Sages are game designers, like you. They belong to a 'race' or a group of creatures called "the ancients". All sages are mostly creations of the new gods, but some are even created by the elder gods. They aren't humans or not necessarily belong to any humanoid-creature group. They can be ancient beasts like dragons, great eagles, celestial spirits, moon elves, or some other unique, weird and long lost creatures. They might even be last surviving members of their own species. Also sages can have multiple forms, like 10 different beast forms and 3 humanoid forms for example.

Some of the sages are younger than others, while a group of them has been created by elder/new gods, some of them have been created by lesser and younger gods. the age between sages can vary in thousands of years.

But nearly all sages are still older than mankind itself, they are the ancients after all. They are evidently immortal and quite powerful in terms of physical strenght, and other suchs things. But the greatest power of the sages comes from eons of experience. They know _alot_ and they interact with men more than gods do, so they are atleast the next best thing, sometimes even better. All sages know a great deal about magic and other hidden arts.

Sages often serve greater powers. Demigods are about equal to sages in power, lesser gods are a little above them, new gods are far above sages and elder gods arent even from this world not to mention their superiors, the greater gods ...

Sages might follow some gods agenda, do some tasks for him, lead mortals to goals of the god. They may even serve more than one god at same time, even if those gods have different philosophies and are rivals to eachother, without them knowing it for sages often follow their own paths and care about the world and mortals much more than the gods themselves do. While the sages often serve the god they do not necessary follow all whims of the gods, other than namely, they do this fully knowing their value for the gods.

When the game begings the primary role of sages is to teach and lead the mortals in the forms of wise men, hiding their true nature unless it is necessary to show their real power. Sages will become powerful leaders and respected tutors for awhile, but our goal is that eventually, when players possess the knowledge and skills to play independly, role of the sages changes more towards one of the observer who watches that everything goes on smoothly, interfering only if need arises.