Avianmosquito
2014-02-03, 07:38 AM
Change is an RPG I'm making alongside my best friend and my daughter. Change's setting is very much nonstandard and will take a LOT of explaining, so I'm going to start now and just direct anybody who asks questions to this thread. Feedback is welcome, and I absolutely want to hear if I haven't adequately explained something. I mean it. Tell me. I don't have time to do this all at once, but so I'm going to come back and post things one at a time. Today, I'll be covering the pantheons.
God Realms:
The most important aspect of the change universe is a concept called a "god realm". In the simplest possible terms, a god realm is a living ecosystem that has developed a consciousness of its own. All god realms have an avatar, a physical being created by the god realm that has control over the god realm, some degree of omniscience within it, and is constantly backed up by it so it can be remade nearly instantly in the event of its destruction. Many connect to one another for protection, using eachother to gain strength, at the cost of merging their consciousnesses together. Many others assimilate other ecosystems, which takes thousands of years to prepare and is harmless to the individual beings within the ecosystem. Many even do both. Now, it might seem odd that a magical hive mind the size of a star system would need protection, but believe it or not these realms not only need all the protection they can get but all the protection they can get is usually next to nothing against their primary threat.
Change takes place within a massive god realm called Ginnungagap. ("Mighty Gap") This realm incorporates thirteen star systems. Ginnungagap's systems are bridged together by the giant trees found in each of them, which are actually a single, massive organism not entirely dissimilar to a quaking aspen. These trees, despite being one and the same, have different names in different realms. The most common name is "The Ash Yggdrasil", but it is also known as "The World Tree", "The Tree of Life" and "The Tree of Sephiroth". Ginnungagap is almost obsessively focused on its own defence, incorporating other realms fairly slowly and spending most of its incalculable energy on preserving the lives within it that constitute its being and its primary means of defence. Ginnungagap's avatar is a small boy named Wandel. He appears to be about five years old, and his features change depending on the system he is within, although he is generally blonde with blue eyes, wearing the colours purple and red.
The Elder God:
The Elder God is a galaxy-spanning cosmic horror, comprised of a seemingly endless number of individual bodies called "Regulators". These come in ten tiers, each one much smaller and weaker but one hundred times more numerous than the last. These are the hundred Creators, the ten thousand Constructors, the million Builders, the hundred million Purifiers, the ten billion Cleansers, the trillion Destroyers, the hundred trillion controllers, the ten quadrillion changers, the quintillion manipulators and the hundred quintillion observers. And these are all one entity in our one galaxy, and possess the ability to reproduce. Each member of each tier can produce members of the next tier, but can only have one hundred at a time as they are also responsible for connecting them to the whole. The hundred creators are not replaceable, but they hide behind the lower tiers and as such none have ever been killed since the elder god first came into being when the hundred creators were formed, roughly one billion years ago.
The Elder God is a cruel, vain, callous being that cares nothing for any entity other than itself as all other entities are so far beneath it as to hold no meaning. It cares, more than anything else, about becoming more powerful. But it cannot exceed its own current size and has reached the limit on the number of tiers it may have, so it seeks two strategies to enhance its own power. One is its age-old strategy of lowering the bar so its own power is more significant, which it does by preventing others from gaining power and attempting to strip away what power they have, no matter what form this power takes. Magic, technology, physical power, all of it is to curtailed in order to make the elder god seem more powerful. The other strategy is more recent, and significantly more clever, although it largely invalidates the first. This is to control others. It tricks, coerces or more often forces others into doing its bidding, and most recently creates its own slave races. These come in two varieties, listed below.
Abominations:
The abominations were the first category of slave race created by the elder god, first coming into being roughly one million years ago. These beings are the weaker, but easier to produce and by far more numerous, of the slave races. They come in two forms, "hybrid" and "eldritch".
Hybrid abominations are created by regulators using the reproductive tracts of local species, hence the name. This is almost never consensual. This varies from one local species to another, but with most the regulator does this by stealing sperm from a male of a local species, using the sperm as a template to make its own sperm, then using this sperm to impregnate a single female of the species. Rinse and repeat. The Elder God has gotten very, very good at making these and can actually make some sterile members of a species fertile in order to make this work.
Hybrid abominations have traits of the local species used and new traits the elder god finds desirable. There are a number of clearly defined hybrid types, which can be bred with any local species present. All hybrid abominations can reproduce with locals conventionally and have the same (although much stronger) drive to do so.
The other variety are pure abominations, which are new slave races made roughly two hundred thousand years ago, created by repeatedly editing abominations of an ideal species and type until they form a new, pure form. These creatures are much stronger than hybrid abominations, but are few in number, can't conceal themselves amongst the local population and must find more of their own to reproduce and take a long time to reproduce once they do. They can, however, create hybrid abominations of their own type using locals.
Angels:
Angels are the newer, stronger variety of abomination that first came into being forty thousand years ago. Angels are different in that they are divine, mimicking all the powers of gods, if usually to a much lesser extent, but are also completely sterile and thus are very few in number.
Angels come in three varieties. These are "standard", "eldritch" and "pure". Standard angels are made using locals, eldritch angels are made using hybrid abominations and pure angels are made using pure abominations. Pure angels and eldritch angels emphasize the traits of the abomination type they are made from, but standard angels emphasize the traits of the local species. Pure angels tend to be the most powerful, but the others are roughly tied. All three come in three tiers, which are "djinn", "angel" and "archangel". The djinn are the most common but least potent, the angels are intermediate and the archangels are the least common but most potent. Djinn were made roughly 40,000 years ago, angels were made out of djin 8,000 years ago and archangels were made out of angels a mere 1,600.
Divines:
Since I mentioned them, I should explain divines. Divines are weak beings that serve guardians and mortal gods. Divines come in four categories, which are divine beasts, outsiders and both wyrm and serpent dragons. These are further separated into five tiers, which are "minor", "lesser", "moderate", "greater" and "major". Divine beasts can only be minor, lesser or moderate, outsiders can only be lesser, moderate or greater, both types of dragons can only be moderate, greater or major.
Divine beasts are divines serving the guardians or remaining independent that take the form of intelligent animals of exceptional power, usually having a small number of special abilities that set them apart from regular animals. This includes creatures such as fenris (exceptionally strong canines) nemeans (exceptionally durable felines), which are capable enough. The most abundant, however, are the yokai, Shinkai's unusually massive allotment of divine beasts, which range from kappas (exceptionally durable, beaked, hairy turtle-men) to oni (large, muscular ogre men with superhuman physical power) and tengu (winged bird men with an inconveniently long nose and exceptional martial prowess), which are no more or less capable than other divine beasts and their numbers are roughly that of non-yokai divine beasts, but they're almost all crammed into two realms, making them seem exceptionally common to the residents of those realms.
Outsiders are divines that have limited shapeshifting ability, with 3-5 pre-set forms that can easily be of different creature types. They always have a humanoid form that lets them blend in with locals. These include creatures like werewolves (three forms) and akuma (five forms), all of which are no more capable than regular people.
Wyrm dragons are divines that may serve physical gods or remain independent. These creatures tend to be fairly dismissive and callous of lesser beings and enjoy control. Even the lesser wyrms, known as drakes, are a step above humans and they know it. Greater wyrms are a step above them.
Serpent dragons are divines that may serve guardians or remain independent. These creatures tend to be fairly considerate and helpful towards lesser beings but enjoy praise. They are almost evenly matched with wyrms in power.
Guardians:
Guardians are mortals, given divine power to allow them to more easily protect and lead their fellows. They come in five tiers, "minor", "lesser", "moderate", "greater" and "major". There exists one minor guardian for every hundred people, one lesser guardian for every ten thousand, one moderate guardian for every million, one greater guardian for every hundred million and one major guardian for every ten billion. The definition of a person used here is very loose.
Mortal gods:
Mortal gods are the beings most commonly associated with the term "god". The represented pantheons so far are only the Greek and Norse ones, but more will be added as time goes on. Their purpose is mostly to protect with little effort put into controlling mortals.
Alignment gods:
The strongest of the physical gods, there are exactly six alignment gods, which come in pairs representing order, chaos and neutrality. Their purpose is mostly to control with little effort put into protecting mortals.
Overall scale of power:
The different tiers listed here are meant for comparison, and are listed weakest to strongest, to a given upper and lower limit, with a single example of each in parenthesis when an example is needed. The tiers are roughly equidistant in terms of relative power, so tier 1 is to tier 2 what tier 2 is to tier 3, tier 2 is to tier 3 what tier 3 is to tier 4 and so on. These assume only natural resources (level 1 with no items) and direct match-ups but take cognition into account.
1. Minor creature (Rat)
2. Lesser creature (Racoon), Minor person (Monkey), Observer
3. Moderate creature (Dog), Lesser person (Gibbon), Minor divine (Kappa), Manipulator
4. Greater creature (Cougar), Moderate person (Human), Lesser divine (Akuma), Minor guardian, Changer
5. Major creature (Tiger), Greater person (Ogre), Moderate divine (Drake), Lesser guardian, Minor mortal god, Djinn, Controller
6. Major person (Giant), Greater Divine (Oni), Moderate guardian, Lesser mortal god, Destroyer
7. Major divine (Dragon), Greater guardian, Moderate mortal god, Angel, Cleanser
8. Major guardian, Greater mortal god, Purifier
9. Major mortal god, Archangel, Builder
10. Alignment god, Constructor
11. Creator
God Realms:
The most important aspect of the change universe is a concept called a "god realm". In the simplest possible terms, a god realm is a living ecosystem that has developed a consciousness of its own. All god realms have an avatar, a physical being created by the god realm that has control over the god realm, some degree of omniscience within it, and is constantly backed up by it so it can be remade nearly instantly in the event of its destruction. Many connect to one another for protection, using eachother to gain strength, at the cost of merging their consciousnesses together. Many others assimilate other ecosystems, which takes thousands of years to prepare and is harmless to the individual beings within the ecosystem. Many even do both. Now, it might seem odd that a magical hive mind the size of a star system would need protection, but believe it or not these realms not only need all the protection they can get but all the protection they can get is usually next to nothing against their primary threat.
Change takes place within a massive god realm called Ginnungagap. ("Mighty Gap") This realm incorporates thirteen star systems. Ginnungagap's systems are bridged together by the giant trees found in each of them, which are actually a single, massive organism not entirely dissimilar to a quaking aspen. These trees, despite being one and the same, have different names in different realms. The most common name is "The Ash Yggdrasil", but it is also known as "The World Tree", "The Tree of Life" and "The Tree of Sephiroth". Ginnungagap is almost obsessively focused on its own defence, incorporating other realms fairly slowly and spending most of its incalculable energy on preserving the lives within it that constitute its being and its primary means of defence. Ginnungagap's avatar is a small boy named Wandel. He appears to be about five years old, and his features change depending on the system he is within, although he is generally blonde with blue eyes, wearing the colours purple and red.
The Elder God:
The Elder God is a galaxy-spanning cosmic horror, comprised of a seemingly endless number of individual bodies called "Regulators". These come in ten tiers, each one much smaller and weaker but one hundred times more numerous than the last. These are the hundred Creators, the ten thousand Constructors, the million Builders, the hundred million Purifiers, the ten billion Cleansers, the trillion Destroyers, the hundred trillion controllers, the ten quadrillion changers, the quintillion manipulators and the hundred quintillion observers. And these are all one entity in our one galaxy, and possess the ability to reproduce. Each member of each tier can produce members of the next tier, but can only have one hundred at a time as they are also responsible for connecting them to the whole. The hundred creators are not replaceable, but they hide behind the lower tiers and as such none have ever been killed since the elder god first came into being when the hundred creators were formed, roughly one billion years ago.
The Elder God is a cruel, vain, callous being that cares nothing for any entity other than itself as all other entities are so far beneath it as to hold no meaning. It cares, more than anything else, about becoming more powerful. But it cannot exceed its own current size and has reached the limit on the number of tiers it may have, so it seeks two strategies to enhance its own power. One is its age-old strategy of lowering the bar so its own power is more significant, which it does by preventing others from gaining power and attempting to strip away what power they have, no matter what form this power takes. Magic, technology, physical power, all of it is to curtailed in order to make the elder god seem more powerful. The other strategy is more recent, and significantly more clever, although it largely invalidates the first. This is to control others. It tricks, coerces or more often forces others into doing its bidding, and most recently creates its own slave races. These come in two varieties, listed below.
Abominations:
The abominations were the first category of slave race created by the elder god, first coming into being roughly one million years ago. These beings are the weaker, but easier to produce and by far more numerous, of the slave races. They come in two forms, "hybrid" and "eldritch".
Hybrid abominations are created by regulators using the reproductive tracts of local species, hence the name. This is almost never consensual. This varies from one local species to another, but with most the regulator does this by stealing sperm from a male of a local species, using the sperm as a template to make its own sperm, then using this sperm to impregnate a single female of the species. Rinse and repeat. The Elder God has gotten very, very good at making these and can actually make some sterile members of a species fertile in order to make this work.
Hybrid abominations have traits of the local species used and new traits the elder god finds desirable. There are a number of clearly defined hybrid types, which can be bred with any local species present. All hybrid abominations can reproduce with locals conventionally and have the same (although much stronger) drive to do so.
The other variety are pure abominations, which are new slave races made roughly two hundred thousand years ago, created by repeatedly editing abominations of an ideal species and type until they form a new, pure form. These creatures are much stronger than hybrid abominations, but are few in number, can't conceal themselves amongst the local population and must find more of their own to reproduce and take a long time to reproduce once they do. They can, however, create hybrid abominations of their own type using locals.
Angels:
Angels are the newer, stronger variety of abomination that first came into being forty thousand years ago. Angels are different in that they are divine, mimicking all the powers of gods, if usually to a much lesser extent, but are also completely sterile and thus are very few in number.
Angels come in three varieties. These are "standard", "eldritch" and "pure". Standard angels are made using locals, eldritch angels are made using hybrid abominations and pure angels are made using pure abominations. Pure angels and eldritch angels emphasize the traits of the abomination type they are made from, but standard angels emphasize the traits of the local species. Pure angels tend to be the most powerful, but the others are roughly tied. All three come in three tiers, which are "djinn", "angel" and "archangel". The djinn are the most common but least potent, the angels are intermediate and the archangels are the least common but most potent. Djinn were made roughly 40,000 years ago, angels were made out of djin 8,000 years ago and archangels were made out of angels a mere 1,600.
Divines:
Since I mentioned them, I should explain divines. Divines are weak beings that serve guardians and mortal gods. Divines come in four categories, which are divine beasts, outsiders and both wyrm and serpent dragons. These are further separated into five tiers, which are "minor", "lesser", "moderate", "greater" and "major". Divine beasts can only be minor, lesser or moderate, outsiders can only be lesser, moderate or greater, both types of dragons can only be moderate, greater or major.
Divine beasts are divines serving the guardians or remaining independent that take the form of intelligent animals of exceptional power, usually having a small number of special abilities that set them apart from regular animals. This includes creatures such as fenris (exceptionally strong canines) nemeans (exceptionally durable felines), which are capable enough. The most abundant, however, are the yokai, Shinkai's unusually massive allotment of divine beasts, which range from kappas (exceptionally durable, beaked, hairy turtle-men) to oni (large, muscular ogre men with superhuman physical power) and tengu (winged bird men with an inconveniently long nose and exceptional martial prowess), which are no more or less capable than other divine beasts and their numbers are roughly that of non-yokai divine beasts, but they're almost all crammed into two realms, making them seem exceptionally common to the residents of those realms.
Outsiders are divines that have limited shapeshifting ability, with 3-5 pre-set forms that can easily be of different creature types. They always have a humanoid form that lets them blend in with locals. These include creatures like werewolves (three forms) and akuma (five forms), all of which are no more capable than regular people.
Wyrm dragons are divines that may serve physical gods or remain independent. These creatures tend to be fairly dismissive and callous of lesser beings and enjoy control. Even the lesser wyrms, known as drakes, are a step above humans and they know it. Greater wyrms are a step above them.
Serpent dragons are divines that may serve guardians or remain independent. These creatures tend to be fairly considerate and helpful towards lesser beings but enjoy praise. They are almost evenly matched with wyrms in power.
Guardians:
Guardians are mortals, given divine power to allow them to more easily protect and lead their fellows. They come in five tiers, "minor", "lesser", "moderate", "greater" and "major". There exists one minor guardian for every hundred people, one lesser guardian for every ten thousand, one moderate guardian for every million, one greater guardian for every hundred million and one major guardian for every ten billion. The definition of a person used here is very loose.
Mortal gods:
Mortal gods are the beings most commonly associated with the term "god". The represented pantheons so far are only the Greek and Norse ones, but more will be added as time goes on. Their purpose is mostly to protect with little effort put into controlling mortals.
Alignment gods:
The strongest of the physical gods, there are exactly six alignment gods, which come in pairs representing order, chaos and neutrality. Their purpose is mostly to control with little effort put into protecting mortals.
Overall scale of power:
The different tiers listed here are meant for comparison, and are listed weakest to strongest, to a given upper and lower limit, with a single example of each in parenthesis when an example is needed. The tiers are roughly equidistant in terms of relative power, so tier 1 is to tier 2 what tier 2 is to tier 3, tier 2 is to tier 3 what tier 3 is to tier 4 and so on. These assume only natural resources (level 1 with no items) and direct match-ups but take cognition into account.
1. Minor creature (Rat)
2. Lesser creature (Racoon), Minor person (Monkey), Observer
3. Moderate creature (Dog), Lesser person (Gibbon), Minor divine (Kappa), Manipulator
4. Greater creature (Cougar), Moderate person (Human), Lesser divine (Akuma), Minor guardian, Changer
5. Major creature (Tiger), Greater person (Ogre), Moderate divine (Drake), Lesser guardian, Minor mortal god, Djinn, Controller
6. Major person (Giant), Greater Divine (Oni), Moderate guardian, Lesser mortal god, Destroyer
7. Major divine (Dragon), Greater guardian, Moderate mortal god, Angel, Cleanser
8. Major guardian, Greater mortal god, Purifier
9. Major mortal god, Archangel, Builder
10. Alignment god, Constructor
11. Creator