Creating Gods

U

Umni

New Member
Ok I'm not if this should be here so I'm sorry if I got the wrong place. Ok so if I'm not wrong if you were to create a new item or somethign entirely new in the world, there would have to be a new god created to in charge of that right? So if I were to for a example create a new city that eventually grew into a big metropolis, what would the god of the new city do for it? Like what does the city city gain as a benefit?
 
Look at Great Forks for an example of the benefits of the over intervention of gods intervening on behalf of their city. A new god might not even be made, as Great Forks shows. The Celestial Bureaucracy's unemployment line might get shorter as an unemployed god has its nature changed to suit whatever it is to watch over.


Heaven's pretty bad. There are tons of gods without work. Some of them would probably be glad to get some, even if it meant being the city god of Stinkton, the bean eating capital of Creation.
 
I don't think it is entirely appropriate to think of a god being a benefit to a city (or any other entity in Creation). I think the gods should be seen as the soul of their area. A city god is the reason a city keeps itself in existense. If a new town arises, somehow, a god would move in or be created. If someone were to kill that god people would move away and the town fall apart untill a new god took over.


In Great Forks the gods have gone a little further than they were supposed to. They have taken over rulership of the city, but that is far from the case with all gods.
 
The gods of Great Forks actually MADE the city. They got demons and elementals in on the building, too. They didn't take over rulership, either. They ruled from the get go. The three groups of mortal each had a god following them on their exodus, and it was those gods who decided to work out peace between the groups and have them share the land they wanted to settle.
 
Thanks for reminding me. My point was that, as has been pointed out several times, it is not the role of the gods to rule men. I gather that the three gods of Great Forks have been allowed this rulership (along with the Dynasts of Whitewall and many others) due to the general fault in the bureaucracy. The laws aren't being upheld as they used to be.
 
Pointed out several times in the books, or something?


The Solars weren't supposed to go crazy. Lunars weren't supposed to run with tails tucked between their legs off into the borders of the world and fuck themselves up into 3 Castes. Dragon-Blooded weren't supposed to rise up and kill their masters. Sidereals weren't supposed to be such manipulative, pragmatic bastards who'll do anything to cling to their power in the name of preserving Creation. Abyssals aren't supposed to exist.


Shit happened. Now most gods are out enjoying mixing it up with mortals, cheating on their celestial taxes, or getting turned into Starmetal because they pissed off Bob in accounting who wanted to replace the god in question with Bob's attractive cousin god.


I cannot even begin to conceive of how it is terribly relevant to point out that it is the case that gods are not supposed to interact with humans face to face. It's really too huge to change. Ahlat's going to keeping fucking around with Harborhead and making it his personal harem/sacrifice bank. All of those gods are going to keep ruling. Only the Blessed Isle has gods sort of staying in their place, but since the Empress has gone things have kind of gone sour. Salt gods getting uppity, and all that. And, well, that's only because the Blessed Isle is home to a race of genetic supermen with enough power to put the hurt on the local gods, or enough stroke to coerce gods into their favor by giving or denying holidays in said god's name. IIRC, about the only way you're about to get the laws to be followed again is to clean up the Solars, Lunars, Abyssals, Infernals, the Dragon-Blooded, and then get the Incarna off their GoD-addled asses.


Your god is either a benefit, a cruel tyrant who demands virgins, cows, or whatever all the fucking time, or it's useless.
 
I think this fits the question you're asking....

That's a tall order.


The Celestial Bureaucracy is the system that was originally built by the Primordials to regulate and manage Creation. Thus, the purpose of the Celestial Bureaucracy is to regulate and manage.


Gods, in Exalted, do not embody their concepts. They are not "anthropomorphic personifications." They are supervisors. They are celestial functionaries. They're just guys (and gals) with homes and jobs and salaries and co-workers.


It was originally set up in a heirarchy. At the very bottom, you have what are called Least Gods. Everything in Creation has a Least God -- every rock, every pebble, every sword, every spoke of every wheel has a Least God. The Least God of a sword sits in the sword and makes sure it behaves in a sword-ish manner -- it cuts things, it stays made of metal, its temperature remains constant with that of its environment, it does not spontaneously combust, etc. Most of the time, swords don't do that sort of thing anyway, so the Least God of a sword spends the vast majority of the time asleep. Ideally, if something unusual happens to the sword, the sword's Least God is supposed to report it to its supervisor, which would be...


Here's where things get complicated.


It's a management heirarchy, so things are never clear. Does the god of the sword report to its specific manager, or does it report to whatever manager of conflict exists in the area? Does it report to a conflict manager at all, or ro a tool manager?


Because gods don't embody concepts, you can kill gods without killing concepts. The spirit of a particular stretch of river reports to the spirit of that river as a whole, who reports to the spirit of rivers in the area, which reports to the spirit in charge of rivers in that elemental quadrant (north, east, south, west, and the blessed isle counts as its own), which reports upwards to the Spirit of Rivers. If the spirit of a particular stretch of river gets killed, that stretch of river lacks a supervisor (until the spirit of the river notices the problem and files the paperwork requisitioning a replacement, the general Celestial Bureaucracy process the paperwork, and a replacement is sent and given basic job training), so it doesn't have anyone making sure it behaves the way it should. It might flood out of season, a demon might discover that it can lair there and remain unobserved, etc..


What happens if the spirit of a whole river dies? Well, that depends. Ideally, the spirit of rivers for the elemental quadrant notices and requisitions a replacement.


Enter corruption.


During the First Age, Exalts were supposed to do all the actual physical work, and spirits were supposed to stay insubstantial and observe, acting as information gathering. If a river spirit saw something wrong, it'd send a report up the chain, and the report would travel until it got to the point where the spiritual and Exalt bureaucracies interacted. The report would then get sent down that heirarchy and someone (probably a Dragon-Blood) would go investigate and solve the problem. If the problem were too big for the Dragon-Blood to solve on his own, he'd go back to his superior and requesition more force.


In the Second Age, this doesn't work. After the Usurpation, spirits started having to solve problems themselves, because the now-ruling Dragon-Blooded were too busy fighting succession wars and being decadent and recovering from Twilight boobytraps to do their damn jobs. Then the Great Contagion hit and many, many things were destroyed, leaving a whole hell of a lot of gods out of jobs.


For instance, remember how Creation got smaller? Well, what do you think happened to the gods of rivers and trees and cities and things when those things got eaten by the Wyld and stopped existing? They're stuck in Yu-Shan with no job and no income, that's what. Yu-Shan wasn't used to dealing with massive unemployment and homelessness, and I doubt it had a social security system. Dealing with these homeless gods took a lot of effort, and meanwhile Creation is still recovering from a huge war.


So in the midst of all this, a river god dies. The river's immediate superior doesn't notice because he's got squatter camps set up across from his mansion and he's afraid of leaving his house 'cause the squatters will mug him for food, and even when he does get to work he's absolutely swamped with requests for this, that, and the other thing.


Suddenly all the gods directly under the river god have no supervisors. What do they do? Well, with few exceptions nobody likes their boss, right? And now these stretch-of-river gods have no boss. They can do whatever they want! Well hell, one of them is good friends with a god who's now homeless, let's invite him away from Yu-Shan to live here, because here it's pretty good. We can exploit the natives for more worship and flood their villages if they refuse, etc. etc..


That's kinda how things went. It's how they're still going. At some point (thanks to a great deal of work on the part of the Sidereals and the Immaculate Order), a certain degree of order is restored to some places, and in other places the strongest gods got together and made their own order, taking over cities, annexing new areas of land, and beating up any gods who refused. But it's all a big confusing muddle, generally.


Did this help with the explanation?


- Stephenls (from RPG.net)
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Ok thanks guys that was really helpfull. But I still have one question, would the gos of a city give it any benefits like growth of something, and wheter or not it would like try to manipulate politics within the celestial bureacracy to benefit his city?
 
Umni said:
wheter or not it would like try to manipulate politics within the celestial bureacracy to benefit his city?
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Various writings seem to indicate that a god grows or shrinks in power and ifluence in direct proportion to the power and influence of their domains. I would think any ambitious god would definitely do all they could to have things go favorably for things under their control.


However, most gods probably don't do this for altruistic reasons. What's good for them might not be the best thing for the people who live under them.


-S
 
Umni said:
Ok thanks guys that was really helpfull. But I still have one question, would the gos of a city give it any benefits like growth of something, and wheter or not it would like try to manipulate politics within the celestial bureacracy to benefit his city?
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Yes, a god of any given item grows more powerful if he gets more essence, his domain increases in some way or such.


Say as a REALLY out of there example... the patron goddess of the Lintha... if they manage to conquer the Realm... would REALLY go up in terms of power, because the people that she's the goddess of have managed to grow really large/powerful.


It's much better to manipulate the growth of your people/city in Creation... that's the reason that a number of gods are down there in Creation and doing stuff... it's effective. Also bear in mind that certain departments like it when various gods take over a city and run it directly as opposed to having it run by humans and dragonblooded.
 
Haku--While the analgoy isn't bad, the Lintha perhaps aren't a great example, since Kimberry is a Primordial, and currently all Yozi'ed out...
 
Haku--While the analgoy isn't bad' date=' the Lintha perhaps aren't a great example, since Kimberry is a Primordial, and currently all Yozi'ed out...[/quote']
Ahh... I'm not speaking of Kimberry... she's their patron Yozi Princess... I'm talking about the godblooded whose angling for godhood. ^_^
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Ok this cleared up several of my questions but brought a new. Ok I was just reading up on Yu-shan and I read something that said that the Gods could only gain 2 essence or lose 2 essence maximum, so if this is true does that mean that if a small group of people captured the realm their patron god still wouldn't grow that much in power unless he was already a powerful god?
 
Must have missed that passage. Where does it say that?


-S
 
Sidereals, page 34.


Umni is kind of twisting the passage, if I've identified the one he's talking about.


"However, gods are exceedingly durable beings. No deity who has ever possessed a permanent Essence of 2 or more will ever drop below a permanent Essence of 2, even if her domain is utterly destroyed. Also, most gods almost never lose or gain more than two points of pemanent Essence, regardless of what happens to their domains. Vanileth, the Shogun of Artificial Flight (see Games of Divnity, pp. 27-28), was one of the greatest deities of the First Age and had a mighty Essence of 7. In the Age of Sorrows, artificial flight is almost unknown, but he still retains an Essence of 5. Powerful gods always retain at [least] some of their prior greatness, and weak gods can never fully overcome their innate inferiority."


There is mention of Endowment and Scourge a paragraph later, but it is not specific other than to mention these charms get used to promote/demote and they are "exceedingly rare, and neither one is likely to happen more than a few times a century."


To be honest, I'm having a hard time seeing Ahlat being Essence 5 back in the day when his domain was the mating competition of the bull Northern black walrus. Then again, maybe I'm putting too much stock in the "almost never." Though, I guess that the Essence scale increases in leaps and bounds, so that there would be a huge gap between Essence 5 and Essence 6, though it's not really quantified much anywhere that I know of.
 
Almost never seems to happen nine times out of ten when it comes to the world of the Exalted.  After all, if the almost impossible didn't happen on a regular basis in the world (whose sheer existance is a bit less likely than Discword) than it would be a pretty boring place.
 
Million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten.  I love the Discworld.  Terry Pratchet is the greatest person to have ever donned a cowboy hat.


The topic at hand though, I have nothing to add.  I'm just wondering where all the interesting stuff about gods, and especially the rules governing their existance and actions, is printed.  I'm assuming Games of Divinity, which luckily is sitting in my game room (I don't actually own any Exalted books, but my friends do, boy howdy), but I'm guessing Sidereals as well?


Edit: Also, where can I find the Exalted wiki?
 
Andrew02 said:
Sidereals, page 34.
Umni is kind of twisting the passage, if I've identified the one he's talking about.


"However, gods are exceedingly durable beings. No deity who has ever possessed a permanent Essence of 2 or more will ever drop below a permanent Essence of 2, even if her domain is utterly destroyed. Also, most gods almost never lose or gain more than two points of pemanent Essence, regardless of what happens to their domains. Vanileth, the Shogun of Artificial Flight (see Games of Divnity, pp. 27-28), was one of the greatest deities of the First Age and had a mighty Essence of 7. In the Age of Sorrows, artificial flight is almost unknown, but he still retains an Essence of 5. Powerful gods always retain at [least] some of their prior greatness, and weak gods can never fully overcome their innate inferiority."


There is mention of Endowment and Scourge a paragraph later, but it is not specific other than to mention these charms get used to promote/demote and they are "exceedingly rare, and neither one is likely to happen more than a few times a century."


To be honest, I'm having a hard time seeing Ahlat being Essence 5 back in the day when his domain was the mating competition of the bull Northern black walrus. Then again, maybe I'm putting too much stock in the "almost never." Though, I guess that the Essence scale increases in leaps and bounds, so that there would be a huge gap between Essence 5 and Essence 6, though it's not really quantified much anywhere that I know of.
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 Isn't that the key point, though? If Ahlat had remained the fertility god of northern black walruses, he would have been subject to the 2-Essence gap. However, his portfolio got upgraded--multiple times. Being the southern God of War has a different Essence baseline than his previous positions; it's a different domain.


 Think of it as a salary guideline for a corporation. An admin assistant has a cap on his/her salary, no matter how much seniority/experience he/she has. However, if said AA gets promoted to a management position, the new position now has a higher salary cap.
 
i dont think there would generally be direct effects of a city god -think esoteric luck, salvation from some cataclysm- that kind of thing


IF the city god intervines it is generally because the people of that city give him worship or tribute or buth and a citygod without a city has no job


worse yet a god with no worship has no money food well basically no nuthin


city spirits might intervine but only in extreme circumstances but it is generally to protect their livelyhood and place in the beaurocracy exept in the case of those who rule with impunity who might torch people for looking at them and other forms of blatency
 
IF the city god intervines it is generally because the people of that city give him worship or tribute
city spirits might intervine but only in extreme circumstances but it is generally to protect their livelyhood and place in the beaurocracy exept in the case of those who rule with impunity who might torch people for looking at them and other forms of blatency
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Where is this covered? I got the impression that gods had motives as varied as those of people, and many were actively involved in their communities. If there's canonical reasons to think that gods remain far more aloof than that, I'd like to read more about it.
 
Question- what exactly happens to god-bloods who get their powerup and turn into gods? It says the become a god of "the same type as their ancestor", but what do they do then? They can't be god of the same thing, right? Are they "free" gods, with (potentially) all the powers their pappy had but not the job? Do they become a god of a subsection of that god's domain?


And what's the view on gods that used to be mortal? Since creating god-bloods in the first place is illegal under the Bureacracy, are they second-class citizens, looked down on by regular gods?


What, in other words, is up with that?
 
I pretty much say that they are whisked away into the Celestial Bureacracy, and are swept under a rug somewhere.  Making winds, turning tides, lighting small fires, paying their dues, learning the Celestial Bureacracy's ropes, and getting used to the idea of immortality.


What happens when your boss' kid comes into the company?  Maybe he gets a cushy, out of the way, away from real responsibility kind of job that lets him 'earn' his keep, while being groomed for better things.  Or just kept the heck out of the way.
 
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