Life flourishes in the twenty-first century as it long has, and has always hoped to continue. The megalopolis of Avernale is a fine monument to to the relentless evolution of humanity. Its burgeoning sprawl of humans and their constructed shells has long since consumed its outliers, and proud radiance spills into the world from its illustrious core, a triumph of wealth and knowledge. Over ten million people live within its borders, half-mile-high towers of aspiration on the shore of the estuary reminding them every day why they continue to strive and struggle to live as a human.

The development of the mortal race until this moment has been explosive, but predictable. The natural laws tick blindly onwards, empowering many and destroying others. The world turns on the rule of the collective, the total sum of billions of decisions made by a deeply interconnected species.

On the second of November, 2021, the dispersion of power between humans underwent an abrupt and unnatural change.

A sparse selection of individuals were torn from their mortal coil in a mundane accident. A bus careened into a petrol station, and their flesh was destroyed in fire. But their conscious minds were preserved in new forms, at once detached from their foster world and more tightly bound to it than any human had ever been. Their bodies had become fluid enough to sculpt with a whim, and so also the world around them grew malleable and soft, deeper under the control of their thoughts than their own flesh and blood of former days. So much control did the once-mortals hold over the world they perceived that only the echoes of vanished and fearful years still reserved for them a title, a name- God.

Thus was the new pantheon created, and so were the heavens born, each awaiting the presence of their assigned deity to be crafted into maturity. But the minds of the gods had neither grown nor decayed under their ascension. Each still thought like a human, and retained human desire and feeling. They retained pain, and exhaustion, and wilful pleasure. They refused to sulk alone in their divine realms, but sought out the vibrant humanity of Avernale, and remembered the wishes and ideals that they were now free to act upon. Greatest of all they retained a human lust for community- For peers, for rivalry, for love and hatred among one another. The gods pulled each other together like strings twisting and tying one another, looping and tugging in knots of harmony and tangles of violence, undoing their bonds to one another only to come together again, all for the sheer sake of connection.

And as the gods quarrelled and romanced over the lights of Avernale, so did their creations grow familiar and strange, and the world entered a new age of magic.

Divine Power
The driving concept of this roleplay is the dynamics that develop between characters as they're given divine power. However, this power is not infinite. It is limited by several factors, of which the most notable are proximity and time. Given direct proximity and no consideration for time, gods can function at their optimal capacity, and can do the following: Transport themselves and objects through air at speeds up to 150 km/h; Travel (and bring other objects) through solid barriers; Create matter from nothing; Arrange matter in any chemical and physical form they wish, including machines and buildings; Create and edit living organisms to their specifications; Change their own body into any shape they choose; Construct portals to their own and other heavens; Cause physical changes that have no observable explanation, i.e. occur by magic.

Divine Realms
Each deity has their own extradimensional domain. Within their realm, their powers (other than observation) are amplified- Large objects like buildings and mountains can be produced in minutes, and they can change things that are ordinarily beyond their control, such as projecting a sun into the sky, changing the source and strength of the ambient gravity, altering the composition of the atmosphere, and so on. However, divine realms are strictly limited by available space, with an unoccupied realm occupying a cube with a width and length of about 300m. This space can be arranged into any shape its deity wishes (sphere, cylinder etc.) but will only expand based on the number of human souls inside it. An empty spherical realm will have about half the radius of one with a thousand residents. Any deity can freely enter any realm, though transporting themselves through the interdimensional space takes longer if it is not their own, and exiting is always instant, and will always return them to the Avernale city center.
The composition of a divine realm will affect the powers of its corresponding deity, and is the only available means for the gods to specialize their power. It takes a reduced amount of time for a god to move or produce something similar to what occupies their divine realm. A realm that contains an abundance of dragons will make it easier for a god to create or turn mortals into dragons. A heavily volcanic realm will reduce the amount of time it takes its deity to produce lava flows or volcanic materials like obsidian. A realm with Gothic cathedrals will facilitate reproducing the same architecture in Avernale.

Time
The larger the scope of what a god is trying to create, the longer it will take to do so. This is effective for all divine powers, but more notable for some. Changing their own bodies can usually take place in a matter of seconds, depending on the size of their new form- Even a fairly large body takes only a minute or two to complete. Creating or editing other forms of life takes longer, depending on size and the complexity of the change, whether physical or magical. A very large body, such as a 200 tonne whale, will take several hours to create from scratch, while a body the size of a human may only take twenty minutes, and tiny bodies such as spiders can be produced in seconds.
The time it takes to produce a magical change is identical to the time taken to produce a physical change with the same effects. Granting a large animal the bones and muscles required to support its own weight takes the same amount of time as it does to give it the ability to support itself by magic, and granting a human the ability to breathe fire takes as long as it does to grow fire lungs and appropriate fireproofing within their body. Inanimate matter is easier to create than living organisms, but still limited by time. Creating a 20-storey, 100-metre tall building, with an internal cavity and rooms but no furnishings, takes at least an hour, if not more. Causing objects or themselves to move is a fairly rapid process, but gods still need to accelerate for a few seconds to reach their top speed, especially when changing direction.

Proximity
The power a god can exercise is limited by how close they are to where the effects of their actions are manifesting. When close enough for their body to physically touch what they are interacting with, their powers work at their maximum speed. This does not decline linearly as distance increases. The first three metres or so will cause very little change to the speed of effect. At ten metres, the speed at which their powers function has declined to 75% of maximum, at fifteen, it drops to 50% of maximum, and at twenty, it sits at about a tenth of its usual speed. Power cannot be exercised beyond 25 metres.
This also limits a god's powers of observation. Gods are aware of the movement, magical and chemical nature, and physical arrangement of everything within a three-meter radius. This awareness dims and declines at the same rate that their powers do, so at fifteen metres, their perception is dulled and distorted to about half its usual effectiveness, and beyond 25 metres they must rely on their body's sensory organs to perceive the world around them.

Souls
A soul is a construct of a human brain that can only be separated by magic or death. Upon separation, it exists as a small, amorphous fluid bubble, visible only to those with the ability to detect it by magic. In this form it can be easily destroyed, and indeed dissipates of its own accord within hours unless preserved magically. When implanted into a new bearer, organic or otherwise, a soul will take on the functions of the brain that created it without requiring the same material infrastructure, though it may facilitate cohesive function. Gods are unable to create self-aware, highly intelligent life without using human souls- A body created with a complex brain but no soul will fail to use its brain, go comatose, and eventually die. Bodies with more limited intelligence will function as normal, however. The free will of a soul-bearing or lesser organism cannot be directly altered by divine intervention. Soul-bearing constructs can be immunised from having their soul severed by means other than death for very little effort. Notably, a soul-bearing construct is difficult to alter by divine power unless it consents to being changed.

Portals
Portals can be built between Avernale and a divine realm to allow transport of matter. Similarly to personal transport, this takes longer if the portal is to another god's realm, but is still disproportionately difficult compared to producing ordinary matter. A square metre of portal takes half an hour to produce for one's own realm, and twice that for another realm. Portals take on any appearance their god designates for them, but can be destroyed like ordinary matter. Soul-bearing constructs can be given the power to vault between planes at will in the same amount of time it would take to produce a portal large enough to allow passage for them, but souls can be transported between realms without requiring any infrastructure.

Pain
The gods of Avernale are immortal. Even if their bodies are destroyed, their consciousness remains capable of producing a new body at the exact location where the old one was decommissioned, though they can take no other action until they have a new body. However, their bodies can feel pain as a remnant of their human psyche. As with humans, pain is quite distracting, but unlike humans, deities can repair their body at immense speed. The more intense the damage, the more strongly a deity will tend towards reconstructing themselves as their former human body.

Exhaustion
Gods can delay sleep for considerably longer than mortals, but still retain human minds with a human need to reset themselves upon being overworked. The longer a deity avoids sleep, the more their reaction time, memory, and capacity for logical thought suffers, just like a human. Gods do not need to sleep for as long as humans do, though the amount of sleep they require still increases along with their tiredness, and can wake up at a predetermined time or signal. Conversely, gods can sleep for as long as they want with no adverse effects.

Sense of Attraction
Upon ascension, there are two inherent changes to a deity's psyche- The sense of attraction, and the sense of doom. The sense of attraction is the more noticeable of the two. Each deity has a lingering desire to interact personally and emotionally with other gods. This sense only subsides during and after communicating with other deities, and during sleep. Like thirst, it slowly recurs after an interaction until it must be satisfied again. Communicating information is insufficient to fulfil the desire- Some kind of emotional connection must be refreshed, established, or changed. This can be love, rage, jealousy, lust, frustration, disgust, mockery, or a more mild attitude. Satisfying the sense of attraction is identical whether the attitude held towards another god is requited or completely one-sided.

Sense of Doom
There are no physical barriers preventing a deity from producing something with immense destructive capacity, such as a bomb. However, all gods, upon ascension, are burdened with a permanent extra-sensory awareness of any points in space that have the potential to either produce a large amount of entropy over a large area in a short amount of time, or sever a large amount of souls from their bodies by spreading between hosts. Any such points in space are marked by a homing instinct that the gods experience as a sense of foreboding and anxiety with a specific direction and approximate distance. The strength of the instinct increases proportionately with the destructiveness of whatever resides at the location. There is no delay between the growth of the threat and the intensity of the sense- As soon as the point in space begins to become a danger, other gods will sense it. The sense of doom has a one-way function between dimensions. Emanating from within Avernale, the sense of doom affects all deities in all planes. The divine realms mask any points within their borders, but the sense does transmit through portals or soul-bearers that are given the ability to vault planes.

Avernale is an enormous city occupying the south coast of the sizeable island of Makarya, itself resting on fairly cold lattitude northwest of Hawaii and due south of the Bering Sea. The city is capital of Aver, its namesake country, which occupies the entirety of Makarya. The east coast consists mostly of a chain of mountains running from north to south, dubbed the Spine of Gehenna, its mountains the Gehennans. Meltwater and glacial lakes irrigate the highly fertile and still fairly rural northwestern plateau. The southwest is occupied by Aver's handful of cities, most of which, notably coastal Abime and landlocked Mictlan, are industrial tributaries that supply, and survive on the wealth that flows through, Avernale.

Makarya was for hundreds of years a sparsely but diversely populated combination of cultures, hosting old colonies of Japanese, Korean, Russian, Inuit, and Polynesian descent. Only a little more recently it has become a haven for European and American migrants, including a small population dislocated across the New World from Africa by the 18th century slave trade. Though agriculture, fishing and trade have always been lucrative for Aver, the population of its cities increased exponentially over the 1900s, with immigration both from inland villages and overseas driven by the profit of its bountiful offshore oil reserves. The majority of inhabitants in Avernale are bilingual, with English now its most common tongue, followed by Japanese, Russian, and a vast array of others.

Going into modernity, the culture of Avernale is a historically tolerant one. The original beliefs of the Makaryan islanders at large were a blend of folk religions incorporating elements of Polynesian and east Asian lore and Arctic animism, with little in the way of a consolidated pantheon, but a myriad of individual creation myths and local gods, almost always associated with animals or landmarks. Buddhism spread through the region and gained a foothold long before the reach of Christianity, which survives mostly in the descendants of European voyagers, but regularly sees both conversion and abandonment. Recently, a large mosque has been established west of the city center, not without intolerant opposition. Still, most Avernalese have inherited the old culture of enjoying the variety of spirituality and choosing the form that suits them most, an attitude that to this day encourages unique fledgling sects and cults, though agnosticism is slowly gaining the numerical upper hand.

The city itself is built mostly on the west side of a south-flowing estuary fed by waterways running from the Gehennans, largest of them the river Lethe, which also runs through Mictlan, facilitating heavy shipping traffic upriver in addition to ships arriving from either side of the Pacific. The estuary is large, but the titanic Life Bridge, a mile-long suspension bridge and national symbol, spans it with enough clearance to allow passage for large vessels from Mictlan without needing to be raised periodically.

The physical remnants of Avernale's heritage are mostly restricted to the the east side of the Lethe, where the settlements that preceded the city once stood. Though space is limited due to close proximity with the foothills of the Gehennans, this area still contains a Buddhist monastery and a vast number of old shrines, as well as the oldest surviving European structure on Makarya, a hilltop fortress overlooking the Pacific. The inhabitants of the region were resettled elsewhere in the city after the area suffered heavy bombing in the second world war, distributing their local spiritualistic culture across Avernale, and most of the old structures have been demolished. In their place on the east bank lies the city's vast seaport, the gleaming, halo-shaped Avernale Global Terminal, and a sprawl of supporting warehouses and factories, though the majority of the city's splendour and industry drains into the west side.

Wealth is most extravagantly concentrated on the west bank and shoreline, the city growing less impressive the further one travels inland. Of its abundant skyscrapers, eight buildings at its heart rise above three hundred metres tall, including the Yomi Petroleum Tower reaching 400, Pacific Central Telecom peaking at 650, and the Avernale Financial Spire, currently the second tallest construction on the planet, piercing the horizon like a javelin at nine hundred metres. Additionally, numerous museums, theatres, halls, universities, churches, communication and observation towers bud from the city like vast and fantastic flowers, each in its own colours and shapes. The majority of the structures in central Avernale are rigorously designed to stand their ground against earthquakes, floods, wind, and, in the light of the tragedy in 2001, acts of human violence.

Further from the center, Avernale's buildings become smaller and less fabulous. Westwards to Abime, the city slowly loses itself to the airy beachside suburbs of the lucky middle class, lushly decorated with parks and monuments. Towards Mictlan in the north dwells the majority of the city's industry, and the millions who ply it. Here, land is scarce, so accommodation usually comes in the form of apartment blocks, some more glamorous than most. To supplement the available space, the vast majority of these structures have at least one basement level, which may be used for storage, accommodation, as a plaza, or for any other form of infrastructure- So common are these chambers that many are connected to their neighbours by tunnels. Hundreds of factories jostle for space along both sides of the Lethe and its canals, competing for access to vast amounts of water. As distance from employment grows longer and harsher, the buildings give way to meagre government-issued housing, a new and ravenously growing layer of slums, and finally, wilderness.

Due to the character's abilities to change their bodies continuously and quite rapidly throughout the roleplay, there will be two sheets per character- One for who they are before ascension, to be written as an application, and one to contain details about their current form and that of their divine realm, which will need to be edited lightly but repeatedly as it changes in character. Post your application in the OOC thread. When approved, repost it the characters thread, along with your realm and form notes in a separate hider.

Application:
[hider=Name or Nickname]
[b]Name:[/b] Include pronouns.

[b]Age:[/b] No upper or lower limits, but playing a child younger than 12 may be difficult to pull off believably.

[b]Personality:[/b] The usual. If you're playing a self-insert, make it believable and interesting.

[b]Interests:[/b] Usually lumped into personality or history, but the emphasis in this roleplay is on the behaviour of the character, which will be driven by what they like and dislike. Ideas to include: Their fantasies, clubs or sports, literary pursuits, their use of the internet, their employment, and so on.

[b]History:[/b] The reason this section is here is to provide some context to their personality and interests, so keep it relevant. The younger your character, the shorter this will tend to be.

[b]Appearance:[/b] Text description first, optional link to an image second. Include what they're wearing on the day they die, when a bus careens into a fuel station and explodes, though this may change fairly quickly.

[b]Notes:[/b] Anything else?
[/hider]

Deity Notes:
[hider=Name or nickname (Deity Notes)]

[b]Realm:[/b] All divine realms originate as a barren plain of compact grey dust, lit by no sun and blown by no wind. Once you start to mould this wasteland to your liking, include any effects it may have on their powers.

[b]Form:[/b] Initially, the human form they had upon death.

[b]Other:[/b] Anything else that changes after their ascension.

[/hider]

What are this roleplay's policies towards interacting with inactive players?
In my personal experience, writing up actions for someone else's character is actually preferable to a week-long delay. If the delay is under three days, wait. If the inactive roleplayer is still around but not posting, ask them about planning how to keep the momentum going sooner rather than later. I'll intervene if I need to by making characters abruptly fall asleep because they've been awake longer than they can afford to be- That's the main function of sleep in the mechanics. Don't hesitate to mess with their plans while they're gone, but don't exploit their inactivity either- Just play your character the way you designed them to react.

I'm a new player and I'm still confused about the deity notes sheet.
Leave it blank until you've been accepted and your character begins to alter their form and realm in-game. Your form and divine realm are not part of your application, they're designed to develop and adapt to the course of the roleplay.

When does the action start in-character?
Upon the death of the characters. Some may die slowly, while others might not even notice that they're dead until they see the wreckage. Either way, your first post should start either with their final moments as a human or their first moments as a god. This only applies to applicants at the start of the roleplay, though, so if you're hopping in after we've started, feel free to post and we'll go over your options.

Should I be interacting in a specific way to satisfy the sense of attraction?
Not really! I tried to make it as general as possible. Pretty much any conversation is sufficient to satisfy your deity for a while. The reason it's there is, like pretty much everything else, to emphasize character interaction.

When will I know when something I'm doing is triggering the other deity's sense of doom, and how strongly?
I'll include something about it in an IC post. Alternatively, you can ask me privately beforehand.

Should I ping the players I'm interacting with at the end of my posts?
Yes. Don't forget.

Hey, why do you even have a character? You're the GM.
Basically because this is first and foremost a character-driven story, and the characters themselves are the highest authority in the setting. So I figure that the best way for me to occasionally nudge events in an interesting or plot-related direction (yes, there are future plot details) is by having a character that does it inadvertently as they do their own thing.

These gods don't seem to be all-powerful.
They're not intended to be. The purpose of the roleplay is to see how characters and character relationships develop while adapting to their new nature, and see what they choose to create with the limited resources they have.

Can gods die?
Yes, but there are a few conditions they need to meet. They need to have a desire to die, be capable of destroying their current body, and either be able to do so quickly or painlessly enough to bypass any survival instinct that may cause them to defend or repair themselves, or be determined enough not to feel such an instinct.

Can I destroy another god's body?
The deities are given equal and identical powers upon ascension, and are still pretty evenly matched even with a well-constructed divine realm. You may try, but your chances of success are low unless the other god is outnumbered at least three to one. Also remember that unless slain voluntarily, you will need to continuously destroy their body as they try to regenerate it.

Won't players get bored of a sandbox roleplay quickly?
See above- The roleplay is primarily an experiment in character relationships. However, there are hidden elements to the story that will emerge over time and eventually call for the characters to react in increasingly significant ways. Namely, the Godeater.

What or who is the Godeater?
That's not for me to tell.

I have other questions.
Ask me here, or try to see if they've been answered on the Interest Check.