D8s

Octas/fallen


Gods

Stats are non-applicable: Gods are so far above mortals that fighting one is not even something to consider. Where would you start?: They don't even have a physical form, being more like highly-concentrated forces of nature.... You can't fight a tornado or a lightning bolt. At best you can take sensible steps to avoid being in their path. You can - occasionally, and briefly - out-think a god, but this is going to be left to role-play, rather than dice-rolls, since the avenues for out-thinking something orders of magnitude more intelligent than you, are very narrow and specific.

Description: There are an awful lot of gods on Octas! They are usually confined to specific geographic areas, which may or may not not conform to local geographic features.

The minimum space required to host a god is around 400km² (so 20km x 20km if actually a square, but the area can be any shape). Most gods have an insatiable need to grow their territories to fill any adjacent space they can, including space presently occupied by another god. This results in constant warfare between adjacent gods, though the majority of this warfare happens on a plane of existence that doesn't touch the mortal realms, so all mortals normally experience of this is that the borders sometimes change. Sometimes a god will completely disappear and be quickly replaced by one or more neighbours expanding wholly or partly into the now vacant space.

The maximum space which a god has ever been known to occupy is around 24,000km² (or a rough-circle of 90km radius, and around 180km represents the maximum width in any direction, so long-thin god-territories at this scale don't happen). At around this point, gods, and their territories tend to fracture into several new child-gods back down around the 400km² size. These new god-lets immediately go into expansionist war amongst each other and with any other neighbours.

The range of Geographic gods is not limited to dry land, and they can exist partly, or even wholly, under ocean beds.

Gods naively speak Dæmonic but are not in any way related to Dæmons, and don't actually seem to be able to tell the difference (or if they can, they don't care) between a Dæmon and a Human-who-can-speak-Dæmonic-proficiently. Even an Uplifted, Dragon or Aware Re-lived, well-versed in the Dæmonic language would be treated the same by a god.

A god can very quickly and easily learn other languages to a high degree of proficiency, though they seldom have any motivation to use non-Dæmonic languages. They generally know all the languages spoken in their territory, whether they admit to it or not.

Gods' general lack of discrimination between sapient species is about their only redeeming quality, as most gods are so inscrutable in their vast power and intelligence that, from the perspective of a mortal being, they may as well be insane. Usually dangerously insane.

Gods will treat mortals that they notice in their domains-of-influence in a number of ways, and which way will vary from god-to-god, and even from moment-to-moment, with the larger gods.

One or more (including, to mortals at least, contradictory) attitudes may be held by any god at any particular time:

Mortals are vermin: Gods with this attitude will actively exterminate mortals in their domains. At the minor end, they will only do so to mortals that bring themselves directly to the god's attention, at the extreme end, they will attempt to purge their domain of all organic life, right down to bacteria!

Mortals are irrelevant: Gods ignore, or tolerate, mortals in their domain as long as the mortals don't do anything the god dislikes. What a god likes or dislikes is hard to determine, and can change quickly and arbitrarily.

Mortals are tools: While there is little a god can't do in its own domain, there are things that a god may consider beneath itself, and so allocate to a mortal, using threats, or sometimes even reward, as motivation. Being quite geographically limited, gods usually must rely on mortals for any action they wish to perform outside their geographic domain of control.

Mortals are entertainment: Some gods tolerate mortals because they find watching them interesting or entertaining. As per the now-established pattern, what entertains a particular god is arbitrary and fluid. Some like clever word-play, some like slapstick, some like ritual mass-murder. .... Some may even like all three in simultaneous combination!

Mortals are citizens: While extremely rare, some gods (invariably smaller less powerful ones when it happens) actually view the mortals in their domains of control as individuals to be valued in their own right. Such gods may act as a benign dictator, but far more often they take on an advisory role, providing beneficent guidance to their resident mortals, and within certain broad guidelines letting them rule themselves. These gods provide small pockets of effective-paradise on Octas, and the only thing that stops massive population migration to these areas is that the god in question, while beneficent, isn't stupid, and will strictly - and lethally, if needed - enforce immigration quotas to avoid their domain being over-run and destroyed by desperate outsiders. Peaceful through-traffic is generally welcome in such areas, but attempts to over-stay this welcome are dealt with harshly.

The beneficent-god attitude tends to be exceptional not just in its rarity but in its stability. Gods with this attitude tend to keep it, and a god without it is unlikely to ever develop it.

The only thing that can stand up to a god is another god, so the only limit on a god is their geographic neighbour gods, which stop them from extending their power significantly outside of their domains. Gods are highly mistrustful of each other and local alliances are impossible (suggesting an alliance with another near-by god is the best way to anger a god!).

Note that gods can cast their power outside of their geographic domain. Doing this, however, puts them in a position of weakness relative to any other gods between their domain and the location at which they are casting their magic, so they are very adverse to using this ability. Their ability to do this is also very sporadic and there is only about a 1-in-8 chance (1D roll of 0) most can even do this at all on any given day. Very very rare gods seem to have this ability continuously, though they are still careful with its use.

Interloper Gods. There are rare gods that seem to not be tied to a geographic region. These gods tend to show up at rare but regular intervals and disappear again just as mysteriously until the next time. The geographically-fixed gods hate them, and the feeling is entirely mutual. Their presence is usually intermittent, lasting for a half-day period, synchronised, but not aligned with, the day/night cycle of Octas. They occur rarely and randomly, and their presence usually only lasts for a few weeks to a few months with years or even centuries until the next appearance.

Interloper gods tend to behave similar to smaller, saner, ground-based gods and tend to be far less antagonistic towards organic beings. They often have the demeanour of a somewhat senile, but kindly, elderly person.

Moon Gods. The seven moons of Octas are also considered gods by some, though of a very different type than the geographic gods, for if the moons really are gods, their influence on the mortal world is either negligible or at a whole other level of inscrutable again. There are ancient stories of an eighth Moon-God that died or was somehow destroyed and which formed the sky-ring from its ashes. Other stories claim the Sky Ring is just another type of sky-god, as impotent or inscrutable as the Moon Gods.

The Moon-gods are named (in order of closest-to-furthest):

Godless Regions. There are pockets of space on Octas that are (or at least appear to be!) godless. Pervasive magics often completely fail to work in these areas, or are weak and patchy at best. Why do gods, normally so desperate to expand their domains, shun these areas? No one knows, and no god has ever seen fit to explain.

While a godless-domain may seem like it would the next best thing to a domain under a beneficent god, this is usually not the case. These lands are far-more-often-than-not barren wastelands where only the most hardy can eek out a harsh and sparse existence. Gods, apparently, do serve an ecological purpose in the lands in which they manifest!


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