The Gods

The Bankers of Vajra and Souls

Gods are composite beings. Incorporeal as Spirits, derived from concepts as Elders, and bearing anthropomorphic avatars as Fair Folk; Gods have one unifying factor. Gods require human belief, human prayer, sacrifice and offerings. Gods are empty vessels that cannot generate any power of their own. They are bankers or insurance brokers, absorbing the Vajra and Souls offered them from a multitude of worshipers and giving back some small measure to the occasional worshiper as a miracle.

Gods can be a source of great power, but the cost is high. And it is difficult for a Freepath Sorcerer to use the power of the gods without breaking the first of the four great laws and worshiping that god.

Ur Gods

The Main demarcation for gods is whether or not the God is named. Legion and the many Proto Nameless Gods, fall into the category of Ur Gods that are not yet named.

Named Gods

Once a God has a name its nature changes, and so named Gods are classified differently. There are many Pantheons of Gods, but most are simply the same few Gods wearing different suits. Listed below are a few of the more prominent Pantheons.

The Gods of Light

Living in the Realms of the Afterlife and treating death as an eternal sentence of servitude for those beings foolish enough to die beholden to one of more Gods, the Gods of Light seem the most benevolent on the surface.

The Dead Gods

Technically all gods are dead gods, but one group in particular is known by that as a title: The Dead Gods, so named because they have managed the difficult task of dying twice.

The Vu’Hath Blood Gods

The Gods of Rage. Now dead for all intents and purposes. The Locust King once used these gods to power his armies, but now relies more upon gods who can generate conformity.

The Gods of Dust

The Hungry Empire provides a feast for the few, and promises a feast for the many while supplying them with only scraps. In order to keep the many who are hungry from rebelling, the Locust King turns to the Gods of Dust who lionize deprivation and poverty and suffering as the path to righteousness.

 

Excerpt

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play