Some of this can come slowly of course! Concepts like humanity, human language, trade, an alphabet, civilization, agticulture, etc. might not all fit in the first week
Quick question Zakaz: Did you include the insects in your creation? (if so I've got some work to do.... if I could ask politely for everyone to refrain from creating spiders - its kind of central Araneae's motif. Cheers!)
PS.. They'll be along in a while.. I have plans for them.
You may choose to say he didn't and it wouldn't bother me any. :)
How do we get in contact with the MODs?
You may choose to say he didn't and it wouldn't bother me any. :)
More than happy for you to have introduced insects - just wanted to see if there's anything for my children to eat when they do arrive!
How do we get in contact with the MODs?
Just post here, unless you want to keep it private, in which case you should PM them.
How do we get in contact with the MODs?
Sorry I didn't see this sooner! Been engrossed in season 2 of the new Voltron series on Netflix.
But, as our lovely Spider Mistress has said, feel free to PM me at any time.
Unless things have changed, Choon aka Kazak is also a mod. However, if this is something secret, I ask that you inform me as well, please.
I believe we have at least one or two other mods, but I need to check with them first.
Just a reminder, but we need to eventually create things like time, souls, an after life, the sun and moon, the elements, etc.
Liriiestil will make the moon and the classic elements, but if nobody feels the other things fit them, we can wait till the 1st when we get new gods.
We're not doing so badly. He didn't spell it out specifically, but Zakaz seems to have created most basic life forms (essentially, he took a 0 AP action around a hundred times)—plants, bugs, prey animals, predators. Maybe not the whole of creation, but certainly a workable basic ecosystem
Atheos can't really contribute fundamental concepts himself because, as the anti-god, he'd be betraying his own principles a little too directly. But as a character he "suggests" a world following basic physics, and as a player I've got assumptions as to which gods would probably want "dibs" on certain concepts.
Souls/afterlife will probably need to wait until after sentient life. A lot of peole will have an opinion on this one.
Time seems very much to be Araneae's thing, at least to the point where I'd expect her to be the first to consider creating it. Apedemak was the first to actually speak, and his love of proclamations and announcements suggests he might be the one to give language to humanity (or elves, etc), though other gods may be the ones to introduce more complex variations on this like writing, math, currency, song, etc.
Elements are tricky, sure; we don't currently have any deities laying claim to one, although a group of four deities agreeing to split the elements would be the first step on a path to each deity gaining an elemental domain, which is not bad powerwise.
I kind of assumed Liriiestil might want to take Source of Magic and create the basic concepts of magic, and was staying away from that for such reasons.
* * *
And lastly, in the last god game I played, Atheos reluctantly became the sun god, after the death of Lathander left a hole in the pantheon. This was because he felt the sun should run on cold hard physics and not deific whimsy, and it seemed like the only way to keep mortals from ignorantly worshipping the sun.
I assume a summit of the gods is coming, or at least some discussions. If there are missing basic concepts that someone thinks should be in the world, it might be possible for gods to talk each other into taking responsibility for things.
Yeah, I was thinking about some of those things myself. The sun and moon came to mind when Araneae made the stars--I even thought about having Apedemak point it out then, or make it himself, but I'm not sure I actually want him to be a sun deity, and I found it more interesting to think our world might go for a little while without a sun. We're building our own mythos here in some ways, and it's neat to think about how the stories and timeline will look as we keep going on, you know?
As for elements, I dig the concept of four gods pitching in to each take a concept there. Not sure who would want to volunteer for what, although I could see Fire being linked to passion and creativity and Earth being linked to nature and the beasts.
I'd say BIG concepts like time and souls and such can wait for now. The idea of the gods beginning by just flitting about in a paradise without concerns of that nature is an interesting one, and in my mind lends a real sense of mythic origins to the endeavor. Maybe Shess holds the secrets to introducing something like that a little later on, provoking a conflict? Or Atheos realizes that time is required for the universe to work properly.
As for me, I like the idea of Apedemak giving language. First off, though, Zakaz just made the lions, so unless we're having our meeting soon, that might be next on my list ;)
It's about time we had some conversation so I'll set that up.
It's hard to think of all of the things this basically.
Indeed. Right now there is no sun, but my world is ding perfectly fine without it. :)
It's kinda weird, but I like it.
This is also pretty tough to conceptualize. I studied a great amount of physics and there are things that nag at my mind. 1) your things would not be able to exist in pure dark. 2) Time isn't a thing. Time is merely a measurement of things growing, then degrading. In my brain, as soon as things begin existing time does as well. Hell, time would be a mundane concept.
All of these things are by no means hard and fast just the thoughts in my brain.
EDIT: I wonder if there'd be a way to attend this moot but, secretly? Maybe spend some AP?
I don't know. If you already had an ability like Many Faced Trickster, maybe? Disguise yourself as a stray rock and listen in? I'm not sure the presence of a god can be cloaked without spending more than you're probably willing to spend.
Right now the plants are being fueled by my divide spark, my blood. I'm enjoying that the world, in the beginning at least, is being naughty from science's perspective. We can straighten everything out via rp, which sounds like fun.
"But you need a sun..."
"Why?"
"Because physics, you animal!"
"What had that to do with it!"
Etc. :P
I don't know. If you already had an ability like Many Faced Trickster, maybe? Disguise yourself as a stray rock and listen in? I'm not sure the presence of a god can be cloaked without spending more than you're probably willing to spend.
I dunno, I've got 9 AP and i'm willing to spend.
You may not be able to attend, but here's a bit from Crystal Seer that may apply:
being of such sight and vision that you can sense what is happening anywhere if you wish
You would miss whatever you aren't focusing on, but I think that allows you to listen in. How you find out I'm there is another matter entirely. :)
Er.
Plants in their modern form wouldn't grow without light, sure. But you could have a heat or chemical-based world, where fertilizer in the soil, nutrients left over from creation, permitted fungal plants to grow for a while, or volcanic activity just below the surface caused heat-powered bacteria to grow into towering trees and whatnot. Eventually, a sun would become necessary, but not immediately.
Or: We have stars, but only one planet. How close are the stars? I can picture the entire world in a sort of dim starlight, far brighter than anything on earth, but not enough to get massive jungles as much as general mosses, lichens, small shrubs and fast-growing vines; and perhaps the isolation of a sun would push the other stars further away.
Not a bad idea. I'm cool with either of those. Right now I'm just creating away and seeing what sticks. :)
Well, I was. I'm pretty much done for now.
Heh, *or* plants are dying off left and right from lack of sunshine (but their seeds remain, ready to grow back when the sun shows up), and Zakaz continuing to walk the world is what's sustaining them right now.
Would you guys mind if I also portrayed Veldrin? Yea, I am running the game, but I am also playing, and this a cooperative story, so I want to make sure you're cool with me playing 2 gods.
What if someone else comes along who wants to play the same concept? How would you like to handle that?
Quite like the idea of a twilight world, but there needs to be an alternative source of energy. As Atheos noted, the stars could do the job, but they'd have to be very close.... an internal - earth-based source would mean that plants wouldn't grow upwards (no forests). If someone wants to create magic then that could be the source, especially if it emanates in some way from the stars/sky. I'd be happy to do this but it might have to wait a bit if i'm going to create time itself (didn't realise this was necessary but will get on to it as soon as i get some time to post properly.)
What if someone else comes along who wants to play the same concept? How would you like to handle that?
To clarify, I am not particularly ageist the idea, just wondering if you had thought about it.
Yea, I guess I hadn't thought about, hence my asking in first. Not sure if anybody has posted wanting to play such a character yet. But, I can wait to see if such an interest is shown.
Also, was thinking of making Lir into more of a general nature deity, along with being the patron of elves and magic.
I've been saving my last AP to do something big—if nobody *wants* to take responsibility for the sun, Atheos has a back-up plan.
As for Lir—we're all going to branch out into additional domains eventually, so no worries. Since elves are often the first race to be created, though, no shame in getting those guys out early if you want to—I think the big question is who wants to do what before we all meet up etc.
* * *
As for "God of Undead": How would you feel about playing such a deity, but potentially handing it off to a new player if someone had interest in taking one over?
Purely devil's advocate here but, with the "God of Undead", are we pigeon holing into souls and afterlife things?
Also, I am kind of against one person playing multiple gods. That is half of the interesting of this game style, different people creating different things and the gods reacting and probably evolving out of our plans for them.
Well, there's always demigods; but those are smaller gods working with your big gods.
I don't know if you need souls for undeath (see: Hollywood zombies, fungus zombies, etc.) but yeah, this early on, it's a bit out of place
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I'll agree that I think the game would be more interesting and in some ways more fun if everyone is only playing one god, but I'm not necessarily against it. Although I do also feel like a god of undeath this early on doesn't make much sense... Maybe a god of death who comes to take on the undead as part of his domain?
Also, personally I think we may be overthinking and overconcerning ourselves with logistical things that don't really matter. Who cares if it doesn't really make sense for our world to exist as it does without a sun? Why bother worrying over internal-earth energy generation, or creating magic as an excuse to make it work? We're gods. We can do what we want, and right now we're very much in the mythical prehistory time, before the creation of sapient races who think rationally and try to piece those things together.
Long story short, we don't need to worry about how it all works until somebody comes along and asks. And even Atheos doesn't really qualify as that somebody, because he's a god, too--like it or not ;)
Heh, he's also god of death. The only reason he has 'lord of undead' in his alias is because I was also using the name Veldrin for a normal PC at the time.
Veldrin is of my oldest IRL PCs who I have re-created a few times for PF games, and when a new LOC game came about after the one I played Lir in, I decided to portray Veldrin instead.
Anyways, all that aside, I am totally fine not also playing him, though at the moment, I only really have one thing I want him to do in game. However, I plan on keeping that a secret, in case he actually joins.
So, Araneae just created time and mandated that all (created) things must die (5AP)
I'm wondering if time and things must die should not be two separate decrees.
After all, while things can die via old age, that is not the only way. If you had just created time, warriors could battle, be hurt but not die, heal, and go on to fight again, till there time was up.
Well, technically, perhaps. I don't know if we have the decree capacity to get that granular though. We can only have so many decrees running at this point. Maybe another good comes in, say your good of death, and takes part of her decree from her for his own when he chimes in the scene. I could see that.
As Aped said, let's not worry to much until our creations start peeking behind curtains.
Flip side.
Why do we need death right now? Why do we need time? We have no creations that have awareness of such concepts.
Another god can't take part of a decree, they can only make one that works with/against it.
For example, let's say we stick with Araneae's time and death decree, and Aped desired lions to be immortal cuz they are his favored animal, he could make such a decree that all lions live forever.
I thought we agreed that we need time? Maybe not.
That kinda sounds like the LOTR elves, actually. Some good decreed that they were immune to entropy, but not death via physics.
Who would have thought creating a universe would get this complicated. At least there's plenty for the new his to do.
Let's focus on getting the fountain laid, then. Time, space, physics. Some of those, all of those, none of those. Once that's handled I think the test will start falling into place.
Bed time for me!
We do need them, eventually. My prior post was a reminder to make such things. It's very easy to take things like that for granted, as people in an already created universe.
Do we need time and death right now? Yes? No? Probably?
I just feel that time and death are to very different, yet very major aspects of a universe and should therefore be separate decrees. After all, most mythologies have gods/entities for each. Ie, Thanatos and Cronus in Greek.
I would be happy to step up and decree death, but....it is a bit too much attention for now.
Err, the rules specify: you can spend 3 AP as a boon to protect the races you created against a decree.
E.g. if Lir wants elves to be immortal, an extra 3 AP would let them skip death's decree.
So, after some thought and a DISCLAIMER ( I will 100% respect the MODs decision on this one or two decree thing)
My 2 cents: As I have said before, time is the measure of growth to death. Which is why it stands to reason that dieties are, barely affected by/exist outside of, time per se. So the god of Fates is pretty much the god of death, in a divinationy/eloquent kind of way.
I'm fine with one decree, along the lines of "all life has a finite lifespan." That's not quite the same as decreeing things die of old age; think the Greek Fates measuring out wool to be the length of a man's life, regardless of his cause of death. This also sets up Araneae to take Death or Time as a domain later, as well as making her a natural enemy of the undead, should they emerge, as creatures that escape their lifespan.
Sure, time isn't necessarily neat and measured. But the decree makes it finite, and one of us can invent clocks later to put it in its place.
More than happy to go along with whatever ruling the MOD makes... As a way of explanation I was thinking that time == entropy --> death... - that is, that death is a necessary outcome of entropy, which is (essentially) the same thing as time. (kind of what Shess said)
Happy with whatever ruling you make though (although making it 2x decrees would mean that we'd have to retcon death out... I don't have the AP for 2 decrees!).. Its a bit tricky to figure out what we need to make.. gravity? sex? pain? love? hate? evaporation? tides? light? darkness? Do these things happen automatically when other things happen (e.g., does light automatically exist when stars are created, or does it need a separate creation event?)
Note that, in narrative terms, Araneae is not the creator of death... she's merely revealing its inevitability due to the creation of time. Plenty of space for a god/goddess of death in there somewhere.
Thanatos' siblings were Geras(Old Age), Oizys (Suffering), Moros (Doom), Apate (Deception), Momus (Blame), Eris (Strife), Nemesis (Retribution) - do each of these need a separate creation?
*rubs hands together maniacally*
Yes! Clocks!
I think that the order things emerge in probably depends somewhat on party priorities; if Araneae creates time in a way that creates death, whoops, but the *existence* of fate is more important to her than souls or such are to any of us.
Later, yeah, we'll need souls, and an afterlife, and all the nitty gritty bits of what happens with death. But Zakaz seems to have established the "hunt and kill" part by his entry to the world (this ain't a garden of eden full of only herbivores)
I think the main rub we are struggling with is that entropy is a very cosmic-level concept by nature. We don't think of people suffering from the general decay of the universe (whether we do or not). The word itself just doesn't carry that concept for most people. So, we could separate out universal entropy, which was just decreed, and the more intimate and many times violent Death of a living thing.
It would make a lot of sense for me to be the god of life AND death, specifically death of a cause other than old age. After all, one of my creative acts was the killing of a deer. I was the first to kill a living thing. As a hunter, I could then be seen as the greatest and most successful hunter of all, death itself, which would make me undeath's second worst enemy behind staggering, eternal boredom. It would also go well with the dark beast visual thing I have going.
So Aranae decrees time in general and the general entropy of the world. My decree would be "Death is a fact of life". I don't say living things must be killed, only that they can. That way we can have immortal elves who die of physical trauma and stars that burn for a billion billion years but are practically immune to anything short of a god's touch. As long as nothing created is, by definition, immune to ending or death (which are now kind of separate things) we're happy.
Now, say a good grants a creation immunity to both these effects. What happens? Well, first you have TWO upset gods on your case. Second, Atheos just created this lovely plane with nice, inescapable holding cells...
But that's not s ruling, just an attempt at a compromise. What do you guys think?
It's... hard for me to weigh in on this. Ordinarily, Atheos would be pretty into thermodynamic entropy, the general inevitability of death, etc. as a universal constant that even the gods can't escape, except... being among the oldest and wisest gods in this universe, suddenly he needs to *create* things if he wants to help the world, and that's kind of a personal paradox.
"Death is a fact of life"
We gods are alive, aren't we? Thus we are bound by this rule. :)
Personally I'm still of the opinion we didn't really need to lay down things like time and death just yet, but it also works fine for me that we have. I'd say the decree that was listed works--Entropy exists, and "Created things must die." That's a pretty wide-open statement, and even taking it hand in hand with entropy it just means that created things die eventually.
I don't know that we need a decree about things like hunting and murder, because A) as Zakaz pointed out, he's already killed the first living thing, and B) I really think those are concepts that don't need to be dealt with until we have creations who care.
Think about it this way: Pandora's Box wasn't created and opened before humans were walking around and talking big and pissing off the gods. It was opened after, because that's when it would have any kind of impact. Unless we want a particularly grimdark world here (and I don't), let's not go around setting things up for failure just yet. We've got all the time in the world to have things like death and chaos and suffering be pinned down as facts of life.
True, we don't have to create them now, but I think this discussion is healthy for the future so that, when the time comes, we don't have to hold everything and figure it out.
Well uh... that escalated quickly. So we've got a floating continent full of advanced and powerful beings in a world that barely exists... I guess there's a sort of hyperborean "powerful city at the dawn of time" feel to that, but it might make sense to list out *which* advanced concepts you've created so far, because "all of them" seems a bit much.