As this RP has started to slow down and the old plots that I started years ago have begun to grow stale, I've been thinking a lot about a new installment for Divinus. In past months I've advocated for us planning to begin the slow process of seeing arcs to their end, so I imagine this comes as no surprise. Anyways, I've realized that there needn't be a linearity here. I could stick around here and simultaneously start a new Divinus.

So some ideas have taken my mind by storm over the past day or two and I figured I'd share them here, both to test the waters for interest and also get some feedback.

To start with, I'm of the opinion that it's high time we took a collective dive into the deep end and made a Divinus in the Advanced RP section. This is basically the opposite approach of what was done with Godspeed some time ago, so I'm interested in seeing how it might turn out differently. 

Another idea I had to differentiate it from past Divinus RPs was to bunker down bigtime on the mythology, magic, and divine aspects. Basically I'd canonize the metaphysics as being more or less completely Aristotelian; the universe would be composed of a series of numerous concentric spheres and would be Galbar-centric. With Galbar as the middle sphere, there'd be upper 'Celestial' spheres with the stars and such embedded into them, as well as 'lower' spheres that might contain an underworld and the like. In this hierarchical system, objects and life would be very intrinsically connected to their sphere of origin. Travel between the spheres would be quite difficult but not impossible. Most magic could be explained as energy (or essence) of other spheres leaking into Galbar's, and gravity would exist because the objects of Galbar's middle sphere long to be united with Galbar. Birds cannot simply fly up all the way to the Heavenly Spheres; that'd be absurd, and they're bound to Galbar!

When you do mythological stuff, go big or go home, as they say.

Anyways, the concept of the spheres would tie in to the nature of divinity and the powers of the gods. Though divine beings would be powerful enough to traverse throughout the various spheres (this would probably make for a good definition of divinity, actually--it also fits in with our current limitations of demigods being incapable of unaided interplanetary travel) they would be most closely connected with one of them. Some gods might well choose to attune themselves with the middle sphere (Galbar) and exist among the mortals, a la Thor. But many others would probably choose their own spheres, so the god of death might have his underworld, and the fire god might have some infernal sphere that'd be like Muspelheim, and so on. This provides a very solid in-universe explanation for how personal planes would work and it also might allow some tensions. Since these spheres are physical places, they aren't entirely cut off from others; it'd be much easier to trespass into others' places, and in some cases it might be necessary to travel through somebody else's sphere to get to where you need to go. The gods of the upper spheres and those of the lower spheres might also come to dislike one another.

So spheres would obviously be very important and defining aspects of a god. For the most part they'd become manifest very early on in the RP and then stay the same, but perhaps a few resemblant of Persephone could change spheres throughout the course of things. Given the much greater emphasis on personal planes by lieu of this concept of spheres, I am tempted to make modifications to the Domain(Portfolio) system. Specifically I find myself tempted to say that 'Domains' as we call them are no longer necessary; I could rename Portfolios to something more like Foci. A god could then take completely unrelated Foci, like Horses, Earthquakes, and Seas (a la Poseidon). Though you wouldn't start with one, our notion of 'Domain' could perhaps be renamed to Cluster. Taking multiple closely-related Foci like Volcanoes and Forges would give you a cluster over that sort of thing, in this case Fire. Having the cluster of Fire would imply some level of mastery and control over all things Fire-related, even if they aren't technically Foci.

And all this talk of spheres leads in nicely to one thing that I very much liked about Godspeed--the usage of Mater Lei instead of some all-powerful yet vague and enigmatic figures like Fate and Amul'Sharar. They wouldn't be exact parallels, but I would have a figure that I'll nickname 'the Architect of the Spheres' as the informal leader of the pantheon. The Architect would be the god that found the void that would eventually become Galbar's universe, slowly crafted the various spheres, and then after spending so much time creating the empty shell of Galbar decided to enlist help for the monumental task before him. Enter the other gods, who he promptly offers control over many of the spheres so that they can help him to realize his vision. Of course, all the millennia of solitude have made the already oddball Architect into even less of a people-person. So given that as well as how he'd only be slightly more powerful than the other gods rather an overwhelmingly so, the situation would quickly spiral out of his control. Much to his chagrin he'd be unable to micromanage and gods would start doing what they want, but as they'd come to be attuned to the various spheres, it'd be too late to kick them out. So he'd just have to make the best of it and try to maintain some semblance of order.

Well that was quite a bit. :lol Thoughts?