Aranai Ra, Unreasonably Beefy Lion

Last time we talked about the reach a god has to interact with the mortal realm, and before that we touched on how a god needs to have an Avatar in order to sustain themself, since their Aeon exists outside of reality. So what starts to happen when that breaks down?

Anchors

Some types of Avatars are anchoring—they represent a fundamental link keeping your Aeon connected to the mortal world. All gods have to maintain at least one anchoring avatar or their Aeon starts to fall to Oblivion (though more on that in a later post). Anchoring Avatars are all something physical and tangible, something with mood and personality.

Other Avatars are non-anchoring—an emanation of your power and the themes you embody, but not something that helps to reinforce your existence. Non-Anchoring Avatars are usually something transitory, less tangible, or somehow disconnected from physical existence.

Both of these are game terms, not a concept that gods would really talk about in-universe. As far as categorizing goes:

• Corporeal, Relic, and Sanctuary Avatars are all Anchoring. They're all a physical being of some kind that can directly interact (or be interacted with) in the mortal world.
• Legion Avatars are Non-Anchoring. While physical beings like a Corporeal Avatar, they're too disparate to really anchor the self.
• Locus Avatars are Non-Anchoring. While a physical place like a Sanctuary Avatar, a Locus Avatar is far too disconnected from the mortal world to anchor the self.
• Patronhood and Symbol Avatars are Non-Anchoring. They don't have a constant presence, and thus don't anchor your identity.
• Proxy Avatars (to be discussed in a later post) can be either Anchoring or Non-Anchoring, depending on the god in question.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Anchoring and Non-Anchoring Avatars is that an Anchoring Avatar can be injured or killed.

Avatar Death

So what happens when one of a god's Avatars dies? Well it's certainly not pleasant, but death isn't quite the end for a god like it is for a mortal. After some time, the Aeon emanates the Avatar again, but it's never quite the same as it was.

Its physical form might change. Its personality might shift. It might develop some strange compulsions or needs that it didn't have before. The changes might be subtle or they might be severe, but they're going to be present.

If a god's last Anchoring Avatar is slain, their Aeon immediately resumes starving to death and is at risk of falling to Oblivion. And that's bad! Usually.

Fortunately, Avatars are a lot more resilient than mortals. Or unfortunately, if you find yourself in the difficult spot of needing to kill (or at least severely inconvenience) a god.

Next Time

Time to talk about how gods and harm, both physically and to their identity.

Last time we talked about what Avatars are. Let's dive a bit more into how Avatars interact with the mortal world.

Influence

Gods don't have infinite reach. They can't affect anything, anywhere, at any time—they can only really exert power over lands and peoples that believe in them as an authority. In places and among peoples who have never heard of the god in question, an Avatar is notably less powerful.

Just being somewhere that people have heard of you and your deeds before offers a god a major power boost over being somewhere that they're an absolute stranger.

Maintaining a devoted cult within a region offers a lot more influence... but being the unquestioned top authority within a region is as good as you can get. There's no actual difference in influence between being the top dog in town and being the only dog in town though—gods don't tend to quash the cults of other gods unless they're making motions to try a coup of sorts. It's too much work for no real payoff.

A god somewhere where they have no influence isn't powerless, but they're much more susceptible to actual harm and have fewer defenses to the powers of other gods. So it's not ideal!

Pantheon gods are very location dependent. As largely physical divinities, they have to deal with directly interacting with the mortals in their areas of influence.

Omnipresence

Since gods have a pretty vested interest in the areas they have influence over, they tend to have a direct hand in the management of "their" territory. Fortunately for gods, corporeal and relic avatars are capable of omnipresence.

Omnipresence allows an avatar to be in more than one place at the same time, doing different things, holding different thoughts, conversations, and seeing different plans through all simultaneously.

There's a couple weird properties of omnipresence.

• Any injury sustained by one omnipresent instance happens to all of them simultaneously. It's the same body, just in more than one place at once.
• Objects (or people!) picked up by one omnipresent instance can be "shifted" to another one with as much ease as passing it to their other hand. Being warped across space like this by your divine friends takes a lot of getting used to, and often leaves the poor mortal disoriented and nauseous for awhile.
• If any mortal ever sees more than one omnipresent instance of an avatar at the same time, all instances of that avatar collapse into that single point, vanishing from everywhere else. This leaves the god a bit disoriented and more than a bit nauseous. (This property was actually created for gameist reasons—if the collapsing didn't happen, then if two gods got into a fight, whichever one had the greater omnipresence reach would win every time because there'd just be more of them. I wanted omnipresence to be a feature to help in managing large swaths of areas politically, not a thing to use in divine smackdowns.)

There's a hard limit to the number of omnipresent instances of each Avatar a god can have based on how much influence they hold. In game terms:

• A territory where people have heard of you (Legend influence): +1
• A territory where you maintain a dedicated cult (Cult influence): +2
• A territory where you are the unquestioned top authority (Sovereign influence): +4

In short, the more a god's reach grows, the more tools they have to deal with that increased reach.

Next Time

Time to talk about the last bits about an Avatar's physical nature and what it means to the Aeon—Identity Anchoring.

So last time we established that once the Aeonic Self ascends out of reality, it starts starving to death because it's now separated from the concept that sustains it. How does a new god deal with this existential threat? By making an Avatar.

Avatars

An Avatar is a vessel for some small facet of your Aeon, a reflection of the whole of your Aeonic Self that, while incredibly powerful in its own right, can't ever encompass the entirety of what your Aeon became. Gods use Aeons to interact with the mortal world and to spread their influence (and thus grow in power).

All Avatars of a given Aeon share core identity aspects, but can and do deviate as individuals. Each Avatar is loosely aware of the thoughts, desires, and actions of other Avatars under the Aeon, but does act as a fully independent divine soul.

The Aeon isn't "puppeting" the Aeons like remote bodies. You experience everything as each Avatar and as your ascended Aeonic Self simultaneously. The Aeon acts as a metaphysical "lighthouse" of sorts that the Avatars guide themselves by, a greater Self that emanates downward into individual existences with their own unique perspectives. By living as a separate person, you further your understanding of your Self and what brings you Meaning.

Types of Avatars

While the first Avatar most gods emanate is wrought of ascended flesh and blood, they don't have to be people (in Pantheon's game terms, a Corporeal Avatar). All of these things could be Avatars:

• An object of great power and a will of its own (To use a real world mythology example, Mjolnir is just as much an Avatar as Thor is). In Pantheon's game terms, this is called a Relic Avatar.
• A caste of lesser living divine beings that act as a cohesive whole. In Pantheon's game terms, this is called a Legion Avatar.
• A location that's particularly Meaningful to your Aeonic Self. A building, a sacred grove, a holy city. In Pantheon's game terms, this is called a Sanctuary Avatar.
• A realm disconnected from the mortal world. These are almost always relatively small, maybe only the size of a large city and the surrounding countryside. In Pantheon's game terms, this is called a Locus Avatar.

That last one gets a little bit esoteric, but even more esoteric things can be an Avatar.

• You could live in a particular representation that you live inside of (a Symbol).
• You could live in a particular act, like the toil of stonemasons or the strum of the harp (a Patronhood).

These more subtle Avatars don't have their own individuality like the five more concrete examples given above, but they do allow a god perceptions into wide swaths of existence simultaneously.

Next Time

Time to talk about more topics relevant to a god's existence in the mortal world—Influence and Omnipresence.

So before I talk about my main OC, I need to explain a bit about how gods work in the Pantheon setting. This is gonna be a little bit long, so buckle in!

Apotheosis

All gods were originally mortal. Some may not want to admit that, but it's true.

Apotheosis isn't something that can be predicted or reliably triggered. It just sort of happens, very rarely, to people who can go and make Meaning™ for themselves rather than needing to seek it out elsewhere.

It starts with a feeling of elation and dread in equal measure. A jittering energy in everything you do and think, like you have more of yourself than you can possibly pour into anything you're doing. It builds in intensity over time, never going away. The amount of time varies, for some nascent gods it happens over the course of hours, but for others it can take years.

Once the rising energy reaches an overwhelming point, it sort of... spills out of you. Gods most commonly refer to this as your Branding—some sort of undeniable mark appears on your flesh. There's different kinds of gods, and how the Branding affects the nascent god is largely dependent on what type of god they're becoming (which I'll elaborate on in a future #worldbuilding post).

Whatever type of Brand the nascent god manifests, the final result is the same—the utter destruction of their physical body as their metaphysical Self starts growing out of control. Your sense of Self grows into something immeasurably beyond humanity (most commonly called the Aeon by gods), something that can't fit within the confines of reality anymore.

Your Aeonic Self ascends out of reality, and you experience a moment of absolute perfect Unity, Meaning, and Truth as your Aeonic Self merges with the concepts that you've defined your own Meaning with.

...and then you realize you're actively starving to death.

You need the mortal world to feed off of the Concept that you define Meaning with, but you're too metaphysically big to fit inside of reality anymore. What do??

Next Time

Time to talk about Avatars!