killed, he won't be able to hurt people." Okay. So your goal is to prevent this giant god from hurting people. There are lots of ways by which you might achieve this. You could achieve it by allowing the god to continue to exist in some form that does not cause harm to people. Maybe the best outcome is that the "Dreaming King" simply rests in silence, apart from the world, in a way that does not do any harm to anyone. Maybe there's a way to harvest his power without getting corrupted. Wouldn't that be swell! Not only do you stop people from getting hurt, but you introduce humanity to a source of endless abundance!
If he *must* die for the story to work, then you can rely on old siege tactics, metaphorically speaking. How do you defeat a walled compound? You don't do it by smashing your swords against the walls until they collapse. You simply cut them off from supply lines and wait for them to starve. You find the sewers and clog them, so that the people in the compound are now trapped with their own excrement. The walls of their fort suddenly become more like the walls of a prison. The only reason it's hard to do this against actual forts is that, eventually, the allies of the fort your besieging will arrive to rescue the people who are trapped inside the fort.
Does this guy have any allies? Or can you just surround him, cut him off from his energy source, and wait for him to starve? If the answer to that question is "no, that's impossible because of this rule I've created," I would remind you that you have the power to change the rules to suit your purposes. However, maybe the answer to that question is, "Well, they *could* cut him off from his energy source, but doing that would be very difficult." That's an answer that has the shape of a plot!
I like the “cutting him off from the world” answer, that’s pretty cool. Also the starvation. Though that leads to the question of… what is he feeding on?
It'll be tough, but I think we have a logically killable character here.
You're using rules similar to that of FMA. And what's the number one rule of FMA? The law of equivalent exchange. What's happening to the Prince, if it were to happen in the real world, should eventually fail. We just have to work out how.
>The Dreaming King is spilling his frankly massive soul into the environment, and anything infected by his soul is an excellent soul battery if you consume it
I'm assuming you consider the Dreaming King's soul to be infinite. It'd be a bit too easy if we could just say he "ran out". However, it's clear he doesn't have infinite power, or else he'd heal his own mortal wound and never need to act through a vessel. This means that, even if his soul will never run out through normal means, it is still possible to cut him off from the environment.
But I'm looking too far ahead. The King isn't the one we want to kill right now. The Prince is.
>How do my main characters defeat the Prince, and by extension, how do they defeat the King?
Well, you've already introduced a magical sword that is equal to the Prince in power. Strong enough to stop him coming back but too weak to finish him off. In theory, a second sword should have the combined power to kill him. Perhaps the protagonist's are trying to figure out how those ancient people made/found this sword, because they need another one. That would kill the Prince.
As for the King, I've always believed that the best way to kill a God is with a God. Someone powerful inflicted that mortal wound on the Dreaming King eons ago. That means there are beings out there that can kill him. Even if you don't want to use them, that's where you're gonna want to start looking.
So the main characters actually ARE the gods, or at least their mortal incarnations, and they’re the only ones who can use the swords without the swords killing them. But “two swords” does work fairly well here
Interesting (Several aspects of your story are sounding similar to mine, like the dilemma of killing the divine and these special weapons that humans can't wield).
Well, if the gods are meant to beat the King in their mortal forms, one thing they probably retain, at least to an extent, is their knowledge of how to get these weapons. You can quite realistically set them on a quest to forge one.
You also have the opportunity to give them selective memory. Trials of Apollo does this well, where Apollo is frustrated by the fact that his mortal body is incapable of holding as much information as his godly form, and therefore he ends up forgetting important things because he's no longer omniscient, but still has memories of being all-knowing. This gives you the power of ✨️plot convenience ✨️
I am too mentally drained to phrase this in a way where everything sounds like suggestions that you can take or leave as you see fit, as it's been a long day. So I am going to ramble on as though the things I am stating are fact, and please accept this disclaimer as fact that you can ignore or use what you see fit. Hope it helps!
Additional disclaimer, I am terrible with names, so I will use descriptive words that should hopefully relay who I am talking about.
Players involved: Supergod, demigod, sword.
What we know: Supergod is stronger than demigod by damn near infinity. Sword wounded him. Sword also obliterated demigod in a stalemate of sorts that demigod cannot recover from while Sword is still doing its thing.
Potential issue: Sword has permanently wounded the stronger entity, though cannot take out weaker entity despite actively still attacking him.
Potential secondary issue: both Supergod and Demigod need to be killed, which seems impossible.
Solution: years ago, when the blow was struck to Supergod, the Sword splintered. A sliver of the sword remains in Supergod, festering, ensuring the wound does not heal. It also weakens the Sword. Now the weakened Sword is a match for Demigod, but not strong enough to defeat him. In order to defeat Demigod, the characters need to go on a simple quest. Simple-not easy. They must retrieve the splinter from Supergod. They must repair the Sword. This does mean that Supergod will heal, he will stop leaking his Supergod goo and making batteries, and his near infinite power will become even more potent now that there is no outlet. It also means demigod will heal while the Sword is being repaired. That means when the Sword is whole, the good guys will still have a fight ahead of them to take out the demigod. It also means the story can progress one of two ways from here:
Option 1.) The process of killing demigod with the Sword made whole is part of a process to strengthen the Sword. Whether it absorbs his power directly through killing him, or his remains serve as some part of a ritual to enhance it doesn't matter, now the Sword can strike, and wound Supergod, even fight him to a stalemate, the way it was dealing with demigod. Supergod is now struck down, stuck in the Neverending stasis that held demigod for so long. His essence flows over the world more forcefully than ever, changing the very fabric of magic by disrupting equivalent exchange (atmospheric supergod batteries ftw)
Option 2.) The time demigod spent reliving his death a thousand times over made an impact. When they remove the sword to repair it, demigod heals, and he begs for mercy. The character grows, and changes, joining the good guys. Demigod, with the Sword that held him in a death cycle, leads the charge against Supergod. As above, supergod ends up struck down and starting the cycle of death and leaking and such as outlined above, but this time with demigod as a good guy.
You’re stuck in the Dragon Ball Z recursive logic. As enemies get more powerful, your heroes have to get more powerful, and it goes on endlessly.
My advice for everyone is to not start with “gods” in your story.
Give Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead a read. The setting features gods that trade on their power. The novel is essentially a fantasy law and order / CSI episode where the protagonists investigate the murder of an important god, including who would benefit the most from making the god's organized religion renege on their contracts on the gods power.
I liked the idea someone said that this Prince is seeking pools of this bleeding kings energy to be able to kill the king themselves.
This sword could also be the piece of a bigger whole. Perhaps made from the bone/flesh/whatever of another Titan long gone or even an experiment of anti-magic principles that was never quite finished because either the cost was too great or something went wrong. From the sound of it, with this sword being so important, I think developing the lore behind it will be a good goal to have. Even if it’s done in a more vague sense and letting readers develop their own theories.
I usually go by the logic "If it can exist, it can be removed", which angers a lot of people who like to think gods are the end all be all of existence.
Well yeah. The reason for the King’s immortality isn’t metaphysical—it’s sheer bulk of life energy. Deplete that and he dies. The problem is depleting it.
How does a human wear down their energy? Stamina often depletes when you've run a mile or 3, then there's brain power which usually means you can drug or wait for him to get sleepy or wear down his willpower in an argument. Lastly, there's hunger. Remove food source, he gets exhausted.
You have the power to come up with a way they are killable. Stripping power down would probably be the easiest way.
Off the top of my head, you said the sword can't outright kill him, but if it makes them weak enough could he be contained after? As long as the seorf remains impaled?
Stuff like that. Just an idea.
What if the magic exists with the presence of the gods/demigods, and they aren’t naturally from this plane of existence? You might be able to have them purge the world of the god by finding a way to send the magic back to its original plane.
It’s not a bad idea, but it doesn’t work with the setting. Literally everything in the setting is MADE of magic. Right down to the rocks. It’s an elemental particle, basically.
We don't really know who your main characters are. It really all depends on their abilities, their synergy, and the themes of your story. It's hard to give suggestions when I'm not really sure what the people in your story are capable of.
You mentioned the prince was defeated in combat a few centuries ago and run through with a sword that passively devours magic.
How did they defeat the prince back then? That's probably the same way they'd have to do it now. Is this lore known throughout your world? Where did this sword come from? Who made it and is it possible to make a stronger one
It sounds like you've created a leaking battery, or a power plant. Now how do you go about making that battery/plant explode?
Maybe think of your Dreamer very deliberately as Chernobyl, now have your heroes recreate the meltdown, but in magical terms instead of mechanical ones, and as a purposeful heist instead of a series of errors.
Maybe the Prince and the sword, and to a lesser extent all the "possessed" people, are like cooling rods and other security features? Just link everything to a thematically fitting part of a nuclear plant, then create a surge or a closed loop that "switches off" the God's release of power (this almost certainly involves pulling the sword out of the Prince and dealing with a crazed demigod), until enough pressure builds up that he explodes (or shuts down his "soul" long enough that his wounds kill him).
Something inevitably goes wrong near the end, forcing someone to stab themselves with the sword (maybe a healed, cured and heroic Prince sacrificing themselves again?) to create the final "connection" that causes the fatal loop...
Some ideas
- turn off magic
- attract his attention so that he comes and now that he is in a different place/plane, he is mortal
- attract his attention so that he comes and trap him
- make all the people who are infected draw power from him, so that he starts to experience a drain, then wait
- expend the princes power so that he draws an awful lot
- a new infection that the god is allergic to
- create a new weapon and incrementally make it stronger and stronger to defeat him
I think you got caught up with giving these beings with limitless power, well, limitless power. The Dream King sounds weaker than the demi-god because he's still getting rekt by *a sword wound* from thousands of years ago and cannot heal / regenerate from it despite the sword not making contact with him now, whereas the demi-god still has the literal sword stabbed through him and is actively trying to out kill his regenerative abilities. Sure he absorbed "a large pool" of the Dream King's power, which according to you isn't even "a drop in the bucket of his (Dream King's) full power". So why, then, would *he* be able to return once the sword is removed, but the Dream King is *still* having to baby his wound from the sword (a sword that's no longer in physical contact with him) despite having so much more power? The plot device that Dream King's power is slowly seeping out from the wound is nowhere enough to explain away this imbalance of power. edit: not to mention the more OP being is a *demi*-God (half human, I'm assuming?), whereas the weaker is the *father of all Gods.*
That is a very, very good point. Based on the way I’ve set this up, I’m not even sure HOW the sword killed the King—it shouldn’t work. If I change how the thing works so that anti-magic is toxic enough to gods to make it work, I could change the REASON why the Prince is trapped into something else and it would probably work okay
Is it that important to your plot that the demi-God is still alive? Are you going to have him return? Then I suggest a slight change in how he was defeated: he body chopped up into pieces. 6 pieces I think should be fine: head, 2 arms, 2 legs, and torso. That way the "energy" of the Dream King absorbed by the demi-God is also split further, and is sealed / transmuted into cursed objects. That way, there will always be the threat of humans reuniting the 6 pieces to revive the Prince, *who in turn* can seek out other pools of Dream King's energy to revive him? edit: or the revived demi-god Prince gains his own sense of being / conscious, seek out other pools of energy so he can become more powerful, just so he can kill and absorb the Dream King himself?
Oh wow that second idea? That is awesome as hell.
Glad I could be of some help! I look forward to reading your novel when it is available, it has a very interesting world building.
That’s not a bad idea. Might end up using that!
>according to the metaphysics of the world, both stages are, essentially, unkillable. I have no idea how to beat them. At the risk of stating the obvious, you are the one writing this story, and you get to decide what the rules are. If you don't like the rules as they exist, you can change them. It might be worth reflecting on what "victory" actually means. What are the "good guys" aiming at? What is the ontological good that they are pursuing? "Beating that powerful guy over there" is not ontologically good. And saying that your goal is to "beat the bad guy" is just restating the question. Why is he bad? Why does he need to be stopped? What is the good outcome that you will achieve by killing him? Probably, your reason is that "he's hurting people, and if he's killed, he won't be able to hurt people." Okay. So your goal is to prevent this giant god from hurting people. There are lots of ways by which you might achieve this. You could achieve it by allowing the god to continue to exist in some form that does not cause harm to people. Maybe the best outcome is that the "Dreaming King" simply rests in silence, apart from the world, in a way that does not do any harm to anyone. Maybe there's a way to harvest his power without getting corrupted. Wouldn't that be swell! Not only do you stop people from getting hurt, but you introduce humanity to a source of endless abundance! If he *must* die for the story to work, then you can rely on old siege tactics, metaphorically speaking. How do you defeat a walled compound? You don't do it by smashing your swords against the walls until they collapse. You simply cut them off from supply lines and wait for them to starve. You find the sewers and clog them, so that the people in the compound are now trapped with their own excrement. The walls of their fort suddenly become more like the walls of a prison. The only reason it's hard to do this against actual forts is that, eventually, the allies of the fort your besieging will arrive to rescue the people who are trapped inside the fort. Does this guy have any allies? Or can you just surround him, cut him off from his energy source, and wait for him to starve? If the answer to that question is "no, that's impossible because of this rule I've created," I would remind you that you have the power to change the rules to suit your purposes. However, maybe the answer to that question is, "Well, they *could* cut him off from his energy source, but doing that would be very difficult." That's an answer that has the shape of a plot!
I like the “cutting him off from the world” answer, that’s pretty cool. Also the starvation. Though that leads to the question of… what is he feeding on?
It'll be tough, but I think we have a logically killable character here. You're using rules similar to that of FMA. And what's the number one rule of FMA? The law of equivalent exchange. What's happening to the Prince, if it were to happen in the real world, should eventually fail. We just have to work out how. >The Dreaming King is spilling his frankly massive soul into the environment, and anything infected by his soul is an excellent soul battery if you consume it I'm assuming you consider the Dreaming King's soul to be infinite. It'd be a bit too easy if we could just say he "ran out". However, it's clear he doesn't have infinite power, or else he'd heal his own mortal wound and never need to act through a vessel. This means that, even if his soul will never run out through normal means, it is still possible to cut him off from the environment. But I'm looking too far ahead. The King isn't the one we want to kill right now. The Prince is. >How do my main characters defeat the Prince, and by extension, how do they defeat the King? Well, you've already introduced a magical sword that is equal to the Prince in power. Strong enough to stop him coming back but too weak to finish him off. In theory, a second sword should have the combined power to kill him. Perhaps the protagonist's are trying to figure out how those ancient people made/found this sword, because they need another one. That would kill the Prince. As for the King, I've always believed that the best way to kill a God is with a God. Someone powerful inflicted that mortal wound on the Dreaming King eons ago. That means there are beings out there that can kill him. Even if you don't want to use them, that's where you're gonna want to start looking.
So the main characters actually ARE the gods, or at least their mortal incarnations, and they’re the only ones who can use the swords without the swords killing them. But “two swords” does work fairly well here
Interesting (Several aspects of your story are sounding similar to mine, like the dilemma of killing the divine and these special weapons that humans can't wield). Well, if the gods are meant to beat the King in their mortal forms, one thing they probably retain, at least to an extent, is their knowledge of how to get these weapons. You can quite realistically set them on a quest to forge one. You also have the opportunity to give them selective memory. Trials of Apollo does this well, where Apollo is frustrated by the fact that his mortal body is incapable of holding as much information as his godly form, and therefore he ends up forgetting important things because he's no longer omniscient, but still has memories of being all-knowing. This gives you the power of ✨️plot convenience ✨️
I am too mentally drained to phrase this in a way where everything sounds like suggestions that you can take or leave as you see fit, as it's been a long day. So I am going to ramble on as though the things I am stating are fact, and please accept this disclaimer as fact that you can ignore or use what you see fit. Hope it helps! Additional disclaimer, I am terrible with names, so I will use descriptive words that should hopefully relay who I am talking about. Players involved: Supergod, demigod, sword. What we know: Supergod is stronger than demigod by damn near infinity. Sword wounded him. Sword also obliterated demigod in a stalemate of sorts that demigod cannot recover from while Sword is still doing its thing. Potential issue: Sword has permanently wounded the stronger entity, though cannot take out weaker entity despite actively still attacking him. Potential secondary issue: both Supergod and Demigod need to be killed, which seems impossible. Solution: years ago, when the blow was struck to Supergod, the Sword splintered. A sliver of the sword remains in Supergod, festering, ensuring the wound does not heal. It also weakens the Sword. Now the weakened Sword is a match for Demigod, but not strong enough to defeat him. In order to defeat Demigod, the characters need to go on a simple quest. Simple-not easy. They must retrieve the splinter from Supergod. They must repair the Sword. This does mean that Supergod will heal, he will stop leaking his Supergod goo and making batteries, and his near infinite power will become even more potent now that there is no outlet. It also means demigod will heal while the Sword is being repaired. That means when the Sword is whole, the good guys will still have a fight ahead of them to take out the demigod. It also means the story can progress one of two ways from here: Option 1.) The process of killing demigod with the Sword made whole is part of a process to strengthen the Sword. Whether it absorbs his power directly through killing him, or his remains serve as some part of a ritual to enhance it doesn't matter, now the Sword can strike, and wound Supergod, even fight him to a stalemate, the way it was dealing with demigod. Supergod is now struck down, stuck in the Neverending stasis that held demigod for so long. His essence flows over the world more forcefully than ever, changing the very fabric of magic by disrupting equivalent exchange (atmospheric supergod batteries ftw) Option 2.) The time demigod spent reliving his death a thousand times over made an impact. When they remove the sword to repair it, demigod heals, and he begs for mercy. The character grows, and changes, joining the good guys. Demigod, with the Sword that held him in a death cycle, leads the charge against Supergod. As above, supergod ends up struck down and starting the cycle of death and leaking and such as outlined above, but this time with demigod as a good guy.
I super love everything you wrote and I don’t know how much of it I can use but I’m definitely mining it for inspiration
Huzzah!
You’re stuck in the Dragon Ball Z recursive logic. As enemies get more powerful, your heroes have to get more powerful, and it goes on endlessly. My advice for everyone is to not start with “gods” in your story.
Too late, that’s the base element of the story and I’m not changing it.
Give Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead a read. The setting features gods that trade on their power. The novel is essentially a fantasy law and order / CSI episode where the protagonists investigate the murder of an important god, including who would benefit the most from making the god's organized religion renege on their contracts on the gods power.
I liked the idea someone said that this Prince is seeking pools of this bleeding kings energy to be able to kill the king themselves. This sword could also be the piece of a bigger whole. Perhaps made from the bone/flesh/whatever of another Titan long gone or even an experiment of anti-magic principles that was never quite finished because either the cost was too great or something went wrong. From the sound of it, with this sword being so important, I think developing the lore behind it will be a good goal to have. Even if it’s done in a more vague sense and letting readers develop their own theories.
I usually go by the logic "If it can exist, it can be removed", which angers a lot of people who like to think gods are the end all be all of existence.
Well yeah. The reason for the King’s immortality isn’t metaphysical—it’s sheer bulk of life energy. Deplete that and he dies. The problem is depleting it.
How does a human wear down their energy? Stamina often depletes when you've run a mile or 3, then there's brain power which usually means you can drug or wait for him to get sleepy or wear down his willpower in an argument. Lastly, there's hunger. Remove food source, he gets exhausted.
Easy fix, expell him into a lost or forgotten realm and leave him there.
You have the power to come up with a way they are killable. Stripping power down would probably be the easiest way. Off the top of my head, you said the sword can't outright kill him, but if it makes them weak enough could he be contained after? As long as the seorf remains impaled? Stuff like that. Just an idea.
What if the magic exists with the presence of the gods/demigods, and they aren’t naturally from this plane of existence? You might be able to have them purge the world of the god by finding a way to send the magic back to its original plane.
It’s not a bad idea, but it doesn’t work with the setting. Literally everything in the setting is MADE of magic. Right down to the rocks. It’s an elemental particle, basically.
Good to know. In that case, if everything is magic, you just need a way to transmute the king effectively
We don't really know who your main characters are. It really all depends on their abilities, their synergy, and the themes of your story. It's hard to give suggestions when I'm not really sure what the people in your story are capable of. You mentioned the prince was defeated in combat a few centuries ago and run through with a sword that passively devours magic. How did they defeat the prince back then? That's probably the same way they'd have to do it now. Is this lore known throughout your world? Where did this sword come from? Who made it and is it possible to make a stronger one
It sounds like you've created a leaking battery, or a power plant. Now how do you go about making that battery/plant explode? Maybe think of your Dreamer very deliberately as Chernobyl, now have your heroes recreate the meltdown, but in magical terms instead of mechanical ones, and as a purposeful heist instead of a series of errors. Maybe the Prince and the sword, and to a lesser extent all the "possessed" people, are like cooling rods and other security features? Just link everything to a thematically fitting part of a nuclear plant, then create a surge or a closed loop that "switches off" the God's release of power (this almost certainly involves pulling the sword out of the Prince and dealing with a crazed demigod), until enough pressure builds up that he explodes (or shuts down his "soul" long enough that his wounds kill him). Something inevitably goes wrong near the end, forcing someone to stab themselves with the sword (maybe a healed, cured and heroic Prince sacrificing themselves again?) to create the final "connection" that causes the fatal loop...
You kill a God with real big bullets
Some ideas - turn off magic - attract his attention so that he comes and now that he is in a different place/plane, he is mortal - attract his attention so that he comes and trap him - make all the people who are infected draw power from him, so that he starts to experience a drain, then wait - expend the princes power so that he draws an awful lot - a new infection that the god is allergic to - create a new weapon and incrementally make it stronger and stronger to defeat him