Deities

Gods and Godesses

Subclass: constructs (astral)

''“The Law of Belief given form. A more or less stable, more or less sane form.”''

-       ''Master Henry Griffiths, of the R.B.G.H''

The Law of Belief states that magic follows the path of least resistance to the sapient mind. Ambient magic will attune itself to a given area, a given inhabitant to that area, a given mind-set, etc. This, in its most basic, and yet most complex form, means that should enough people believe that a certain divine being, with a certain persona and a certain set of powers and weaknesses exists in this world or one very close to it (Heaven, the Spirit world, astral plane etc.) then that being will start to form from the wisps of ambient magic surrounding and suffusing those who believe in it. This is, of course, how many unnatural creatures gain attributes which they, biologically and evolutionarily, have no right to possess, such as the mutative number of limbs and flight of the true dragons or the shapeshifting of certain types of trolls, but in its most extreme, divine beings, or creatures so close to the divine as to make the distinction insignificant, are formed from the collective belief of the surrounding sapient mortals.

The creation of the mind is, surprisingly enough, not the most complicated part. Generally, the mind of the divine being is quite close in scope and ability to the person or people who imagined it, and as such parts of their own psyche are copied, for lack of a better term, to make up the whole of the deity. This does mean that as the minds of its followers change, so too will the mind of a deity change, and thus most deities last a few years at most before becoming too instable to function as one entity, and splitting apart when belief falters. The remainder tend to be stable because they are worshiped in a very stable community, but since stable societies are almost always small, they have little real power besides expending magic in that community every now and then. However useful it might seem to be to have a local church which, once a month or so, can heal a grievous wound or sickness, in general the presence of even one trained healer or magus will outdo even the most focused of local deities.

There are, however, exceptions. Those rare deities which have lasted for decades or even centuries, and are powerful beyond most anything found on earth. Their names are well known. Yahweh, Yù Dì, Buddha, Shiva, Vishnu, Odin, Quetzalcoatl, the Great Spirit, Dagon, Lucifer, and many more. Through long established traditions, or holy books, or internal ways to remedy radical change, these beings have risen to a level where they routinely grant miracles, give their priests the ability to channel, cast or resist magic, and war with each other over new potential converts. Each of them are relatively stable, though they can vary slightly in attitude over geographical areas, and make powerful allies should you find yourself aligned to their causes. It should be said, however, that they are not truly alive, nor are they even truly aware, as far as we can tell; they act like their believers generally think they would act, and have very limited free will within those boundaries. That speck of free will tends to be set to expansion, gaining power, gaining converts, etc.

Smaller, more local gods, are generally more flexible, both in thought and in awareness. Their minds are less of a gestalt comprised of thousands, and more of a combination of at most a dozen people, generally very similar people. This does mean that a priest of a local deity, worshiped by a village or small town, might have more of a working relationship with his patron deity, and find his god to be one capable of forethought and compassion. Everything is possible with magic. Almost everything, at any rate.

It is also possible, and happens semi frequently, for a community to unintentionally create spirits or minor deities which are antagonistic rather than benign. It is the sad truth that should no happy, good and genuinely nice person will ever be so well known, or so well believed in if you will, as a wanted criminal or known maligner. This quirk of sentient psychology also applies in the creation of deities, and generally manifest in, for example, a spirit attacking those who enter a certain ruin or cave, or a deity which cares for a certain forest and is hostile to any hunters or loggers. Classifying a being as a created spirit or deity and not a true spirit of nature i.e. a dryad or spriggan, or the spirit of a dead sentient i.e. a wraith or ghast, can be difficult. As always, time and research is key to the Hunter’s craft.