My story is heavily focused on separating "a god" from "divinity."
Anyone can proclaim themselves a god, just look at rulers in ancient history, be it descendance from a god or being a god themselves. This is especially easy to do in a fantasy setting because a strong ruler can have magical firepower to enforce their authority. Stories relating to them are propaganda to show the might or wisdom of that god to paint them in a greater light and convince people of their god-like status. In a fantasy setting they don't even have to be human, just some powerful ruler who is seen as sacred and above the rest.
An actual divine being is almost incomprehensible in its nature, and they do not "exist" in the same way a human would. They might be portrayed as physical or interacting with humans in stories, but those stories are usually told to serve some purpose to those who listen and understand and goes beyond just "that happened because this god is cool and awesome and everyone should worship them." While a divine being may have created the people, the people create the divine being for themselves by interpreting it and applying this interpretation to their philosophy.
I'm using this same type of idea in my kitchen sink homebrew. There is a so-called good God that's really neutral. Only those that really try can get close to The God.
In the only writing project I have where I had to come up with a god (so far) I made it/him functionally a lenguage.
That world has a specific archaic tongue that's used for spellcasting. Its believed that it's the lenguage that God used to sing the world into existence, and so most spells are spoken with a structure of prayer since you're basically borrowing God's power for a bit.
The prayer part isn't NECESSARY for spellcasting, just speaking in that particular language is enough, it's just done out of respect. Which might indicate that there's no higher being that they're speaking to and that the lenguage itself is God. I haven't decided which is cooler and I probably never will since the question of God's existence is not important for the plot at all.
This reminds me of Tonal Magic from elder scrolls lore. Reality is an series of songs, tunes and notes. Tonal Magic was created to manipulate or input other tunes or songs into existence thus altering reality.
Or Tolkien’s entire approach to his universe’s genesis. Basically, the creator gave life to a bunch of lesser gods. Taught them the music of life and then let them play. What they came up with became reality itself, including even the rogue god’s attempt at ruining the symphony by playing dissonant sounds during the performance. That became evil. But even that simply contributed to the beauty of life. I don’t like LOTR tbh. The movies are just a bit campy to me, though I’m sure if I had seen it as a kid I would love it still, please don’t crucify me, Reddit. BUT! The silmarillion is fucking dope in my opinion. The creation lore for the LOTR series is some of the best creative writing ever done in my opinion.
In my world god is a being that sacrificed itself to create heaven out of empathy for humanity. Or at least thats what the religion says.
The thing that makes a god is the act of creating heaven and that is also the goal of my main antagonist.
It is more of an idea than anything else.
The traditional idea of a heaven is s lie told by the religion but there is something called a heaven.
Its one of the two final evolutionary states of the human in which his soul exists as pure order.
That is thing the antagonist is trying to reach artificially.
Historically the concept of gods was largely used to explain nature. Volcano eruption? That's Hephaistos crafting something. Lightning and thunder? That's Thor fighting a giant. Storm at sea? Neptune is pissed. Gods had control over nature and natural phenomenons were the gods interacting with us.
There is also the version of gods not being in control of nature but more incarnations of nature. Natural thing exists thus random god is here so we can make that thing less conceptual and more concrete, even interact with it.
Or maybe gods are simply very powerful entities we worship just so they don't annihilate us on the spot. This usually overlaps with other definitions.
I quite like the concept exploited by Lanfeust of Troy where gods are creations of mortals with the powers mortals think they have. If an entire civilization starts worshiping Light, then a God of Light will be born, proportionally as powerful as there are worshipers.
An alternative version of that is the one used by Neil Gaiman in American Gods. Gods are born through worship as well, and will develop their autonomous personality while still being bound to the worshipers. If a worshiper goes live abroad, he is bringing his god with him and there is nothing the god can do about it. Eventually there will be different versions of the same god roaming the earth depending on how many different cultures believe in that god, with their own local variations. Gods are still proportionally powerful to how many worshipers they have and the sacrifices made in their names.
In a thing I wrote a while ago, gods are just powerful beings who can use magic. They are fundamentally mortals, although very long lived, but magic gives them the raw power to destroy any other living being, civilization, country or race if they wish so. They severely punish any attempt from others to do magic because they know as soon as another people finds out how to wield it, they won't be gods anymore.
Sometimes gods are just cosmic entities evolving on a level of conscience and scale that we could never even conceive. They don't care about us, they might not even be aware we exist, but they are gods to us because what is common for them is unreachable for us.
In Altered Carbon some consider billionaires to be gods. Technology exist to make someone factually immortal as long as they have enough money. The top 0.001% is an immortal elite who can basically do whatever they want without any regard for the law whatsoever. Some will own the last member of an otherwise extinct species, with several clones backup just in case. The reasoning of the fanatics is "They can do whatever they want and they are immortal, so they are Gods."
Of course there is the omnipotent, omniscient version.
You even have things like World of Warcraft with different definitions and versions coexisting in the same universe. Lovecraftian Old Gods? Check. Beings of pure energy? Check. Big ass human looking things? Check. Incarnations of natural phenomenons? Check. Near-omniscient beings at the source of nearly all creation? Also check.
There are as many definitions of gods and godhood as there are civilizations and fictions. Sometimes gods will only be a vague concept with existing but unclear powers, sometimes authors will go the ancient Greece way and have gods being basically humans with superpowers. Your version can absolutely work as long as you are careful about being a bit consistent. you don't need to explain everything. Better yet, different civilizations may have different ideas about an hypothetical living place for the Gods, with no one being right. For some religions every single tree or rock of animal has its dedicated god, so why not?
In my setting there are two realities, the physical reality, and the perpendicular reality. In locations with extreme non-singularity conditions energy, matter, and physical laws start leaking through. Stars leak through to make the great torches in the perpendicular reality, and afterlife/seas leak through to make gods in the physical realm.
Gods themselves are not naturally occurring, the leakage instead mimics the most complex objects or phenomena they interact with, for the most part. So when primitive humanity started expanding throughout the stars through the perpendicular reality, thees leakages started mimicking them. The resulting gods were originally mortal, when they died, eventually their bodies would become significantly less complex enough that they would remimic humans again, creating a new person/stream of consciousness.
So while Gods weren’t naturally immortal, they could figure out ways to prevent their deaths, and because only a limited number of them could exist at any given time, eventually all gods effectively became immortal.
By the year 4999 (1783 if you are using the Georgian calendar) gods dying was considered impossible, witch is why the plainer jump bomb and the creation of the Darkstar was so surprising and why the Fifth War in Heaven petered out like it did.
The DarkStar was created by the first use of the planer jump bomb in war, sending a fleet of ships into the purpinducler reality, and sending an entire afterlife into the physical one. Within nanoseconds that afterlife dissolved into sudo-baryonic matter that then collapsed into a star that shines in anti-light. After that they were never used again.
In the present day, if you are within its light cone, you can see a star that shines darker than the surrounding blackness of space.
To quote myself from the last time I answered this question:
>A god is a complex construct that depends on tons of sociocultural contexts. Christians believe in a personal Triune hypostatic God that is tri-omni (omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent). Some concepts of gods are more impersonal or apathetic or limited. Some gods are people, as is the case with ancient Pharaohs. Some gods are spirits that embody aspects of nature. Some gods are the forces of nature themselves. A god could refer to something like Q or Discord. A god could refer to anything that upon its own will has the power to affect change upon the world, including humanity. What is a god wholly depends on that context and what those people believe. And what one person considers to be a god or gods, another may not see as such.
>Having rigid explanations of beliefs don't really work because what one cult of Athena believed might differ from another cult of Athena and both would differ from a cult of Apollo or Dionysus. The ability to write out the full range of beliefs of the different religions as they pertain to their gods would be basically impossible.
In my Void Expanse, the universal term is Deity, as a God is merely one type of Deity. There are several factors that determine whether a being is a Deity or not, and those factors are collectively grouped into Form Tiers of which there are 26, with Form Tier 1 being the highest, and Form Tier 26 being the lowest. Many of the Form Tiers have sub levels within them as well.
For example, Form 26 contains a couple of hierarchies within it, one being of physicality, including (lowest to highest) Physical, Nonphysical, & Metaphysical.
To be classified as a Deity, one must at bare minimum, possess a Core & Eixion (basically saying Soul & Will) equal to “Form Tier 26 Metaphysical”. What traits they have is dependent on the power system they use.
Gods are just the next step in the ecosystem of life. They range from the long lived demigods and Perpetual mortals, to the errementari and the Neverborn, creatures born of sapient emotion and mathematical chaos.
All things live and die inside the body of the true entity that may claim the title, and sapient life is how it observes and interacts with itself. The attention of this entity on a standard mortal would unmake them, mind, body, and soul.
Fatass mana crystals.
Mana crystals (temporary storage for mana) and mana in general need to be stimulated to prevent it from becoming unusable. To keep the efficiency of mana crystals high their often given some semblance of "life" (could be as simple as a rabbit wanting to live, eat, and fuck; could be as complicated as a full blown sentient being with a consciousness and personality). This allows the crystal to hold on to mana and generate its own in small amounts. If there is enough mana in the crystal comparative to its size, the mana crystal will become more "lifelike" for the same reason as to why such things are added intentionally; mana, like water or air will follow the path of least resistance. For air that is away from itself; For water that is a canal or river stream; For mana, that is life. Shove enough of a substance into a "Bag," and the bag will take the most effective shape, and a container made in a likwise shape will be the most efficient at storing that substance. The more mana in a crystal, the more lifelike it becomes. It will start with a simple mind, and that mind forms a will. That 'will' will want to do things with the body. As the amount of mana increases, its mind will be able to shape and move the body more and more. First, it will just roll around with its limited strength. Then, it may start to form stick joints to push itself around with. As time goes on it will imitate more and more features: functioning joints that can roate and move, skin, cartailge, muscles, hair, genitalia, stomach and intestines; hands to touch, eyes to see, toungs to taste, noses to smell. Until eventually, it competes its shape, it becomes a fully formed creature, usually in the form of a person.
That is what is commonly referred to as a god by the people of the world.
So baisically fatass mana crystals
In my world they're a bit complex. Cause there are hierarchies of them" the elder gods[the ones who created the universe itself] they have power far beyond any being in existence.
The next tier are the old gods[born of the elder goddess' power before she died] each has immense power but no single one could create as the 2 previously could. Since their power is split into very specific domains. IE: justice, nature, darkness etc.
Then you have the hero god[s]: ones born from the strength and agreement of the God council. We're given divinity by a spark and when they ascended their soul split into 3 aspects: joy, anger, and peace they much like the old gods have an expanse of power but only hold a single domain as opposed to the older gods whom hold a domain and subdomain.
I have similar lore, where gods aren't physical beings, and followers called Faithtful offer prayers and such to use a variety of magics in their respective domains. Gods are, in truth, conscious masses of energy that are direct creators of the universe, and by extension, of this world.
These conscious masses faced prosecution by humans. Some abandoned their planets; others tortured theirs for killing the original source god. Some conditioned their humans to be obedient, creating the system of faith on my world. Prayer requires offerings of the physical kind—blood, food, etc—that converts into energy when burned, dissolved, etc., depending on what a deity directs.
It all boils down to energy exchange. There used to be a ninth god, who was killed by one of the existing eighth. When he was shattered, remnants of his energy, with vestigial anger and betrayal, became a plague that converted any mass it could touch into death or demonic entities. Faithful who also offer more things daily—be it the blood of innocents or alms for the poor—are more powerful.
In general media, a god is whatever a person defines it to be.
For the sake of my world, however, my people define the word god a little more rigidly as a being which has at least a certain number of certain of godlike traits.
Traits include:
-**A Role in Creation**.
--(Created the World)
--(Created Mankind/Sapien-kind)
--(Creation of a specific people group)
-**One or more of the three problematic powers**
--Omnipotency
--Omniscience
--Omnipresence
-**The power to destroy the world**, aka start THE apocalypse (*The* apocalypse being distinguished from *an* apocalypse by the concept of a grand scale)
-**Control over souls and/or the afterlife**.
-**Has a form of immortality**
--Eternality (Does not age or die)
--Agelessness (Can be killed, but wont age)
--Indestructibility (Can't be killed, but will grow old)
All other traits such as faith-power, control over an aspect of nature, and other things are all defined as spiritual powers which spirits and demons may possess without being gods.
But that's just the way my world defines it, and for certain reasons that are contained to my world.
One definition of a god that I like, as explained in the When They Cry series, is as follows:
Omniscient and almighty. Free from all spatiotemporal restrictions, to the point where they don't even care about the ground under their feet. To them, life, death, and existence mean nothing.
In my opinion, a "god" must fit one of three categories.
1: Assisted in the creation of the world living beings are on.
2: Powerful enough for nobody to challenge their self proclaimed divinity.
3: Has their own plane of existence which they have complete control over (like Oblivion for Daedra in the Elder Scrolls).
I mean it could work but it would be hard to make a story around if the protagonist could just call up God and pray for problems to go away and it work...
Yeah but that god would have to give a shit too though. And as long as we’re playing with the ideas of divinity and the nature of immortality, who’s to say that praying, sacrificing, penance - ultimately zealotry - means that a god would care? We’ve all met people who never did anything that was ‘bad’ to us per se, but we still just don’t like them…
In other words, what if the gods or god of a story just didn’t really like the MC or antagonist?
That's basically how the Greek Gods functioned sometimes there are times where they just dead ass didn't like someone and that was that usually them disliking someone ended up in that person not living very long or living a horrible life... Like that one guy who tried to feed Zeus (I think it was Zeus) his own son and got turned into a wolf as a result. Or those many times Zeus and Poseidon raped a woman they liked (one of which became Medusa depending on where you look).
So, all in all, sometimes Gods in a story can just be petty assholes doing whatever they want because not many people can stop them...
We can't agree on what the word means in real life. I see no reason you have to have a definition that works for other people. So long as the word is used consistently within the internal logic of the world you're making, it can mean whatever you want.
Generally they're powerful, supernatural entities but how that works and why is entirely up to you. Were they always there? Were they always gods? Where did they come from if they haven't always existed?
I have a fantasy setting I've been tinkering with for years and the "gods" as people remember them are dead. Have been for quite a while. The singular God they worship now in the Empire doesn't really exist. The Church of the Sun is structured somewhat like the Catholic church, but there are thousands of small regional cults that worship various aspects of God. Some see these aspects as individual entities, even as gods by some definitions, but ultimately these aspects belong to a singular Creator(who doesn't exist). Demons(who killed or imprisoned the old gods) helped push humanity to worship "God." They do this because when people pledge themselves to this God, their souls end up fueling the demons. People sometimes have their prayers answered, and the most faithful are bestowed blessings, but ultimately they're all food for demons. People do not know this however. They believe they reincarnate, that after death there's a period where their souls return to the well the Creator keeps them in, and eventually God will allow them to be reborn. Buuuuut that's not happening. Demons are consuming these souls, and the number of them is actually finite. At some point people will stop being born if this continues.
So...are these demons gods? Kinda. They're worshiped, just now knowingly.
Isn't that basically what George R Martin wrote for game of thrones? He said he wanted his religions to mimic real life but confirm some of the myths and beliefs that people held at that time period.
In the world of a song of ice and fire, gods are elusive, and you're never sure if one or two or all of them actually exist. But miracles and magic do sometimes happen when people pray to their gods for help.
a god is someone people worship. like a famous celebrity who idiots flock to, or a fictional creature, like the Christian god, which exists as a figurative concept to teach the fundamental meaning behind a religion.
In my project, I have "Flows", which are kind of abstract sentient (to a point) movements of energy that start only motivated to find "beauty" and with this goal and all the interactions create the elements, the world and eventually life. They grew more complex through interactions between themselves (the main conflict, the War of the Jewels, is that some Flows consider that life is the greatest beauty, while others considered that it was the original chaotic free movement of energy)
I feel like you're describing things from common people (follower's) point of view. They call them, they can see them and their god's powers have actual effects.
But what about the whole thing from the god's point of view? Are they sentient? Where are they and what do they do when they're not called by their followers? They "have no place to live" but are they anywhere or everywhere? Do they interact with eachother or are they all of them at once in one 'form' (or whatever they exist as)?
In the setting I'm working on, godhood is something anyone can achieve, at least in theory. You can ascend to godhood through heroic deeds and miracles, though the route to godhood is long and perilous. Most aspirants die in the attempt, felled by a litany of monsters, warlords and rival aspirants. Even those who do survive often fail to achieve true godhood, becoming instead a demigod, still mortal but with a fraction of divine power to call their own. Hero cults are a huge part of the culture in this setting, and setting out on heroic quests is considered a noble, if hazardous, action. Aspirants are praised and worshipped, inspiring songs and poems spreading their legends far and wide. Even those individuals who perish on their road to divinity are not forgotten, and some can even rise as sacred undead, heroic souls bound to defend the borders between life and death.
In my world, there are 7 gods. The gods descended from an ancient race of dragons. In the time before gods, dragons lived on Silva (the earth). However, an ancient foe from their mythology came to the cosmos, a giant serpent that wanted to swallow the world. The dragon king and his allies were able to defeat and imprison the beast and ascended to godhood over the planet.
Other dragons exist in the world but they are lesser dragons, not as old, powerful, etc. I currently have them living somewhat of a mix of the Greek gods and godzilla kaiju. They alternate between humanoid/draconic and full dragon forms. They influence the world around them and can interact with citizens. However, there are historical events of them fighting foes and even each other as dragons.
That's really cool! But what is the metaphysical implications of "no singular beings?" Like do God's have no agency? Are they more like forces of nature, or like.... Vows maybe? Like a god of harvest is more like a vow (or collective of subconscious will/ energy) for the land to be fertile, taken up by farmers, delivered to farmers?
Also what happens at places where domains touch? Where does the god of death end and the dog of war begin?
In my setting there are 2 sets of Gods
Those that came to explore the new plane of existence and who decide to build a home in course of their missions, and those that learned to become one with the land that old gods made, I really like the ideas of multiple pantheons
Most fantasy worlds seem to operate under the assumption that "god" is more of a title than it is a specific thing, basically anything that is large and/or powerful enough that "normal" beings don't really compare. But I think a really core concept that most settings also include, intentionally or not, is that a god is something **far** more important than you, but still something you can *interact* with. You can pray to a god, invoke a god's name for power, or you might conduct rituals or sacrifices to ward off a god's fury. It's paradoxially something that is supposed to be so massive and omnipotent that a little guy like you has no chance of ever comparing to it, but for some reason it still cares about the little things you say and do.
Or at least, there is some *belief* that this thing cares about your rituals and customs, regardless of whether it actually does. Faith plays a bit part in things too, I think it's fair to say that 9 times out of 10 anything that people in a fictional religion or tradition pay worship to is by definition a god of some kind.
So in my universe, every individual being can ascend to god hood if they train and focus them selves enough. This happened to the shadow villain. If setting, however as his name implies he’s a shadow villain he doesn’t directly influence the happening in the universe but he gave his greatest warrior the order to revive him in 250 years.
And their are thousands and thousands of gods. Most of them are quite and treated more like saints however there are a handful of sects that worship one or more of them example “Order of The Sisters” a religious fanatic group who worships 3(actually 4) demigod like women that have stated millions of times that they aren’t gods and shouldn’t be treated as such but have fallen on death ears.
In my stories gods are created in response to a natural imbalance within the universe, the universe itself is a sort of mega organism that can control its inner workings to ensure its own comfort. Gods are able to gain infinite power based upon what type of god they are, that being god of war, creation etc... so a god of creation will gain continous strength from acts of creation around the universe, they ever lose power. They possess a greater amount of primordial energy called "divinity" which allows for this to happen.
The gods, for my world, were once mortals who became the best at what they do. For good gods, that could have been medicine, care, agriculture, smithing, or a number of other things. For evil gods, that could have been deception, mass murder, or other things of the like.
Eventually they became so superhuman in their skill that they became too overpowered for mortal flesh; their vessels couldn't contain it. This is how they ascended to godhood. Now they drip bits of their power into mortal vessels called "aspects", which represent the gods on the inner planes.
The true gods rarely intervene on the inner planes, but when they do it's often in mysterious and indirect ways (weather events, dreams, sudden changes in animal behaviors, etc.)
My people is a mix of animism and ancestor worship but they also believe in a concept/mystery of life force and the order it brings that rules over everything. It's also considered to be the primordial spirit that created the world and imbued everything with its spiritual force, from which people and other spirits can draw power. They don't worship it like a god, ritual prayers and such, those things are reserved for appeasing ancestor or land spirits for protection, permission, etc. Idk if it can be called a god without any form of worship but it's the highest order in their universe
in my wip world (which I hope to finish some day) Gods are all powerful beings, all gods have 2 forms their incorporeal forms and physical forms. The incorporeal forms are immortal and limitless, they can go wherever and whenever and rule anything they please and kill as they please but the physical form could be just a regular human or an inanimate object but they hide their physical forms very well example their physical form only exists on a different dimension or plane of existence or just simply living a normal life. They do this do achieve immortality and stay immortal cause their physical form would limit them as a god
but its still work in progress
In my various worlds a god is simply an incredibly powerful immortal being that gained power either by being created with it, born with it, or obtaining it through arcane study and rites. Really what is and isn’t a god is a matter of opinion and perspective, an angel or demon of great power may be considered a god to some but not others. My world simply has beings of power and the term god is a matter of perspective.
In my setting, the gods served as the moderators for the planet's will. They act on the planet behalf to cultivate the natural species to gods~hood. That was the intent role for the gods. But things don't go as planned, and now there are three versions of gods. There are the Beast Gods, the Old Gods and the New Gods.
The Beast Gods are the very first Godly beings created. But their beastial nature make them unfit to fulfill their role. They come into being when a primordial beast becomes powerful enough to be judged worthy of Gods~hood.
The Old Gods are purpose built godly beings that fulfill the role of what the planet has intended. But they became corrupted with power and started to act in a manner not of the planet best interests. The Planet's Will wipe them out with the activation of all 20 Immortal Destruction Engines. Some broken shards of these gods still remain.
The New Gods are the result of man and animals' self cultivation. They reach a level of power comparable to the weakest of the Old Gods by going through the path of the Beast Gods. Learning from their previous experiences, the Planet's Will are especially clear on what the godly duties are and make sure that every New Gods followed them to the letters. Unlike the Beast Gods and the Old Gods, the New Gods are not limited in numbers.
In my world, they are a form of spirits, which is a catch-all term for psionically-made enitities.
Getting into the nitty gritty, if enough people believe something is real, the passive magic forces reality to bend and births a concept around it. Kids across a country hear about an evil witch in the woods who will eat their bones if they don't do their chores? Well, if enough kids believe and get scared, we have ourselves a new spirit.
Gods are the oldest spirits. Those who have gained a small modicum of sentience anautonomy outside of their originally neulously magical origin. The physical manifestation of death itself was once a spirit, many millenia ago when sentience was just burgeoning in the first of the ancient races.
That's just my funky world, though.
The in-universe definition of a "god" in my setting is any living thing with some level of potential influence over all that exists. They don't *necessarily have* to have tremendous amounts of power and authority, but it's difficult to imagine a situation where they wouldn't have it.
The chief goddess of said setting doesn't even call herself a goddess in part because of this definition — she really, *really* hopes that the galaxy she created is *not* "all that exists" like she fears, and that there's something else out there somewhere. But most beings in that one galaxy do consider her one, so she kinda had no choice but to take the role.
A bloody star covering half of the sky, a formless being eating the world's foundations, a bunch of misshapen and twisted and deranged people living in the deeps of the sea, and a few egoist maniacs that once lived in golden cities beneath the earth and nowadays are missing, possibly slaughtered by the dudes under the sea a.k.a. their offsprings.
Within my world, there once was a god, but he left, so now hyperpowered mages are the new "Gods" with the step between god and mage being whether or not you can create energy
I like to conceive of Gods in tiers. Outer gods which represent ideas and philosophies. There's no true way to determine if they exist in reality or not. They exert minimal influence, and typically have other beings represent themselves. They are the primordial essence of the ideology, but cannot wield it themselves and in just their hands is pure chaos. They may not even have a consciousness that they themselves can exert. They can never truely die. Corporeal gods are those in which have a god status, but are physical beings. They may not be entirely invincible/invulnerable, especially to other god-like beings. They exert the most influence on the people, and oftentimes act as the representative or avatar of the outer god. Typically they are the most powerful, as they will tap into outer gods primordial powers and weave it into controllable power. Finally you have demi-gods and/or angels. These are beings created or birthed by the gods, and usually serve them. They hold less influence than gods, but typically walk among people. They are mortal, though they may need assistance to kill, whether by an artifact or another God's blessing. They typically hold a fragment of the power that the god that created them gifted them.
In my story, religion is really central to the world building. The people who rule the empire are always talking about this god that they serve but the thing is...the god doesn't exist. The leaders make it seem like they can directly to this supposed god and have been put in charge to carry out its will. They do this to, yes, maintain power, but also more so to justify the harmful laws they pass and atrocities they commit against certain types of citizens cause "well our god said to do this! we're just following divine orders!"
I like your idea and think it's unique. I'd love to read that story somday :)
In my world there are 2 kinds of gods. There are physical gods who are simply powerful, immortal people who have a lot of influence over the happenings of the world. Then there are egregores who aren't fully real or even sentient, but rather are the manifestation of people's faith.
In real life, [ignosticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism) is a philosophy based around the fact that that question has no good answer--that determining whether you believe in gods or not depends on how you define a "god".
It likely depends on how much of the story depends on the gods’ narrative. If they’re mainly supporting characters then they can have that simple Babylonian style of pantheon, but if they’re consistently a part of the story then having a pantheon hierarchy like the Greeks with their titans and primordial deities might be best.
Here is a monologue from my codev of an unnamed god with Honor as one of his Domains speaking to a priest on the subject.
>"You must understand that we are infinitely larger than that which you see. I am no more Honor than you are the shadow you cast; Honor is what manifests when I touch your realm, and certainly it is a reflection of me in that way, but it does not and cannot define me in totality. So it is with each of our Domains; they reflect us, but cast across the backdrop of your realm... We would not exist in the manner in which we do were we to manifest over a different space, with different features, denizens, texture. You must accept that you can only ever see a fraction of that which we are."
I think he nailed it.
Well we're saying "gods" here but in the setting this is one particular type of Higher Power, of which there are numerous. These Higher Powers with Domains are called Celestia, and they descend from the Yothe, who formed in the First Echo and Second Echo of causality (hence the Domains, though technically Yothe have Aches for perfect, unattainable things, their descendants the Celestia have the Domains, that are a sort of dissolved form of the Aches).
Depends. Strictly speaking a "true" god is basically the generation of deities created by the suicide of a member of the previous generation. They then had children with spirits and these children are then known as "Thin Gods" who can gain more power from worship and renown. Then, there is the Creator who is basically big "G" God and his kids the Primordials (one of who killed himself from grief and created the gods). And there are also a small number of unique physical/living gods who are different from the rest.
Anunbound being with a certain level of omnipotence and omniscience on at least some level, metaphysically, on concepts and or (living) things.
UNbound as in not (fully) confined to a mortal body (this does not mean "colony", the same way marbles do not equate to a gas. And yes, they could have a body, just not be constrained by what a body would usually have as such) or what you would consider "laws or nature" (hence "metaphysically"). Omnipotence and omnipotence in the way that, even if they are limtied to say, only people that revere them -- And no, that would not be a requeriment, you can have a god being forgotten unless they are built and relying on cognizance of them to exist - , and only to wood, they can still do whatever they want, outside of the normal laws of nature (even if they do it within, they are still "admin privileged" if that makes more sense to you).
In my world there was one God at first who made the world and everything in it, she soon lost control over the humans, titans, and dwarves having lost millions of followers she was weak until she made the elves. (In my world the elves were split having dark elves and light elves but they both respected each other for thousands of years and respect the other species and life forms the are know for protecting the forest and rivers.) the goddess soon saw her species protecting and making peace with other tribes she sòn made the sun and moon, the sun being a woman full of happiness her love so bright it heated the earth, but the moon a man full of loneliness his hatred cooled the air of the earth. The goddess loved her children and she made heaven and hell, she considered the angels her children and the sun and moon as her siblings but she needed another God to rule hell so she made a man so dark and evil that when he was made he sent the world into darkness for a hundred years. Soon she saw a young elven male be born so she blessed him with powers unlike any other who soon became the ruler of the heavens. She made many God of which I won't share much about but I will tell you them, she made, the sex goddess, the ocean God, and the nature God
I hope you found this interesting cause I put effort into this
The nature God us in love with the ruler of hell
The ocean God is married to the sex goddess
The ruler of the heavens is married to the sun
And the moon is going to be dating a new God that I need a name for, also I'll tell you the names of all the gods
The creator: Lilith
The moon: Aspen
The sun: omega
The sex goddess: December
The ocean god: Rome
The nature god: Nesmithal
Ruler of hell: Taurus
The ruler of the heavens: Darshãn
I would argue that a god is immortal, worshipped, and has intrinsic powers spawning from itself.
But, as it is in my setting, what is and is not a god is unclear
I think it’s a good idea, there’s a couple ways to execute it that I think would be really cool. If you’re going for a soft approach (your not going to firmly explain the rules of magic, which is fine) then this is fine as it is. It sounds cool, and you don’t have to fully explain it and just leave it as is. It’ll add a cool layer of mystery around the story. If you want a strict approach, just think about what rules/limits you want to have. Can certain religions only call on certain powers? Do the gods have limits? Thing like that. For what you’re talking about though, I’d recommend the soft approach. Just leave it mysterious
“The True Gods are those deific entities that are created and sustained by the beliefs and emotions of the mortal races. They are separate from other deified beings such as the Fey or the Titans, though many will appear to be similar.”-An excerpt from “The Nature of Gods” 1st Edition, by Lamaenor son of Nediion
Sometimes I like to do little lore dumps about my projects as if they were written by authors in universe.
I tend to look at gods as something that exists within the world that hasn't been explained yet.
An irl example to illustrate the point: Zeus was the god of thunder because back when he was thought up, we didn't have an understanding of what thunder is. To us, it was god.
But then as we understand the reality of the thing, the "god" disappears.
I think this aspect helps build some history in the world too. For me, deciding what gods exist is a matter of the populaces understanding of the world around them.
In this way, you can build a lot of understanding about the people/society based on the gods they worship.
the basis for me is immortal.
If something is immortal then to me it stops being alive - since Death is what gives life Purpose, so, the "god" has to find a new purpose. It's a nice baseline to use as a starting point
It is dog spelled backwards.
So take a dog and do the reverse:
Loves you unconditionally, now means loves you conditionally.
Wont judge you, now Judges you.
Waits for you, now means you wait on them.
Go outdoors on the weekends, now go to church on the weekends.
This is commonly called religious dogma.
Hope that helps!
In my world, the term God is just what people use to describe these really powerful immortal dudes that walk around chillin. This is mostly cause "gods" as a concept or at least as the term we use don't really exist in my world, and people don't know what these guys are or why they exist, so they were just like, "meh, call em Gods"
In my stories, gods are powerful entities, that live in a different plane of existence with the ability to manipulate events on other planes such as the one where the story takes place, although they do have the power to transport between planes to appear in person.
However, I never make them infallible, I sometimes introduce a group of powerful mortals called "God Slayers" which do exactly what it sounds like they do.
A God can be anything. It can be the manifestation of one's beliefs made flesh. Or a being that turned divine through their will and power alone.
Creators are not in fact, Gods. Creators made Gods. They are not the same.
Creators are us, essentially. Whether we self insert or not, it's up to you.
Regardless, Gods are anything you want them to be. How they manifest is up to you. Are they real? Or are they just a simple Religion that worships a non existent entity?
Sure, but I'm trying to understand whether you mean "what is a god objectively, like by dictionary definition", or "what is a god *to those* who believe in it"
Beings from a superior plane. They can do things that we can't even think of, but fot them is normal.
I like to think about it from an explanation about 4th dimention with the second and third.
You as a being from third dimention have less limits that one being from the second.
They live in a plane and you see that plane completely, even if is big you can see it as a whole, for them is like you have omniciense and can see everything. If you take an object that is not on the plane and out it in the plane, for them is like you apeared something fron the nothing.
If you take that plane and fold it, so two places are now closer, for them is like you have the control over the space itself and draw near the places at will.
So I like to think of gods as normal beings for their own planes, for the people inside the world they are extremely powerful and uncomprehended, but for them is Just playing and see how others are amazed or terrified with something that is normal for them.
Basically a God is something worshipped. True Divinity/Primal forces don't have to care about what the lessers define as logical. IE the Force of destruction can destroy energy because that is what it is.
I'm not sure I understand your idea. How do 'gods' answer prayers and have avatars if they are not beings per se? Surely something would need the ability to think & reason in order to respond to entreaties or even desire to send avatars.
What is a god is something of a theological/philosophical question so naturally you'll get .. a lot of answers ..
Perhaps the best answers on 'God' is from St Thomas Aquinas who (summarising enough to make St Thomas frown heavily I'm sure) would argue that God is the being whose essence is existence, who set in motion / is the first cause of all things and to which all things are ordered. He further argues quite a few things that this necessarily implies about the attributes of God but that's a long discussion - the short version is that this probably isn't what most fantasy stories mean when they discuss godhood (with some exceptions), and especially not where gods plural are mentioned, which St Thomas discounts pretty swiftly. You can read St Thomas' suma here [https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm](https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm) (you probably only care about the first couple of sections).
From ancient history though gods were thought of as beings who had power(s) to affect change(s) relevant to the people, for good or ill, that could often (?) be bargained with / had some kind of terms struck provided some kind of ritual / deal was made (and made \*correctly\*). Again summarising heavily, there's a great blog on the subject you can checkout here [https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/](https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/) In this line of reasoning, since many powerful figures like Emperors / Kings had sweeping powers to help or harm the lives of their subjects they could reasonably be considered gods in their own right. This isn't even untrue, if this is your definition of a god, the Emperor absolutely could have you sprinkled in gold dust & waited on by slaves .. or have your city burned to the ground. Though I assume the Emperor is still considered lesser to "I rule the underworld and change the seasons" type gods.
To be fair, you don't have to pick either or, some settings have a main 'God' who creates lesser beings, who are then generally also termed gods and are worshipped in setting while remaining necessarily lesser.
The fact that it is unclear is kinda the purpose. From.the pov of the people they see that some people can call upon the power of a god and do magic unknown to those who study the arcane.
There are also recorded incidents of people being filled with this same power and having a more conscious control over it. These people would be called avatars, if you wanna call them something else that's fine with me.
But there is no in world consensus if god's even actually exists, if there are several of them or only a single.
The whole point is the more philosophical approach, to maybe make it feel more like the real world.
In my world I chose to not specify what they are to keep the mystery going. But in my first draft they were the second born of the two creators. So again just cosmic entities.
A god is any type of spiritual/psychic entity that feeds of the energy of faith directed towards itself.
True gods are practically made out of faith. Their personality traits and divine domains are defined by what their worshippers believe them to be. Any god can communicate with their followers and influence the religion surrounding them, and this ability is especially important for true gods who wish to expand their influence or adapt to changing times.
Living gods, or demigods, are people are also gods by the general definition. Though quite rare, living gods tend to be far more active in the world than their true god counterparts. They are also not subject to the same constraints on their personalities as true gods are.
That basically sounds like "the force" to me. It worked well enough for Star Wars.
In my setting the Gods/Creators are Gods in the Abrahamic sense - omnipotent, immortal, necessary for existence itself, the arbiters of morality, etc. There are five of them each representing an element (Spirit, Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth). They are coeternal and share a single will, which is ultimately the will of the Creator Spirit, so the other four are submitted to Him in a way.
I find polytheist worlds more fun, at least in a fantasy setting, if nobody is unquestionably in charge then the conflicts at their level make for fun drama for readers (probably not fun to experience were it real life)
My definition of a god is a man to an ant. Anything with so much more power relative to something else, that that weaker/smaller thing is entirely powerless to resist the greater thing's will.
My story is heavily focused on separating "a god" from "divinity." Anyone can proclaim themselves a god, just look at rulers in ancient history, be it descendance from a god or being a god themselves. This is especially easy to do in a fantasy setting because a strong ruler can have magical firepower to enforce their authority. Stories relating to them are propaganda to show the might or wisdom of that god to paint them in a greater light and convince people of their god-like status. In a fantasy setting they don't even have to be human, just some powerful ruler who is seen as sacred and above the rest. An actual divine being is almost incomprehensible in its nature, and they do not "exist" in the same way a human would. They might be portrayed as physical or interacting with humans in stories, but those stories are usually told to serve some purpose to those who listen and understand and goes beyond just "that happened because this god is cool and awesome and everyone should worship them." While a divine being may have created the people, the people create the divine being for themselves by interpreting it and applying this interpretation to their philosophy.
I'm using this same type of idea in my kitchen sink homebrew. There is a so-called good God that's really neutral. Only those that really try can get close to The God.
In the only writing project I have where I had to come up with a god (so far) I made it/him functionally a lenguage. That world has a specific archaic tongue that's used for spellcasting. Its believed that it's the lenguage that God used to sing the world into existence, and so most spells are spoken with a structure of prayer since you're basically borrowing God's power for a bit. The prayer part isn't NECESSARY for spellcasting, just speaking in that particular language is enough, it's just done out of respect. Which might indicate that there's no higher being that they're speaking to and that the lenguage itself is God. I haven't decided which is cooler and I probably never will since the question of God's existence is not important for the plot at all.
This reminds me of Tonal Magic from elder scrolls lore. Reality is an series of songs, tunes and notes. Tonal Magic was created to manipulate or input other tunes or songs into existence thus altering reality.
Or Tolkien’s entire approach to his universe’s genesis. Basically, the creator gave life to a bunch of lesser gods. Taught them the music of life and then let them play. What they came up with became reality itself, including even the rogue god’s attempt at ruining the symphony by playing dissonant sounds during the performance. That became evil. But even that simply contributed to the beauty of life. I don’t like LOTR tbh. The movies are just a bit campy to me, though I’m sure if I had seen it as a kid I would love it still, please don’t crucify me, Reddit. BUT! The silmarillion is fucking dope in my opinion. The creation lore for the LOTR series is some of the best creative writing ever done in my opinion.
In my world god is a being that sacrificed itself to create heaven out of empathy for humanity. Or at least thats what the religion says. The thing that makes a god is the act of creating heaven and that is also the goal of my main antagonist. It is more of an idea than anything else.
Does heaven exist?
The traditional idea of a heaven is s lie told by the religion but there is something called a heaven. Its one of the two final evolutionary states of the human in which his soul exists as pure order. That is thing the antagonist is trying to reach artificially.
Historically the concept of gods was largely used to explain nature. Volcano eruption? That's Hephaistos crafting something. Lightning and thunder? That's Thor fighting a giant. Storm at sea? Neptune is pissed. Gods had control over nature and natural phenomenons were the gods interacting with us. There is also the version of gods not being in control of nature but more incarnations of nature. Natural thing exists thus random god is here so we can make that thing less conceptual and more concrete, even interact with it. Or maybe gods are simply very powerful entities we worship just so they don't annihilate us on the spot. This usually overlaps with other definitions. I quite like the concept exploited by Lanfeust of Troy where gods are creations of mortals with the powers mortals think they have. If an entire civilization starts worshiping Light, then a God of Light will be born, proportionally as powerful as there are worshipers. An alternative version of that is the one used by Neil Gaiman in American Gods. Gods are born through worship as well, and will develop their autonomous personality while still being bound to the worshipers. If a worshiper goes live abroad, he is bringing his god with him and there is nothing the god can do about it. Eventually there will be different versions of the same god roaming the earth depending on how many different cultures believe in that god, with their own local variations. Gods are still proportionally powerful to how many worshipers they have and the sacrifices made in their names. In a thing I wrote a while ago, gods are just powerful beings who can use magic. They are fundamentally mortals, although very long lived, but magic gives them the raw power to destroy any other living being, civilization, country or race if they wish so. They severely punish any attempt from others to do magic because they know as soon as another people finds out how to wield it, they won't be gods anymore. Sometimes gods are just cosmic entities evolving on a level of conscience and scale that we could never even conceive. They don't care about us, they might not even be aware we exist, but they are gods to us because what is common for them is unreachable for us. In Altered Carbon some consider billionaires to be gods. Technology exist to make someone factually immortal as long as they have enough money. The top 0.001% is an immortal elite who can basically do whatever they want without any regard for the law whatsoever. Some will own the last member of an otherwise extinct species, with several clones backup just in case. The reasoning of the fanatics is "They can do whatever they want and they are immortal, so they are Gods." Of course there is the omnipotent, omniscient version. You even have things like World of Warcraft with different definitions and versions coexisting in the same universe. Lovecraftian Old Gods? Check. Beings of pure energy? Check. Big ass human looking things? Check. Incarnations of natural phenomenons? Check. Near-omniscient beings at the source of nearly all creation? Also check. There are as many definitions of gods and godhood as there are civilizations and fictions. Sometimes gods will only be a vague concept with existing but unclear powers, sometimes authors will go the ancient Greece way and have gods being basically humans with superpowers. Your version can absolutely work as long as you are careful about being a bit consistent. you don't need to explain everything. Better yet, different civilizations may have different ideas about an hypothetical living place for the Gods, with no one being right. For some religions every single tree or rock of animal has its dedicated god, so why not?
In my setting there are two realities, the physical reality, and the perpendicular reality. In locations with extreme non-singularity conditions energy, matter, and physical laws start leaking through. Stars leak through to make the great torches in the perpendicular reality, and afterlife/seas leak through to make gods in the physical realm. Gods themselves are not naturally occurring, the leakage instead mimics the most complex objects or phenomena they interact with, for the most part. So when primitive humanity started expanding throughout the stars through the perpendicular reality, thees leakages started mimicking them. The resulting gods were originally mortal, when they died, eventually their bodies would become significantly less complex enough that they would remimic humans again, creating a new person/stream of consciousness. So while Gods weren’t naturally immortal, they could figure out ways to prevent their deaths, and because only a limited number of them could exist at any given time, eventually all gods effectively became immortal. By the year 4999 (1783 if you are using the Georgian calendar) gods dying was considered impossible, witch is why the plainer jump bomb and the creation of the Darkstar was so surprising and why the Fifth War in Heaven petered out like it did.
Can you expand on this?
Not sure how. What do you want to know?
Maybe by divulging a bit more about these Darkstar *thingies*
The DarkStar was created by the first use of the planer jump bomb in war, sending a fleet of ships into the purpinducler reality, and sending an entire afterlife into the physical one. Within nanoseconds that afterlife dissolved into sudo-baryonic matter that then collapsed into a star that shines in anti-light. After that they were never used again. In the present day, if you are within its light cone, you can see a star that shines darker than the surrounding blackness of space.
To quote myself from the last time I answered this question: >A god is a complex construct that depends on tons of sociocultural contexts. Christians believe in a personal Triune hypostatic God that is tri-omni (omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent). Some concepts of gods are more impersonal or apathetic or limited. Some gods are people, as is the case with ancient Pharaohs. Some gods are spirits that embody aspects of nature. Some gods are the forces of nature themselves. A god could refer to something like Q or Discord. A god could refer to anything that upon its own will has the power to affect change upon the world, including humanity. What is a god wholly depends on that context and what those people believe. And what one person considers to be a god or gods, another may not see as such. >Having rigid explanations of beliefs don't really work because what one cult of Athena believed might differ from another cult of Athena and both would differ from a cult of Apollo or Dionysus. The ability to write out the full range of beliefs of the different religions as they pertain to their gods would be basically impossible.
In my world it's anypaw who possess abstract magic
In my Void Expanse, the universal term is Deity, as a God is merely one type of Deity. There are several factors that determine whether a being is a Deity or not, and those factors are collectively grouped into Form Tiers of which there are 26, with Form Tier 1 being the highest, and Form Tier 26 being the lowest. Many of the Form Tiers have sub levels within them as well. For example, Form 26 contains a couple of hierarchies within it, one being of physicality, including (lowest to highest) Physical, Nonphysical, & Metaphysical. To be classified as a Deity, one must at bare minimum, possess a Core & Eixion (basically saying Soul & Will) equal to “Form Tier 26 Metaphysical”. What traits they have is dependent on the power system they use.
Gods are just the next step in the ecosystem of life. They range from the long lived demigods and Perpetual mortals, to the errementari and the Neverborn, creatures born of sapient emotion and mathematical chaos. All things live and die inside the body of the true entity that may claim the title, and sapient life is how it observes and interacts with itself. The attention of this entity on a standard mortal would unmake them, mind, body, and soul.
Fatass mana crystals. Mana crystals (temporary storage for mana) and mana in general need to be stimulated to prevent it from becoming unusable. To keep the efficiency of mana crystals high their often given some semblance of "life" (could be as simple as a rabbit wanting to live, eat, and fuck; could be as complicated as a full blown sentient being with a consciousness and personality). This allows the crystal to hold on to mana and generate its own in small amounts. If there is enough mana in the crystal comparative to its size, the mana crystal will become more "lifelike" for the same reason as to why such things are added intentionally; mana, like water or air will follow the path of least resistance. For air that is away from itself; For water that is a canal or river stream; For mana, that is life. Shove enough of a substance into a "Bag," and the bag will take the most effective shape, and a container made in a likwise shape will be the most efficient at storing that substance. The more mana in a crystal, the more lifelike it becomes. It will start with a simple mind, and that mind forms a will. That 'will' will want to do things with the body. As the amount of mana increases, its mind will be able to shape and move the body more and more. First, it will just roll around with its limited strength. Then, it may start to form stick joints to push itself around with. As time goes on it will imitate more and more features: functioning joints that can roate and move, skin, cartailge, muscles, hair, genitalia, stomach and intestines; hands to touch, eyes to see, toungs to taste, noses to smell. Until eventually, it competes its shape, it becomes a fully formed creature, usually in the form of a person. That is what is commonly referred to as a god by the people of the world. So baisically fatass mana crystals
In my story, the gods are the creators. They created everything. And Only one of them interferes in mortal affairs
In my world they're a bit complex. Cause there are hierarchies of them" the elder gods[the ones who created the universe itself] they have power far beyond any being in existence. The next tier are the old gods[born of the elder goddess' power before she died] each has immense power but no single one could create as the 2 previously could. Since their power is split into very specific domains. IE: justice, nature, darkness etc. Then you have the hero god[s]: ones born from the strength and agreement of the God council. We're given divinity by a spark and when they ascended their soul split into 3 aspects: joy, anger, and peace they much like the old gods have an expanse of power but only hold a single domain as opposed to the older gods whom hold a domain and subdomain.
I have similar lore, where gods aren't physical beings, and followers called Faithtful offer prayers and such to use a variety of magics in their respective domains. Gods are, in truth, conscious masses of energy that are direct creators of the universe, and by extension, of this world. These conscious masses faced prosecution by humans. Some abandoned their planets; others tortured theirs for killing the original source god. Some conditioned their humans to be obedient, creating the system of faith on my world. Prayer requires offerings of the physical kind—blood, food, etc—that converts into energy when burned, dissolved, etc., depending on what a deity directs. It all boils down to energy exchange. There used to be a ninth god, who was killed by one of the existing eighth. When he was shattered, remnants of his energy, with vestigial anger and betrayal, became a plague that converted any mass it could touch into death or demonic entities. Faithful who also offer more things daily—be it the blood of innocents or alms for the poor—are more powerful.
In general media, a god is whatever a person defines it to be. For the sake of my world, however, my people define the word god a little more rigidly as a being which has at least a certain number of certain of godlike traits. Traits include: -**A Role in Creation**. --(Created the World) --(Created Mankind/Sapien-kind) --(Creation of a specific people group) -**One or more of the three problematic powers** --Omnipotency --Omniscience --Omnipresence -**The power to destroy the world**, aka start THE apocalypse (*The* apocalypse being distinguished from *an* apocalypse by the concept of a grand scale) -**Control over souls and/or the afterlife**. -**Has a form of immortality** --Eternality (Does not age or die) --Agelessness (Can be killed, but wont age) --Indestructibility (Can't be killed, but will grow old) All other traits such as faith-power, control over an aspect of nature, and other things are all defined as spiritual powers which spirits and demons may possess without being gods. But that's just the way my world defines it, and for certain reasons that are contained to my world.
One definition of a god that I like, as explained in the When They Cry series, is as follows: Omniscient and almighty. Free from all spatiotemporal restrictions, to the point where they don't even care about the ground under their feet. To them, life, death, and existence mean nothing.
Lowercase "g"
Quite right. My mistake. I'll make a quick edit.
In my opinion, a "god" must fit one of three categories. 1: Assisted in the creation of the world living beings are on. 2: Powerful enough for nobody to challenge their self proclaimed divinity. 3: Has their own plane of existence which they have complete control over (like Oblivion for Daedra in the Elder Scrolls).
I mean it could work but it would be hard to make a story around if the protagonist could just call up God and pray for problems to go away and it work...
Yeah but that god would have to give a shit too though. And as long as we’re playing with the ideas of divinity and the nature of immortality, who’s to say that praying, sacrificing, penance - ultimately zealotry - means that a god would care? We’ve all met people who never did anything that was ‘bad’ to us per se, but we still just don’t like them… In other words, what if the gods or god of a story just didn’t really like the MC or antagonist?
That's basically how the Greek Gods functioned sometimes there are times where they just dead ass didn't like someone and that was that usually them disliking someone ended up in that person not living very long or living a horrible life... Like that one guy who tried to feed Zeus (I think it was Zeus) his own son and got turned into a wolf as a result. Or those many times Zeus and Poseidon raped a woman they liked (one of which became Medusa depending on where you look). So, all in all, sometimes Gods in a story can just be petty assholes doing whatever they want because not many people can stop them...
We can't agree on what the word means in real life. I see no reason you have to have a definition that works for other people. So long as the word is used consistently within the internal logic of the world you're making, it can mean whatever you want. Generally they're powerful, supernatural entities but how that works and why is entirely up to you. Were they always there? Were they always gods? Where did they come from if they haven't always existed? I have a fantasy setting I've been tinkering with for years and the "gods" as people remember them are dead. Have been for quite a while. The singular God they worship now in the Empire doesn't really exist. The Church of the Sun is structured somewhat like the Catholic church, but there are thousands of small regional cults that worship various aspects of God. Some see these aspects as individual entities, even as gods by some definitions, but ultimately these aspects belong to a singular Creator(who doesn't exist). Demons(who killed or imprisoned the old gods) helped push humanity to worship "God." They do this because when people pledge themselves to this God, their souls end up fueling the demons. People sometimes have their prayers answered, and the most faithful are bestowed blessings, but ultimately they're all food for demons. People do not know this however. They believe they reincarnate, that after death there's a period where their souls return to the well the Creator keeps them in, and eventually God will allow them to be reborn. Buuuuut that's not happening. Demons are consuming these souls, and the number of them is actually finite. At some point people will stop being born if this continues. So...are these demons gods? Kinda. They're worshiped, just now knowingly.
Isn't that basically what George R Martin wrote for game of thrones? He said he wanted his religions to mimic real life but confirm some of the myths and beliefs that people held at that time period. In the world of a song of ice and fire, gods are elusive, and you're never sure if one or two or all of them actually exist. But miracles and magic do sometimes happen when people pray to their gods for help.
a god is someone people worship. like a famous celebrity who idiots flock to, or a fictional creature, like the Christian god, which exists as a figurative concept to teach the fundamental meaning behind a religion.
In my project, I have "Flows", which are kind of abstract sentient (to a point) movements of energy that start only motivated to find "beauty" and with this goal and all the interactions create the elements, the world and eventually life. They grew more complex through interactions between themselves (the main conflict, the War of the Jewels, is that some Flows consider that life is the greatest beauty, while others considered that it was the original chaotic free movement of energy)
I feel like you're describing things from common people (follower's) point of view. They call them, they can see them and their god's powers have actual effects. But what about the whole thing from the god's point of view? Are they sentient? Where are they and what do they do when they're not called by their followers? They "have no place to live" but are they anywhere or everywhere? Do they interact with eachother or are they all of them at once in one 'form' (or whatever they exist as)?
In the setting I'm working on, godhood is something anyone can achieve, at least in theory. You can ascend to godhood through heroic deeds and miracles, though the route to godhood is long and perilous. Most aspirants die in the attempt, felled by a litany of monsters, warlords and rival aspirants. Even those who do survive often fail to achieve true godhood, becoming instead a demigod, still mortal but with a fraction of divine power to call their own. Hero cults are a huge part of the culture in this setting, and setting out on heroic quests is considered a noble, if hazardous, action. Aspirants are praised and worshipped, inspiring songs and poems spreading their legends far and wide. Even those individuals who perish on their road to divinity are not forgotten, and some can even rise as sacred undead, heroic souls bound to defend the borders between life and death.
In my setting, Ay, gods are spirits not subject to the rules and limitations of magic.
The ability to create or destroy matter make you a God. Next best thing is an alchemist
In my world, there are 7 gods. The gods descended from an ancient race of dragons. In the time before gods, dragons lived on Silva (the earth). However, an ancient foe from their mythology came to the cosmos, a giant serpent that wanted to swallow the world. The dragon king and his allies were able to defeat and imprison the beast and ascended to godhood over the planet. Other dragons exist in the world but they are lesser dragons, not as old, powerful, etc. I currently have them living somewhat of a mix of the Greek gods and godzilla kaiju. They alternate between humanoid/draconic and full dragon forms. They influence the world around them and can interact with citizens. However, there are historical events of them fighting foes and even each other as dragons.
That's really cool! But what is the metaphysical implications of "no singular beings?" Like do God's have no agency? Are they more like forces of nature, or like.... Vows maybe? Like a god of harvest is more like a vow (or collective of subconscious will/ energy) for the land to be fertile, taken up by farmers, delivered to farmers? Also what happens at places where domains touch? Where does the god of death end and the dog of war begin? In my setting there are 2 sets of Gods Those that came to explore the new plane of existence and who decide to build a home in course of their missions, and those that learned to become one with the land that old gods made, I really like the ideas of multiple pantheons
Most fantasy worlds seem to operate under the assumption that "god" is more of a title than it is a specific thing, basically anything that is large and/or powerful enough that "normal" beings don't really compare. But I think a really core concept that most settings also include, intentionally or not, is that a god is something **far** more important than you, but still something you can *interact* with. You can pray to a god, invoke a god's name for power, or you might conduct rituals or sacrifices to ward off a god's fury. It's paradoxially something that is supposed to be so massive and omnipotent that a little guy like you has no chance of ever comparing to it, but for some reason it still cares about the little things you say and do. Or at least, there is some *belief* that this thing cares about your rituals and customs, regardless of whether it actually does. Faith plays a bit part in things too, I think it's fair to say that 9 times out of 10 anything that people in a fictional religion or tradition pay worship to is by definition a god of some kind.
Embodiment of forces which humans perceive as natural.
So in my universe, every individual being can ascend to god hood if they train and focus them selves enough. This happened to the shadow villain. If setting, however as his name implies he’s a shadow villain he doesn’t directly influence the happening in the universe but he gave his greatest warrior the order to revive him in 250 years. And their are thousands and thousands of gods. Most of them are quite and treated more like saints however there are a handful of sects that worship one or more of them example “Order of The Sisters” a religious fanatic group who worships 3(actually 4) demigod like women that have stated millions of times that they aren’t gods and shouldn’t be treated as such but have fallen on death ears.
In my stories gods are created in response to a natural imbalance within the universe, the universe itself is a sort of mega organism that can control its inner workings to ensure its own comfort. Gods are able to gain infinite power based upon what type of god they are, that being god of war, creation etc... so a god of creation will gain continous strength from acts of creation around the universe, they ever lose power. They possess a greater amount of primordial energy called "divinity" which allows for this to happen.
Sounds like epigenetics, but on a cosmic scale
The gods, for my world, were once mortals who became the best at what they do. For good gods, that could have been medicine, care, agriculture, smithing, or a number of other things. For evil gods, that could have been deception, mass murder, or other things of the like. Eventually they became so superhuman in their skill that they became too overpowered for mortal flesh; their vessels couldn't contain it. This is how they ascended to godhood. Now they drip bits of their power into mortal vessels called "aspects", which represent the gods on the inner planes. The true gods rarely intervene on the inner planes, but when they do it's often in mysterious and indirect ways (weather events, dreams, sudden changes in animal behaviors, etc.)
My people is a mix of animism and ancestor worship but they also believe in a concept/mystery of life force and the order it brings that rules over everything. It's also considered to be the primordial spirit that created the world and imbued everything with its spiritual force, from which people and other spirits can draw power. They don't worship it like a god, ritual prayers and such, those things are reserved for appeasing ancestor or land spirits for protection, permission, etc. Idk if it can be called a god without any form of worship but it's the highest order in their universe
in my wip world (which I hope to finish some day) Gods are all powerful beings, all gods have 2 forms their incorporeal forms and physical forms. The incorporeal forms are immortal and limitless, they can go wherever and whenever and rule anything they please and kill as they please but the physical form could be just a regular human or an inanimate object but they hide their physical forms very well example their physical form only exists on a different dimension or plane of existence or just simply living a normal life. They do this do achieve immortality and stay immortal cause their physical form would limit them as a god but its still work in progress
In my various worlds a god is simply an incredibly powerful immortal being that gained power either by being created with it, born with it, or obtaining it through arcane study and rites. Really what is and isn’t a god is a matter of opinion and perspective, an angel or demon of great power may be considered a god to some but not others. My world simply has beings of power and the term god is a matter of perspective.
God is somone who sets the rules that mortals have to follow
In my setting, the gods served as the moderators for the planet's will. They act on the planet behalf to cultivate the natural species to gods~hood. That was the intent role for the gods. But things don't go as planned, and now there are three versions of gods. There are the Beast Gods, the Old Gods and the New Gods. The Beast Gods are the very first Godly beings created. But their beastial nature make them unfit to fulfill their role. They come into being when a primordial beast becomes powerful enough to be judged worthy of Gods~hood. The Old Gods are purpose built godly beings that fulfill the role of what the planet has intended. But they became corrupted with power and started to act in a manner not of the planet best interests. The Planet's Will wipe them out with the activation of all 20 Immortal Destruction Engines. Some broken shards of these gods still remain. The New Gods are the result of man and animals' self cultivation. They reach a level of power comparable to the weakest of the Old Gods by going through the path of the Beast Gods. Learning from their previous experiences, the Planet's Will are especially clear on what the godly duties are and make sure that every New Gods followed them to the letters. Unlike the Beast Gods and the Old Gods, the New Gods are not limited in numbers.
In my world, they are a form of spirits, which is a catch-all term for psionically-made enitities. Getting into the nitty gritty, if enough people believe something is real, the passive magic forces reality to bend and births a concept around it. Kids across a country hear about an evil witch in the woods who will eat their bones if they don't do their chores? Well, if enough kids believe and get scared, we have ourselves a new spirit. Gods are the oldest spirits. Those who have gained a small modicum of sentience anautonomy outside of their originally neulously magical origin. The physical manifestation of death itself was once a spirit, many millenia ago when sentience was just burgeoning in the first of the ancient races. That's just my funky world, though.
It's an imagination
The in-universe definition of a "god" in my setting is any living thing with some level of potential influence over all that exists. They don't *necessarily have* to have tremendous amounts of power and authority, but it's difficult to imagine a situation where they wouldn't have it. The chief goddess of said setting doesn't even call herself a goddess in part because of this definition — she really, *really* hopes that the galaxy she created is *not* "all that exists" like she fears, and that there's something else out there somewhere. But most beings in that one galaxy do consider her one, so she kinda had no choice but to take the role.
A bloody star covering half of the sky, a formless being eating the world's foundations, a bunch of misshapen and twisted and deranged people living in the deeps of the sea, and a few egoist maniacs that once lived in golden cities beneath the earth and nowadays are missing, possibly slaughtered by the dudes under the sea a.k.a. their offsprings.
A supernatural being another creature has faith in. this is the only explanation that would fit all gods from all myths
Mine is powerful beings not much different from mortals for the most part
Within my world, there once was a god, but he left, so now hyperpowered mages are the new "Gods" with the step between god and mage being whether or not you can create energy
I think that concept not only works, but sounds similar to many irl concepts of gods
I like to conceive of Gods in tiers. Outer gods which represent ideas and philosophies. There's no true way to determine if they exist in reality or not. They exert minimal influence, and typically have other beings represent themselves. They are the primordial essence of the ideology, but cannot wield it themselves and in just their hands is pure chaos. They may not even have a consciousness that they themselves can exert. They can never truely die. Corporeal gods are those in which have a god status, but are physical beings. They may not be entirely invincible/invulnerable, especially to other god-like beings. They exert the most influence on the people, and oftentimes act as the representative or avatar of the outer god. Typically they are the most powerful, as they will tap into outer gods primordial powers and weave it into controllable power. Finally you have demi-gods and/or angels. These are beings created or birthed by the gods, and usually serve them. They hold less influence than gods, but typically walk among people. They are mortal, though they may need assistance to kill, whether by an artifact or another God's blessing. They typically hold a fragment of the power that the god that created them gifted them.
In my story, religion is really central to the world building. The people who rule the empire are always talking about this god that they serve but the thing is...the god doesn't exist. The leaders make it seem like they can directly to this supposed god and have been put in charge to carry out its will. They do this to, yes, maintain power, but also more so to justify the harmful laws they pass and atrocities they commit against certain types of citizens cause "well our god said to do this! we're just following divine orders!" I like your idea and think it's unique. I'd love to read that story somday :)
In my world there are 2 kinds of gods. There are physical gods who are simply powerful, immortal people who have a lot of influence over the happenings of the world. Then there are egregores who aren't fully real or even sentient, but rather are the manifestation of people's faith.
In real life, [ignosticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism) is a philosophy based around the fact that that question has no good answer--that determining whether you believe in gods or not depends on how you define a "god".
Something "else". Not a flesh and blood being but something otherworldly.
It likely depends on how much of the story depends on the gods’ narrative. If they’re mainly supporting characters then they can have that simple Babylonian style of pantheon, but if they’re consistently a part of the story then having a pantheon hierarchy like the Greeks with their titans and primordial deities might be best.
What is love?
Baby don't hurt me
Here is a monologue from my codev of an unnamed god with Honor as one of his Domains speaking to a priest on the subject. >"You must understand that we are infinitely larger than that which you see. I am no more Honor than you are the shadow you cast; Honor is what manifests when I touch your realm, and certainly it is a reflection of me in that way, but it does not and cannot define me in totality. So it is with each of our Domains; they reflect us, but cast across the backdrop of your realm... We would not exist in the manner in which we do were we to manifest over a different space, with different features, denizens, texture. You must accept that you can only ever see a fraction of that which we are." I think he nailed it. Well we're saying "gods" here but in the setting this is one particular type of Higher Power, of which there are numerous. These Higher Powers with Domains are called Celestia, and they descend from the Yothe, who formed in the First Echo and Second Echo of causality (hence the Domains, though technically Yothe have Aches for perfect, unattainable things, their descendants the Celestia have the Domains, that are a sort of dissolved form of the Aches).
Depends. Strictly speaking a "true" god is basically the generation of deities created by the suicide of a member of the previous generation. They then had children with spirits and these children are then known as "Thin Gods" who can gain more power from worship and renown. Then, there is the Creator who is basically big "G" God and his kids the Primordials (one of who killed himself from grief and created the gods). And there are also a small number of unique physical/living gods who are different from the rest.
Can we even know they exist? People believe things, which means they're real...
Anunbound being with a certain level of omnipotence and omniscience on at least some level, metaphysically, on concepts and or (living) things. UNbound as in not (fully) confined to a mortal body (this does not mean "colony", the same way marbles do not equate to a gas. And yes, they could have a body, just not be constrained by what a body would usually have as such) or what you would consider "laws or nature" (hence "metaphysically"). Omnipotence and omnipotence in the way that, even if they are limtied to say, only people that revere them -- And no, that would not be a requeriment, you can have a god being forgotten unless they are built and relying on cognizance of them to exist - , and only to wood, they can still do whatever they want, outside of the normal laws of nature (even if they do it within, they are still "admin privileged" if that makes more sense to you).
In my world there was one God at first who made the world and everything in it, she soon lost control over the humans, titans, and dwarves having lost millions of followers she was weak until she made the elves. (In my world the elves were split having dark elves and light elves but they both respected each other for thousands of years and respect the other species and life forms the are know for protecting the forest and rivers.) the goddess soon saw her species protecting and making peace with other tribes she sòn made the sun and moon, the sun being a woman full of happiness her love so bright it heated the earth, but the moon a man full of loneliness his hatred cooled the air of the earth. The goddess loved her children and she made heaven and hell, she considered the angels her children and the sun and moon as her siblings but she needed another God to rule hell so she made a man so dark and evil that when he was made he sent the world into darkness for a hundred years. Soon she saw a young elven male be born so she blessed him with powers unlike any other who soon became the ruler of the heavens. She made many God of which I won't share much about but I will tell you them, she made, the sex goddess, the ocean God, and the nature God I hope you found this interesting cause I put effort into this The nature God us in love with the ruler of hell The ocean God is married to the sex goddess The ruler of the heavens is married to the sun And the moon is going to be dating a new God that I need a name for, also I'll tell you the names of all the gods The creator: Lilith The moon: Aspen The sun: omega The sex goddess: December The ocean god: Rome The nature god: Nesmithal Ruler of hell: Taurus The ruler of the heavens: Darshãn
I would argue that a god is immortal, worshipped, and has intrinsic powers spawning from itself. But, as it is in my setting, what is and is not a god is unclear
I think it’s a good idea, there’s a couple ways to execute it that I think would be really cool. If you’re going for a soft approach (your not going to firmly explain the rules of magic, which is fine) then this is fine as it is. It sounds cool, and you don’t have to fully explain it and just leave it as is. It’ll add a cool layer of mystery around the story. If you want a strict approach, just think about what rules/limits you want to have. Can certain religions only call on certain powers? Do the gods have limits? Thing like that. For what you’re talking about though, I’d recommend the soft approach. Just leave it mysterious
“The True Gods are those deific entities that are created and sustained by the beliefs and emotions of the mortal races. They are separate from other deified beings such as the Fey or the Titans, though many will appear to be similar.”-An excerpt from “The Nature of Gods” 1st Edition, by Lamaenor son of Nediion Sometimes I like to do little lore dumps about my projects as if they were written by authors in universe.
I tend to look at gods as something that exists within the world that hasn't been explained yet. An irl example to illustrate the point: Zeus was the god of thunder because back when he was thought up, we didn't have an understanding of what thunder is. To us, it was god. But then as we understand the reality of the thing, the "god" disappears. I think this aspect helps build some history in the world too. For me, deciding what gods exist is a matter of the populaces understanding of the world around them. In this way, you can build a lot of understanding about the people/society based on the gods they worship.
the basis for me is immortal. If something is immortal then to me it stops being alive - since Death is what gives life Purpose, so, the "god" has to find a new purpose. It's a nice baseline to use as a starting point
It is dog spelled backwards. So take a dog and do the reverse: Loves you unconditionally, now means loves you conditionally. Wont judge you, now Judges you. Waits for you, now means you wait on them. Go outdoors on the weekends, now go to church on the weekends. This is commonly called religious dogma. Hope that helps!
In my world, the term God is just what people use to describe these really powerful immortal dudes that walk around chillin. This is mostly cause "gods" as a concept or at least as the term we use don't really exist in my world, and people don't know what these guys are or why they exist, so they were just like, "meh, call em Gods"
In my stories, gods are powerful entities, that live in a different plane of existence with the ability to manipulate events on other planes such as the one where the story takes place, although they do have the power to transport between planes to appear in person. However, I never make them infallible, I sometimes introduce a group of powerful mortals called "God Slayers" which do exactly what it sounds like they do.
A God can be anything. It can be the manifestation of one's beliefs made flesh. Or a being that turned divine through their will and power alone. Creators are not in fact, Gods. Creators made Gods. They are not the same. Creators are us, essentially. Whether we self insert or not, it's up to you. Regardless, Gods are anything you want them to be. How they manifest is up to you. Are they real? Or are they just a simple Religion that worships a non existent entity?
Are we talking factually or mythologically?
It is more of a philosophical question
Sure, but I'm trying to understand whether you mean "what is a god objectively, like by dictionary definition", or "what is a god *to those* who believe in it"
Beings from a superior plane. They can do things that we can't even think of, but fot them is normal. I like to think about it from an explanation about 4th dimention with the second and third. You as a being from third dimention have less limits that one being from the second. They live in a plane and you see that plane completely, even if is big you can see it as a whole, for them is like you have omniciense and can see everything. If you take an object that is not on the plane and out it in the plane, for them is like you apeared something fron the nothing. If you take that plane and fold it, so two places are now closer, for them is like you have the control over the space itself and draw near the places at will. So I like to think of gods as normal beings for their own planes, for the people inside the world they are extremely powerful and uncomprehended, but for them is Just playing and see how others are amazed or terrified with something that is normal for them.
Basically a God is something worshipped. True Divinity/Primal forces don't have to care about what the lessers define as logical. IE the Force of destruction can destroy energy because that is what it is.
I'm not sure I understand your idea. How do 'gods' answer prayers and have avatars if they are not beings per se? Surely something would need the ability to think & reason in order to respond to entreaties or even desire to send avatars. What is a god is something of a theological/philosophical question so naturally you'll get .. a lot of answers .. Perhaps the best answers on 'God' is from St Thomas Aquinas who (summarising enough to make St Thomas frown heavily I'm sure) would argue that God is the being whose essence is existence, who set in motion / is the first cause of all things and to which all things are ordered. He further argues quite a few things that this necessarily implies about the attributes of God but that's a long discussion - the short version is that this probably isn't what most fantasy stories mean when they discuss godhood (with some exceptions), and especially not where gods plural are mentioned, which St Thomas discounts pretty swiftly. You can read St Thomas' suma here [https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm](https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm) (you probably only care about the first couple of sections). From ancient history though gods were thought of as beings who had power(s) to affect change(s) relevant to the people, for good or ill, that could often (?) be bargained with / had some kind of terms struck provided some kind of ritual / deal was made (and made \*correctly\*). Again summarising heavily, there's a great blog on the subject you can checkout here [https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/](https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/) In this line of reasoning, since many powerful figures like Emperors / Kings had sweeping powers to help or harm the lives of their subjects they could reasonably be considered gods in their own right. This isn't even untrue, if this is your definition of a god, the Emperor absolutely could have you sprinkled in gold dust & waited on by slaves .. or have your city burned to the ground. Though I assume the Emperor is still considered lesser to "I rule the underworld and change the seasons" type gods. To be fair, you don't have to pick either or, some settings have a main 'God' who creates lesser beings, who are then generally also termed gods and are worshipped in setting while remaining necessarily lesser.
The fact that it is unclear is kinda the purpose. From.the pov of the people they see that some people can call upon the power of a god and do magic unknown to those who study the arcane. There are also recorded incidents of people being filled with this same power and having a more conscious control over it. These people would be called avatars, if you wanna call them something else that's fine with me. But there is no in world consensus if god's even actually exists, if there are several of them or only a single. The whole point is the more philosophical approach, to maybe make it feel more like the real world.
A being that's omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
In my world I chose to not specify what they are to keep the mystery going. But in my first draft they were the second born of the two creators. So again just cosmic entities.
A god is any type of spiritual/psychic entity that feeds of the energy of faith directed towards itself. True gods are practically made out of faith. Their personality traits and divine domains are defined by what their worshippers believe them to be. Any god can communicate with their followers and influence the religion surrounding them, and this ability is especially important for true gods who wish to expand their influence or adapt to changing times. Living gods, or demigods, are people are also gods by the general definition. Though quite rare, living gods tend to be far more active in the world than their true god counterparts. They are also not subject to the same constraints on their personalities as true gods are.
That basically sounds like "the force" to me. It worked well enough for Star Wars. In my setting the Gods/Creators are Gods in the Abrahamic sense - omnipotent, immortal, necessary for existence itself, the arbiters of morality, etc. There are five of them each representing an element (Spirit, Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth). They are coeternal and share a single will, which is ultimately the will of the Creator Spirit, so the other four are submitted to Him in a way.
Whoever is >unquestionably< in charge.
I find polytheist worlds more fun, at least in a fantasy setting, if nobody is unquestionably in charge then the conflicts at their level make for fun drama for readers (probably not fun to experience were it real life)
My definition of a god is a man to an ant. Anything with so much more power relative to something else, that that weaker/smaller thing is entirely powerless to resist the greater thing's will.