Why aren't there more gods?

[Thales]

We know that worlds can sometimes give rise to new gods, such as the Elven gods, Dvalin, and most significantly, the Dark One. But the cycle of creating new worlds has been going for a long, long time. If even the Order's world birthed at least three new sets of gods, why are there so few gods in total?

Thor gives us a partial answer in strip 1144 — after the destruction of a world, gods can starve for souls before the next world forms. But Thor's phrasing ("he might not survive the process", "I've seen gods with more worshippers than he has fail to make it") implies that some new gods do make it through. So what's happening? Here's some possibilities I see:

1. There's an unknown quantity of demigods floating around. Maybe the number is pretty big and it includes the various gods who survived previous worlds? But the priests at the Godsmoot were surprised to see even seven demigods with representation there. This does not seem to match with the enormous number of previous worlds.
2. Thor is overstating the chances that newly ascended gods survive. But would he mislead like that?
3. The Order's world is really abnormally fecund, god-wise. Most worlds don't produce any gods, and making this many is quite abnormal. But we don't have any reason to think this.
4. There's a lot of turnover among gods. New ones rise and old ones starve all the time. We know that even established gods like Hel can die — Loki is genuinely concerned for her here. But this theory is contradicted by the perhaps-not-fully-accurate depictions we've seen of the past creation of worlds, which have only shown gods who are still around (plus the Eastern Pantheon).
5. Mortal-born gods are at a lasting disadvantage. Even if, say, the elven gods have enough soul reserves to survive the destruction of this world into the next, they're still in some metaphysical way less resilient than the original crew. Eventually, the cycle will get the better of them, perhaps after a bad world like the last one was for Odin.
6. Mortal-born gods eventually get absorbed by the true deities, though it's a slower process than for normal souls. Maybe if Surtur, god of the fire giants survives, he'll eventually be absorbed into Loki, god of fire. After all, they are shaped by belief, and mythologies getting sycreticized and conflated does happen in real life. But there's not really textual support for this.
7. It's just a plot hole?

What do you all think?

[Rrmcklin]

1) We don't know how many gods there actually are.

2) It should not be assumed that ascending to godhood is easy.

3) It doesn't matter for the story. I imagine three is the most part important, it's not a plot hole, it's something that ultimately doesn't actually matter for the story that is being told.

[WanderingMist]

I just assumed the comment about the demigods was referring to that many bothering to show up, since ties are probably uncommon.

[CountDVB]

The thing is that the gods need to have a balance of their four requirements to be a healthy deity. The Dark One is in danger because well, he's not actively worshipped by all his people along with how disorganized his church is along with time. Plus, not being backed by any of the other Pantheons probably causes problems there.

I suspect that while some folk heroes do get their rise in legendary status, their status fades over time as cities and towns grow and whatnot, especially without consistency or maintanance.

I also suspect that this is why elves get their own pantheon. Their long lives and stability means they can support long-lived civilizations to maintain elven churches to elven gods, especially as they venture out.

However, it's also because of the worlds beyond fantasy. Elves represent the higher folk or perhaps other folk. A counterpart to humanity perhaps and maybe they have different variations or echoes throughout all of history. As such, maybe they can make certain claims. Like, maybe any deer folk in the talking animals world, psionic folk in the cyberpunk folk and thus psychic deer or bioaugmented deer in the cyberpunj animal world would be under the elven pantheon.

Elves have mastered the long game and applied that strategy to the many worlds.

[facw]

birthed at least three new sets of gods

This may also be significantly overstating things.

For one, Dvalin is a demigod, as opposed full god. We don't know exactly what the distinction is, but clearly he is in some way lesser than the Dark One, who seems to be considered more as a peer by the other gods. If the Dark One is in danger of not making it to the next cycle, it seems likely that the demigods would be doomed.

And then we have the other problem of incomplete information. The people of Stickworld clearly believe that both Dvalin and the elven gods ascended from their world. But in a world created by the gods, it's entirely possible the gods simply created a world where people remembered the elven gods as being uplifted, even though their actual uplift might have happened millions of cycles ago (I'm assuming they were uplifted at some point, simply because they don't meet the theme). That's probably not the most likely scenario, but it is one that I don't think can be ruled out, given that we have no idea about the age of this world (beyond know that it existed when Xykon was a child), and thus have no way of knowing if anything that happened before that actually happened, or if it was just part of the god's world setup (we do know that Thor said recent worlds usually last a few thousand years, so the world's probably not only 200 years old or something).

[mjasghar]

Consider Thyrrm - god of frost giants is pretty niche. Not masses of worshippers. Okay, maybe that also includes winter and maybe he gets by on being part of the pantheon story. His relationship with Hel seems to have been going on a lot longer than one world though. Somehow he seems to have survived between worlds.
With regards to Elves they were deliberately placed on the planet and likely by one of the western pantheon - which is strange as it doesn’t fit their Theme. Especially incongruous in terms of giving them a special climate compared to the rest of the continent. Definitely feels like a stitch up to me.
Of course other themed worlds likely had different forms of religion and the higher tech ones should have had massive populations from the off. Which raises the issue of where they get the souls in the first place and how they decide initial population size.

[skim172]

My guess is that new gods tend to be adopted into the pantheon that they ascended under. The Dark One is a unique abnormality in that he has his own quiddity - that would imply that all the other new godlings shared a quiddity with one of the existing pantheons. So maybe they're just added to the team after they ascend.

So in practice, it becomes something like:
: "Welp, folks - looks like Enki just sent out a new company email, and we've got a new god we're gonna have to start worshipping."
: "What, another one? But we only just got done canonizing the last one!"
: "Yes, yes - I know all of you guys have been doing a lot of work already, but we've got new deadlines now. So let's get onto the sculptors about carving out the statue, ask the contractors for an estimate on setting up a new temple, and start thinking up some new ideas for holidays and rituals and where we can fit them into the calendar."
: "What's the name of this one?"
: "Errr ... Siris, it says here."
: "Siris? Wasn't she that crazy prophet with that weird isolationist cult that kidnaps hitchhikers and lives up on that volcano?"
: "That's her - looks like they finally sacrificed enough hitchhikers last week to punch her ticket to divinity."
: "And what's she gonna be the goddess of?"
: "The goddess of ... beer and 'TBD'."
: "What does kidnapping hitchhikers and roasting them over lava have to do with beer?"
: "I dunno - maybe it's barbecue themed."
: "And I thought Ninkasi was the goddess of beer already?"
: "I've had it with your attitude, Jerry. Just for that, you get to be the one who delivers the invite to her alcoholic-hitchhiker-volcano-cannibal cult to become a formal part of our church hierarchy and help to define our religious ethos, spirituality, and cosmic worldview."

[snowblizz]

We know that worlds can sometimes give rise to new gods, such as the Elven gods, Dvalin, and most significantly, the Dark One. But the cycle of creating new worlds has been going for a long, long time. If even the Order's world birthed at least three new sets of gods, why are there so few gods in total?

I'm not actually convinced this world has give rise to 3 sets of new gods at all. A lot of that seems to have been funded on the idea that this is the second world. It is not and there have been plenty of other fantasy worlds. If I had to make a guess (a) previous world(s) gave rise to the elf gods and Dvalin which now ensure some elf and dwarf analogues are present in each world. Maybe they are french fries and chocolate balls in the movie snack universe.


The only thing we know for (fairly) sure is the Dark One has a entirely new quiddity and is something new. I like to think due to the self-aware fantasy parody nature of the world itself. Odd things happen when you start messing with meta.

And then we have the other problem of incomplete information. The people of Stickworld clearly believe that both Dvalin and the elven gods ascended from their world. But in a world created by the gods, it's entirely possible the gods simply created a world where people remembered the elven gods as being uplifted, even though their actual uplift might have happened millions of cycles ago (I'm assuming they were uplifted at some point, simply because they don't meet the theme). That's probably not the most likely scenario, but it is one that I don't think can be ruled out, given that we have no idea about the age of this world (beyond know that it existed when Xykon was a child), and thus have no way of knowing if anything that happened before that actually happened, or if it was just part of the god's world setup (we do know that Thor said recent worlds usually last a few thousand years, so the world's probably not only 200 years old or something).

Yes much of this. And I only 15 minutes aog opined on not reading all the post in an thread to the end before replying. The irony.

[Roland Itiative]

I'm not actually convinced this world has give rise to 3 sets of new gods at all. A lot of that seems to have been funded on the idea that this is the second world. It is not and there have been plenty of other fantasy worlds. If I had to make a guess (a) previous world(s) gave rise to the elf gods and Dvalin which now ensure some elf and dwarf analogues are present in each world. Maybe they are french fries and chocolate balls in the movie snack universe.


The only thing we know for (fairly) sure is the Dark One has a entirely new quiddity and is something new. I like to think due to the self-aware fantasy parody nature of the world itself. Odd things happen when you start messing with meta.

The idea that the elven gods and Dvalin are native to this world does not come from the assumption that this is the second world. It comes from statements (by people who have no idea about the many worlds, mind you) that those are gods that rose from mortal ranks, thus having a mortal history in this world. If they had risen in a previous world, to this world's inhabitants they would seem like creator deities, not mortals that rose up to divinity.

Which also might explain why we don't see that many deities being treated as new. Once the world they're originally from is gone, the distinction between an "original" deity and one that was born mortal becomes irrelevant to everyone but the gods themselves. They become just another Northern/Western/Southern god, older than the now current world, same as the others. If this world is destroyed, and The Dark One survives to see the next, he won't be seen by the inhabittants of that world as a mortal that became a god, but just as one of the gods who made the world.

Unless we get a statement by one of the gods that a deity was there during the first world's creation, we can't say for sure if a god is from the original set or got into the pantheon later.

[KorvinStarmast]

The thing is that the gods need to have a balance of their four requirements to be a healthy deity.

Beyond that, when the OoTS verse had more gods (the Green Pantheon that is no more) they created the Snarl.

The OoTS vers doesn't need more gods.

Someone made an observation on TDO not getting all four food groups and being at risk: perhaps, but now that Gobbotopia exists, the opportunity for substantial evangelization among the goblinoids in that region alone, with its subsequent increase in worship, etc, should in the near term mitigate any previous dietary lack. The goblinoids of Gobbotopia have a palpable example of TDO's blessings right in front of them: their new (for them) city and their triumph over the Azurites. I think that will tend to make proseltyzing among the lower level TDO clerics easier. And their current charismatic leader is a TDO cleric.

TDO's health bar looks to be filling up, I'd say.

[Mad Humanist]

My guess is that new gods tend to be adopted into the pantheon that they ascended under. The Dark One is a unique abnormality in that he has his own quiddity - that would imply that all the other new godlings shared a quiddity with one of the existing pantheons. So maybe they're just added to the team after they ascend.

So in practice, it becomes something like:
: "Welp, folks - looks like Enki just sent out a new company email, and we've got a new god we're gonna have to start worshipping."
: "What, another one? But we only just got done canonizing the last one!"
: "Yes, yes - I know all of you guys have been doing a lot of work already, but we've got new deadlines now. So let's get onto the sculptors about carving out the statue, ask the contractors for an estimate on setting up a new temple, and start thinking up some new ideas for holidays and rituals and where we can fit them into the calendar."
: "What's the name of this one?"
: "Errr ... Siris, it says here."
: "Siris? Wasn't she that crazy prophet with that weird isolationist cult that kidnaps hitchhikers and lives up on that volcano?"
: "That's her - looks like they finally sacrificed enough hitchhikers last week to punch her ticket to divinity."
: "And what's she gonna be the goddess of?"
: "The goddess of ... beer and 'TBD'."
: "What does kidnapping hitchhikers and roasting them over lava have to do with beer?"
: "I dunno - maybe it's barbecue themed."
: "And I thought Ninkasi was the goddess of beer already?"
: "I've had it with your attitude, Jerry. Just for that, you get to be the one who delivers the invite to her alcoholic-hitchhiker-volcano-cannibal cult to become a formal part of our church hierarchy and help to define our religious ethos, spirituality, and cosmic worldview."

I think you've got some material for your own webcomic right there.

[brian 333]

There is no reason Dvalin and the Elven gods could not have become deified on a previous world and then kept their mortal ascention as a part of their back-story. If the world begins with the newly created mortals believing they have a history it solves a lot of potential problems.

There may be thousands of new demigods all over the world with no clerics of enough power to channel the Summon Proxy spell. They didn't bother going to the moot, and were likely never given an invitation.
Roxanne the demi-goddess of unrequited love and suicide.
Thomas the demi-god of flint knapping and pottery.
Cecil the demi-god of seasick sea serpents.

Whether these demi-gods make it to the next world depends more on how much the pantheon, or a patron deity, supports them in the interim.

Heck, this may be the source of new celestials and infernals. Roy's Archon may have been the legendary hero Milk Dude in a previous life, but he didn't have the worship he needed to make it to the next world without patronage.

[Mad Humanist]

There is no reason Dvalin and the Elven gods could not have become deified on a previous world and then kept their mortal ascention as a part of their back-story. If the world begins with the newly created mortals believing they have a history it solves a lot of potential problems.

That makes sense to me.

There may be thousands of new demigods all over the world with no clerics of enough power to channel the Summon Proxy spell. They didn't bother going to the moot, and were likely never given an invitation.
Roxanne the demi-goddess of unrequited love and suicide.
Thomas the demi-god of flint knapping and pottery.
Cecil the demi-god of seasick sea serpents.

Whether these demi-gods make it to the next world depends more on how much the pantheon, or a patron deity, supports them in the interim.

This makes less sense. If the majority of gods need sponsorship to be elevated to demigodhead, then I don't think the gods will do it lightly. For a start it is a waste of a perfectly good soul. Secondly they probably want something in return like someone who can help them with the work of being a god or at least a scheme.

Heck, this may be the source of new celestials and infernals. Roy's Archon may have been the legendary hero Milk Dude in a previous life, but he didn't have the worship he needed to make it to the next world without patronage.

I assume celestials and infernals are made in a way not too dissimilar to mortals. It is just that they don't have an afterlife.

[brian 333]

On the second point:
Yes, exactly. A demigod that ascends from mortality but fails to get enough of the four food groups fails to make it to the next world. A pantheon or deity could sponsor one, but that means sharing their food and their potential worshippers in the next world, so, as you said, this would be rare.

On the third point:
Roxanne the newly spawned demigod of unrequited love and suicide never caught on beyond a certain Lover's Leap location, and so will not make it very long into the after-world. Baldur offers her a job as his messenger and she gets to spend forever gazing at him from afar and daydreaming about the beautiful blond children she will never have. Celestials are cheaper to maintain than demigods. Win-win.

I'm not saying it is so, that's the author's call, but absent WotA I speculate on the possible.

[BaronOfHell]

ould he mislead like that?
[3] The Order's world is really abnormally fecund, god-wise. Most worlds don't produce any gods, and making this many is quite abnormal. But we don't have any reason to think this.

Why is the Order's world representative for the huge amount of worlds? The gods get better at making new worlds and certain amounts of time is at least required for gods to rise, and that is the least of it.

I believe the gods needs a world that works like a soul farm to survive, I don't know how long such a world has to exist at a minimum to be worth making though, and I don't know how long this world has to exist to create its own gods. Perhaps a huge majority of the worlds that existed before indeed didn't have the option to create gods.

Still I don't disagree with your point, I'm also shocked at the low numbers, but I don't think it has to be a plot hole.

[Roland Itiative]

Another thing to consider is that the newer worlds the gods make in general last longer than the older ones. So they had more time to develop their own deities and feed them for survival into the next cycle. Previous worlds could have simply not lasted long enough for their own mortal deities to establish themselves, or if they did, might not have lasted long enough for them to grow powerful enough to survive the reboot.

[Morquard]

On the second point:
Yes, exactly. A demigod that ascends from mortality but fails to get enough of the four food groups fails to make it to the next world. A pantheon or deity could sponsor one, but that means sharing their food and their potential worshippers in the next world, so, as you said, this would be rare.

I disagree strongly with that last point! Thor heavily implied the Dark One's purple quiditity is a result of him ascending without any sponsorship, implying that this sponsorship is what so far made mortals ascent, otherwise they'd have had a fourth color a long time ago.

Now why do they sponsor gods to ascend?

You say it makes no sense as they have to share food? But maybe they also bring in more resources into the shared pool than they take out, so making it a net win?

Or maybe (and this is getting dark, so I doubt it) they're food too. Thor kinda makes no secret out of the fact that they feed on mortal souls. Roy's grandfather described it as "eventually merging with the plane", but with this new information it just feels the gods just sucked every drop of juice out of the juicebox at that point. It makes this a whole lot less peaceful and awesome. Now what if to survive the darkness between worlds they need... stronger souls. God souls. I mean they clearly have no qualms eating mortals. Would they really make a huge different between mortals and mortals that got buffed a bit to last longer. Fattened up mortals, so to speak?

[Mastikator]

1) the more gods there are the less souls there are for each, increasing the risk of starvation
2) the fewer gods there are the more likely it is for new gods to be promoted and actually survive

Thus we find an equilibrium of souls to gods ratio.

It's also entirely possible that the current gods were not the original gods. Because
1) gods are shaped by the beliefs of their believers, over billions of generations that is easily enough to completely evolve a god so much that it's unrecognizable from start
2) gods could've died and birthed over billions of generations, the likelihood of all of them surviving is low, the likelihood of all of the current ones being primordial is also low

Let's do some quick math. Let's say that the chances of surviving a new world is 99.999%, the odds of surviving a thousand generations is 99%, the odds of surviving ten thousand generations is only 90%, and the odds of surviving hundred thousand generations is now only 36.7%
The odds of surviving a billion generations? Infinitesimally small. Given these odds it's actually unlikely that any of the contemporary gods are primordial.

Edit- I think 99.999% average chance of survival of a deity is more than generous, given that Thor has stated he doesn't believe the Dark One will survive.

[danielxcutter]

It’s implied that Marduk and Thor at least are “primordial” gods, because they were around for the memorial to the first world.

I wonder just how long it took for the Snarl to be formed? The Snarl may have destroyed the world in less than half an hour, but the world itself probably lasted for longer than that.

[Khay]

I feel it's important to remember that most worlds just don't last very long. According to Thor, they're up to "a few thousand years" now, but the second world lasted just 4 years. A world needs to last for some time to be able to spawn new gods, and then it needs to last for some time after that , since the new god needs to eat a lot of souls to be able to make it to the next world. There might have been billions of worlds, but maybe only the last ten thousand even had a chance to be spawning grounds.

If we assume that the ascension of new gods is a rare event to begin with, and that most of the worlds would have been actively unfriendly to the creation of new gods (like the cyberpunk universes), I think it makes sense that the pantheons are still relatively small.

[Hish]

There's a lot of turnover among gods. New ones rise and old ones starve all the time. We know that even established gods like Hel can die — Loki is genuinely concerned for her here. But this theory is contradicted by the perhaps-not-fully-accurate depictions we've seen of the past creation of worlds, which have only shown gods who are still around (plus the Eastern Pantheon).

This makes the most sense to me. When you think about it, old established gods would have a huge advantage over newly ascended gods. They have the advantage of millions of worlds worth of experience at carving out a niche, figuring out how to remain relevant in the new world, building a following, establishing clergy, etc. The new gods have two, maybe three worlds to figure out how to god in the major leagues before they disappear.

[brian 333]

I disagree strongly with that last point! Thor heavily implied the Dark One's purple quiditity is a result of him ascending without any sponsorship, implying that this sponsorship is what so far made mortals ascent, otherwise they'd have had a fourth color a long time ago.

Now why do they sponsor gods to ascend?

You say it makes no sense as they have to share food? But maybe they also bring in more resources into the shared pool than they take out, so making it a net win?

Or maybe (and this is getting dark, so I doubt it) they're food too. Thor kinda makes no secret out of the fact that they feed on mortal souls. Roy's grandfather described it as "eventually merging with the plane", but with this new information it just feels the gods just sucked every drop of juice out of the juicebox at that point. It makes this a whole lot less peaceful and awesome. Now what if to survive the darkness between worlds they need... stronger souls. God souls. I mean they clearly have no qualms eating mortals. Would they really make a huge different between mortals and mortals that got buffed a bit to last longer. Fattened up mortals, so to speak?

I don't disagree with this analysis. I was specifically responding to the question of why gods would make a celestial of an ascended mortal in subsequent worlds rather than maintain them as demigods.

If Roxanne, a former mortal ascended to demigoddess of unrequited love and suicide, can't bring enough juice to sustain her to the next world, she dies. She will have proven she doesn't have what it takes to play in the big leagues.

So, does the pantheon let her die? Do they expend the resousces to maintain her as a demigod? Or do they allow her to serve as a celestial who is much cheaper to maintain than a demigod and much more useful than a dead goddess?

[thereaper]

Thor doesn't claim that the elven pantheon ascended during this world. So long as no living elves are still around from the creation of this world, it is entirely possible for the elven ascension to have happened in a previous world.

[JonahFalcon]

D&D has plenty of gods. Not all of them will be seen or get center stage.

For example, just because no one mentioned Quetzalcoatl doesn't mean he's not around.

[woweedd]

D&D has plenty of gods. Not all of them will be seen or get center stage.

For example, just because no one mentioned Quetzalcoatl doesn't mean he's not around.

I mean, no, it does. There are four, and only four, pantheons.

[rbetieh]

The answer seems fairly obvious to me, Hel explains it.

She says the soul power of the dwarves will make her Queen of the North (heh heh) and that will lead to her temples being everywhere in the next world. Roy confirms that his belief is that her winning will create hundreds of undead tyrants in the next world.

What does this mean? Just because the gods take turns making the world, doesnt mean the turns are equal. It seems more likely that the stronger gods get a bigger say. So if that is true, then how much of a say do you think Dvalin gets in the next world even if he survives? Not much, certainly no major race will see him as a creator and dedicate themselves to him when he dies. So a surviving god in world 1 is even less likely to survive world 2. Breaking into to established pantheons after a world is lost is hard, no one wants to worship "The Thirteen".

[Emberlily]

Thinking about the gods and especially demigods being at high risk of death with regular turnover would make their decisions in the Godsmoot take on an interesting light for me. We could interpret some of their choices for Yes as possibly a dedication to the long term survival of everything over their own personal life and some as a desire to go for a surefire world end cushioned by a full soul harvest over a chance of surviving but also a chance of going hungry.

[KorvinStarmast]

I mean, no, it does. There are four, and only four, pantheons.

There are three, and only three, pantheons because the Snarl ate / destroyed / eliminated the green one.

@JonahFalcon: wrong edition.
/pedantry mode

[Mike Havran]

There are three, and only three, pantheons because the Snarl ate / destroyed / eliminated the green one.

@JonahFalcon: wrong edition.
/pedantry mode

Technically, Dark One is also a pantheon

[masamune1]

Technically, Dark One is also a pantheon

I think that Dark One, like Hel, probably is a member of a pantheon but not really involved in the formal stuff.