Characters:
Kostis - God of Death and PlaguesNeilos - God of The Sun and Plants
Steidis - God of Fire and Smiths
Flashback
In the months after they attained godhood, the group split up. Neilos aided Meda in her prophecies in an attempt to make a good impression. Kostis tracked down Simon the Sculptor and found that he had kept his promise never to pick up his tools again; for now, he was one of the new Syrinthan farmers, and fished on the side. Steidis tried to help out Nephele in Syrinth, but left soon after arriving when a riot due to his presence seemed imminent and just wandered the cities until the appointed time.
In Metros, Doros was intent on establishing his own cult, and Kotum's faction of Steidis-worshippers were failing. In Urbos, the Tetrarchs became the Triarchs when Chelak threw Voula Raptis and her infant son into the sea from the cliffside. In Mantea, the White Queen died from the plague, while the Black Queen recovered. She was able to seize a position as the sole monarch, and the remnants of the Circle's End cell in the city were ruthlessly hunted down. In Eniad, Chelak slew the Emperor, putting a stop to a planned invasion of Syrinth. Lastly, in Susae, a great typhoon sent by Keti flattened most structures in the city.
Homecoming
Drawn by the knowledge that something important had happened, the gods assembled in front of the stone gates high in the tallest mountain east of Syrinth, and once they all had arrived, Colossus pushed them open. Beyond was a fantastic city of marble and gold, stretching up the side of the mountain all the way to the peak, and Colossus welcomed them home to Chrysos, the Golden City. The plaza in front of them contained numerous bubbling fountains, but no residents. According to Colossus, populating Chrysos was up to them.
Each of the gods found a district that had been designed for them, from Keti's tiny cluster of open-topped buildings at the peak, to the sprawling, dusty, subterranean cavern where Kostis found a familiar golden palace. As the queen of the gods, Nephele's district was closest to the gates, and the most grand. Neilos and Evenia found mirrored districts just below Keti's, while Steidis discovered that he shared a dense warren of buildings and alleys criss-crossed by walkways at multiple levels with Doros and Meda. Chelak's domain lay off to the side, awkwardly squeezed on at the edge of the mountain, and devoid of buildings.
Budding Cults
Over the next few years, the gods set the rules for their followers and saw to it that every mortal in their realm knew what they were responsible for. Chelak's cult, for instance, was one of raw strength, where whoever offered the greatest offerings received the greatest blessings. Naturally, this meant that once someone rose to the top, they tended to stay there. He centered his followers in the remains of the city of Eniad, now broken-off from the remnants of the Empire to the east, which struggled in a long civil war. A group of petty warlords who came to be known as the Titans would claim loose rule over the city. His district in Chrysos continued to lie empty, devoid of inhabitants, and he rarely visited or spoke to the other gods.
Steidis' high priests were all master artisans, chosen by their peers in competitions held in his district of Chrysos. This process remained mostly uncorrupted by the various trade guilds, though there were occasionally accusations of nepotism. A practice which became more common over time was for newly-selected priests to cut off their left hand, as Steidis had done when he ceased to be mortal; Steidis made prosthetics for those who asked at first, and gradually the priests learned to make more themselves. He also encouraged his followers to travel the world as he had done, to find inspiration.
Nephele worked mostly out of Syrinth, and oversaw two types of priests: "mothers", women with children who served as midwives and conducted most of the rituals, and "daughters", children with some gift for prophecy which they lost as they aged. As the queen of the gods, she saw the most petitioners in her district of Chrysos, and a class of clerks gradually grew to point people towards the correct god to petition, and how to approach them. For instance, if a woman's husband was dying of the plague, she should go to Doros, never to Kostis.
Never one to associate with mortals, Neilos secluded himself in his district, which became overgrown with all manner of plant life. Wooden puppets stood guard at the entrances, to discourage anyone who would be particularly desperate. His priesthood, meanwhile, were those who had stared at the sun long enough to go blind (or, in some cases, had simply gouged their eyes out). He only doled out his blessings to farmers who offered sacrifices at harvest time, which gradually escalated from plants, to animals, to humans.
Evenia's worshippers constructed temples where the maimed and disfigured were treated as sacred. Her priesthood themselves were, predictably, made up of only the most beautiful supplicants, chosen by Evenia herself in regular contests within her district. The ability to create works of art was viewed as almost as important as physical beauty, but not quite, and her priests were typically removed from their rank as they aged.
In an effort to draw the attention of mortals to the cycle of reincarnation, Kostis chose those who venerated their ancestors and the knowledge of prior generations as his priests. At lower levels, their duties were mostly restricted to overseeing burial rites, but as they progressed up the hierarchy, they would spend their time researching history and giving speeches containing their knowledge to the public. So that he would be given the opportunity to party, Kostis offered prestigious burial ceremonies for kings and the like in his district, in exchange for offerings of their knowledge and artifacts.
Kostis' insistence that the knowledge of the past be shared put him at odds with Doros, who pursued nearly the opposite agenda. As far as he was concerned, knowledge was to be hoarded, mostly in the New Library of Metros and his archives in Chrysos. The nobility had a duty to fund the healing and studies that would take place at his temples, but none outside of the cult would ever hear of this work. The poor would receive medical treatment, but were viewed as essentially helpless. Only the greatest scholars in the world were allowed into his district, and Doros was particular about keeping some who may have qualified out in the world, as there were none more capable of teaching new initiates.
Unlike the other gods, Keti did not have any fixed temples, and her priests wandered the coasts, collecting sacrifices from fishers and sailors to ward off storms. Her district stayed mostly empty, housing only the apprentice priests who came to learn what sacrifices she preferred, and how best to prepare them. She spent her time wandering around the sky.
Pirus tied her priesthood to the military, with any "professional" soldier becoming a priest, with military rank and religious rank explicitly tied together. Every 5 years, she held a grand tournament in her district, with worshippers competing in events to prove their martial, physical, and tactical prowess and gain her blessings. As a result of this, a permanent class of generals would gradually form in most of the cities.
Lastly, Meda had her "official" priesthood take on the duty of caring for the poor, but they received few blessings. Her true favoured were those who stole from the rich to give to the poor. In particular, those who stole Doros' knowledge and Steidis' artifacts, and conveniently, her district was intertwined with theirs. She did her best to intervene subtly, with cornered thieves suddenly escaping through a hidden passage that emerged from nowhere, or providing new identities and escape for those who had angered another of the gods.
The Golden Age
While the other gods were still figuring out how to structure their cults, Chelak was already out in the world, preaching that people should abandon cities and return to nature. In particular, this affected Mantea, and many mortals left the city in droves to "grow stronger" in the desert and canyons. In reality, most of them saw a disastrous decline in their lifespan. Sadly, this cost Steidis a potential stronghold, as he ignored it in favour of finally helping Petraeus, the Prince of Lamps, to get his gold mine north of Syrinth started.
After that relatively short task, he then wandered the world, trying to find 33 followers who would willingly sacrifice their lives in his flames so that he could complete the "bonus prophecy" he had learned of from the Steidis candidate they had killed so long ago. When he finally did so after several years, he became even more powerful, though did not regain any more powers or memories. Meanwhile, the civil wars in the old Eniadnan Empire drew to a close, with all of the cities allegedly falling into ruin, and Eniad itself remaining under the thumb of the Chelak's Titans.
Some of the Titans openly proclaimed allegience to the Circle's End, but Chelak announced he would defend them, as anyone who believed themselves strong enough to kill a god was welcome to try. As Kostis pondered on where to center his cult, Evenia asked him to let her have sole control of Mantea. After Chelak had ended House Raptis in Urbos, she was short on followers. Kostis begrudgingly agreed, and ignored his followers, spending the next century trying to puzzle out the secrets of what had happened to bring about the death of the gods in previous cycles as well as the removal of gods from of the cycle entirely.
When he went to investigate the dead gods in the Dull Gold Palace in the Starlit Desert, Kostis was disappointed to find that they were now in a vegetative state, seemingly unaware of his presence. But he did confirm some interesting things: Chelak seemed to have joined the pantheon only 15 cycles ago, and some of the gods in the great hall were ones that he didn't recognize if he went back far enough. Considering that the gods seemed to survive in some form after death, he surmised that killing a god wasn't really possible, and it was at most only possible to kill their current incarnation.
After much thought, research, and meditation on his still-foggy memories of the past cycle, Kostis eventually realized that the weapons the Circle's End had possessed (and that he had occasionally used) were made from the remains of dead gods. The oily black substance had likely been the tears or blood of Nephele, and the Twisted Mirror must have been Evenia's skin. It seemed like the only god capable of directly killing another god was himself, though any other god could wield one of these weapons made from the flesh of another (which made Steidis a greater threat).
Further study revealed that a god could not remove another god from the cycle, as far as he could tell. Additionally, it seemed that a cycle always ended in bloodshed, which left one god standing... but eventually, they died as well. In the prior cycle, Kostis had allied with Nephele, Steidis, Pirus, and Keti against Neilos, Chelak, Evenia, and Meda. His side had emerged victorious, but shortly fell into infighting and noteworthily, Nephele had "won" the last cycle, but, as they already knew, she had committed suicide some time later for an unknown reason.
Interestingly, Kostis found some other entity had killed several of the gods in the prior cycle, though he wasn't sure what (or who?) it was. He brought this knowledge to Steidis, who suggested they tell everyone so that they could work to prevent a "Godwar". However, they still weren't sure what caused the Godwars in the first place. It was entirely possible that knowledge of the prior cycles would sow enough disrust to send them spiralling into conflict. Ultimately, they kept the knowledge to themselves.
Rising Tensions
In an effort to secure a food supply for his own followers, Doros beseeched Neilos to keep his word and help the farmers of Metros, but he declined. Instead, he went to Meda, to see if she would be interested in removing Pirus from Urbos. She was already busy establishing her followers in the ruins of Susae, so instead he passed the years creating a useful artifact for himself: a straw farmer's hat that shone with the light of the sun, so that he would never be in darkness.
Syrinth rose to prominence as a trade hub, due to Nephele gradually reshaping ocean currents, and became a monarchy when she gave her blessing to the Prince of Wood, now simply the King of Syrinth. Unfortunately for her, Pirus enacted a scheme where she married into the royal family while posing as a mortal, then revealing her divinity and stealing a good chunk of influence in the city. Nephele was furious.
As time passed, many of the gods lay with mortals, and the resulting children turned out to be superhuman. Shockingly, the first of these Heroes was a daughter sired by Neilos. Known as Valentina the Blazing Sun, she spent her life travelling the known world, committing great deeds in her father's name, hoping to gain his approval. Neilos not only never approved of her, he never even officially recognized her as his child (partly from his disdain for others, and partly from fear of alienating Meda if she found out he wasn't faithful).
In Metros, Doros had overseen the elimination of Kotum's cult of Steidis worshippers, and constructed an impenetrable bureaucracy of scholars to serve as the government. The world's texts were all siphoned away to the New Library, and the greatest of those sent to his district in Chrysos, where they were sealed away in great vaults. Meanwhile, rumours flowed down from the northern lands, claiming that their foreign gods were absent.
Pirus sent forth an army led by one of her Heroes, Melania the Crimson Hawk to take their land in her name, but when the army arrived in the northern lands, they were crushed by disease, and Pirus accused Kostis. He tried to point out that the outbreak had started in the north, where his powers wouldn't work, but she claimed he could have just infected them before they left (Kostis: "Hmm, fair, I would"). Kostis considered trying to get in Pirus' good graces, but ended up pushing his followers to build a power base for him in Metros. This further antagonized Doros, but they were already enemies, so he didn't care much.
Meda spent a long time building a more equitable society out of the ruins of Susae, resulting in a democracy where every adult could vote, and slavery was outlawed. In the shadows, the Circle's End saw its ranks swell as those who didn't appreciate Keti's flattening the city and the disempowered former nobles who'd had their ill-gotten gains redistributed swore revenge against the gods. In Urbos, meanwhile, the power dynamics of the Triarchs had shifted over the centuries, with House Michelakis, aligned with Pirus, rising to be first among equals. Meanwhile, the Hunters, though still extant, had seen further restrictions applied over time, and they were now far more accountable to the Triarchs, if not the public.
After her attempt to secure Syrinth for herself had failed, Nephele came to Steidis and asked for his assistance in removing Pirus from the city. Not eager to expend so many of his resources, even for his wife, Steidis refused, forcing Nephele to call in the favour he still owed her. In an effort to convince her to let this go, he told her of the coming Godwar, and when that didn't work, her victory and ultimate suicide. She remarked that they needed to postpone something so horrible for as long as possible... but also that they should strengthen their position so that they come out on top.
For some reason, Steidis got the impression that when she spoke of "them", she really just meant herself. Still, not willing to anger Nephele further, he gave in, and aided her in attempting to sabotage Pirus' power base in Syrinth. Unfortunately, Pirus was more than prepared, and her cult stayed faithful. To make matters worse, Pirus was aware that Steidis had tried to force her out, and it probably wasn't great to have the god of war as an enemy if they would soon be fighting. On the upside, at least Nephele had appreciated the attempt.
Having pushed off Neilos' advances for centuries, Meda finally gave him an ultimatum: they would assume mortal guise for a year, and if he could not win her over in that time, he would never speak to her again. Confident, Neilos accepted this, and the two took up residence in Urbos for the duration of the challenge. Knowing Meda's beliefs from his (creepily) unwavering observation of her over the centuries, Neilos spent the year designing the perfect heist: they would steal the riches from the vault of House Michelakis, and give them to the needy.
He put together a team, and used his skills at misdirection to talk their way into the estate, where they managed to steal a vast sum of gold with none the wiser before fleeing into the night. As they handed out their spoils to the poor, Meda realized that she'd genuinely fallen in love with Neilos, and the two were wed shortly after. With that done, Neilos really needed a way to blow off the stress of prolonged social interaction, and spread his followers to Eniad, annoying (and undermining) Chelak in the process.
Over time, the relationships between the gods started to show cracks. One year, Keti, apparently not given sufficient offerings, sent great storms to batter Urbos. The city itself was fine, but the countryside was devastated, and the crops destroyed, which infuriated Neilos. Kostis' distribution of knowledge from the long dead resulted in a weeks-long shouting match with Doros. Steidis got into a long argument with Neilos over who really should have control of the sun (it is, after all, made of fire), and ended up burning another year's crops when Neilos would not relent.
The Missing God
The gods continued to squabble, and over the years, Kostis and Steidis grew ever more wary of the coming Godwar. They were all caught off guard when one day, the moon blocked the sun, and the world slowly returned to twilight. As the mortals of the land despaired the eclipse as a sign of the end of the world, the gods remembered that there was another god they had, for some reason, forgotten about until that moment. Vunos, god of the Earth and Memory, first husband of Nephele, and father of gods had returned.
Notes:
This session was a lot more abstract than usual, with multiple giant time skips, but I think it worked well.
There's a "relationship matrix" for the gods at the moment, which will determine who allies with who if the Godwar breaks out. A censored, PC-only version looks like this:
Sacrifices are a source of power for the gods (increasing sacrifices as they completed prophecies and convinced people they were, in fact, the gods gave them extra daily HP during the rest of the campaign). Therefore, having more followers making more sacrifices gives them more power. I deliberately designed this part of the game such that they could make number go up or they could do things they actually wanted to do, and it worked more or less exactly how I hoped.
Kostis has dictated that sky burials be the dominant form of dealing with bodies. In places where this isn't reasonably possible, normal burial is acceptable.
Steidis tolerated the Meda-sponsored thievery of his artifacts, claiming that it was okay as long as they didn't try to pass the works off as their own.
Somehow I never mentioned it before this session, but the general populace have a vague belief in reincarnation over a long time period. Pretty much "the gods come back, so people probably do too!".
Kostis' initial theory on the entity that had killed gods in the last cycle? The christian god showed up and started smitin'.
Neilos had to roll Will +4 to not sleep with some mortal who would later give birth to the first Hero. This put him at a 16 (actually an 18, but crit fails exist), so he naturally rolled a 17. His first idea on how this happened was obviously that he turned into an animal a la Zeus to seduce the poor woman, so he rolled on a random animal generator and got "dung beetle". We'll say something else happened.
Neilos' player has dubbed his magic hat the "Light Lid".
Steidis rolled a 14 under 18 when trying to force Pirus out, only for Pirus to roll a natural 4. What is it with Piruses and rolling well?
There was at one point a conversation about launching a pre-emptive strike to kick off the Godwar, but with Nephele, one of only three people who knew about it, being vehemently opposed to this idea, it didn't take off the ground for fear that it would leave them with few (or no) allies.
Kostis spent a long time thinking about what he wanted to do after his kerfuffle with Pirus.
Meda had to roll a "Fall In Love" reaction roll, for which she needed at least a 12. I rolled the dice and got a natural 7... and with the +5 from Neilos' successful heist, that got her to just barely where she needed to be.
Keti spent basically the whole time just extorting sacrifices with storms and doing literally nothing else. This was definitely not because I just forgot to add her to the list of gods when coming up with things they had done.
In the last part of the game, I asked each player to pick a god, rotated them one to the left, then rolled randomly for whether they would have a positive or negative interaction. Steidis ended up with himself, so I let him choose whoever he wanted, and even told him in advance that it would have to be a negative interaction. He chose Neilos. Pure chaos.
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