God Lore

The dominant form of life, by their own testimony, the Gods are immortal beings inhabiting domains of unnatural wonder hidden deep within the Dreamwilds.

Society: Born with more power than most mortal creatures will ever possess in a realm that is easily bent to fit their every desire, the majority of Gods lack true interest in the events occurring outside their personal domains. Although they interact with other Gods and subordinate Elves, many will never venture out into the shallows of the Dreamwilds, let alone the Mortal Realm.

In part, this is due to the dangers of traveling to the Mortal Realm. While Gods are born with more power than any other sentient clan, the majority of Gods are only as powerful as highly trained Mortals. This means they are in legitimate danger from God hunters from the Church of the Unborn God while on the Mortal Realm.

Even so, some Gods do travel to the Mortal Realm out of curiosity, wanderlust or on missions from their ruling body. In such cases, they are careful to hide their nature, remaining ever vigilant for the Unborn God’s agents. This secretive behavior generates a degree of enigmatic mysticism among their followers, the belief being that Gods simply wish to leave the mortals to forge their own path.

Despite many Gods remaining reclusive, the rulers of the Gods and those they employ are quite active, if in an almost entirely preparatory sense. The three elder Gods, the founding members of their race who originally battled the Unborn God in the beginning, keep their descendants in a constant state of alertness.

Functionally, this means compelling younger Gods with promise to train their skills for battle, trying to build up a standing army for the day they feel ready to move against the Unborn God. Despite their best efforts, the lack of an open war makes many Gods discount this pending conflict as something that does not affect them.

Some Gods even doubt the Unborn God’s existence, suggesting that essence is simply a manageable pollutant with no grander intelligence behind it. They argue that it helps the elder Gods to have an eternal enemy to point to, one that gives a reason to listen to them. Although finding evidence against this theory is easy, it is still hard to utterly disprove when considering the power of the elder Gods.

Despite such dissent, most Gods do their part in countering essence, making a handful of their worshippers into Cleansers and telling them to cleanse essence and destroy essence creatures. Only the most radical Gods legitimately question the need to remove essence.

Even so, there are Gods who have concluded that essence is superior to mana, some even defecting to the Dark Continent. Gods who willingly defect often become Servitors. Many of the greatest God hunters were once Gods, now helping to free their kin from the elder God’s control.

Ecology: Although most commonly known Gods are quite powerful, the average God is only equivalent to a highly trained Mage. This is because Gods are born with only the base Features of the God clan, only gaining farther power through training.

As a result, the population of Gods is much higher than commonly thought, but most Gods are so minor that they would not be considered deities. And, below such young Gods, are the demi-Gods. Demi-Gods are the result of the union between a God and a mortal creature, the result being of the mortal parent’s species, but containing the seeds of godhood.

Demi-Gods have access to the divine mana of the Gods. Although mana and divine mana can both be utilized to create the same affects, divine mana was designed to be as powerful and easy to use as possible.

As a result, demi-Gods grow in power far faster than mana using Mages, not being limited by the deliberately restrictive arcane language the elder Gods programmed into mortal mana. Most demi-Gods are thought to simply be highly skilled Mages, although a knowledgeable creature who examines their methods may discover their nature.

Appearance: There is no true appearance for a God, only that they most often use. In many cases, a God will use a standard appearance when appearing to their worshippers, in order to create a recognizable image.