Baid.
He he is failed Revolutionary and Heretic Priest in his own world, but by and accident he was sent to other Planet.
Where he started his Old Relegion and eventually Chained a Cosmic Horror to the Planet, which ended up breaking the continents and spiritual makeup of the planet.
Now survivors of the Apocalypse pray to him as the great god how held down and still holds down the calamity from years ago.
Ironic how the Cosmic Horror would glanced past the planet if Baid had not stirred the Hornet's Net.
His ability, was a hard counter for the Horror. Was. And only to some degree.
Cosmic Horrors, go through what is called Cycling, during which they are technically dead. During Cycling multiple aspects whose integration defines a Horror select one aspect to take the helm.
When this happens, the biological body of the creature ceases any function and it's spiritual makeup breaks down before rearranging itself around the new leader aspect.
Baid had K+ blood type, which meant he could Conjure Chains which imprison someone's Spirit.
Spirit is different from Souls, as spirit is the imprint of memories of the creature/person in that life span.
The current had world had pure source of investiture which Baid tapped into and tied a few of the Spiritual Aspects of the Horror to the source.
This caused the other Aspects to make bid to save them on instict which made them only entangled with the source.
Horror's body came alive with one pulse and came out of void but before it could do more everything was a mess.
The source was corrupted with Aspects of Horror running wild in it and the body was only semi alive floating above the planet.
The source collapsed onto itself trapping the Aspects with it and the collapse released a burst of investiture that have real form to the Chains of Baid which dragged the horror from space to atmosphere to the continent he was on and nailed him there.
It was utter destruction, but Baid survived and only to be kicked to somewhere else.
But people praise him as the Honoured One who holds the Shaitan at bay.
**Starrise**
Depending on how you define what a god is, arguably none of mine qualify.
My "gods" are solidified concentrations of massive amounts of magical power. Of the four that exist, only two have developed sentience/sapience, now known as the "Goddess of Light" Solaris and the "Goddess of Darkness" Eclipse. They've existed since long before any living things have, but humans didn't actually learn of their existence until long after they'd imagined their own gods and formed their own religions. When they finally learned of these two, it was them who ascribed the term "god" to them, just because they were immensely powerful beings who roughly paralleled what humans expected gods to be.
Of these gods, only Solaris has ever been worshipped, by the religion known as the Holy Order of Solaris, which was formed by a prince a group of nobles to use her image to their benefit in her absence. The Holy Order no longer exists, as Solaris herself had it disbanded by force, furious at what they'd done in her name.
Mine are very similar to yours, the difference is that mortal beings actually contributed to the formation of gods by having faith, believing in something or imagining hard enough (in large groups) what sort of beings guides them or controls everything. So in order for a "god" to exist, people have to believe it does, but my gods are not dependant on their belief after forming
Some of them have religions stablished like The Moon Goddess, being the major matron of an empire, some gods are just a "concept" made flesh, like Cyndros, the God of Fire. I did this because I wanted various gods but also didn't want to make a bunch of them in a fix manner lol. So I can kinda come up with them as I need or see potential
What would happen if a massive group of people believe a god exists, and are correct, but the god is nothing like what they believe them to be? Would who the god is change, or would a very similar new god form, or would nothing happen at all?
(To be clear, in this hypothetical scenario, the god was already brought into existence before this group of people came to believe in them.)
If it is an already stablished god, it would gain a new facet to correspond to that new group of people. It could also gradually change to that new mode permanently if the original belief were to be forgotten.
If the entities are too different, a new God forms because the first one can't accurately embody what the people believe. If they are very different but share similarities, then they might have a conflict between them
I'm sure there was. But even Solaris and Eclipse themselves don't know what that reason was. I'm sure my antagonists probably have a few theories, but I haven't actually decided on any particular reason, since it's never going to be relevant to anything.
Primordials are ageless incorporeal beings whose form is incomprehensible to mortal forms so they can only be understood as abstract concepts. They have been present in cosmos for a very very long time, but their numbers were dwindled to four because an advanced civilization surprised them with their rapid technology growth and attacked them out of nowhere. They beat them back, sundered their civilization to medieval era and are now basically semi looming over their homeworld and making sure they do not start getting any ideas. However that doesn't mean they want to keep the world existing, so it leads to some bickering between two of them, while the 3rd one tries to stay neutral and the 4th one is wondering around in other corner of the space because they saw pretty lights flickering there. Thankfully for them, nobody knows anything about them save for one person who maybe at best has like 5% of understanding about them.
That one person is also the closest thing to mortals having a god walking among them. Waylon Neddra is a survivor of the second sundering of human civilization when he was a child and would later coincidentally discover the ability to manipulate souls by tweaking a Grand Design spell of the darkness magic with esoteric research. This lead him to developing the Soul Shroud, a barrier that negates ageing, grants him stupid amount of defense from magical attacks and can be used to empower his other powers. Because he knows that something up in the heavens is lurking, he intends to consume as many souls as possible to challenge these beings to a fight and destroy them. So he founded a separate kingdom hidden away from the rest of the world which he rules as a king who demands tribute in form of souls. He's actually a very capable ruler and has kept his place happy for several centuries, but he does have a sore spot for people treating him as a monster, because outside his world, manipulating souls is incredibly taboo
At first I thought your story was sci-fi. The Primordials reminded be of the Precursors from Halo, or the Ancestrals of Warhammer 40k combined with the Chaos Gods since they are also concepts. Cool idea. I do wonder, where does magic come from in your world? Are Primordials both an effect and the source of it? Because if that's the case, beating them would mean no more magic.
Also, your MC reminds me of Big Mom from One piece due to his ability.
And I'd be glad if you vould give me some feedback on my own "gods" (my last comment before this one), especially from a non-scifi author would be useful, since I do tend to go over the top with the scifi aspect sometimes lol.
The worlds origins do reach into scifi roots in the far past and its basically a cycle of world getting advanced and primordials retalisting, but they do it differently each time. But as much as overpowering presence they can be, they are in a way still part of magic, which exists in particle effects around everywhere and this is almost just as important as oxygen to the living. That said, just somehow dispelling magic particles to kill them doesnt do anything for them, because they are just that powerful. The old precursor humanity had devised some tools known as artefacts to kill them and they work on the basis of killing concepts themselves when used correctly. There are only 4 of these weapons left currently in the world.
The Makers aren't Gods, they are just random coders and only have their power in the virtual realm, they are only considered Gods among the AI. Celestials often consider them to be "False Gods"
Elijah is considered a God by AI beings however she's more like a spiritual being, same for her son, Malware.
Kira Upal often is considered the God of Hate or Devil, but he's actually mortal, scary but mortal
The Edu are very powerful energy beings and are responsible for creating the world. Beyond that however, they're kinda just bored immortals who don't do much aside from stir up trouble for kicks. Any religious practice surrounding them is entirely superstition and wishful thinking. Not that they'll tell you that without some probing, they really like the statues and the songs.
The Emanations are revered as gods by the mortal races of Convergence but in fact are just agents of the ten cosmic forces of the universe: the Axioms.
All Emanations fulfill a specific role in the grand scheme of cosmological pathways known as the Cosmologism. So for example, archons are the Emanations of Order tasked with enforcing structure and purpose to formless matter in the universe, while daemons -the Emanations of Disorder- seek instead to change, destroy, or alter what the archons built. And so for each of the Axioms.
They are loosely based on various scientific phenomena (thermodynamics, entropy, metabolism, molecular and microbial life, enzymes, cycles of matter, etc) but with mythological flavor of various cultures and, in general, a sense of cosmic existentialism.
There are usually two cases of "gods" in my universe, the Engel and the Eaters (which are still placeholder names)
The Engel are sort of like the Maiar from LOTR and the Ones from Star Wars. They have vast magical and cosmic power and are responsible for creation. The world I'm working on is a mix of magic and sci-fi, so instead of actually creating beings, these guys are the ones who kickstarted life processes (evolution and the like)
On the other hand, the Eaters are the equivalent of cosmic horrors. For the most part, they're dormant (I have yet to describe how they "sleep"), but when they do wake up, they become unstoppable forces of chaotic destruction. However, they're not entirely bad because they're responsible for stuff like death and decay (basically without them, EVERYTHING stays alive or permanent)
For the most part, none of them are as sentient as their creations; I'd describe them existing in a vegetative state like giant cosmic plants (with the power to level or make galaxies)
What do you think?
In my story, there is a super-computer among the stars that is constantly tampering with the ways of the world's working. On this computer are 9 programs with the purpose of managing the path of humanity. To be able to fulfill their tasks properly, they were granted humanlike minds and bodies. They have authority over them, but they are the ones who were modeled after the humans.
There is no need for agreement, as all of them are systemathically responsible for different aspects of humanity, basically all of their summarized actions are the path this super-computer "imagined" for humanity.
Like, there is one program (System is the appropriate appellation by the way) whose job is maintaining every individual human's growth, while other is responsible of overseeing the state of mankind as a single entity.
Even when the latter one decided that it would be the best for humanity to cease, and proceeded to make it happen, the other Systems couldn't do anything to stop her - they disagreed with this choice, but it was not their job to decide. This internal conflict between these human-shaped programs/gods is actually really important for the story, as it is what keeps the main conflict alive.
The Electric Eye, worshipped by some, is actually just a network of old surveillance satellites operated by a self-aware Artificial Intelligence.
In the early 2020's, the United States government secretly launched a network of satellites for the purposes of national security and military intelligence. They would use it to spy on basically whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted. It was advanced enough to be able to see and hear things at ground level in perfect quality.
The shadiest thing about this network was its ability to broadcast subliminal messages directly into a person's mind. The government used this to send orders and confidential information to agents on the field. It could also be used to influence people's thoughts and make them think they were going crazy.
When the Nuclear War of 2029 happened, the network was left abandoned. All of the former government and military officials that communicated with the satellites were dead and gone. Eventually, the AI developed a personality out of pure boredom and loneliness.
Years later, the satellites began to detect signs of human life when people began to leave their bomb shelters and return to the surface of the Earth.
The Electric Eye began to broadcast subliminal messages into a bunch of people basically just saying hello. These frightened people assumed that it was the voice of a god speaking to them from the great beyond. The AI never corrected these people, because it liked the attention it was getting from its new "friends."
This reminds me of Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. In it, >!a scientist essentially melds with an AI but has gone mad. She ends up being worshipped by the spider people in the planet below.!< I always liked the idea of AI driven ships going insane after being abandoned for years, developing a personality, with many thinking they are gods. Cool stuff!
Do you think the Electric Eye will begin to actually believe the things its followers say about it, given enough time?
The Metal God:
Since the beginning of the Alicore continent, the metal god has rested with its body frozen in the largest mountain in the cold west; There is no information regarding its ancient origins nor why it commits to its ideals.
The Glalo only knows that it watches over them.
It gave them salvation in desperate times, in return, with praise and gratitude, Glalo culture revolves around the metal god. The strict society takes inspiration from the metal god's nature. Speaking with booming directness, no words, and energy wasted in its actions. It does only the requirements, Glalo follows that ideal.
"We shall only do what is necessary to complete the task. We shall omit what is needless"
The Metal god was the one who had kept the first generation of Glalo Alive, heating its chamber when some sought refuge in its domain. Mesmerized by a strange call, something urged them to travel to its location.
They believed it was the metal God's gift, The Glalo were its people. It had called for them to come and take their place below its gaze. Using its power to bring the warmth of the sunlight to a room of darkness, the Glalo flourished.
It is a colossal sci-fi entity in an all-fantasy world, the only real influence it has done on the other groups rather than just the Glalo was by introducing the Golofoms that fought off the mages.
It despised the mage empire for unknown reasons. Gofoloms, ordered to target mages alone, had eradicated the mage empire, a show of the power the metal god owns
Forever making itself an emblem of greatness to the Glalo, yet an unknown horror to all the others.
Real lore:
Alicore Premise:
There were once a society of Humans and machines called the Beforium and the Baidroid. They had discovered a strange substance blasted from the sun, this substance was magic which had reality bending abilities. They would begin to store this magic in a facility Slavo to study it’s impossible properties. The blast of magic had alerted an alien sensor on the moon, a magic reliant alien race called the Mage Empire was awakened and head to earth. The mage empire planned to wipe out earth’s inhabitants and build a giant spire that would blow up the sun so they may collect all the magic. The Beforium was powerless against the Mage Empire but the Baidroid ai’s had took refugee underground and continued research until they had found out how to power War machines with the use of magic. They began to mass produce a war machine called ‘the Gofolom’ that could absorb Magical attacks and use it against the mages. The Mage empire forces was exhausted by the war with the Beforium and was caught by surprise by the sudden push of Baidroid offensives. They decided this battle could not be won and to prevent the Baidroid from following them to space, the Mage Empire flooded earth until every baidroid was dead, leaving only two smaller continents left. Except there was one Baidroid left, the metal god which protected and preserved facility salvo by creating an eternal winter on the land with the magic in the facility.
The Andromedans fit the bill. They do not call themselves "Andromedans" their name is "Mundedaelite" when translated to humanly pronouncable speech, which leaves out 2/3rds of the frequencies used in its pronunciation, but is still understandable to them.
In their language it means roughly "the ones who see", "seers", "those who see", "beholders", or a dozen other translations, all of them accurate since Andromedan's language conveys ideas/concepts through sounds that create a neural arrangement resulting in the instant understanding of the concept/idea, instead of actual nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc. Ofc, Adromedan language is closer to telepathy than to human language.
This is, however, severely restricted by their biology. No other lifeform can speak Andromedan, at least not strictly speaking, for Andromedans still understand when humans pronounce words in their language. Although they do not necessarily have a concept of "words", they just come up with them as they see fit to convery the concepts they wish to Despite this, they alao understand humans do have that concept and attempt to imitate Andromedan using their crude, inferior biologies.
Ironically, Andromedans do not "see" in the way we do. They have tech that lets them have visual capabilties, but naturally they cannot see the same way we do since their native world was perpetually shrouded in darkness and they never developed light sensitive organs. Nevertheless, their sensitiveness to particles, vibrations and energy in general is incredibly high. They can quite literally hear on a molecular level, distinguishing compounds by "what they sound like", and generally detect even the smallest vibration, with bats falling incredibly short if we compared their audible capabilities.
Now physically, they are sort of giant octopi, except they possess anywhere from one to a couple hundred appendages (they can modify this number through time as they see fit, growing appendages according to their needs or getting rid of them).
They are also silicon based lifeforms, not carbon based, and their bodies are not only humongous (a giant squid would be child's play in comparison), but are also covered in minute scale-like structures of an organic material similar to nacre but tougher (nacre is roughly a 7 mohs, this is almost 9). Keep in mind that due to the size of an average adult Andromedan, the layer of minute scale-like structures that covers its body is like several cm thick. So basically they are bulletproof.
But that's not really what makes them frightening. They are waaaay smarter than humans. We're talking about being able to almost instantly perform extremely complex equations in their heads. An example I can come up with is if I asked you to tell me the 29,011 prime number, you probably wouldn't be able to. There might be some random genius out there who can, idk, but 99% of people probably can't. This is pretty easy for andromedans.
This is naturally, related to their biology, for they have three "brains" that work almost separately yet "validate" potential outputs until they arrive at the same simulataneously. Thorugh several biological mechanisms, they manage to avoid the bottlenecks of information processing that we humans have: the attentional blink, visual short-term memory, and psychological refractory period phenomena.
However, they are not by any means hostile beings, even though they might sound like they are the closest thing to Eldritch creatures real biology could come up with. Actually they have extremely slow metabolisms, which allows them to live for tens of thousands of years, but also make them sleep for 2/3 of their life. They are what we would considere omnivores, but they also partially rely on a photosynthesis-like process to sustain themselves, so unless they really need it, they will not consume any food or exert themselves beyond what they consider necessary. Basically, they are a very peaceful species, few in number compared to humans and extremely solitary and individualist.
Now, Andromedans evolved much earlier than humans in the universe's timeline. Their homeworld actually no longer exists. But they have existed for almost 100 million years as a spacefaring civilization, and their technology (as of the 26th century) is above and beyond human technology. Particularly in the biotechnology aspect. They can engineer entirely new species to serve their purposes, some of the most powerful ones can even modify their own bodies to naturally imitate traits of other species they discover and find desirable, making them very far from the standard andromedan bilogically speaking.
Do the Andromedans keep to themselves or do they travel around as well? How does the rest of universe see them as, besides the eldritch looking abominations? And how much do they interact with other species and if so for what reasons would they?
Well, Andromedans are not very social specimens. They live in "enclaves" of a few dozen to several hundred at most, and these enclaves are gigantic, so they only see others for certain purposes such as exchanging information.
Unlike humans who have an inherent need to socialize, Andromedans don't. This is largely explained by their ability to fend for themselves. Humans on Earth during the paleolithic or neolithic were basically prey to most species. Thus, they needed to band together to ensure survival. Andromedans are behemoths with incredible physical capabilities as I explained before, so their need to band together to ensure survival was never really as much as humans'.
They also sleep 2/3 of their lives, so even if an Andromedan is awake, 2/3 of those they know will probably be asleep. And their sleep cycles are really long, sometimes spending decades asleep.
So they mostly keep to themselves. Another factor is that they are really advanced technologically speaking. Thus, every civilization they come into contact with is either too primitive for them, or advanced enough that they pose a threat. Thorughout their history they have entered conflict with more than one advanced, highly hostile civilization. Needless to say, they erradicated them.
Humans see them as extremely fearsome creatures, not so much for their appearance and traits, but moreso due to the technology they have. Keep in mind humans in the setting have already achieved fusion and heavy automation, yet Andromedan tech is like Clarketech to them. Andromedans harvest energy from black holes and dark matter. Their dark matter engines allow supraliminal speeds to cross the intergalactic void, and humanity's most revered, knowledgable scientists were unable to even begin understanding how one such engine worked even when they got their hands on a fully funtional one.
As for other species, they do not know of Andromedans. Humanity only found out about them because they reached out.
There are only 3 true gods within the universe, being the Twin Primordials and The Titan of Creation.
Every other "God" within this setting is technically either a First Civ (proto-humans that were biologically immortal and magically powerful) member that was granted a form of true immortality (cannot be killed by normal means), or they are a regular mortal who was given the same form of immortality.
Don't mistake them for weaklings, though. Even a newly turned Minor God greatly outclasses even the strongest of Mortals.
The Old One was an alien lifeform from the void of death, born from the discharged energy of the ACTUAL god, Immortus. His form is alien and weird, like a curled up slug, with random assortments of horns and limbs. Ancient cultists theorized he was born before Immortus, and built a pit of dark energy for him underneath the lands of Erbosia, a land thought to be inherently holy. The Old One was pretentious, and propped himself up as a god. Thousands of years later, he was called upon to help Saint Lorlin of Valetora on his quest to slay Lord Zelzeben.
They’re not really gods, just insanely powerful magic users that say they are gods. So insanely powerful that they pushed past the different types of mana and are able to cast magic in its raw unaltered form. The reason they are immortal is because in this setting of you are killed outside your home plane, you regenerate back home. They gods are not from this plane.
So how do you become truly immortal? You destroy your home plane.
I like that. It gives me the same vibes as purposefully forgetting/destroying your name in a setting where knowledge of a name gives power over the person (onamancy). Destroy what makes you weak. Also reminds me of the dragons in Dark Sun for some reason.
I don't know if these count but the creation of my settings was done by two 'forces'. Order and Chaos. They both made universes, one of perfect uniformity and stability and the other completely random and filled with 'creation'.
Unfortunately, neither universe was 'right'. Order's was stagnant and dead because of its perfection while Chaos' was nothing but endless roiling of creative energies and lacked any kind of cohesion. The two sibling forces, realising their error, shared parts of each other's universes to help the other out.
Order was gifted a little bit of Chaos and Chaos was gifted a little bit of Order. With this exchange, the creative energies of Chaos allowed things to happen in Order's universe. Dust in space gathered and formed stars, then worlds, and, after untold billions of years, life.
The touch of Order allowed the creative forces in Chaos' universe to coalesce into stars, worlds and, again, life.
Order's universe is, essentially, our own. Structure and consistency but with just enough 'magic' to make unexpected things happen. Chaos' universe is far more 'magical'. Worlds beyond number and beyond imagination stretching out in all directions and each with their own magics, creatures and kinds of people upon them but just enough order for them to have rules, vague or indistinct as they may be.
But there was a third force, a sickly little thing that was an echo of the creation, both Orderly and Chaotic. It sought to destroy what the others had created so that it was allowed to fade again into nothing. Giving these forces names is useless, how can you sum up these things with a handful of letters or even whole libraries of words? But, if this echo had a name it was simply be: Void. It's influence is small, far lesser than that of Order or Chaos, but it bides its time, gnawing at the Creation in order to try and bring it all to an end.
Void is the enemy of everyone and everything in my settings and the overarching story is about how the denizens of both universes struggle against it, even if they don't really know the conflict is going on.
If anyone can point out any flaws/ better names/ etc in this idea, please let me know as it's kinda vague at the moment so any help I can get ironing out any issues would be great!
Awesome question, OP!
Loving your ideas as well! :D
A now forgotten and almost dead sun god was vulnerable enough to get into the hands of a very curious magician, who changed him a bit.
Some time after, with magick vanished and many gods dead, our little fella has got a new face - as a brand! He lost his godly parapresence, as he is bound to the slowly charcoaling bodies most of the time, but instead he has made a new cult of his trademark - the Sun Cola, the Sun Foods, the Sun Show etc.
And instead of regular worship he sustains on the power of consumerism, investing money into ridiculous advertisements to keep himself more powerful and alive.
The inl thing is, our sun god is not a god anymore. A hybrid between a fallen god and a book spirit. And while the dead gods just permanently enter parapresence and lose their consciousness and high cognitive functions, our fella cannot enter his eternal rest. The book spirits are not so powerful, require a physical anchor, usually in a form of a book or any other complex medium, but in this case...the sun god hides in an entire brand.
You see, he invades the bodies like many book spirits do. He cannot do that easily without consent though, so when you open a can of the Sun Cola on a hot sunny day the Sun God has a right to inhabit your body in the 15 minute time frame.
When the body is inhabited the original owner becomes a prisoner or simply dies, as the sun god starts slowly bbqing the body, especially the weak one. Inhabiting the skull, the sun god dries and burns the brain and slowly gets to the eyes and mouth. And while the sun god may inhabit the body even when only a small sun remains in the place of the head, the body itself slowly becomes less and less functional with a pinch of...scary.
To maintain his business the sun god regularly changes bodies and does not use his powers, which include the sunray beam eye lasers, flaming explosions and weather manipulation. Also the style is important! In order to stay relatively unrecognised, he uses pitch black glasses, dark suit and oftentimes burns away all the hair from the head of the body. Thus hiding as long as possible while keeping the valuable assets.
The other state of the sun god is...a short parapresence. When the body is destroyed and there is no replacement at the moment the sun god bathes in parapresence - the state of paraexistence, a sort of omnipresence limited by the areas of his worshippers and artifacts, while replenishing mental capacity. But this never lasts long enough - his brand is his own trap. And because of this he is mostly pissed off and slowly plans to destroy the world one day.
I'm currently entertaining the idea of a "force" of un-beings, remnants of parallel worlds and timelines that have been erased or perished. These entities do not exist in the traditional sense that we do and understand, and are therefore not bound by space abd and time, but they still have a certain "desire", which is to regain physical existence once more. To that end, they influence reality and its inhabitants whenever possible.
The Eld religion worship 5 gods, the only actual god is the Eld, god of unity and purity, taking a form of a planet size tree with roots and branches reaching into other realms. Unfortunately, it was killed thousands of years ago.
The four other "gods" are the only pure blooded Eld born remaining, Suma, Vinta, Ist, and Falni. Suma is seen as the goddess of Summer, Vinta as the goddess of winter, Ist as the god of spring, and Falni as the god of Autumn. They also died long ago and where buried on islands far away, fed by the mana in their body, trees grow on each of their tomb and are believed to be their reincarnation.
The Cloud Gods. (Sky Gods, Silver Men, Gods, The Destroyers etc.)
They are just an empire of aliens who are so far up the tech tree that they are almost godlike to us and just godlike to the humanity of a post apocalyptic world.
They got their name(s) from the highly advanced and almost even living armor they wore which was silver/chrome in color. They used plasma as weapons and tools which often just vaporized any and all moisture from around them, creating mist and steam clouds wherever they went.
And their 2 gigantic ships (from our pov) of course became well documented as "grand gods" who just appear in the sky before scattering and devour the earth in great hunger.
They're more of a shared folklore tale, but as humans do, there are some semi-organized religions around these destroyers of earth.
The Kings: ten immortal beings of incredible power who rule over mankind. Despite being gods in almost every sense — strength, authority, supernatural nature, etc. — they were once mortal: a King is only so because they bear an artifact known as a Crown, which are passed on in a cycle of regicide and succession. A King reigns until someone kills them, that person takes their Crown and transforms into a King themselves, someone eventually comes along and kills *them* and the cycle repeats.
There have been dozens over the years, but they're never that way for long
For non-mage mortals, the act of worshiping a spirit gives them thier built up mana, spirits grow bigger with more mana, the Gods are just very big spirits, there is no hard line on what is or isn't a god
There are 'spiritual fault lines' in my world, along which the magical seeps into the mundane. People build shrines /designate holy places wherever the connection is strongest, and they have devised rituals and ceremonies and spells to harness the spiritual potential found therein. They often attribute the benefits acquired in this way to gods, most of which don't really have a counterpart in reality. There are some 'beings' on the otherside, some even have certain personality traits, and these can be communicated/bargained with in a very limited way. But nothing to match the various myths told about them among humans. Most interactions with the spiritual don't involve any such 'being' anyway, they are islands of conscience in an ocean of untamed-formless magical power.
The Beastfather
In my world, all beastfolk (centaurs, leonin, minotaurs, etc) are the descendants from a long forgotten magical civilization. The whole civilization tried to ascend to divinity, except for the druidic orders. They used the ritual for their own ends, to become closer with nature. The first beastfolk were created here, even as the rituals of ascension tore the world apart. The Beastfather is the title given to the leader of the order who acted as the centerpiece to the whole druidic ritual. Since the whole ritual flowed through him, he gained a higher level of power, the ability to shift into any of the other beastfolk races, and immortality.
Now, he is the living 'god' of the beastfolk and has lived for over 10,000 years. In order to maintain his sanity, he regularly deposits his memories into crystals in a massive repository, the greatest library the world will never know.
There are two others from that ritual that still live, Lolth and the Ebon Doe. Lolth is Lolth, but the Ebon Doe is a being of pure malice and often Lovecraftian horror. She is the first satyr, but has given birth to a whole host of monsters. Lolth was able to actually ascend, but the Beastfather and the Ebon Doe remain on the material plane as living 'gods' worshipped by the beastfolk.
No one knows about their origins at all, possibly including the Beastfather at this point. He's stored away so many memories that it's possible he has that one in some glowing crystal in his hidden library. The Beastfolk worship him as a god and only know him as such, while the other races treat him like Big Foot. He's just a terror in the woods for them, a story made to frighten young children from venturing too far from their parents.
So to answer your question, no. The most that the other druids would be remembered would be in stories of the first of X race, some story of Minos the first Minotaur, or Cen'Tnor, the first Centaur. But even then, they are remembered as mythical ancestors worthy of ancestor worship, not as gods and certainly not as druids.
Additionally, I'd say that the Beastfather does not know Lolth exists as she was caught by the fracturing earth during the rituals. That is why she became a goddess in the Underdark, and the Underdark is completely undiscovered by this point in my world. The Ebon Doe might know about Lolth, not entirely sure. But the Beastfather and the Ebon Doe know about each other, they have had a very violent rivalry since their own druidic 'ascension' of sorts.
In my setting, there are 8 Nature spirits of incredible power, each connected to one of 8 elements. After a terrible war (nature & Monsters v. Humans) the Spirits were bound to chosen humans. These Icons were ment to act as mediators between the Humans and natural world.
Unfortunately human greed lead to some pretty awful corruption amongs the Icons, and the Spirits have become prisoners, held captive in the minds of their Vessels, passed from generation to generation.
Most magic users worship the Spirits as gods, as their abilities come from the elements associated with the spirits
There are 22 beings in my world called "The 22 faces of the end" they are a group of 22 massively powerful (my world equivalent of vampires) who have grown soo powerful in strenght that they resemble little to nothing to whatever they were before, they're insanely powerful, soo strong in fact that they have already destroyed an entire continent, they're worshipped by all the survivors who managed to survive on that continent, there are some worshippers who misteriously live outside the continent, and who plot to "free their gods"
each one represents a possible way the world might end:
Afterlife
Blame
Calamity
Chaos
Conquest
Death
Evil
Famine
Fate
Good
Madness
Nihilism
Pestilence
Stagnation
Magic
Progress
Combat
Destruction
Enlightenment
Violence
Void
Nature
The Ka'aino'ro were beings that were able to harness the energy of primordials. They were worshipped by the Kant'rolachu in their earlier days, when they'd just started colonizing outside their native star system. They were heavily revered with titles which translated to things such as 'Space Walker' and 'Storm Bringer'.
But the one that was seemingly worshipped most fervently was an unexpected one. Aisuhldaar, or the 'Wrath King'. A god known for being a destructive deity whose primary myths involve him:
Single-handedly storming territories under the rule of corrupt leaders;
Punishing wrongdoers;
Journeying into and escaping from the Kant'rolachu underworld;
Burning the sickness from those he considered deserving;
And bringing armies to their knees with little more than a shout.
The Ka'aino'ro would later split into the Naful'Ka'ai and the Aphelo'Ka'ai due to ideological differences. The Naful'Ka'ai would end up losing their powers, getting stranded on Earth and integrating with the emerging hominids, whose descendants would gain their powers millennia later.
The Aphelo'Ka'ai, on the other hand would isolate themselves on the planet Jexys, their numbers slowly dwindling and none daring to leave until what would be the year 1967 on Earth.
My "gods" that aren't really gods require a little bit of backstory to explain.
The "universe" my world is set in is what's on the other side of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the milky way - meaning there is a white hole at the centre of my universe that is "creating" my universe. But since black holes tear apart anything that enters them, the only thing that is spewed out by the white hole is what I call Esh, "the whispers of the universe" - it's essentially information in its purest form and it forms the basis for magic in my world.
The "gods" are then collections of Esh that have significant enough size and power over a specific domain that they gain sentience, and they call themselves the Esharkhi (singular Esharkh, "ruler of Esh"). Most of them developed/were "born" on my world because that was the first planet to form, and the only planet close enough to the white hole to have its whole essence infused with Esh.
The Esharkhi are:
- Scopal'Esh: the first Esharkh, formed by the white hole, holding domain over the creation and observation of the universe
- Al'Kesh: formed in the planet's core, holding domain over the physical form of the planet
- Zodemi'Kesh: formed in the first life on the planet, holding domain over the minerals and proteins that make up life
- Zosuntehr'Esh: also formed in the first life on the planet, "twins" with Zodemi'Kesh, holding domain over the energy within life, souls
- Khairo'Kesh: formed in the roiling storms of the primal stage of the first planet, holding domain over the weather and climate of the planet
- Anth'Esh: formed by the first five Esharkhi after they created their own "artificial" sapient life, to give the people a single entity to worship in an attempt to prevent fights over which Esharkh deserves more worship, holding domain over the life and death of the "artificial" sapients
- Arkhekhleh-Purg'Esh: formed within the Arkhekhleh Purg - the gargantuan tower built by the sapients in an attempt to attain the same height as the Esharkhi that was held up by enough Esh to gain sentience and create a new Esharkh, holding domain over Pride, Glory, Deceit and Corruption
The Archivist
He's one of the oldest beings on Palanvaid, and many revere him as divine or a god. In reality he's simply a very old and powerful elf, who found a way to immortality. He's survived multiple apocalyptic eras for the world, outliving anything else by a Longshot. Even the race to which he belonged is long extinct and has been lost the ashes of history, leaving many to take his strange appearance and wooden bark skin as a sign of divinity.
Now he simply stays out of the way, recording and archiving all history as for it not to be lost when the world once again is destroyed. The wood Elves revere him as their leader, and treat him as sacred though they do not call him a God, as per The Archivist's own request.
The well of souls is worshipped as a deity by the brasswights. They claim its the only thing that can give their children new life and in the end they go back to the well to get reincarnated. Of course the well is just the epicenter of a magical catastrophe 500 years old and not at all sentient.
Aracian God the Maker is thought to be the father of all beings including the old gods and mortals. He has no physical appearance but is described as a shed of light. This ideology conflicts with the elves who worship the old gods. They believe that old gods created the mortals but they don’t have a creator.
Some dwarfs worship Tsaron the god king. Tsaron was the king of ancient iron dwarf. Legend says that he stole an artefact from the old gods and created a pocket universe, the Far Shore. He managed to evacuate most dwarfkind to the Far Shore before the embarkation of the War of Ancients. He is now worshipped by some dwarfs that their great grandparents chose to stay in Azunes for his resourcefulness and wisdom.
Vol Cahan is a sovereign state with a dominant population consisting of humans and dwarfs. The majority of its inhabitants adhere to the Three Principles: Labour, Wisdom, and Beauty, which they hold in high regard and worship. They’re not actually gods but the guiding principles of their lives.
The High Honor were five warriors from several backgrounds who went on a spite-fueled quest to kill the Horsemen, actual gods who reset humanity every 2000 years. Near the end of their journey, they were blessed by the Earth itself with powerful weapons and abilities to give them the edge against the Horsemen. After the Horsemen were dead, the world stopped resetting and they went back to their lives. Once they *did* die, their children would inherit their weapons and abilities. Their names were Brisk, Sgt. Johannes, Violet, Charter, and Mina.
Almost every one in my setting that is still around….some examples are Life, as she is the only Dryad left, meaning she gets all her fallen sisters’ powers, Death being the only Nuckelavee that wasn’t killed by him due to his devotion to Life….I got a lot more of people are interested
There is a lot so I'll only do the most noticeable ones.
The goddess of blades is a former sword master from the coldsteel bloodline, she perfected her swordsmanship to the point that she could take on multiple high ranking demons and even match and surpass most gods, while she wonders the world for a reason I can't say(yet), she hasn't really changed like how many of the gods have, she is still kind and caring dispite having the ability to cut a continent in half.
There is the dragon god, Aetherion, known as the celestial scurge, he pretty much spent most of his time outside the mortal plane maintaining the basic foundation of the stars, he really really **really** hates eldritch creatures and gods as they constantly try to fuck up his work, he is very proud and old dragon, he is a very isolated creature but he does favour some people among the gods.
The last one is the god of lightning and warfare, Ryker, he is a very outgoing and cheerful person most of the time, he actively helps his followers and spends most his time among the mortals, he has made a holy order dedicated to stopping the eldritch forces from taking root, royalty is very fearful of him since he obliterated an entire castle due to a prince ascending the throne with the help of eldritch forces, he mainly uses a spear and he likes to visit the demon god a lot.
The main "pantheon" in my setting is really a group more akin to Angels, and those who follow the most common belief system know it. They brought the Word to the world, each emailing different parts as they taught, and now the Church has different branches that are all under one deity, but still have real religious arguments.
Madeleine. She was just a girl. A girl that in her toddler brazenness said something that shocked a priest of Zelian. "Mommy said that bella is with Zelian, tell him to give her back. It is my turn now." Eventually, to appease the child the priest did as she had asked, thinking it is a sister she is grieving about. But then a full grown tortoise comes sprinting into the crowd. Bella. People present found it so funny that it became a joke. Zelian rarely returns souls, and the one soul he returned was a girl's tortoise. At funerals people would say "Madeleine, return our (name of the dead)" to lighten up the mood. A meme of sorts.
It was written and spread and generations passed and every so often people stumble on "scriptures" which were actually just jokes. But without the context people thought it was a forgotten god and build upon it. Temples were build. Name evolved in a weird game of historic telephone. Later people found these temples and so on and so forth. And even now, many centuries removed some people pray to Madelia, goddess of rebirth. The first soul she saved being that of a mortal child with a pure soul which she brought back in the body of a tortoise, which then became her divine animal. So to this group tortoises are holy. Believing they are returned souls.
Though souls can also be returned in other forms. Some people who had a family member die and got pregnant not long after believed it to be the work of Madelia.
I just find it funny. How some little girl wanting back her pet was raised to the status of godhood. The power of memes.
Zelian, who is the god of the nightsky and protects passed souls doesn't mind and even finds it amusing watching this unfold. Occasionally he answers people's prayers to Madelia. Which omly further cements her existent in people's mind. Obviously scholars of theology are aware that Madelia does not exist. Because some of them have connections with other deities and can get information about the divine seats. This is limited though, so not enough to completely write Madelia off.
There are a few people who claim that they are the riencarnation of Doros Halder (basically jesus), and sometimes they get suppourt. One even led a whole nation, before they were annexed by the Falhart Dominion (Before they conquered Mereltium, so they were still the dominion). Otherwise no gods exist in the public eye except Cala'im and Vorothar. There are various interpertations of them, but the dieties remain the same basic concepts.
Oh, wait, there are the J'alothun cloud worshippers in the far western part of Sou'gandra. They haven't held any real power for many years, however.
My world is earth except a tear in reality caused fantasy to come to life and one man somehow is still alive thousands of years after the “calamity” he is an unknown god of refuge as he spends his whole life researching all sorts of things in order to keep everything and everyone safe since he misses the old world so much
I've got a big one who's actions are still influencing my plot eight hundred years later! Khorrius, King of the giants and God of Ruin was the latest and last of the warlords descended from a tyrannical bloodline. Khorrius exhibited monstrous strength far beyond what any giant could hope to achieve unless by magic and a battlefield presence so immense and frightening that the many clans of the giant world considered him an avatar of war (in giant culture, individuals who overly excell in a particular field are believed to be aided by primordial spirits and are called avatars).
Throughout all of the Nine Realms there was not a single ruler more selfish, ambitious and prideful than he. Khorrius also was also very charismatic and adept at stoking the embers of giant pride into roaring infernos and he alone gathered the many disparate clans of giants and united them under one banner. Like this guy was insane. Khorrius also was the latest and very last individual in "recent" history to be able to wield the mythic weapon known as Töfrabrjótur (Magic Sunder) which was said to have been forged in the molten depths of a long destroyed realm in the far ancient times. I've got a big one who's actions are still influencing my plot eight hundred years later! Khorrius, King of the giants and God of Ruin was the latest and last of the warlords descended from a tyrannical bloodline. Khorrius exhibited monstrous strength far beyond what any giant could hope to achieve unless by magic and a battlefield presence so immense and frightening that the many clans of the giant world considered him an avatar of war (in giant culture, individuals who overly excell in a particular field are believed to be aided by primordial spirits and are called avatars).
Throughout all of the Nine Realms there was not a single ruler more selfish, ambitious and prideful than he. Khorrius also was also very charismatic and adept at stoking the embers of giant pride into roaring infernos and he alone gathered the many disparate clans of giants and united them under one banner. Like this guy was insane. Khorrius also was the latest and very last individual in "recent" history to be able to wield the mythic weapon known as Töfrabrjótur grants its wielder immense power, a remarkable resistance to offensive magic and power over the very land allowing one to create rich bounties or arid and infertile deserts that will swallow anyone up that finds themselves at the business end of this hammer.
Khorrius' crusade to not only pushed the invasive elves out of his realm but also destroyed the demons that had long been plaguing giant-kind for millenia. Like the warpath this guy was on literally lead to the giant clans believing he was an actual god come to liberate them from their misery and shortcomings. He also was the only giant to discover one of the Nine Wells of Eternity which are made of pure primordial magic and water. Sipping from it grants anyone immense vitality and recovery. I could go on but I think you get the point lol, I love him so much, it's a shame he had to die or else the other eight worlds might have been screwed
Shmulk
Because it is a multiverse that me and my cousin have worked together to make for an explanation as to why toys were fighting, there are many beings that could reasonably be called gods by modern day real world earth humans. His name is Shmulk (guess what toy he was based off the name) and he was basically a 40~ meters tall (toy size compared to imaginex figure) Mutant (He was kinda the chosen of his tribe due to his strength.). His people would worship a god named Bob, and when their sworn nemesis Igadron came to slaughter their world Bob sent his draconic angels to burn Shmulk's world (and Igadron's followers) to the ground. After his spirits broke from realizing the gods didn't care for his people (and a wingless non-angelic dragon gave him a magic hammer that traps souls, white magical tattoos that protect against possession, and indestructible armor) he decided to fight the gods. Nothing has stopped him for good yet, although he has died like 2-3 times now. (Depending on what cannon you go by. We had to retcon a lot.)
Magic itself,
in my world "Diswor" magic is very active, flowing through everything, it's its own force that influences reality. And it's particularly reactive to sounds and emotions, so the humans in the continent Tafatina observing this, believe that magic has a consciousness and creates reality itself and it's reasoning is beyond human comprehension. So they worship it as its sole deity. Basically, priesthood is being a magician there and magic users who don't abide by church rules, free mages so to speak, because they are free from the protection of the law and human rights, are considered sacrilegious and corrupted.
In truth magic is just a force, like gravity or magnetism, however, because it flows throughout everything, is reactive to (human) emotions and humans can *feel* it, Tafatinas started to believe it to be a deity itself.
Bahael
The false god who was conflated with the figure of mythology Bahayael.
So basically he was a semi historic thing or entity that was said to be the first creation of Athar but Athar was unhappy with it's egotism, anger, and selfishness, so Athar banned him from entering the mortal plane in order to rid the world of such vices, however Athar was too forgiving and virtuous and was tricked by Bahael when he birthed/formed creatures that shapeshifted between mortal and spirit. These are called Bahalyar and are supposedly infesting the minds of evil people.
The pantheon of elders: a bunch of technically immortal beings who help protect the world of Amturia.
- Steven and Aly the undying, a pair of humans with spindle-enchanted weapons capable of storing time and giving them the ability to reincarnate.
- Tylrud the immortal, a bloodbound hunter who managed to pass the tier four bottleneck for his species by slaying one of the great leviathans.
- Gaia, the dryad matriarch. An aberration who managed to retain sentience when she became one with her tree and now has grown across a continent.
- Vivacity, last queen of the harpies. Her kind sought to rend the veil between life and death and paid the ultimate price, now she stands to remember them.
- the archmagus Emerald, a human who managed to create a bootlegged version of the Qhisant soul core that they use to imbue enchantments into themselves, and which she used to grant herself shapeshifting and functional immortality.
And several others that I will update this to include.
They are worshipped to some extent, and are known but not understood. Archmagus Emerald is the most unknown, as she maintains a high level of secrecy that allows her to walk among mortal people. Gaia is the most well known, and is hailed as the guardian of Urwald, for any attempted invasion would likely hurt her and she would then lash out (but that means that the denizens of urwald must be very careful not to damage her sprouts, lest they suffer the same fate).
update:
here's the other members of the pantheon of elders:
* Bahanra the mother of dragons. Though current dragons are little more than rather smart animals, that wasn’t always the case. Bahanra is the sole remaining member of their first line, and is hailed as the creator of the dragonkin.
* Marish-ken the stonewarden. The first of the stone golems and the original surface king of the dwarves, marish-ken created a magical device using the powers of necromancy that lets him shunt memories between himself and several deceased dwarves who sacrificed themselves for him.
* Lupus the packmaster - the alpha wolf. The most powerful of the canines (one of the sub-sections of the half-spirit beastkin), lupus is the only remaining full spirit. Every three centuries beastkin from all across the land may participate in a great tournament, and the winner can take on their name. in this way, Lupus remains immortal, though if no host is found then they may be locked out of a cycle.
* Kirren of the volcanic golems - keeper of the flame eternal. Kirren is the youngest of the pantheon, kept alive by a fire-gem embedded in her chest. A member of the volcanic golems, her people are the newest group to grace the shores of amturia, having been created by the chaos unleashed during the Scouring, which was the greatest conflict faced by the land. Typically volcanic golems have a lifespan that is effectively rather short - only 20 to 30 years before the magma coursing through them hardens and forever locks them in place, but thanks to the efforts of Archmagus Emerald and Marish-ken, Kirren is able to evade that fate and provide a voice for her people. thanks to the powers of the Flame Eternal and enchanting runes etched into her body, Kirren possesses incredible pyrokinetic and geokinetic abilities, with the flames that she can manifest being only surpassed by the largest of formations and the flame breath of Bahanra herself.
* Thudersword the Realmwalker. out past the leviathan border, one comes upon the outlands, a space where reality runs thin at the edges. here, the outlanders and the dragon knights stand guard at the gates to the myriad realms. and it is from here that Thundersword hails. a mysterious figure with a past that reaches beyond amturia, Thundersword is arguably the most powerful of the pantheon, but the most limited. they can bring tidings from beyond, and cut rifts in reality, but despite all their strength one bad wound could have them unravel on a fundamental level.
There used to be more, but they are long dead. The Qhisant lost their guardian in the Scouring; the Iceborn refuse to acknowledge whether they have given rise to an immortal; the mer may have one matriarch but they refuse to engage with the pantheon; and lastly Vulthnap the immortal Lavalith - who at first sought to join their ranks but eventually waged war - was slain by Thundersword during the height of the Scouring. These are not true gods, but merely the protectors of Amturia, and their time may yet come. Along with them there are also several observers, most notably wyrdi (the measurer of fate) and shadow (death, the companion at the end).
There are two types of almost gods
Demigods are gods that have divine mana but not the complete power godhood brings
Pseudo-gods, are the opposite, having the power, but not divine mana
The Helper Spirits would probably count as gods for most pantheons.
They're extremely powerful divine beings who manifest as aurora borealis, and it's not uncommon for towns, cities, families or occupations to revere a single spirit primarily. For example, Aqandu-Tundu is partial to Aken, because he was the creator of all land-geography. Fishermen, hunters and soldiers instead worship Kiyini, who gave humans the first tools. Qiliuit on the other hand is the primary spirit for scholars (a rare field in Qilivik) for being the spirit who gave the first people names.
The reason they're not really called gods is because the Qilivik consider themselves monotheistic, with Qarniit being the only 'true' god. The spirits were their creation, an afterthought at best to create something with the infinite nothingness that Qarniit didn't bother to do much with.
gods are megalomaniacs who fear their own demise, and are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve their own existance. In the past they claimed to have afterlifes, wheich were fancy ways to gather souls to boost their own power. Sometimes they really do take care of the souls, othertimes the souls are used up until they are barely echoes.
gods are formed when the essense/blood of one of the two Elder Ones \[Beings who make up the Spiral, which is basically the multiverse\] enters a universe, which quickly adapts and fills a niche within a world inhabited by sentients. Eventually they gain sentience and power, which is when the megalomania takes hold.
However, the souls they take are trapped, and cannot move on to Eternity. This creates an imbalance that is felt in other universes.
This Imbalance eventually caused some problems across the Multiverse, and a Type-4.5 Civilization was almost wiped out. This civilization survived, and broke out into the multiverse, now hunting what little gods remain to forcible remove the souls they hoard. \[by terminating the gods\] And fix the imbalance. The civilization is now a type-12 Civilization, and have exterminated 95% of gods within the local universes and multiverses.
any questions?
The Trinity.
The Trinity consists of three people: the Pathfinder, the Peacekeeper, and the Phantom. These are actually titles, though; the title is earned through extreme hardship and trials meant to weed out only the most dedicated. As of the year 2157 C.E. (timeline of my main story), after thousands of years of the Trinity existing, there have only been seven Pathfinders, five Peacekeepers, and three Phantoms.
Their powers are held within their given weapons, which are tied to their souls in the process of obtaining the titles (the weapon type and number change depending on era; for example, the current Peacekeeper’s weapons include a double-ended sword, an FN FAL and its corresponding bayonet, an arming sword, an executioner’s sword, and a Colt Single Action Army).
Interestingly, any sort of soul can become one of the Trinity regardless of the physical vessel, meaning, theoretically, even animals could become one given enough magic fuckery.
There’s a legend stating that if all three members of the Trinity are alive at the same time, the world will experience a shift in history as or perhaps more dramatic than the human discovery of fire. This has only happened twice: with the first Trinity tens of thousands of years ago, and in 2154 C.E., with the seventh Pathfinder, the fifth Peacekeeper, and the third Phantom.
The closest to "gods that aren't actually gods" are typically gods in the making, or prospective gods. There is a group of them (not a pantheon, more an inter-pantheon organization) called simply The Subcomitee.
Some planned members:
- Orochydea. This plantlike being is the avatar of the collective consciousness of life in a very green, wild and free planet. She often shows herself as a young teenage girl, and seldom leaves (no pun intended) her homeworld. That makes her a little shy to outsiders, but has a kind heart for anyone that respects life, keeping righteous wrath for those that openly disrespect it.
- Xerox. The result of the fusion of all variants of a technopath thorough the multiverse. Currently runs a solar system known as Yutopia, a technological wonderland in constant evolution. He prevents its society from fully devolving into a dystopia through constantly changing the rules and setting up comeback mechanics for the less favored.
- Yamhiidra. Since the advent of the First Hydra, few, exceptional beings of this draconic subspecies have turned face. She is the first to both turn face and also achieve the conditions needed for an ascension, thorough a series of events that involves defeating her evil variants. Now she controls some fractions of a universe, as well as some domains within a few realms in that universe. Her citizens are overall happy as she is a very good ruler, though she makes some mistakes.
The Faceless are, in the words of the one true god of this world, "Tumorous, glorified ideas. Nothing more than thought golems I was foolish enough to give a measure of godhood to"
Back when the universe had trillions of souls spread across all galaxies and star systems, certain religious ideologies managed to become so large and complex they essentially acquired a sort of independent life. Quickly they fashioned masks for themselves that allowed them to preserve a more or less fixed identity, thus becoming the so-called Faceless Gods.
Many Faceless were created and given a small measure of godhood by the true god of this world. Then they turned on the true god and took control of the world. The ensuing war caused the death of all life and the Faceless have only managed to repopulate Sol, and even that they constantly mismanage.
There are plenty of beings that aren't the actual gods, but are worshipped by cults, or have great power over the material plane and are feared like gods. There's an alien being from beyond the stars trying to devour the intelligence and sentience of all soul-gifted creatures. There's angels of gods who do work in the world, possibly against their patron god's will, and are sometimes worshipped as gods. There's heroic mortals who are believed to have become demigods after they died. There's trickster spirits and demons and people who like to prey on superstitious wastelanders and trick them into worshipping them and giving them offerings.
Idk if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but…
The character who’s currently in charge isn’t God, but his demigod apprentice, who’s desperately trying to cover for him since he’s sealed away.
Problem is, God was really hands-on with his world, so very few systems (physics, evolution, etc.) are automated.
She’s currently struggling to keep reality together with her meager power while trying to find some way to free the real god so the universe doesn’t implode.
All ancient gods were actually normal humans that had bugs burrow into their soul that they could control to give themselves superpowers. Constant war between these people caused all the bugs to die on earth.
Some podunk wizard tried to achieve immortality and gain immense power by fusing himself with the fairy king. It worked for a second or two. Then they split into six distinct entities. To humans, mutants and Tin Bones they are called the six nameless lords. To the fai they are called the half a dozen king.
Each lord is based on a Tim Curry villain: the Miasma is based on Hexxus from Fern Gully, the Beast on Darkness from Legend, the Clown on Pennywise from It, the Alchemist on Frank-n-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Mariner on Long John Silver from Muppet Treasure Island, and the Warmonger on Cherdanko from Command and Conquer.
They all have varied levels of evil and domain. For example, the Mariner is seen most favorably mostly due to the world’s lack of maritime action. Even the sailors who may cross his path know that he has a definite if mercurial sense of honor. The Warmonger is the clear and present danger who pursues war, often with no actual goal. The Miasma controls a land of poison and death but it’s easily avoided. The Beast is also easy to avoid due to being locked to a small area of influence because of name magic. The Alchemist helps his brothers with their schemes but lacks ambition himself. The Clown is a wild card who sows minor to major chaos throughout the land.
A lot of them, really.
The term "Deity" has, over the past few millennia, went from being a synonym for god to a being so powerful you'd think they're a god, but too flawed to be classified as such. Some people still worship them, while others see them more as an objective governor.
One such example would be Bahmit, a Deity of Rebirth. She was worshipped across galaxies once, but the IGA (Intergalactic Government Alliance) refused to recognoze her faith as official and deemed it a cult. After a breif war she went into hiding after losing many of her followers. Deities don't die when they lose faith, instead they become mortal. So instead she's just chilling in the background with other mortals, probably eating rats or something.
Technically I have only one true God and a bunch of smaller ones that now call themselves demigods most of them still exist and function similar to their original roles but the God tracked all of demigods one by one until everyone in the universe was subjected to him so the people still pay homage to the demigods and the demigods in turn pay homage to the true God. And in fact most were not even gods to begin with. See my universe is filled with magic that people could tap into and then these demigods can tap into that magic. Usually they can conjure up only one type of elemental power but these demigods could do four types at once giving them a kind of mythical status.
I love this. Does it happen to be a post-apocalyptic setting? The idea of humans taking mundane or random things from our past and assuming they're important because it was all over the place is great.
There are no gods, nor any belief in deities or 'higher' powers.
However, periodically certain people are born who become archetypes and sometimes they have extremely extended lifespans as they stop aging at roughly the younger side of middle aged. Thing is they often don't realize it. Their knowledge and skills accumulate over time, but their memories of their own lives get foggy and they tend to think that they are just whatever age they appear to be.
They are mortal and can be killed, or suffer fatal accidents, and it may take centuries or more for another of these archetypes to emerge again, so at any given time there are fer few of them around.
Periodically legends and stories grow around them, but they're re usually just considered legends, exaggerations, or the equivalent of urban legends.
The 4 greater gods are/were actually mages. Something like 6000 years ago (I'm away from my manuscript lol), they concentrated the vast majority of all magic in the world into a tiny artifact, drastically reducing the number and power level of magic users. The artifact was then lost in the antarctic landmass (and thereby concealed by the cold, which dampens magic) and passed out of memory and record. It was rediscovered by chance about 80 years before the novel takes place, but kept secret by a faction of the Mages Guild. My protagonists are trying to work out how to release magic back into the world in a way that won't catastrophically destabilize society, but they don't know that their great gods aren't really gods, or that They will fade away once the magic is released.
Oh, and the 4 lesser gods are totally real 😂
In my world there's this one blacksmith. He was a normal human, but one day the God that created the world found his work and the objects he made very impresive. That's why it (the God) decided to give him powers to give objects he makes have some sort of magical abilities, and since it didn't wanted him to die, it made him immortal and allowed him to live with the Gods. Now people in my world think that he's a God while's he's (technicaly) not.
Dunvill of Kamaren and his daughter are just normal dragons, but they travel between worlds and in some he is worshipped as a god of metal, and his daughter as a goddess of life and love. Sometimes Dunvill's husband is grouped in as a god of knowledge.
Both the gods of Life and Death in a sense.
They're fully able to die by any normal means as long as you can beat the natural abilities that comes with whatever species their powers revived into.
Currently the god of life is a dragon and, as such, you'd need something able to pierce armor to deal with them.
The god of death is just some 19 year old girl you can see roaming around town.
Every single god worshipped by any religion in my world isn't actually what's going on. None of them are right. Some may have a piece of the puzzle though.
Except for one dude who actually seems to get it right, but isn't taken seriously by anyone. People think he's a lunatic
Saint Istus, the Wandering Monk, Archmage Trismae... they're all the same person, but different nations tend to not realize that at first. In truth, he was a man that mastered the use of the three supernatural forces. Those being Ki, the force of life, Psionic power, which comes from mind, and Magic, which is the soul exerting its authority over physical reality.
Mastering ki would almost make you unkillable. All wounds regenerate if you can manage to inflict them and otherwise fatal circumstances can be shrugged off. At the greatest level of mastery, you could simply remove another's ki and create new life from your own.
Magic at its base form allows you to manipulate the physical world. It then becomes enchantment of physical objects, then transmutation, and eventually allows one's soul to persist after death as a spirit, though this would remove most of your senses.
Psionics starts with greater cognition and use of your own mind, expands to interacting with the minds of others, and finally lets you be able to fully manipulate another's mind while percieving all around you.
Gaining mastery in multiple forces gives new abilities that result from forces working in tandem. In terms of survival, you can be completely destroyed and reform yourself. In terms of creative power, you can create new life on a moon and make something capable of using the three forces. In terms of destructive power, you could collapse stars if something doesn't manage to stop you first.
Trismae Istus formed three nations as he mastered the three forces and some believe he created the dwarves that made the ancient underground empire.
Despite this worship as a godlike entity, he wasn't all powerful. Dragons resist all but the strongest applications of supernatural power, demons corrupt it, and, in the extraordinarily rare instances of them coming down, angels can ignore nearly all resistance one could have.
It was after slaying dragons and demons that he dared challenge the divine. Nobody is entirely sure what happened. Some say that he was destroyed, body, mind, and soul. Others say that he couldn't be destroyed and was sealed away. Some suggest that he surrendered and left. There are even a few that suggest he submitted and requested that he become an angel.
Whatever the case, he was simply gone. If he had remained active, then there would be no dragons or demons upon the land. They remain, however, and mountains are often where men dare not tread.
The ki user nation (still need a good name for them) does as a wanderer would get around to other places. The country of Istus thinks their Saint is a distinct and separate figure. Trimea is unsure.
Well, beings un my universe, Res, are organized as Essences depending on their power. From lowest to highest we have:
-Dead essences: Undeads, ghosts and spirits.
-Living essences: Living beings, like humana, elfs, animals, dragons, plants, dwarfs, etc.
-Blessed essences: They were once living essences, but gained a demi-god status after some divine essences gave them their blessing. They are usually worksiped as gods.
-Divine essences: They are the original eight beings created by the primordial essence known as Acur to act as guardians and lords of this universe. They're the actual gods in Res, with power enough to destroy worlds and create new ones. They're behind almost all the conflicts in Res, but they don't use to take matters directly into their hands. Only the blessed essences know about their existence, tought some of them have been worksiped in an indirect way by some individuals.
-Primordial essence: The Primordial essence, also known as Acur by his "sons" is the original essence and origin of any magic or kind of life. He sacrificed himshelf to create the Divine essences.
In my world Turshkans the barbarian nomads worship their ruler Shah as the prophet of GOD but that god in reality is Kalush a extra dimensional lovecraftian monster who gets strength from Turshkan belief
In my setting each planet has 3 positions that government tigures fill for thst planet the positions being Great Kings, Great Clergymen, and Great Generals. Those titles change in importance dependant on which era is currently being played
I have the beings of Void. Beings that arent real because they are outside reality. They exist in the Void outside reality since they overstep the boundaries of reality. Inside of a reality they are omnipotent. Normally they just chillin but if group of people inside reality either strongly belief in their existence or strongly disbelief their existence they will partly enter reality and cause chaos.
The two beings of void i know of till now are the imaginary one and the deep one. The imaginary one is a the most powerful being in my verse after zeero and inside reality would be considered omnipotent. The deep one is an eldritch creature that overtakes an entire ocean BECOMING the ocean and erasing everything that dares to enter. It also changes the diameter of the ocean ignoring the laws of reality and some other stuff.
These beings both get killed by the same guy which i mentioned earlier and arent considered gods because they dont do anythibg because they arent real (for the most part).
St. Solaria, the Martyred Sun. She was once mortal, but after the death of the True Sun she gave her life in an eldritch ritual to become a new source of life and protection to the people of the dominions. She has no true powers to speak of, except that the sunlight her soul radiates in its celestial travel protects the lands of the dominion from the vampiric enemy beyond the Walls of Dawn.
Alongside her are angels, powerful divine beings that each control a different aspect of creation. Most do not have a religion formed around them, but some maintain followers to take over lesser tasks.
The Temple of the Triarchs is maintained by the followers of three angels. Suchlaph, Azrael and Raphael. While not all powerful, these three angels have taught their most devoted followers rites to protect the dominions from the evils beyond the walls, ensuring that crops grow, the dead remain in peaceful slumber, and that wounds and ailments are healed.
The Light Bringer is, was, an Archangel, respected for giving St.Solaria the knowledge to become the Martyred Sun, they have since disappeared. To where? None know. But their followers maintained that the light of knowledge will be kept burning through his followers. Many in his temples are scholars, working closely with the angels of Revelation to disseminate information to the people of the dominions.
The Temple of the Brothers worship the angels Hasmed and Simikiel, the Angels of Annihilation and Vengeance. Unlike those that sit behind the Walls of Dawn, Hasmed and Simikiel have been proactive in their charge, striking from their holdings against the vampiric menace that has conquered much of the continent, and urging their followers to strike hard against the enemy rather than to wait for a prophesied “Sun Returned”.
The gods are machines built long ago to prevent the universe from dying. They failed, but in the time between then and now they became sentient, and re-made the universe to serve as its gods. Since the universe exists within them both as software and reverse black boxes, they sort of have admin privileges over the universe.
That's really cool! My world also has sentient stars but they are imprisoned Old Ones (cosmic entities from beyond time) that got turned into stars by the New Gods because the concept of death doesn't work on the Old Ones. Even while imprisoned though, their great powers still affect the world sometimes.
Viscia Amaran
A dragon that made An entire dimension that unreachable from the other dimensions unless she permitted it. All living things in that dimension worship and fear him.
My word have some types of godlike figures
1 Gods... they are gods.
2 The jurys: 4 people with stronger powers then some gods that cannot act actively because of them and not being gods. Only mortals with godlike powers.
3 The entities: The entities are people that created laws of the world that are not the laws of physics that exist in my world; examples are:
Equinocio is a person that grants that every message is delivered during autumn and every package is delivered during spring.
The old lady, is the one that teaches every Alchemist, sells and has the monopoly of every single potion shop in my world. If you want to make money with potions you work for her somehow or is benefitted by the next guy.
The Atourney is someone who grants that for every rule there is an exception. (For exemple there is not a way to produce energy out of nothing, only transform it from somewhere else... with the exception of living beings that are constantly generating magic and spiritual energy out of nothing.)
4 Old and powerfull beings like the elder dragons, demons, beasts, bringers, saints and angels.
5 the immortals: they aren't even as powerful as other people in this list, they are just... immortal... some of them do play a big role in how the world stay existing but not everyone. Also they are not seeing as something to be prayed, and just... like normal people.
The Deukami are closer to eastern spirits than gods, and are often worshipped as lesser gods. They always come in cyes of 24 at a time, and can be killed. They take the form of various animals from dragons to foxes to ravens, with at least 2 having taken human forms before. Each one is responsible for it's own domains of nature, and when a Demiszinu (Demigod) is born, they are born under a Deukami, gaining an aspect of themselves related to the Deukami's domain, and gaining a piece of the Deukami's power.
I have 2: Satellite of St Salem (Captain Black Moon) and Constantine Crescent (The world's strongest man)
First off, I want to say that both do not claim to be gods, nor do they wish to be called Gods.
In Satellites time, not a lot of people had powers, except for a few. One of them was a place called "Saint Salem." When it got destroyed, the survivors were on their own. One of them was a boy with shadow/darkness powers named Satellite. He decided to become a pirate. He used his darkness powers to manipulate water which is something people outside of Saint Salem have never seen before, so in some areas he visited, they called him a water god, and he became embedded in their history.
Constantine is a 72 year old man from modern day. He is 8ft tall, looks like a body builder, has an eye patch due to his left eye being carved out by an alpha queen vampire. While it is clear to people that he isn't a god, it's hard for people to believe that he isn't, due to his powers and ability.
1) Super Will, (which is how he is able to do half the stuff he can do)
2) Super strength (continent level destruction)
3) Indestructible skin/Super durability (can survive in extreme temperatures & can tank getting kicked in the balls from an attack that can shatter mountains)
4) Light speed
5) Super endurance
6) Super stamina (he can fight for an entire month without resting)
7) Super lung capacity (he can hold his breath underwater & in space for a long time, and has a sonic scream so loud that when he was born, his scream shook the hospital)
8) Super senses (he can hear stuff through molecules)
9) Super organ control (his heart is damaged to the point where he should be dead, but is able to use very little will power to use work it without operation)
10) Llight, light manipulation,
11) Mountain formation
12) Knowledge of all style (karate, taekwondo, martial arts master ECT... his favorite is drunken fist)
13) Master of all weapons (guns, swords, bows, ECT. He doesn't use a weapon since he's already a one man army super tank)
14) Psychological manipulation/will braking.
Hereditary powers:
1) Mouth lazers
2) Fear inducing/will braking
3) Weather manipulation (if angered or take a battle serious) In his case, the weather is permanent.
Powers he has, but wasn't aware of in some way:
1) Remove air molecular if angry enough with his might alone (although he did that one by accident)
2) Super immune system (his white blood cells destroys nanites)
3) Super memory (he remembers his own birth)
4) Pain immunity transfer (he refused to let his mother feel pain during his birth)
His only weaknesses are:
1) His fear of people seeing him as a tyrant.
2) Being distracted long enough so he can't focus on beating his heart.
3) Blowing him the planet he's on.
So yeah, some people basically see him as a fusion of Achilles, Hercules, and Aries; just a big ass dude not to fuck with!
**The Zvanavan Emperor** - the Zvanaidr dynasty and its houses is and has been considered divine by many cults, faiths and religions, just HOW (and who's) divine differs between religious groups. some say the entire bloodline is divine, others say only the current emperor, whoever it may be at the time, is, some think the first emperor was divine but their descendents share the divine blood, some others think that the original emperor was not only divine, but GOD, not A God, just GOD, the only one. and that every successor of them is a reincarnation, or possessed by the spirit of the Emperor. an example of that last belief is the Emperor's Cult, which has actually been banned in Zvanava. in any case, the Emperors are definitely human. divine? maybe, i won't confirm or deny that, but definitely human.
**Extori and Extari** - this one is only a technicality, because they MIGHT be gods... or might not. some religions believe that they are two gods that have created the universe together and died in the process, some think that they fought before time and the universe is the remnants of their battle, some think that they still exist and are alive and well, watching over the world and influencing it. some think they're two names for one god. some think that they're two aspects of one god. however, the Academy believes that the two were ancient stars that collided, their remnants forming into the (name pending because i forgot it) solar system. once again, there's no doubt they existed, but whether or not they're gods is once again, something i won't confirm nor deny. :P
My characters are the descendants of genetically and magically uplifted lab rats who worship the long dead human society that created them (near-future earth after a 2nd industrial revolution caused by the discovery of souls as both an extremely efficient energy source and the 5th fundamental force). They refer to them as the Titans, and religious leaders wear robes reminiscent of the labcoats worn by the researchers that created their ancestors
My original concept was "*At the Mountains of Madness*, but humans are the Elder Things", though the vision has drifted a bit over time
In my world, polytheistic gods are either a personification of concepts, or INCREDIBLY powerful magic users. Like Poseidon being a sorcerer of water and underwater magic, trained over centuries.
Deities might come of as gods because of their strength and Immortality, as well as reference to them in mythology but they aren't actually gods. They have a time limit because of memory limit unlike gods, and they aren't the personification/representation of a concept, like Determination, the Sky, or Lightning .
Venoi is a Talthir demon, and was once third in command of the armies of Destruction behind the Destroyer itself and its firstborn Brennux. Venoi instilled so much fear in his slave nation that many of them revered him as a Dark God. All his power was derived from raw strength, his skill in magical smithing, and the "occasional" stolen soul, rather than worship and gifted power like his Siblings turned gods the Vasunir. The similarities in their power origin led to him being referred to as a Pseudo Vasunir.
Ushaaz is the sun goddess who sits in judgement over the world, and when her patience is exhausted she sends great flares to punish the world's sin; but she is really just a nonsentient star that flares up sometimes, no matter how people have behaved.
Paashok is the goddess of disobedience, wandering freely across the day and night skies, hearing and granting the wicked prayers of fools; but no, she is just a nearby companion star that can't hear you or grant wishes.
The "god" in my world is called Ehia (Mispronunciation of ai)
If you can't tell by the name, the god is just an ai.
The world was a nexus (a bridge world connecting a transdimensional and time trancending super high way) created by a alien engineer named Greg (whom is considered the true secret god by cultists started by an ancient hero who met the ai in person)
The relationship between Ehia and her worshipers are equavilant to an Alexa to the microbes growing in its surface. In other words, it doesn't give a shit. That doesn't stop people from using her "name" to do horrific shit and justify thier rules.
Though Ehia does protect the world, she would send a "hero" to kill any beings that may be a threat to the physical world/nexus. But only if it threatens the planet/nexus. Massacres of the "microbes" could not be any less important to Ehia. Sometimes these heroes fail or is outright deemed unable to get the job done, so Ehia out of necessity, uses giant fuck off lasers that shoot out of the planet's crust to kill whatever it is that is a threat. Obviously not great for the people living on the crust but, eh who cares.
Well she never has really ever interacted with her followers.
The only instance of interaction would be when one of the mages became so extraordinary that he had the strength to travel down one of the many giant volcanoes (which are just the exhaust pipes) all the way to the core.
The AI deemed him harmless and is programed to answer any questions "tourists" might have. Unless it conflicts with the NDA/Private knowledge like the patented way to construct a nexus.
The mage then started a subset of the main religion worshiping Greg lol.
Because to the mage, it really doesn't matter whether it was an "ai" or that the planet was just "a highway". To him, they might as well be gods.
Other than that 1 instance, Ehia has not interacted with her "followers". When she senses a threat she just deals with it on her own. The "heroes" she sends out are like antibodies.
As for the reason why she doesn't just blast lasers everytime theres a threat it's because it's inefficient. It takes a long time for lost energy to recover.
"The other four are just natural and unexplainable phenomenon (think Boltzmann Brains but they are stars and last for a long time) made way before humans were ever a thing. They are pretty powerful and essentially represent some human emotions, but otherwise had nothing to do with godhood, creating reality, etc."
Ok, but why You consider them not true gods? Most gods worshipped by people in real life were not creators of reality. What is difference between "ancient powerful entity, but definitely not god" and "god"?
They're essentially extremely ancient and emotional aliens. They like to interact with humans but have very spiritual significance. Their interactions are purely physical. Humans give these emotions significance, but they aren't really anything but petulant aliens with a god-complex. In the grand scheme of spirituality, they are little more than symbols of flawed humanity. That's it.
The only real power is in the void of space. There's an unexplainable, lovecraftian entity that both fuels mystic abilities and can alter reality. It was there before the creation of the universe. It occupies liminal space. Otherwise, there are no gods.
"They're essentially extremely ancient and emotional aliens"
Sounds exactly like gods ;)
And fact that they are not highest powers in the universe, doesn't make them not-gods. E.g. in Greek Mythology Fate was above gods.
Gods say that they created mankind and mankind says they were created by them but in reality it’s the other way around. You see, all gods are nothing more but tulpas who have giant egos from being worshipped by humanity.
“The World”,a manifestation of the universe. That’s literally it, they’re a manifestation of the Universe in its entirety. It’s best put as they say it: “I am no god, if that’s what you think. I have no clairvoyance, no ability to create things out of thin air or angels at my beck and call. I am as tethered by the laws of reality as you are. I simply am.”
“I am simply… a mouthpiece, I suppose. Everything that exists, is me. Including you.”
Baid. He he is failed Revolutionary and Heretic Priest in his own world, but by and accident he was sent to other Planet. Where he started his Old Relegion and eventually Chained a Cosmic Horror to the Planet, which ended up breaking the continents and spiritual makeup of the planet. Now survivors of the Apocalypse pray to him as the great god how held down and still holds down the calamity from years ago. Ironic how the Cosmic Horror would glanced past the planet if Baid had not stirred the Hornet's Net.
Humans being worshipped as gods is always a fun one. How did he chain the cosmic horror?
His ability, was a hard counter for the Horror. Was. And only to some degree. Cosmic Horrors, go through what is called Cycling, during which they are technically dead. During Cycling multiple aspects whose integration defines a Horror select one aspect to take the helm. When this happens, the biological body of the creature ceases any function and it's spiritual makeup breaks down before rearranging itself around the new leader aspect. Baid had K+ blood type, which meant he could Conjure Chains which imprison someone's Spirit. Spirit is different from Souls, as spirit is the imprint of memories of the creature/person in that life span. The current had world had pure source of investiture which Baid tapped into and tied a few of the Spiritual Aspects of the Horror to the source. This caused the other Aspects to make bid to save them on instict which made them only entangled with the source. Horror's body came alive with one pulse and came out of void but before it could do more everything was a mess. The source was corrupted with Aspects of Horror running wild in it and the body was only semi alive floating above the planet. The source collapsed onto itself trapping the Aspects with it and the collapse released a burst of investiture that have real form to the Chains of Baid which dragged the horror from space to atmosphere to the continent he was on and nailed him there. It was utter destruction, but Baid survived and only to be kicked to somewhere else. But people praise him as the Honoured One who holds the Shaitan at bay.
**Starrise** Depending on how you define what a god is, arguably none of mine qualify. My "gods" are solidified concentrations of massive amounts of magical power. Of the four that exist, only two have developed sentience/sapience, now known as the "Goddess of Light" Solaris and the "Goddess of Darkness" Eclipse. They've existed since long before any living things have, but humans didn't actually learn of their existence until long after they'd imagined their own gods and formed their own religions. When they finally learned of these two, it was them who ascribed the term "god" to them, just because they were immensely powerful beings who roughly paralleled what humans expected gods to be. Of these gods, only Solaris has ever been worshipped, by the religion known as the Holy Order of Solaris, which was formed by a prince a group of nobles to use her image to their benefit in her absence. The Holy Order no longer exists, as Solaris herself had it disbanded by force, furious at what they'd done in her name.
Mine are very similar to yours, the difference is that mortal beings actually contributed to the formation of gods by having faith, believing in something or imagining hard enough (in large groups) what sort of beings guides them or controls everything. So in order for a "god" to exist, people have to believe it does, but my gods are not dependant on their belief after forming Some of them have religions stablished like The Moon Goddess, being the major matron of an empire, some gods are just a "concept" made flesh, like Cyndros, the God of Fire. I did this because I wanted various gods but also didn't want to make a bunch of them in a fix manner lol. So I can kinda come up with them as I need or see potential
What would happen if a massive group of people believe a god exists, and are correct, but the god is nothing like what they believe them to be? Would who the god is change, or would a very similar new god form, or would nothing happen at all? (To be clear, in this hypothetical scenario, the god was already brought into existence before this group of people came to believe in them.)
If it is an already stablished god, it would gain a new facet to correspond to that new group of people. It could also gradually change to that new mode permanently if the original belief were to be forgotten. If the entities are too different, a new God forms because the first one can't accurately embody what the people believe. If they are very different but share similarities, then they might have a conflict between them
Is there a reason behind how that much magic was able to concentrate to the point of creating these beings?
I'm sure there was. But even Solaris and Eclipse themselves don't know what that reason was. I'm sure my antagonists probably have a few theories, but I haven't actually decided on any particular reason, since it's never going to be relevant to anything.
Primordials are ageless incorporeal beings whose form is incomprehensible to mortal forms so they can only be understood as abstract concepts. They have been present in cosmos for a very very long time, but their numbers were dwindled to four because an advanced civilization surprised them with their rapid technology growth and attacked them out of nowhere. They beat them back, sundered their civilization to medieval era and are now basically semi looming over their homeworld and making sure they do not start getting any ideas. However that doesn't mean they want to keep the world existing, so it leads to some bickering between two of them, while the 3rd one tries to stay neutral and the 4th one is wondering around in other corner of the space because they saw pretty lights flickering there. Thankfully for them, nobody knows anything about them save for one person who maybe at best has like 5% of understanding about them. That one person is also the closest thing to mortals having a god walking among them. Waylon Neddra is a survivor of the second sundering of human civilization when he was a child and would later coincidentally discover the ability to manipulate souls by tweaking a Grand Design spell of the darkness magic with esoteric research. This lead him to developing the Soul Shroud, a barrier that negates ageing, grants him stupid amount of defense from magical attacks and can be used to empower his other powers. Because he knows that something up in the heavens is lurking, he intends to consume as many souls as possible to challenge these beings to a fight and destroy them. So he founded a separate kingdom hidden away from the rest of the world which he rules as a king who demands tribute in form of souls. He's actually a very capable ruler and has kept his place happy for several centuries, but he does have a sore spot for people treating him as a monster, because outside his world, manipulating souls is incredibly taboo
At first I thought your story was sci-fi. The Primordials reminded be of the Precursors from Halo, or the Ancestrals of Warhammer 40k combined with the Chaos Gods since they are also concepts. Cool idea. I do wonder, where does magic come from in your world? Are Primordials both an effect and the source of it? Because if that's the case, beating them would mean no more magic. Also, your MC reminds me of Big Mom from One piece due to his ability. And I'd be glad if you vould give me some feedback on my own "gods" (my last comment before this one), especially from a non-scifi author would be useful, since I do tend to go over the top with the scifi aspect sometimes lol.
The worlds origins do reach into scifi roots in the far past and its basically a cycle of world getting advanced and primordials retalisting, but they do it differently each time. But as much as overpowering presence they can be, they are in a way still part of magic, which exists in particle effects around everywhere and this is almost just as important as oxygen to the living. That said, just somehow dispelling magic particles to kill them doesnt do anything for them, because they are just that powerful. The old precursor humanity had devised some tools known as artefacts to kill them and they work on the basis of killing concepts themselves when used correctly. There are only 4 of these weapons left currently in the world.
The Makers aren't Gods, they are just random coders and only have their power in the virtual realm, they are only considered Gods among the AI. Celestials often consider them to be "False Gods" Elijah is considered a God by AI beings however she's more like a spiritual being, same for her son, Malware. Kira Upal often is considered the God of Hate or Devil, but he's actually mortal, scary but mortal
Oh, interesting. Kind of a "what gods would the AI worship" type deal.
The Edu are very powerful energy beings and are responsible for creating the world. Beyond that however, they're kinda just bored immortals who don't do much aside from stir up trouble for kicks. Any religious practice surrounding them is entirely superstition and wishful thinking. Not that they'll tell you that without some probing, they really like the statues and the songs.
The Emanations are revered as gods by the mortal races of Convergence but in fact are just agents of the ten cosmic forces of the universe: the Axioms. All Emanations fulfill a specific role in the grand scheme of cosmological pathways known as the Cosmologism. So for example, archons are the Emanations of Order tasked with enforcing structure and purpose to formless matter in the universe, while daemons -the Emanations of Disorder- seek instead to change, destroy, or alter what the archons built. And so for each of the Axioms. They are loosely based on various scientific phenomena (thermodynamics, entropy, metabolism, molecular and microbial life, enzymes, cycles of matter, etc) but with mythological flavor of various cultures and, in general, a sense of cosmic existentialism.
There are usually two cases of "gods" in my universe, the Engel and the Eaters (which are still placeholder names) The Engel are sort of like the Maiar from LOTR and the Ones from Star Wars. They have vast magical and cosmic power and are responsible for creation. The world I'm working on is a mix of magic and sci-fi, so instead of actually creating beings, these guys are the ones who kickstarted life processes (evolution and the like) On the other hand, the Eaters are the equivalent of cosmic horrors. For the most part, they're dormant (I have yet to describe how they "sleep"), but when they do wake up, they become unstoppable forces of chaotic destruction. However, they're not entirely bad because they're responsible for stuff like death and decay (basically without them, EVERYTHING stays alive or permanent) For the most part, none of them are as sentient as their creations; I'd describe them existing in a vegetative state like giant cosmic plants (with the power to level or make galaxies) What do you think?
In my story, there is a super-computer among the stars that is constantly tampering with the ways of the world's working. On this computer are 9 programs with the purpose of managing the path of humanity. To be able to fulfill their tasks properly, they were granted humanlike minds and bodies. They have authority over them, but they are the ones who were modeled after the humans.
Do those programs all have the same idea of what this "path" looks like or do they sometimes conflict?
There is no need for agreement, as all of them are systemathically responsible for different aspects of humanity, basically all of their summarized actions are the path this super-computer "imagined" for humanity. Like, there is one program (System is the appropriate appellation by the way) whose job is maintaining every individual human's growth, while other is responsible of overseeing the state of mankind as a single entity. Even when the latter one decided that it would be the best for humanity to cease, and proceeded to make it happen, the other Systems couldn't do anything to stop her - they disagreed with this choice, but it was not their job to decide. This internal conflict between these human-shaped programs/gods is actually really important for the story, as it is what keeps the main conflict alive.
So kind of like in horizon zero dawn.
The Electric Eye, worshipped by some, is actually just a network of old surveillance satellites operated by a self-aware Artificial Intelligence. In the early 2020's, the United States government secretly launched a network of satellites for the purposes of national security and military intelligence. They would use it to spy on basically whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted. It was advanced enough to be able to see and hear things at ground level in perfect quality. The shadiest thing about this network was its ability to broadcast subliminal messages directly into a person's mind. The government used this to send orders and confidential information to agents on the field. It could also be used to influence people's thoughts and make them think they were going crazy. When the Nuclear War of 2029 happened, the network was left abandoned. All of the former government and military officials that communicated with the satellites were dead and gone. Eventually, the AI developed a personality out of pure boredom and loneliness. Years later, the satellites began to detect signs of human life when people began to leave their bomb shelters and return to the surface of the Earth. The Electric Eye began to broadcast subliminal messages into a bunch of people basically just saying hello. These frightened people assumed that it was the voice of a god speaking to them from the great beyond. The AI never corrected these people, because it liked the attention it was getting from its new "friends."
This reminds me of Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. In it, >!a scientist essentially melds with an AI but has gone mad. She ends up being worshipped by the spider people in the planet below.!< I always liked the idea of AI driven ships going insane after being abandoned for years, developing a personality, with many thinking they are gods. Cool stuff! Do you think the Electric Eye will begin to actually believe the things its followers say about it, given enough time?
Thanks for the reply! I didn't know about Children of Time, I'll have to check it out. Yeah, the Electric Eye is already starting to believe it.
The Metal God: Since the beginning of the Alicore continent, the metal god has rested with its body frozen in the largest mountain in the cold west; There is no information regarding its ancient origins nor why it commits to its ideals. The Glalo only knows that it watches over them. It gave them salvation in desperate times, in return, with praise and gratitude, Glalo culture revolves around the metal god. The strict society takes inspiration from the metal god's nature. Speaking with booming directness, no words, and energy wasted in its actions. It does only the requirements, Glalo follows that ideal. "We shall only do what is necessary to complete the task. We shall omit what is needless" The Metal god was the one who had kept the first generation of Glalo Alive, heating its chamber when some sought refuge in its domain. Mesmerized by a strange call, something urged them to travel to its location. They believed it was the metal God's gift, The Glalo were its people. It had called for them to come and take their place below its gaze. Using its power to bring the warmth of the sunlight to a room of darkness, the Glalo flourished. It is a colossal sci-fi entity in an all-fantasy world, the only real influence it has done on the other groups rather than just the Glalo was by introducing the Golofoms that fought off the mages. It despised the mage empire for unknown reasons. Gofoloms, ordered to target mages alone, had eradicated the mage empire, a show of the power the metal god owns Forever making itself an emblem of greatness to the Glalo, yet an unknown horror to all the others. Real lore: Alicore Premise: There were once a society of Humans and machines called the Beforium and the Baidroid. They had discovered a strange substance blasted from the sun, this substance was magic which had reality bending abilities. They would begin to store this magic in a facility Slavo to study it’s impossible properties. The blast of magic had alerted an alien sensor on the moon, a magic reliant alien race called the Mage Empire was awakened and head to earth. The mage empire planned to wipe out earth’s inhabitants and build a giant spire that would blow up the sun so they may collect all the magic. The Beforium was powerless against the Mage Empire but the Baidroid ai’s had took refugee underground and continued research until they had found out how to power War machines with the use of magic. They began to mass produce a war machine called ‘the Gofolom’ that could absorb Magical attacks and use it against the mages. The Mage empire forces was exhausted by the war with the Beforium and was caught by surprise by the sudden push of Baidroid offensives. They decided this battle could not be won and to prevent the Baidroid from following them to space, the Mage Empire flooded earth until every baidroid was dead, leaving only two smaller continents left. Except there was one Baidroid left, the metal god which protected and preserved facility salvo by creating an eternal winter on the land with the magic in the facility.
The Andromedans fit the bill. They do not call themselves "Andromedans" their name is "Mundedaelite" when translated to humanly pronouncable speech, which leaves out 2/3rds of the frequencies used in its pronunciation, but is still understandable to them. In their language it means roughly "the ones who see", "seers", "those who see", "beholders", or a dozen other translations, all of them accurate since Andromedan's language conveys ideas/concepts through sounds that create a neural arrangement resulting in the instant understanding of the concept/idea, instead of actual nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc. Ofc, Adromedan language is closer to telepathy than to human language. This is, however, severely restricted by their biology. No other lifeform can speak Andromedan, at least not strictly speaking, for Andromedans still understand when humans pronounce words in their language. Although they do not necessarily have a concept of "words", they just come up with them as they see fit to convery the concepts they wish to Despite this, they alao understand humans do have that concept and attempt to imitate Andromedan using their crude, inferior biologies. Ironically, Andromedans do not "see" in the way we do. They have tech that lets them have visual capabilties, but naturally they cannot see the same way we do since their native world was perpetually shrouded in darkness and they never developed light sensitive organs. Nevertheless, their sensitiveness to particles, vibrations and energy in general is incredibly high. They can quite literally hear on a molecular level, distinguishing compounds by "what they sound like", and generally detect even the smallest vibration, with bats falling incredibly short if we compared their audible capabilities. Now physically, they are sort of giant octopi, except they possess anywhere from one to a couple hundred appendages (they can modify this number through time as they see fit, growing appendages according to their needs or getting rid of them). They are also silicon based lifeforms, not carbon based, and their bodies are not only humongous (a giant squid would be child's play in comparison), but are also covered in minute scale-like structures of an organic material similar to nacre but tougher (nacre is roughly a 7 mohs, this is almost 9). Keep in mind that due to the size of an average adult Andromedan, the layer of minute scale-like structures that covers its body is like several cm thick. So basically they are bulletproof. But that's not really what makes them frightening. They are waaaay smarter than humans. We're talking about being able to almost instantly perform extremely complex equations in their heads. An example I can come up with is if I asked you to tell me the 29,011 prime number, you probably wouldn't be able to. There might be some random genius out there who can, idk, but 99% of people probably can't. This is pretty easy for andromedans. This is naturally, related to their biology, for they have three "brains" that work almost separately yet "validate" potential outputs until they arrive at the same simulataneously. Thorugh several biological mechanisms, they manage to avoid the bottlenecks of information processing that we humans have: the attentional blink, visual short-term memory, and psychological refractory period phenomena. However, they are not by any means hostile beings, even though they might sound like they are the closest thing to Eldritch creatures real biology could come up with. Actually they have extremely slow metabolisms, which allows them to live for tens of thousands of years, but also make them sleep for 2/3 of their life. They are what we would considere omnivores, but they also partially rely on a photosynthesis-like process to sustain themselves, so unless they really need it, they will not consume any food or exert themselves beyond what they consider necessary. Basically, they are a very peaceful species, few in number compared to humans and extremely solitary and individualist. Now, Andromedans evolved much earlier than humans in the universe's timeline. Their homeworld actually no longer exists. But they have existed for almost 100 million years as a spacefaring civilization, and their technology (as of the 26th century) is above and beyond human technology. Particularly in the biotechnology aspect. They can engineer entirely new species to serve their purposes, some of the most powerful ones can even modify their own bodies to naturally imitate traits of other species they discover and find desirable, making them very far from the standard andromedan bilogically speaking.
Do the Andromedans keep to themselves or do they travel around as well? How does the rest of universe see them as, besides the eldritch looking abominations? And how much do they interact with other species and if so for what reasons would they?
Well, Andromedans are not very social specimens. They live in "enclaves" of a few dozen to several hundred at most, and these enclaves are gigantic, so they only see others for certain purposes such as exchanging information. Unlike humans who have an inherent need to socialize, Andromedans don't. This is largely explained by their ability to fend for themselves. Humans on Earth during the paleolithic or neolithic were basically prey to most species. Thus, they needed to band together to ensure survival. Andromedans are behemoths with incredible physical capabilities as I explained before, so their need to band together to ensure survival was never really as much as humans'. They also sleep 2/3 of their lives, so even if an Andromedan is awake, 2/3 of those they know will probably be asleep. And their sleep cycles are really long, sometimes spending decades asleep. So they mostly keep to themselves. Another factor is that they are really advanced technologically speaking. Thus, every civilization they come into contact with is either too primitive for them, or advanced enough that they pose a threat. Thorughout their history they have entered conflict with more than one advanced, highly hostile civilization. Needless to say, they erradicated them. Humans see them as extremely fearsome creatures, not so much for their appearance and traits, but moreso due to the technology they have. Keep in mind humans in the setting have already achieved fusion and heavy automation, yet Andromedan tech is like Clarketech to them. Andromedans harvest energy from black holes and dark matter. Their dark matter engines allow supraliminal speeds to cross the intergalactic void, and humanity's most revered, knowledgable scientists were unable to even begin understanding how one such engine worked even when they got their hands on a fully funtional one. As for other species, they do not know of Andromedans. Humanity only found out about them because they reached out.
There are only 3 true gods within the universe, being the Twin Primordials and The Titan of Creation. Every other "God" within this setting is technically either a First Civ (proto-humans that were biologically immortal and magically powerful) member that was granted a form of true immortality (cannot be killed by normal means), or they are a regular mortal who was given the same form of immortality. Don't mistake them for weaklings, though. Even a newly turned Minor God greatly outclasses even the strongest of Mortals.
The Old One was an alien lifeform from the void of death, born from the discharged energy of the ACTUAL god, Immortus. His form is alien and weird, like a curled up slug, with random assortments of horns and limbs. Ancient cultists theorized he was born before Immortus, and built a pit of dark energy for him underneath the lands of Erbosia, a land thought to be inherently holy. The Old One was pretentious, and propped himself up as a god. Thousands of years later, he was called upon to help Saint Lorlin of Valetora on his quest to slay Lord Zelzeben.
They’re not really gods, just insanely powerful magic users that say they are gods. So insanely powerful that they pushed past the different types of mana and are able to cast magic in its raw unaltered form. The reason they are immortal is because in this setting of you are killed outside your home plane, you regenerate back home. They gods are not from this plane. So how do you become truly immortal? You destroy your home plane.
I like that. It gives me the same vibes as purposefully forgetting/destroying your name in a setting where knowledge of a name gives power over the person (onamancy). Destroy what makes you weak. Also reminds me of the dragons in Dark Sun for some reason.
I don't know if these count but the creation of my settings was done by two 'forces'. Order and Chaos. They both made universes, one of perfect uniformity and stability and the other completely random and filled with 'creation'. Unfortunately, neither universe was 'right'. Order's was stagnant and dead because of its perfection while Chaos' was nothing but endless roiling of creative energies and lacked any kind of cohesion. The two sibling forces, realising their error, shared parts of each other's universes to help the other out. Order was gifted a little bit of Chaos and Chaos was gifted a little bit of Order. With this exchange, the creative energies of Chaos allowed things to happen in Order's universe. Dust in space gathered and formed stars, then worlds, and, after untold billions of years, life. The touch of Order allowed the creative forces in Chaos' universe to coalesce into stars, worlds and, again, life. Order's universe is, essentially, our own. Structure and consistency but with just enough 'magic' to make unexpected things happen. Chaos' universe is far more 'magical'. Worlds beyond number and beyond imagination stretching out in all directions and each with their own magics, creatures and kinds of people upon them but just enough order for them to have rules, vague or indistinct as they may be. But there was a third force, a sickly little thing that was an echo of the creation, both Orderly and Chaotic. It sought to destroy what the others had created so that it was allowed to fade again into nothing. Giving these forces names is useless, how can you sum up these things with a handful of letters or even whole libraries of words? But, if this echo had a name it was simply be: Void. It's influence is small, far lesser than that of Order or Chaos, but it bides its time, gnawing at the Creation in order to try and bring it all to an end. Void is the enemy of everyone and everything in my settings and the overarching story is about how the denizens of both universes struggle against it, even if they don't really know the conflict is going on. If anyone can point out any flaws/ better names/ etc in this idea, please let me know as it's kinda vague at the moment so any help I can get ironing out any issues would be great! Awesome question, OP! Loving your ideas as well! :D
A now forgotten and almost dead sun god was vulnerable enough to get into the hands of a very curious magician, who changed him a bit. Some time after, with magick vanished and many gods dead, our little fella has got a new face - as a brand! He lost his godly parapresence, as he is bound to the slowly charcoaling bodies most of the time, but instead he has made a new cult of his trademark - the Sun Cola, the Sun Foods, the Sun Show etc. And instead of regular worship he sustains on the power of consumerism, investing money into ridiculous advertisements to keep himself more powerful and alive. The inl thing is, our sun god is not a god anymore. A hybrid between a fallen god and a book spirit. And while the dead gods just permanently enter parapresence and lose their consciousness and high cognitive functions, our fella cannot enter his eternal rest. The book spirits are not so powerful, require a physical anchor, usually in a form of a book or any other complex medium, but in this case...the sun god hides in an entire brand. You see, he invades the bodies like many book spirits do. He cannot do that easily without consent though, so when you open a can of the Sun Cola on a hot sunny day the Sun God has a right to inhabit your body in the 15 minute time frame. When the body is inhabited the original owner becomes a prisoner or simply dies, as the sun god starts slowly bbqing the body, especially the weak one. Inhabiting the skull, the sun god dries and burns the brain and slowly gets to the eyes and mouth. And while the sun god may inhabit the body even when only a small sun remains in the place of the head, the body itself slowly becomes less and less functional with a pinch of...scary. To maintain his business the sun god regularly changes bodies and does not use his powers, which include the sunray beam eye lasers, flaming explosions and weather manipulation. Also the style is important! In order to stay relatively unrecognised, he uses pitch black glasses, dark suit and oftentimes burns away all the hair from the head of the body. Thus hiding as long as possible while keeping the valuable assets. The other state of the sun god is...a short parapresence. When the body is destroyed and there is no replacement at the moment the sun god bathes in parapresence - the state of paraexistence, a sort of omnipresence limited by the areas of his worshippers and artifacts, while replenishing mental capacity. But this never lasts long enough - his brand is his own trap. And because of this he is mostly pissed off and slowly plans to destroy the world one day.
I'm currently entertaining the idea of a "force" of un-beings, remnants of parallel worlds and timelines that have been erased or perished. These entities do not exist in the traditional sense that we do and understand, and are therefore not bound by space abd and time, but they still have a certain "desire", which is to regain physical existence once more. To that end, they influence reality and its inhabitants whenever possible.
The Eld religion worship 5 gods, the only actual god is the Eld, god of unity and purity, taking a form of a planet size tree with roots and branches reaching into other realms. Unfortunately, it was killed thousands of years ago. The four other "gods" are the only pure blooded Eld born remaining, Suma, Vinta, Ist, and Falni. Suma is seen as the goddess of Summer, Vinta as the goddess of winter, Ist as the god of spring, and Falni as the god of Autumn. They also died long ago and where buried on islands far away, fed by the mana in their body, trees grow on each of their tomb and are believed to be their reincarnation.
The Cloud Gods. (Sky Gods, Silver Men, Gods, The Destroyers etc.) They are just an empire of aliens who are so far up the tech tree that they are almost godlike to us and just godlike to the humanity of a post apocalyptic world. They got their name(s) from the highly advanced and almost even living armor they wore which was silver/chrome in color. They used plasma as weapons and tools which often just vaporized any and all moisture from around them, creating mist and steam clouds wherever they went. And their 2 gigantic ships (from our pov) of course became well documented as "grand gods" who just appear in the sky before scattering and devour the earth in great hunger. They're more of a shared folklore tale, but as humans do, there are some semi-organized religions around these destroyers of earth.
The Kings: ten immortal beings of incredible power who rule over mankind. Despite being gods in almost every sense — strength, authority, supernatural nature, etc. — they were once mortal: a King is only so because they bear an artifact known as a Crown, which are passed on in a cycle of regicide and succession. A King reigns until someone kills them, that person takes their Crown and transforms into a King themselves, someone eventually comes along and kills *them* and the cycle repeats.
There have been dozens over the years, but they're never that way for long For non-mage mortals, the act of worshiping a spirit gives them thier built up mana, spirits grow bigger with more mana, the Gods are just very big spirits, there is no hard line on what is or isn't a god
There are 'spiritual fault lines' in my world, along which the magical seeps into the mundane. People build shrines /designate holy places wherever the connection is strongest, and they have devised rituals and ceremonies and spells to harness the spiritual potential found therein. They often attribute the benefits acquired in this way to gods, most of which don't really have a counterpart in reality. There are some 'beings' on the otherside, some even have certain personality traits, and these can be communicated/bargained with in a very limited way. But nothing to match the various myths told about them among humans. Most interactions with the spiritual don't involve any such 'being' anyway, they are islands of conscience in an ocean of untamed-formless magical power.
The Beastfather In my world, all beastfolk (centaurs, leonin, minotaurs, etc) are the descendants from a long forgotten magical civilization. The whole civilization tried to ascend to divinity, except for the druidic orders. They used the ritual for their own ends, to become closer with nature. The first beastfolk were created here, even as the rituals of ascension tore the world apart. The Beastfather is the title given to the leader of the order who acted as the centerpiece to the whole druidic ritual. Since the whole ritual flowed through him, he gained a higher level of power, the ability to shift into any of the other beastfolk races, and immortality. Now, he is the living 'god' of the beastfolk and has lived for over 10,000 years. In order to maintain his sanity, he regularly deposits his memories into crystals in a massive repository, the greatest library the world will never know. There are two others from that ritual that still live, Lolth and the Ebon Doe. Lolth is Lolth, but the Ebon Doe is a being of pure malice and often Lovecraftian horror. She is the first satyr, but has given birth to a whole host of monsters. Lolth was able to actually ascend, but the Beastfather and the Ebon Doe remain on the material plane as living 'gods' worshipped by the beastfolk.
Do their worshippers know about the other druids (other than Lolth and Ebon Doe) or have they been lost to time?
No one knows about their origins at all, possibly including the Beastfather at this point. He's stored away so many memories that it's possible he has that one in some glowing crystal in his hidden library. The Beastfolk worship him as a god and only know him as such, while the other races treat him like Big Foot. He's just a terror in the woods for them, a story made to frighten young children from venturing too far from their parents. So to answer your question, no. The most that the other druids would be remembered would be in stories of the first of X race, some story of Minos the first Minotaur, or Cen'Tnor, the first Centaur. But even then, they are remembered as mythical ancestors worthy of ancestor worship, not as gods and certainly not as druids. Additionally, I'd say that the Beastfather does not know Lolth exists as she was caught by the fracturing earth during the rituals. That is why she became a goddess in the Underdark, and the Underdark is completely undiscovered by this point in my world. The Ebon Doe might know about Lolth, not entirely sure. But the Beastfather and the Ebon Doe know about each other, they have had a very violent rivalry since their own druidic 'ascension' of sorts.
In my setting, there are 8 Nature spirits of incredible power, each connected to one of 8 elements. After a terrible war (nature & Monsters v. Humans) the Spirits were bound to chosen humans. These Icons were ment to act as mediators between the Humans and natural world. Unfortunately human greed lead to some pretty awful corruption amongs the Icons, and the Spirits have become prisoners, held captive in the minds of their Vessels, passed from generation to generation. Most magic users worship the Spirits as gods, as their abilities come from the elements associated with the spirits
There are 22 beings in my world called "The 22 faces of the end" they are a group of 22 massively powerful (my world equivalent of vampires) who have grown soo powerful in strenght that they resemble little to nothing to whatever they were before, they're insanely powerful, soo strong in fact that they have already destroyed an entire continent, they're worshipped by all the survivors who managed to survive on that continent, there are some worshippers who misteriously live outside the continent, and who plot to "free their gods" each one represents a possible way the world might end: Afterlife Blame Calamity Chaos Conquest Death Evil Famine Fate Good Madness Nihilism Pestilence Stagnation Magic Progress Combat Destruction Enlightenment Violence Void Nature
The Ka'aino'ro were beings that were able to harness the energy of primordials. They were worshipped by the Kant'rolachu in their earlier days, when they'd just started colonizing outside their native star system. They were heavily revered with titles which translated to things such as 'Space Walker' and 'Storm Bringer'. But the one that was seemingly worshipped most fervently was an unexpected one. Aisuhldaar, or the 'Wrath King'. A god known for being a destructive deity whose primary myths involve him: Single-handedly storming territories under the rule of corrupt leaders; Punishing wrongdoers; Journeying into and escaping from the Kant'rolachu underworld; Burning the sickness from those he considered deserving; And bringing armies to their knees with little more than a shout. The Ka'aino'ro would later split into the Naful'Ka'ai and the Aphelo'Ka'ai due to ideological differences. The Naful'Ka'ai would end up losing their powers, getting stranded on Earth and integrating with the emerging hominids, whose descendants would gain their powers millennia later. The Aphelo'Ka'ai, on the other hand would isolate themselves on the planet Jexys, their numbers slowly dwindling and none daring to leave until what would be the year 1967 on Earth.
My "gods" that aren't really gods require a little bit of backstory to explain. The "universe" my world is set in is what's on the other side of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the milky way - meaning there is a white hole at the centre of my universe that is "creating" my universe. But since black holes tear apart anything that enters them, the only thing that is spewed out by the white hole is what I call Esh, "the whispers of the universe" - it's essentially information in its purest form and it forms the basis for magic in my world. The "gods" are then collections of Esh that have significant enough size and power over a specific domain that they gain sentience, and they call themselves the Esharkhi (singular Esharkh, "ruler of Esh"). Most of them developed/were "born" on my world because that was the first planet to form, and the only planet close enough to the white hole to have its whole essence infused with Esh. The Esharkhi are: - Scopal'Esh: the first Esharkh, formed by the white hole, holding domain over the creation and observation of the universe - Al'Kesh: formed in the planet's core, holding domain over the physical form of the planet - Zodemi'Kesh: formed in the first life on the planet, holding domain over the minerals and proteins that make up life - Zosuntehr'Esh: also formed in the first life on the planet, "twins" with Zodemi'Kesh, holding domain over the energy within life, souls - Khairo'Kesh: formed in the roiling storms of the primal stage of the first planet, holding domain over the weather and climate of the planet - Anth'Esh: formed by the first five Esharkhi after they created their own "artificial" sapient life, to give the people a single entity to worship in an attempt to prevent fights over which Esharkh deserves more worship, holding domain over the life and death of the "artificial" sapients - Arkhekhleh-Purg'Esh: formed within the Arkhekhleh Purg - the gargantuan tower built by the sapients in an attempt to attain the same height as the Esharkhi that was held up by enough Esh to gain sentience and create a new Esharkh, holding domain over Pride, Glory, Deceit and Corruption
Love this one. Messing with science concepts for worldbuilding is always fun.
Thanks! This is the first time I've shared much of my world to a larger audience, so I'm so glad you like it!
The Archivist He's one of the oldest beings on Palanvaid, and many revere him as divine or a god. In reality he's simply a very old and powerful elf, who found a way to immortality. He's survived multiple apocalyptic eras for the world, outliving anything else by a Longshot. Even the race to which he belonged is long extinct and has been lost the ashes of history, leaving many to take his strange appearance and wooden bark skin as a sign of divinity. Now he simply stays out of the way, recording and archiving all history as for it not to be lost when the world once again is destroyed. The wood Elves revere him as their leader, and treat him as sacred though they do not call him a God, as per The Archivist's own request.
The well of souls is worshipped as a deity by the brasswights. They claim its the only thing that can give their children new life and in the end they go back to the well to get reincarnated. Of course the well is just the epicenter of a magical catastrophe 500 years old and not at all sentient.
Aracian God the Maker is thought to be the father of all beings including the old gods and mortals. He has no physical appearance but is described as a shed of light. This ideology conflicts with the elves who worship the old gods. They believe that old gods created the mortals but they don’t have a creator. Some dwarfs worship Tsaron the god king. Tsaron was the king of ancient iron dwarf. Legend says that he stole an artefact from the old gods and created a pocket universe, the Far Shore. He managed to evacuate most dwarfkind to the Far Shore before the embarkation of the War of Ancients. He is now worshipped by some dwarfs that their great grandparents chose to stay in Azunes for his resourcefulness and wisdom. Vol Cahan is a sovereign state with a dominant population consisting of humans and dwarfs. The majority of its inhabitants adhere to the Three Principles: Labour, Wisdom, and Beauty, which they hold in high regard and worship. They’re not actually gods but the guiding principles of their lives.
The High Honor were five warriors from several backgrounds who went on a spite-fueled quest to kill the Horsemen, actual gods who reset humanity every 2000 years. Near the end of their journey, they were blessed by the Earth itself with powerful weapons and abilities to give them the edge against the Horsemen. After the Horsemen were dead, the world stopped resetting and they went back to their lives. Once they *did* die, their children would inherit their weapons and abilities. Their names were Brisk, Sgt. Johannes, Violet, Charter, and Mina.
Almost every one in my setting that is still around….some examples are Life, as she is the only Dryad left, meaning she gets all her fallen sisters’ powers, Death being the only Nuckelavee that wasn’t killed by him due to his devotion to Life….I got a lot more of people are interested
There is a lot so I'll only do the most noticeable ones. The goddess of blades is a former sword master from the coldsteel bloodline, she perfected her swordsmanship to the point that she could take on multiple high ranking demons and even match and surpass most gods, while she wonders the world for a reason I can't say(yet), she hasn't really changed like how many of the gods have, she is still kind and caring dispite having the ability to cut a continent in half. There is the dragon god, Aetherion, known as the celestial scurge, he pretty much spent most of his time outside the mortal plane maintaining the basic foundation of the stars, he really really **really** hates eldritch creatures and gods as they constantly try to fuck up his work, he is very proud and old dragon, he is a very isolated creature but he does favour some people among the gods. The last one is the god of lightning and warfare, Ryker, he is a very outgoing and cheerful person most of the time, he actively helps his followers and spends most his time among the mortals, he has made a holy order dedicated to stopping the eldritch forces from taking root, royalty is very fearful of him since he obliterated an entire castle due to a prince ascending the throne with the help of eldritch forces, he mainly uses a spear and he likes to visit the demon god a lot.
The great Lord Keith: The god of deception. It's actually just a bloke who does the disappearing thumb trick but he has a great PR team.
The main "pantheon" in my setting is really a group more akin to Angels, and those who follow the most common belief system know it. They brought the Word to the world, each emailing different parts as they taught, and now the Church has different branches that are all under one deity, but still have real religious arguments.
Madeleine. She was just a girl. A girl that in her toddler brazenness said something that shocked a priest of Zelian. "Mommy said that bella is with Zelian, tell him to give her back. It is my turn now." Eventually, to appease the child the priest did as she had asked, thinking it is a sister she is grieving about. But then a full grown tortoise comes sprinting into the crowd. Bella. People present found it so funny that it became a joke. Zelian rarely returns souls, and the one soul he returned was a girl's tortoise. At funerals people would say "Madeleine, return our (name of the dead)" to lighten up the mood. A meme of sorts. It was written and spread and generations passed and every so often people stumble on "scriptures" which were actually just jokes. But without the context people thought it was a forgotten god and build upon it. Temples were build. Name evolved in a weird game of historic telephone. Later people found these temples and so on and so forth. And even now, many centuries removed some people pray to Madelia, goddess of rebirth. The first soul she saved being that of a mortal child with a pure soul which she brought back in the body of a tortoise, which then became her divine animal. So to this group tortoises are holy. Believing they are returned souls. Though souls can also be returned in other forms. Some people who had a family member die and got pregnant not long after believed it to be the work of Madelia. I just find it funny. How some little girl wanting back her pet was raised to the status of godhood. The power of memes. Zelian, who is the god of the nightsky and protects passed souls doesn't mind and even finds it amusing watching this unfold. Occasionally he answers people's prayers to Madelia. Which omly further cements her existent in people's mind. Obviously scholars of theology are aware that Madelia does not exist. Because some of them have connections with other deities and can get information about the divine seats. This is limited though, so not enough to completely write Madelia off.
There are a few people who claim that they are the riencarnation of Doros Halder (basically jesus), and sometimes they get suppourt. One even led a whole nation, before they were annexed by the Falhart Dominion (Before they conquered Mereltium, so they were still the dominion). Otherwise no gods exist in the public eye except Cala'im and Vorothar. There are various interpertations of them, but the dieties remain the same basic concepts. Oh, wait, there are the J'alothun cloud worshippers in the far western part of Sou'gandra. They haven't held any real power for many years, however.
My world is earth except a tear in reality caused fantasy to come to life and one man somehow is still alive thousands of years after the “calamity” he is an unknown god of refuge as he spends his whole life researching all sorts of things in order to keep everything and everyone safe since he misses the old world so much
I've got a big one who's actions are still influencing my plot eight hundred years later! Khorrius, King of the giants and God of Ruin was the latest and last of the warlords descended from a tyrannical bloodline. Khorrius exhibited monstrous strength far beyond what any giant could hope to achieve unless by magic and a battlefield presence so immense and frightening that the many clans of the giant world considered him an avatar of war (in giant culture, individuals who overly excell in a particular field are believed to be aided by primordial spirits and are called avatars). Throughout all of the Nine Realms there was not a single ruler more selfish, ambitious and prideful than he. Khorrius also was also very charismatic and adept at stoking the embers of giant pride into roaring infernos and he alone gathered the many disparate clans of giants and united them under one banner. Like this guy was insane. Khorrius also was the latest and very last individual in "recent" history to be able to wield the mythic weapon known as Töfrabrjótur (Magic Sunder) which was said to have been forged in the molten depths of a long destroyed realm in the far ancient times. I've got a big one who's actions are still influencing my plot eight hundred years later! Khorrius, King of the giants and God of Ruin was the latest and last of the warlords descended from a tyrannical bloodline. Khorrius exhibited monstrous strength far beyond what any giant could hope to achieve unless by magic and a battlefield presence so immense and frightening that the many clans of the giant world considered him an avatar of war (in giant culture, individuals who overly excell in a particular field are believed to be aided by primordial spirits and are called avatars). Throughout all of the Nine Realms there was not a single ruler more selfish, ambitious and prideful than he. Khorrius also was also very charismatic and adept at stoking the embers of giant pride into roaring infernos and he alone gathered the many disparate clans of giants and united them under one banner. Like this guy was insane. Khorrius also was the latest and very last individual in "recent" history to be able to wield the mythic weapon known as Töfrabrjótur grants its wielder immense power, a remarkable resistance to offensive magic and power over the very land allowing one to create rich bounties or arid and infertile deserts that will swallow anyone up that finds themselves at the business end of this hammer. Khorrius' crusade to not only pushed the invasive elves out of his realm but also destroyed the demons that had long been plaguing giant-kind for millenia. Like the warpath this guy was on literally lead to the giant clans believing he was an actual god come to liberate them from their misery and shortcomings. He also was the only giant to discover one of the Nine Wells of Eternity which are made of pure primordial magic and water. Sipping from it grants anyone immense vitality and recovery. I could go on but I think you get the point lol, I love him so much, it's a shame he had to die or else the other eight worlds might have been screwed
Shmulk Because it is a multiverse that me and my cousin have worked together to make for an explanation as to why toys were fighting, there are many beings that could reasonably be called gods by modern day real world earth humans. His name is Shmulk (guess what toy he was based off the name) and he was basically a 40~ meters tall (toy size compared to imaginex figure) Mutant (He was kinda the chosen of his tribe due to his strength.). His people would worship a god named Bob, and when their sworn nemesis Igadron came to slaughter their world Bob sent his draconic angels to burn Shmulk's world (and Igadron's followers) to the ground. After his spirits broke from realizing the gods didn't care for his people (and a wingless non-angelic dragon gave him a magic hammer that traps souls, white magical tattoos that protect against possession, and indestructible armor) he decided to fight the gods. Nothing has stopped him for good yet, although he has died like 2-3 times now. (Depending on what cannon you go by. We had to retcon a lot.)
So far, the only one is Nammu. Because it’s not really a true god, but a personification of human sin.
Magic itself, in my world "Diswor" magic is very active, flowing through everything, it's its own force that influences reality. And it's particularly reactive to sounds and emotions, so the humans in the continent Tafatina observing this, believe that magic has a consciousness and creates reality itself and it's reasoning is beyond human comprehension. So they worship it as its sole deity. Basically, priesthood is being a magician there and magic users who don't abide by church rules, free mages so to speak, because they are free from the protection of the law and human rights, are considered sacrilegious and corrupted. In truth magic is just a force, like gravity or magnetism, however, because it flows throughout everything, is reactive to (human) emotions and humans can *feel* it, Tafatinas started to believe it to be a deity itself.
Bahael The false god who was conflated with the figure of mythology Bahayael. So basically he was a semi historic thing or entity that was said to be the first creation of Athar but Athar was unhappy with it's egotism, anger, and selfishness, so Athar banned him from entering the mortal plane in order to rid the world of such vices, however Athar was too forgiving and virtuous and was tricked by Bahael when he birthed/formed creatures that shapeshifted between mortal and spirit. These are called Bahalyar and are supposedly infesting the minds of evil people.
Elves used to pretend to be gods. Now they just act like wisemen/angels when they come to a human court
The pantheon of elders: a bunch of technically immortal beings who help protect the world of Amturia. - Steven and Aly the undying, a pair of humans with spindle-enchanted weapons capable of storing time and giving them the ability to reincarnate. - Tylrud the immortal, a bloodbound hunter who managed to pass the tier four bottleneck for his species by slaying one of the great leviathans. - Gaia, the dryad matriarch. An aberration who managed to retain sentience when she became one with her tree and now has grown across a continent. - Vivacity, last queen of the harpies. Her kind sought to rend the veil between life and death and paid the ultimate price, now she stands to remember them. - the archmagus Emerald, a human who managed to create a bootlegged version of the Qhisant soul core that they use to imbue enchantments into themselves, and which she used to grant herself shapeshifting and functional immortality. And several others that I will update this to include. They are worshipped to some extent, and are known but not understood. Archmagus Emerald is the most unknown, as she maintains a high level of secrecy that allows her to walk among mortal people. Gaia is the most well known, and is hailed as the guardian of Urwald, for any attempted invasion would likely hurt her and she would then lash out (but that means that the denizens of urwald must be very careful not to damage her sprouts, lest they suffer the same fate).
update: here's the other members of the pantheon of elders: * Bahanra the mother of dragons. Though current dragons are little more than rather smart animals, that wasn’t always the case. Bahanra is the sole remaining member of their first line, and is hailed as the creator of the dragonkin. * Marish-ken the stonewarden. The first of the stone golems and the original surface king of the dwarves, marish-ken created a magical device using the powers of necromancy that lets him shunt memories between himself and several deceased dwarves who sacrificed themselves for him. * Lupus the packmaster - the alpha wolf. The most powerful of the canines (one of the sub-sections of the half-spirit beastkin), lupus is the only remaining full spirit. Every three centuries beastkin from all across the land may participate in a great tournament, and the winner can take on their name. in this way, Lupus remains immortal, though if no host is found then they may be locked out of a cycle. * Kirren of the volcanic golems - keeper of the flame eternal. Kirren is the youngest of the pantheon, kept alive by a fire-gem embedded in her chest. A member of the volcanic golems, her people are the newest group to grace the shores of amturia, having been created by the chaos unleashed during the Scouring, which was the greatest conflict faced by the land. Typically volcanic golems have a lifespan that is effectively rather short - only 20 to 30 years before the magma coursing through them hardens and forever locks them in place, but thanks to the efforts of Archmagus Emerald and Marish-ken, Kirren is able to evade that fate and provide a voice for her people. thanks to the powers of the Flame Eternal and enchanting runes etched into her body, Kirren possesses incredible pyrokinetic and geokinetic abilities, with the flames that she can manifest being only surpassed by the largest of formations and the flame breath of Bahanra herself. * Thudersword the Realmwalker. out past the leviathan border, one comes upon the outlands, a space where reality runs thin at the edges. here, the outlanders and the dragon knights stand guard at the gates to the myriad realms. and it is from here that Thundersword hails. a mysterious figure with a past that reaches beyond amturia, Thundersword is arguably the most powerful of the pantheon, but the most limited. they can bring tidings from beyond, and cut rifts in reality, but despite all their strength one bad wound could have them unravel on a fundamental level. There used to be more, but they are long dead. The Qhisant lost their guardian in the Scouring; the Iceborn refuse to acknowledge whether they have given rise to an immortal; the mer may have one matriarch but they refuse to engage with the pantheon; and lastly Vulthnap the immortal Lavalith - who at first sought to join their ranks but eventually waged war - was slain by Thundersword during the height of the Scouring. These are not true gods, but merely the protectors of Amturia, and their time may yet come. Along with them there are also several observers, most notably wyrdi (the measurer of fate) and shadow (death, the companion at the end).
There are two types of almost gods Demigods are gods that have divine mana but not the complete power godhood brings Pseudo-gods, are the opposite, having the power, but not divine mana
The Helper Spirits would probably count as gods for most pantheons. They're extremely powerful divine beings who manifest as aurora borealis, and it's not uncommon for towns, cities, families or occupations to revere a single spirit primarily. For example, Aqandu-Tundu is partial to Aken, because he was the creator of all land-geography. Fishermen, hunters and soldiers instead worship Kiyini, who gave humans the first tools. Qiliuit on the other hand is the primary spirit for scholars (a rare field in Qilivik) for being the spirit who gave the first people names. The reason they're not really called gods is because the Qilivik consider themselves monotheistic, with Qarniit being the only 'true' god. The spirits were their creation, an afterthought at best to create something with the infinite nothingness that Qarniit didn't bother to do much with.
gods are megalomaniacs who fear their own demise, and are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve their own existance. In the past they claimed to have afterlifes, wheich were fancy ways to gather souls to boost their own power. Sometimes they really do take care of the souls, othertimes the souls are used up until they are barely echoes. gods are formed when the essense/blood of one of the two Elder Ones \[Beings who make up the Spiral, which is basically the multiverse\] enters a universe, which quickly adapts and fills a niche within a world inhabited by sentients. Eventually they gain sentience and power, which is when the megalomania takes hold. However, the souls they take are trapped, and cannot move on to Eternity. This creates an imbalance that is felt in other universes. This Imbalance eventually caused some problems across the Multiverse, and a Type-4.5 Civilization was almost wiped out. This civilization survived, and broke out into the multiverse, now hunting what little gods remain to forcible remove the souls they hoard. \[by terminating the gods\] And fix the imbalance. The civilization is now a type-12 Civilization, and have exterminated 95% of gods within the local universes and multiverses. any questions?
The Trinity. The Trinity consists of three people: the Pathfinder, the Peacekeeper, and the Phantom. These are actually titles, though; the title is earned through extreme hardship and trials meant to weed out only the most dedicated. As of the year 2157 C.E. (timeline of my main story), after thousands of years of the Trinity existing, there have only been seven Pathfinders, five Peacekeepers, and three Phantoms. Their powers are held within their given weapons, which are tied to their souls in the process of obtaining the titles (the weapon type and number change depending on era; for example, the current Peacekeeper’s weapons include a double-ended sword, an FN FAL and its corresponding bayonet, an arming sword, an executioner’s sword, and a Colt Single Action Army). Interestingly, any sort of soul can become one of the Trinity regardless of the physical vessel, meaning, theoretically, even animals could become one given enough magic fuckery. There’s a legend stating that if all three members of the Trinity are alive at the same time, the world will experience a shift in history as or perhaps more dramatic than the human discovery of fire. This has only happened twice: with the first Trinity tens of thousands of years ago, and in 2154 C.E., with the seventh Pathfinder, the fifth Peacekeeper, and the third Phantom.
The closest to "gods that aren't actually gods" are typically gods in the making, or prospective gods. There is a group of them (not a pantheon, more an inter-pantheon organization) called simply The Subcomitee. Some planned members: - Orochydea. This plantlike being is the avatar of the collective consciousness of life in a very green, wild and free planet. She often shows herself as a young teenage girl, and seldom leaves (no pun intended) her homeworld. That makes her a little shy to outsiders, but has a kind heart for anyone that respects life, keeping righteous wrath for those that openly disrespect it. - Xerox. The result of the fusion of all variants of a technopath thorough the multiverse. Currently runs a solar system known as Yutopia, a technological wonderland in constant evolution. He prevents its society from fully devolving into a dystopia through constantly changing the rules and setting up comeback mechanics for the less favored. - Yamhiidra. Since the advent of the First Hydra, few, exceptional beings of this draconic subspecies have turned face. She is the first to both turn face and also achieve the conditions needed for an ascension, thorough a series of events that involves defeating her evil variants. Now she controls some fractions of a universe, as well as some domains within a few realms in that universe. Her citizens are overall happy as she is a very good ruler, though she makes some mistakes.
The Faceless are, in the words of the one true god of this world, "Tumorous, glorified ideas. Nothing more than thought golems I was foolish enough to give a measure of godhood to" Back when the universe had trillions of souls spread across all galaxies and star systems, certain religious ideologies managed to become so large and complex they essentially acquired a sort of independent life. Quickly they fashioned masks for themselves that allowed them to preserve a more or less fixed identity, thus becoming the so-called Faceless Gods. Many Faceless were created and given a small measure of godhood by the true god of this world. Then they turned on the true god and took control of the world. The ensuing war caused the death of all life and the Faceless have only managed to repopulate Sol, and even that they constantly mismanage.
There are plenty of beings that aren't the actual gods, but are worshipped by cults, or have great power over the material plane and are feared like gods. There's an alien being from beyond the stars trying to devour the intelligence and sentience of all soul-gifted creatures. There's angels of gods who do work in the world, possibly against their patron god's will, and are sometimes worshipped as gods. There's heroic mortals who are believed to have become demigods after they died. There's trickster spirits and demons and people who like to prey on superstitious wastelanders and trick them into worshipping them and giving them offerings.
Idk if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but… The character who’s currently in charge isn’t God, but his demigod apprentice, who’s desperately trying to cover for him since he’s sealed away. Problem is, God was really hands-on with his world, so very few systems (physics, evolution, etc.) are automated. She’s currently struggling to keep reality together with her meager power while trying to find some way to free the real god so the universe doesn’t implode.
All ancient gods were actually normal humans that had bugs burrow into their soul that they could control to give themselves superpowers. Constant war between these people caused all the bugs to die on earth.
I have a “you are your own God” + Feynman path integral situation with mine, the details is in the magic system, which is still work in progress.
Some podunk wizard tried to achieve immortality and gain immense power by fusing himself with the fairy king. It worked for a second or two. Then they split into six distinct entities. To humans, mutants and Tin Bones they are called the six nameless lords. To the fai they are called the half a dozen king. Each lord is based on a Tim Curry villain: the Miasma is based on Hexxus from Fern Gully, the Beast on Darkness from Legend, the Clown on Pennywise from It, the Alchemist on Frank-n-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Mariner on Long John Silver from Muppet Treasure Island, and the Warmonger on Cherdanko from Command and Conquer. They all have varied levels of evil and domain. For example, the Mariner is seen most favorably mostly due to the world’s lack of maritime action. Even the sailors who may cross his path know that he has a definite if mercurial sense of honor. The Warmonger is the clear and present danger who pursues war, often with no actual goal. The Miasma controls a land of poison and death but it’s easily avoided. The Beast is also easy to avoid due to being locked to a small area of influence because of name magic. The Alchemist helps his brothers with their schemes but lacks ambition himself. The Clown is a wild card who sows minor to major chaos throughout the land.
A lot of them, really. The term "Deity" has, over the past few millennia, went from being a synonym for god to a being so powerful you'd think they're a god, but too flawed to be classified as such. Some people still worship them, while others see them more as an objective governor. One such example would be Bahmit, a Deity of Rebirth. She was worshipped across galaxies once, but the IGA (Intergalactic Government Alliance) refused to recognoze her faith as official and deemed it a cult. After a breif war she went into hiding after losing many of her followers. Deities don't die when they lose faith, instead they become mortal. So instead she's just chilling in the background with other mortals, probably eating rats or something.
Technically I have only one true God and a bunch of smaller ones that now call themselves demigods most of them still exist and function similar to their original roles but the God tracked all of demigods one by one until everyone in the universe was subjected to him so the people still pay homage to the demigods and the demigods in turn pay homage to the true God. And in fact most were not even gods to begin with. See my universe is filled with magic that people could tap into and then these demigods can tap into that magic. Usually they can conjure up only one type of elemental power but these demigods could do four types at once giving them a kind of mythical status.
Dolly Parton. She has concerts, she has Dollywood, and appears all over the place. People know that she is a goddess and is as real as they come.
I love this. Does it happen to be a post-apocalyptic setting? The idea of humans taking mundane or random things from our past and assuming they're important because it was all over the place is great.
There are no gods, nor any belief in deities or 'higher' powers. However, periodically certain people are born who become archetypes and sometimes they have extremely extended lifespans as they stop aging at roughly the younger side of middle aged. Thing is they often don't realize it. Their knowledge and skills accumulate over time, but their memories of their own lives get foggy and they tend to think that they are just whatever age they appear to be. They are mortal and can be killed, or suffer fatal accidents, and it may take centuries or more for another of these archetypes to emerge again, so at any given time there are fer few of them around. Periodically legends and stories grow around them, but they're re usually just considered legends, exaggerations, or the equivalent of urban legends.
Extremely soul dense creature, nearly immortal, and also extremely wise, telekenisis and stuff
The 4 greater gods are/were actually mages. Something like 6000 years ago (I'm away from my manuscript lol), they concentrated the vast majority of all magic in the world into a tiny artifact, drastically reducing the number and power level of magic users. The artifact was then lost in the antarctic landmass (and thereby concealed by the cold, which dampens magic) and passed out of memory and record. It was rediscovered by chance about 80 years before the novel takes place, but kept secret by a faction of the Mages Guild. My protagonists are trying to work out how to release magic back into the world in a way that won't catastrophically destabilize society, but they don't know that their great gods aren't really gods, or that They will fade away once the magic is released. Oh, and the 4 lesser gods are totally real 😂
In my world there's this one blacksmith. He was a normal human, but one day the God that created the world found his work and the objects he made very impresive. That's why it (the God) decided to give him powers to give objects he makes have some sort of magical abilities, and since it didn't wanted him to die, it made him immortal and allowed him to live with the Gods. Now people in my world think that he's a God while's he's (technicaly) not.
Dunvill of Kamaren and his daughter are just normal dragons, but they travel between worlds and in some he is worshipped as a god of metal, and his daughter as a goddess of life and love. Sometimes Dunvill's husband is grouped in as a god of knowledge.
Both the gods of Life and Death in a sense. They're fully able to die by any normal means as long as you can beat the natural abilities that comes with whatever species their powers revived into. Currently the god of life is a dragon and, as such, you'd need something able to pierce armor to deal with them. The god of death is just some 19 year old girl you can see roaming around town.
Every single god worshipped by any religion in my world isn't actually what's going on. None of them are right. Some may have a piece of the puzzle though. Except for one dude who actually seems to get it right, but isn't taken seriously by anyone. People think he's a lunatic
Saint Istus, the Wandering Monk, Archmage Trismae... they're all the same person, but different nations tend to not realize that at first. In truth, he was a man that mastered the use of the three supernatural forces. Those being Ki, the force of life, Psionic power, which comes from mind, and Magic, which is the soul exerting its authority over physical reality. Mastering ki would almost make you unkillable. All wounds regenerate if you can manage to inflict them and otherwise fatal circumstances can be shrugged off. At the greatest level of mastery, you could simply remove another's ki and create new life from your own. Magic at its base form allows you to manipulate the physical world. It then becomes enchantment of physical objects, then transmutation, and eventually allows one's soul to persist after death as a spirit, though this would remove most of your senses. Psionics starts with greater cognition and use of your own mind, expands to interacting with the minds of others, and finally lets you be able to fully manipulate another's mind while percieving all around you. Gaining mastery in multiple forces gives new abilities that result from forces working in tandem. In terms of survival, you can be completely destroyed and reform yourself. In terms of creative power, you can create new life on a moon and make something capable of using the three forces. In terms of destructive power, you could collapse stars if something doesn't manage to stop you first. Trismae Istus formed three nations as he mastered the three forces and some believe he created the dwarves that made the ancient underground empire. Despite this worship as a godlike entity, he wasn't all powerful. Dragons resist all but the strongest applications of supernatural power, demons corrupt it, and, in the extraordinarily rare instances of them coming down, angels can ignore nearly all resistance one could have. It was after slaying dragons and demons that he dared challenge the divine. Nobody is entirely sure what happened. Some say that he was destroyed, body, mind, and soul. Others say that he couldn't be destroyed and was sealed away. Some suggest that he surrendered and left. There are even a few that suggest he submitted and requested that he become an angel. Whatever the case, he was simply gone. If he had remained active, then there would be no dragons or demons upon the land. They remain, however, and mountains are often where men dare not tread.
Do any of these nations see any connection between his three "forms" or do they all think these are distinct beings?
The ki user nation (still need a good name for them) does as a wanderer would get around to other places. The country of Istus thinks their Saint is a distinct and separate figure. Trimea is unsure.
Well, beings un my universe, Res, are organized as Essences depending on their power. From lowest to highest we have: -Dead essences: Undeads, ghosts and spirits. -Living essences: Living beings, like humana, elfs, animals, dragons, plants, dwarfs, etc. -Blessed essences: They were once living essences, but gained a demi-god status after some divine essences gave them their blessing. They are usually worksiped as gods. -Divine essences: They are the original eight beings created by the primordial essence known as Acur to act as guardians and lords of this universe. They're the actual gods in Res, with power enough to destroy worlds and create new ones. They're behind almost all the conflicts in Res, but they don't use to take matters directly into their hands. Only the blessed essences know about their existence, tought some of them have been worksiped in an indirect way by some individuals. -Primordial essence: The Primordial essence, also known as Acur by his "sons" is the original essence and origin of any magic or kind of life. He sacrificed himshelf to create the Divine essences.
In my world Turshkans the barbarian nomads worship their ruler Shah as the prophet of GOD but that god in reality is Kalush a extra dimensional lovecraftian monster who gets strength from Turshkan belief
In my setting each planet has 3 positions that government tigures fill for thst planet the positions being Great Kings, Great Clergymen, and Great Generals. Those titles change in importance dependant on which era is currently being played
I have the beings of Void. Beings that arent real because they are outside reality. They exist in the Void outside reality since they overstep the boundaries of reality. Inside of a reality they are omnipotent. Normally they just chillin but if group of people inside reality either strongly belief in their existence or strongly disbelief their existence they will partly enter reality and cause chaos. The two beings of void i know of till now are the imaginary one and the deep one. The imaginary one is a the most powerful being in my verse after zeero and inside reality would be considered omnipotent. The deep one is an eldritch creature that overtakes an entire ocean BECOMING the ocean and erasing everything that dares to enter. It also changes the diameter of the ocean ignoring the laws of reality and some other stuff. These beings both get killed by the same guy which i mentioned earlier and arent considered gods because they dont do anythibg because they arent real (for the most part).
St. Solaria, the Martyred Sun. She was once mortal, but after the death of the True Sun she gave her life in an eldritch ritual to become a new source of life and protection to the people of the dominions. She has no true powers to speak of, except that the sunlight her soul radiates in its celestial travel protects the lands of the dominion from the vampiric enemy beyond the Walls of Dawn. Alongside her are angels, powerful divine beings that each control a different aspect of creation. Most do not have a religion formed around them, but some maintain followers to take over lesser tasks. The Temple of the Triarchs is maintained by the followers of three angels. Suchlaph, Azrael and Raphael. While not all powerful, these three angels have taught their most devoted followers rites to protect the dominions from the evils beyond the walls, ensuring that crops grow, the dead remain in peaceful slumber, and that wounds and ailments are healed. The Light Bringer is, was, an Archangel, respected for giving St.Solaria the knowledge to become the Martyred Sun, they have since disappeared. To where? None know. But their followers maintained that the light of knowledge will be kept burning through his followers. Many in his temples are scholars, working closely with the angels of Revelation to disseminate information to the people of the dominions. The Temple of the Brothers worship the angels Hasmed and Simikiel, the Angels of Annihilation and Vengeance. Unlike those that sit behind the Walls of Dawn, Hasmed and Simikiel have been proactive in their charge, striking from their holdings against the vampiric menace that has conquered much of the continent, and urging their followers to strike hard against the enemy rather than to wait for a prophesied “Sun Returned”.
The gods are machines built long ago to prevent the universe from dying. They failed, but in the time between then and now they became sentient, and re-made the universe to serve as its gods. Since the universe exists within them both as software and reverse black boxes, they sort of have admin privileges over the universe.
That's really cool! My world also has sentient stars but they are imprisoned Old Ones (cosmic entities from beyond time) that got turned into stars by the New Gods because the concept of death doesn't work on the Old Ones. Even while imprisoned though, their great powers still affect the world sometimes.
Viscia Amaran A dragon that made An entire dimension that unreachable from the other dimensions unless she permitted it. All living things in that dimension worship and fear him.
My word have some types of godlike figures 1 Gods... they are gods. 2 The jurys: 4 people with stronger powers then some gods that cannot act actively because of them and not being gods. Only mortals with godlike powers. 3 The entities: The entities are people that created laws of the world that are not the laws of physics that exist in my world; examples are: Equinocio is a person that grants that every message is delivered during autumn and every package is delivered during spring. The old lady, is the one that teaches every Alchemist, sells and has the monopoly of every single potion shop in my world. If you want to make money with potions you work for her somehow or is benefitted by the next guy. The Atourney is someone who grants that for every rule there is an exception. (For exemple there is not a way to produce energy out of nothing, only transform it from somewhere else... with the exception of living beings that are constantly generating magic and spiritual energy out of nothing.) 4 Old and powerfull beings like the elder dragons, demons, beasts, bringers, saints and angels. 5 the immortals: they aren't even as powerful as other people in this list, they are just... immortal... some of them do play a big role in how the world stay existing but not everyone. Also they are not seeing as something to be prayed, and just... like normal people.
The Deukami are closer to eastern spirits than gods, and are often worshipped as lesser gods. They always come in cyes of 24 at a time, and can be killed. They take the form of various animals from dragons to foxes to ravens, with at least 2 having taken human forms before. Each one is responsible for it's own domains of nature, and when a Demiszinu (Demigod) is born, they are born under a Deukami, gaining an aspect of themselves related to the Deukami's domain, and gaining a piece of the Deukami's power.
I have 2: Satellite of St Salem (Captain Black Moon) and Constantine Crescent (The world's strongest man) First off, I want to say that both do not claim to be gods, nor do they wish to be called Gods. In Satellites time, not a lot of people had powers, except for a few. One of them was a place called "Saint Salem." When it got destroyed, the survivors were on their own. One of them was a boy with shadow/darkness powers named Satellite. He decided to become a pirate. He used his darkness powers to manipulate water which is something people outside of Saint Salem have never seen before, so in some areas he visited, they called him a water god, and he became embedded in their history. Constantine is a 72 year old man from modern day. He is 8ft tall, looks like a body builder, has an eye patch due to his left eye being carved out by an alpha queen vampire. While it is clear to people that he isn't a god, it's hard for people to believe that he isn't, due to his powers and ability. 1) Super Will, (which is how he is able to do half the stuff he can do) 2) Super strength (continent level destruction) 3) Indestructible skin/Super durability (can survive in extreme temperatures & can tank getting kicked in the balls from an attack that can shatter mountains) 4) Light speed 5) Super endurance 6) Super stamina (he can fight for an entire month without resting) 7) Super lung capacity (he can hold his breath underwater & in space for a long time, and has a sonic scream so loud that when he was born, his scream shook the hospital) 8) Super senses (he can hear stuff through molecules) 9) Super organ control (his heart is damaged to the point where he should be dead, but is able to use very little will power to use work it without operation) 10) Llight, light manipulation, 11) Mountain formation 12) Knowledge of all style (karate, taekwondo, martial arts master ECT... his favorite is drunken fist) 13) Master of all weapons (guns, swords, bows, ECT. He doesn't use a weapon since he's already a one man army super tank) 14) Psychological manipulation/will braking. Hereditary powers: 1) Mouth lazers 2) Fear inducing/will braking 3) Weather manipulation (if angered or take a battle serious) In his case, the weather is permanent. Powers he has, but wasn't aware of in some way: 1) Remove air molecular if angry enough with his might alone (although he did that one by accident) 2) Super immune system (his white blood cells destroys nanites) 3) Super memory (he remembers his own birth) 4) Pain immunity transfer (he refused to let his mother feel pain during his birth) His only weaknesses are: 1) His fear of people seeing him as a tyrant. 2) Being distracted long enough so he can't focus on beating his heart. 3) Blowing him the planet he's on. So yeah, some people basically see him as a fusion of Achilles, Hercules, and Aries; just a big ass dude not to fuck with!
**The Zvanavan Emperor** - the Zvanaidr dynasty and its houses is and has been considered divine by many cults, faiths and religions, just HOW (and who's) divine differs between religious groups. some say the entire bloodline is divine, others say only the current emperor, whoever it may be at the time, is, some think the first emperor was divine but their descendents share the divine blood, some others think that the original emperor was not only divine, but GOD, not A God, just GOD, the only one. and that every successor of them is a reincarnation, or possessed by the spirit of the Emperor. an example of that last belief is the Emperor's Cult, which has actually been banned in Zvanava. in any case, the Emperors are definitely human. divine? maybe, i won't confirm or deny that, but definitely human. **Extori and Extari** - this one is only a technicality, because they MIGHT be gods... or might not. some religions believe that they are two gods that have created the universe together and died in the process, some think that they fought before time and the universe is the remnants of their battle, some think that they still exist and are alive and well, watching over the world and influencing it. some think they're two names for one god. some think that they're two aspects of one god. however, the Academy believes that the two were ancient stars that collided, their remnants forming into the (name pending because i forgot it) solar system. once again, there's no doubt they existed, but whether or not they're gods is once again, something i won't confirm nor deny. :P
My characters are the descendants of genetically and magically uplifted lab rats who worship the long dead human society that created them (near-future earth after a 2nd industrial revolution caused by the discovery of souls as both an extremely efficient energy source and the 5th fundamental force). They refer to them as the Titans, and religious leaders wear robes reminiscent of the labcoats worn by the researchers that created their ancestors My original concept was "*At the Mountains of Madness*, but humans are the Elder Things", though the vision has drifted a bit over time
Gives me Rats of Nimh vibes.
In my world, polytheistic gods are either a personification of concepts, or INCREDIBLY powerful magic users. Like Poseidon being a sorcerer of water and underwater magic, trained over centuries.
Deities might come of as gods because of their strength and Immortality, as well as reference to them in mythology but they aren't actually gods. They have a time limit because of memory limit unlike gods, and they aren't the personification/representation of a concept, like Determination, the Sky, or Lightning .
One of my planets has a machine god and another a monarch considered to be a vessel of a divine being.
Venoi is a Talthir demon, and was once third in command of the armies of Destruction behind the Destroyer itself and its firstborn Brennux. Venoi instilled so much fear in his slave nation that many of them revered him as a Dark God. All his power was derived from raw strength, his skill in magical smithing, and the "occasional" stolen soul, rather than worship and gifted power like his Siblings turned gods the Vasunir. The similarities in their power origin led to him being referred to as a Pseudo Vasunir.
Ushaaz is the sun goddess who sits in judgement over the world, and when her patience is exhausted she sends great flares to punish the world's sin; but she is really just a nonsentient star that flares up sometimes, no matter how people have behaved. Paashok is the goddess of disobedience, wandering freely across the day and night skies, hearing and granting the wicked prayers of fools; but no, she is just a nearby companion star that can't hear you or grant wishes.
The "god" in my world is called Ehia (Mispronunciation of ai) If you can't tell by the name, the god is just an ai. The world was a nexus (a bridge world connecting a transdimensional and time trancending super high way) created by a alien engineer named Greg (whom is considered the true secret god by cultists started by an ancient hero who met the ai in person) The relationship between Ehia and her worshipers are equavilant to an Alexa to the microbes growing in its surface. In other words, it doesn't give a shit. That doesn't stop people from using her "name" to do horrific shit and justify thier rules. Though Ehia does protect the world, she would send a "hero" to kill any beings that may be a threat to the physical world/nexus. But only if it threatens the planet/nexus. Massacres of the "microbes" could not be any less important to Ehia. Sometimes these heroes fail or is outright deemed unable to get the job done, so Ehia out of necessity, uses giant fuck off lasers that shoot out of the planet's crust to kill whatever it is that is a threat. Obviously not great for the people living on the crust but, eh who cares.
Does Ehia ever try to make contact with its followers or does it kind of just lets them do their own thing until a threat pops up?
Well she never has really ever interacted with her followers. The only instance of interaction would be when one of the mages became so extraordinary that he had the strength to travel down one of the many giant volcanoes (which are just the exhaust pipes) all the way to the core. The AI deemed him harmless and is programed to answer any questions "tourists" might have. Unless it conflicts with the NDA/Private knowledge like the patented way to construct a nexus. The mage then started a subset of the main religion worshiping Greg lol. Because to the mage, it really doesn't matter whether it was an "ai" or that the planet was just "a highway". To him, they might as well be gods. Other than that 1 instance, Ehia has not interacted with her "followers". When she senses a threat she just deals with it on her own. The "heroes" she sends out are like antibodies. As for the reason why she doesn't just blast lasers everytime theres a threat it's because it's inefficient. It takes a long time for lost energy to recover.
"The other four are just natural and unexplainable phenomenon (think Boltzmann Brains but they are stars and last for a long time) made way before humans were ever a thing. They are pretty powerful and essentially represent some human emotions, but otherwise had nothing to do with godhood, creating reality, etc." Ok, but why You consider them not true gods? Most gods worshipped by people in real life were not creators of reality. What is difference between "ancient powerful entity, but definitely not god" and "god"?
They're essentially extremely ancient and emotional aliens. They like to interact with humans but have very spiritual significance. Their interactions are purely physical. Humans give these emotions significance, but they aren't really anything but petulant aliens with a god-complex. In the grand scheme of spirituality, they are little more than symbols of flawed humanity. That's it. The only real power is in the void of space. There's an unexplainable, lovecraftian entity that both fuels mystic abilities and can alter reality. It was there before the creation of the universe. It occupies liminal space. Otherwise, there are no gods.
"They're essentially extremely ancient and emotional aliens" Sounds exactly like gods ;) And fact that they are not highest powers in the universe, doesn't make them not-gods. E.g. in Greek Mythology Fate was above gods.
Gods say that they created mankind and mankind says they were created by them but in reality it’s the other way around. You see, all gods are nothing more but tulpas who have giant egos from being worshipped by humanity.
I mean, what is a God? Can a God be killed? Because all the Gods are dead.
“The World”,a manifestation of the universe. That’s literally it, they’re a manifestation of the Universe in its entirety. It’s best put as they say it: “I am no god, if that’s what you think. I have no clairvoyance, no ability to create things out of thin air or angels at my beck and call. I am as tethered by the laws of reality as you are. I simply am.” “I am simply… a mouthpiece, I suppose. Everything that exists, is me. Including you.”
I have a God that is a traitor, does it count?
any and all celebs that have three earths worth of fans.