Antarctic Termite

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

If souls exist in this game, what do they do? What functions does not having a soul prohibit, and what function that we think are done by the brain are actually done by the soul? In addition, how does the soul interact with reality, and how can it be observed? If I created a perfect copy of a living brain and put it in a perfect copy of the corresponding body, what would be the result? What is the soul made of? Do souls significantly vary? Where are they stored in the body, or where are they physically when attached to a thing?

@Zugzwang

Souls aren't a very scientifically solid concept. Like everything else here, they're a gameplay mechanic, a resource. They develop in the brain of their original bearer, but once they're severed from the mortal by magic or death, they can take on the same functions by themselves, without needing the physical infrastructure of a brain but still needing some kind of host entity (if you're cruel, you can give eyes to a rock and plant a soul in it to watch it suffer in boredom for the next million years). A mortal with their soul removed, or one created without a soul, has a brain, but won't use it- They'll die or go comatose. It can only be interacted with by magical means, and until severed, it occupies no space and can only be sort of sensed by a god- Not seen or heard or smelt. Once they're severed they just sort of sit around like a bubble or cumulus cloud or pile of translucent goop, small enough to be picked up with both hands but pretty amorphous. They dissipate unpredictably when not in a host, disappearing suddenly after anything from a few minutes to a few hours, but can be sustained by a god (pickled, as it were) to last longer.

Speaking of pair production, how hard would it be for a deity to make some antimatter? I would figure if we can make a skyscraper in an hour or two, we could make a pile of protons with their chirality swapped over without too much difficulty, if we really wanted to fuck everything up. Even excepting antimatter, though, I know you say we can create an explosion, but it seems like it would be much more time-efficient to just make a skyscraper of tnt, or your regional equivalent, and light a match.

@Zugzwang

You could try that, but the process of producing something with that much potential to destroy complexity would trip off every other god's Bai Suzhen Sense, also known as their ohfuckometer, whether they're nearby or in the mortal plane or not.

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

Minor update since I keep naming the city 'the city' all the time: Its actual name will be Avernale.

If my character wanted to do something like, create a city of super humans, how long would it take to build up enough power to do it?

@ActRaiserTheReturned

Power isn't 'built up', so to speak. You can only exercise a limited amount at one moment of time, so you'd have to put together the city one piece at a time. If you consider that it takes an hour or so to make a decent but nowhere near record-breaking high rise building, building an entire modern city would take weeks, easily, if you include all the infrastructure and removing any constructions that are already there. Better to reappropriate and edit the buildings in Avernale.

Wait a minute. O.o

If the PC gods can't create souls, what can?

Is there an even more powerful type of god? And if so is it actually a different thing from the types of gods we are to play as? Or is it something that only ancient gods can do or some other factor that alters the type of god we would be playing? Or is there some other specialized deity or force that cannot do anything else but create souls?

Edit: Or is it the Godeater? Does that thing actually tear apart the essence of a god and convert the scraps of such a broken divinity into the souls of the unborn?

@Necromancy

This is very philosophical. Perhaps there are only so many souls in existence at one time. Perhaps only those who specialize in creating life can make souls. Perhaps all the gods must pool their powers to create a single soul. Perhaps a god must have more power than we can achieve in order to create a soul.

@Ryuzaki

You could say that there have always been a finite number of souls, being recycled through billions and trillions of brigs over time? Kind of like energy or matter, which can't be created or destroyed?

@Obscene Symphony

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

Work is underway. Will have at least the premise, character sheet and most of the mechanics up by today. Question: Can everyone see this unicode symbol? Should be an inverted V.

Ʌ

So does this mean I couldn't make my hypothetical fire mage immune to fire?

@ZB1996

You could. It just eats up more of your spare time. The less time one spends putting magic into an individual, the more haphazard and limited their ability to use it will be.

Okay, so we all have our own realms, correct? So let's just say my charater would want to take his followers into his realm would they have to build a big ass dimensional portal or just require his blessings to enter into his realm with him.

@Slendy

Being able to jump planes on their own needs a bit of investment, but your character can do it quickly and easily, and take numerous humans with them. Portal construction depends on size. One large enough to allow access for a tank could take hours.

Also when the character sheet comes would we have to post a pic of what the realms would look like once they become more in tuned with said god?

@Slendy

Nope. They all start out as an empty grey waste. If you feel like your written descriptions as the roleplay progresses aren't sufficiently getting the vibe across, you can post a pic in the OOC thread.

Furthermore when creating a construct would fusing a human animal take shorter time then just adding them to a human or is it faster vise versa.

@Slendy

Not sure if the question is about 'fusing a human to an animal' or 'creating a human with animal traits'. It's faster to fuse animals to humans, though you'll still need to edit them to mesh properly (bird wings are built to attach to bird shoulders and support the relatively light weight of a bird), but remember that this is an enormous city- Outside of pests, pets, and zoos, there aren't many animals around. Creating an animal from scratch and then fusing it to a human takes more time than just granting those traits to a human.

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

How hard is it to imbue a mortal with magic? I'm just trying to get a timescale compared to other powers and in no way plotting something...

@Chromane

At a guess, it would take about as long as it would take to give that mortal physical traits equivalent to the powers you're trying to imbue. If you're trying to give a human comprehensive powers of flight, to do so by granting them large wings, a tail, and a lightened skeleton would take about as long as giving them the capacity to do it magically- Probably like ten minutes if they cooperate. However, there can aspects to magical power that it might be easy to overlook. For example, we usually don't picture a superhero with the power to fly as growing tired when they do, but a human given wings would obviously tire pretty quickly if using them to the same extent. Your magic flight man may not tire in the same way, but his abilities would still run dry after a while until they have time to recharge (or you recharge them yourself, or do it via your divine realm). Giving the ability to fly without growing tired, either magically or biologically, will take quite a bit longer. Some examples of things to consider:

-Fire mage needs to consider being protected from their own heat, the limitations of their magical or chemical fuel, and whether they can control the fire they've created.

-Necromancer needs to consider whether they can control the zombies they animate, over what distance they can do so and through how much interference, how many they can animate, how much autonomy the zombies have, and how much reconstruction they can do to a damaged body.

Why give mortals these traits magically instead of biologically, then? Having magic is harder to notice and less intrusive to grant. Humans may (or may not) be happier to accept magic than they will be to having their bodies altered. They are also more dependent on you or your realm for their power. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is open for debate.

E: Sort of what I'm thinking is that players will find the balance between biological and magical traits that produces supernatural species similar to our myths and legends. Since I keep bringing dragons up, let's take a look at them: Biologically, they're dangerous and flight-capable predators. Magically, they can also breathe fire. Whether their ability to support such a large body both on land and in the air is magical or physical is ultimately irrelevant- It only matters that they can do so, and that's pretty unusual, so it would take a bit of extra time to create that trait.

If you want to go full bio, full magic, or even full cybernetic for the powers you create, though, feel free to do so.

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

Back for today, for a little while. Based on the comments I've seen so far, I've decided to flesh out the role and nature of the Godeater. You'll now see it much sooner, but it will be introduced more gradually. What it is, what it does, and why it does so, are questions you will have to answer for yourselves.

Hint: It may or may not actually eat gods. I just thought the name sounded cool.

@Antarctic Termite wait, if two Gods end up getting intimate, could there be more damned Gods? Something tells me this whole world will become crowded with so many Gods...

@Vocab

Yes

Gods can only imbue power in other living things to a certain degree, and they also cannot create self-aware, reasoning souls. The bodies they use after deification are produced and controlled by the same divine power that they do everything else with, so even if they tried to go through the process of pregnancy and birth, they still follow the same rules.

What!? I'm not having some kid grow up to be stronger than me and usurp everything... Pass the ketchup!

@Bai Suzhen

damn it kronos not again

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

As one counter to the nuke, might a god have some sort of future-vision when it concerns massive amounts of death? I imagine most of the gods are pretty invested in keeping their city and worshippers alive, so if they had some warning would be willing to intervene.

That way, if a god wants to destroy the city, they have to get cunning and set events in motion which are hard to stop with a simple snap of the fingers teleporting said nuke into the elemental plane of nuclear fission.

@Bai Suzhen

That would fit very well, actually. I could add some kind of entropy-sense to the set that includes gravitation towards other gods, so that the characters feel some kind of growing dread the closer something morbidly destructive comes to completion. Neither of the two are very well explained anyway, but I prefer them both a lot more to unspoken rules. Thanks!

Remember, kids, if you want to initiate mass destruction of a city state, always do so in a way that promotes healthy counterplay, and don't forget to have fun.

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

Also, just wondering, would the characters remember the crash in which they were? Because that can be pretty traumatic and maybe be the cause of some changes in said characters, so it could be potentially interesting.
The alternative could also fun to explore to, especially if the character is the revengeful/inquisitive type.

@PolkaDancer

Some will. Some won't. Some may have died quicker than others. Some may not realise they're actually dead for longer than others. Up to you!

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

So basically, whatever goes as long as it's not overpowered or ridiculously unfair, and as long as it's within the rules?

@ravenDivinity

p much

It's harder to be unfair than it is to be unfun, though. The gods all have the same powers and resources. Using them in a way that destroys significantly more physical complexity than it creates is what's discouraged.

Also I should have specified last post: For a god to die, all three of those conditions have to be met at the same time.

Also, do you have an estimate on when the OOC will be up?

@ravenDivinity

Not tomorrow. I'm shooting for the day after.

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

Also just wondering, could things such as flooding the city or large scale disasters be done by us gods or not?

@PolkaDancer

Part of that would fall under the realistically arbitrary but also necessary rule of excessive destruction. Certainly you could make a river rise a few metres and burst its banks to cause some random destruction, and do so repeatedly, but on a city wide scale, that would take a while to have really catastrophic effects. Honestly I don't think the power limit (medium skyscraper an hour) I've set on the gods will ever be sufficient to change things like climate or tectonic plates far enough or suddenly enough to produce a noticeable effect. Those things are just so monstrously huge.

The thing that bothers me so much about a nuclear explosion as opposed to other forms of destruction is that it's set off by an object- A comparatively small one at that- and objects are fair game to create. Earthquakes, cyclones, mass floodings are all triggered by events, sometimes a long string of events going back quite a while. Could you engineer the kind of climatic events needed to pull stuff like this? Probably not, because the main limitation on your power is the time it takes to exercise, and events require much more precise timing, possibly in more than one place at once.

Within the boundaries of your divine realm, however, go nuts. Access from your divine realm to the mortal plane is limited by the size and number of portals you can maintain, though.

Deification. Let's give some random people divine powers of creation and see if they get along.

:O Could we turn humans into angels?

@Slendy

Turn humans into angels. Turn another god's angels back into humans. Turn humans into angels then whisper 'lol nope get rekt son' before blowing them up while blasting shitty dubstep. Turn humans into cats with tentacles that live off lava vents. Start a church based on turning humans into angels which you then import to a divine realm of angelic choir upon a cloud of cleansing light, where repentant humans come to be washed free of guilt. Watch as another god with a different taste in aesthetic grows jealous enough to sabotage your new religion.

You're a god. Have fun.

And maybe create constructs or is that a bit to crazy?

@Slendy

The rules on 'crazy' are looser than those on potential destructive power. If it's within your character's personality and time span to create a thing, then do it. It would help to know what you mean by 'construct', though. Constructs as in mechs? Go for it. Constructs as in humans turned into androids? Sure! Constructs as in artificial intelligence? That could be a bit more complicated, since at a certain level of intelligence it would probably count as creating a soul, which is not allowed. Simple, narrow robot intelligence (dumb AI) should be fine, though.