Approved: | Wed Jun 16 1999 |
Last update: | Wed Jun 16 1999 |
Author: | namhas |
The gods are personalities. They do not have alignment nor they have any exact spheres of influence. A god of forest cloud burn its own forest and eat the all children of nearby tribes if he wants to do so but as he loves the forest and wants to keep his followers, he will not do that. He might even then get in to trouble with other gods, particularly the god to whose "sphere of influence" he is trying to make way. The gods are usually quite jealous about their territory. The mortal worshippers pick a god whose motives are similar in some way with their own motives, they do not pick a by their alignment or anything else, with an exception that truly power hungry mortals could pick a god with totally different motives just in order to gain great powers and then maybe somehow try to cheat himself out from the god's service without attaining the wrath of the god. Thus, there is no actually gods of forests, gods of death, instead there are gods who like the forests, gods who like death, but they are not bound only to those. They may change their mind if they want to. They can do whatever they want, at a cost of their followers and fellow gods dislike. They however must have an initial personality and a bunch of stuff they like before they even try to start roleplaying their role. That is what the mortals except the god to do and that is why they may worship the god.
By this way we don't need to have a god for every sphere of influence we can think of. There is no need. As said before, mortals do not pick a god by their sphere of influence, they pick a god by their motives and the way they see the world.
The lesser gods, gods and greater gods only differences are that they need to pay a share of their divine points to the higher ranking ones and that is quite automatical and the initial amount of divine points and followers they have (no lesser god may have a whole race behind it). So if a lesser god gains divine points a share of them are spread over all the gods and when a god gains divine points a share of them are spread over all the greater gods. This way the higher ones can always get divine points without actually having any followers. A lesser god can however get more divine points than the average amount the higher gods possees and then its time for the greater gods think about the advancement to a higher rank and also think about who to replace the lesser god and that replacement is taken from the mortals, most likely the former lesser god's best ranking worshipper, an arch bishop of some sort. The gods who only idle can become forgotten ones and people can really forgot them. They can however make a come back whenever they like.