Ey boys, just dropping by to state my interest. You guys think an Undead portfolio could work?
That was going to be the first extra portfolio that I had Katharsos adopt
authority, wind, dying (we have a god of death, as in the afterlife, but not a god of murder/DYING), music, domestication/animal husbandry, luck, rot/decay/disease, demons, magic, fear, love, art, beauty, pride, envy, greed, fraud, and wealth
...but if your heart is truly set upon a god of undeath, I'll acquiesce the Portfolio to you and maybe we can work something out since I have the death god.
In the beginning, the Universe was filled with nothing Architect's cold and lonely presence and lifeless dust; there were no souls. That changed when the great god finally decided to open a rift. He closed the floodgate after a few seconds, of course, but in that time an unimaginable number of souls flooded in from beyond. Most were mere fragments, weak and broken things, but a few remained intact and were made into gods. Katharsos was one of these.
He manifested as a colossal head of fire, for he clutched onto faint memories of an existence of some flame spirit in a past life. The visage of his head twists with the flames, but it is usually bestial and never anything human. The heat and light that radiates from his form is very real, but the flames of his body are not mundane fire. They are unquenchable, burning on without air or fuel and even when submerged. As the god's temper changes, the color of the flames can take on a comforting orange glow, a soft red, a raging white and blue, or even a sickly green or purple.
Despite this vestigial appearance, Katharsos cares little about his past and instead chooses to fixate upon the future. Though assosciated with fire, he does not lord over it, instead taking Death for a Portfolio. As he interprets it, his soul is to care for all the Universe's souls, like a shepherd watches his herds, or perhaps more accurately like a forester cultivates and prunes his woods. Loose souls of the recently departed must be collected lest they crowd the Spheres and cause trouble to the living, and fresh new souls must always be in abundance so that life may go on. Katharsos' Portfolio of Death mainly pertains to souls of the dead and their ultimate fate; murder and the process of dying are beyond the scope of his realm, though he certainly could separate a soul from a living being and prematurely cause death if he willed it.
This came to be as a result of his first moment in the new Universe being not one of wonder, but rather of horror and panic. Whilst the other gods reveled in their own existence, or stared at the Architect in awe, or gawked at one another, or looked down to the empty canvas before them with ambition or yearning, Katharsos saw only the current of untold billions of broken souls that had been swept into this new Universe besides him. He saw their potential, but wept for their pitiful state and vowed to take good care of them. Perhaps the Architect planted this seed into Katharsos' mind, but it has never felt anything but natural to him.
Katharsos views mundane flame as a somewhat base, entropic, and crude thing, but a magical fire's purifying properties nonetheless make it a useful tool. Thus he works strange magics upon souls by conjuring what others see and name 'flames' even if they are truly more like the strange stuff that composes his body.
He prefers to do all of this from his Sphere, a celestial plane called the Sky of Pyres. It exists as one of the outermost Spheres, high, high above Galbar's surface. His realm is a largely empty one, devoid of much save for great clouds of sickly smoke and gigantic braziers where he lights the astral fires which incinerate souls that the ashes can be recovered and recycled. There are a great many souls, and they can sometimes take quite some time to burn, so he has countless of these massive braziers drifting through the space of his Sphere, wrapping all the way around Galbar's night sky. When mortals on Galbar look up and behold the glory and light of the stars, the souls of great people are witnessed as the light of the brightest of these infernos. Katharsos plans to connect the Sky of Pyres to Galbar through a massive invisible gateway called the Vortex of Souls, an ethereal maelstrom that tugs at all loose souls with an ultimately irresistible pull.
The Sky of Pyres, despite all Katharsos' efforts, is a grim place with an aura that most gods do not enjoy. The vast nebulae of smoke are a byproduct of the Braziers and the burning of souls, and they carry a horrific reek as well as a negative energy that can sicken anything living that somehow comes to visit the Sphere of Death.
Death is not a short and simple process. When a mortal being finally succumbs, its soul does not immediately part with the body that it had grown so tightly bound to over an entire lifetime. Beings sometimes remain conscious and continue to retain a varying degree of sensory input and denial, but most soon come to realize their fate. A soft pulling comes to tug at their essence, and in time, even their body begins to come to terms with its fate and push away as rigor mortis sets in. Some souls rage against death, fighting to stay in their body, and they can have some success. But eventually, all must succumb. The gentle pulling will become a horrific ripping, and their soul will be torn free and unshackled.
Then they will be a disembodied spirit, able to observe their surroundings. But before they can muster the will or discover the knowledge that would be needed for them to manifest in such a form, they start to drift upwards, for that same pulling that wrested them from their corpses now seeks to deliver them to Katharsos' realm. So they drift upward, slowly at first, and behold the land of the living from high above. They can feel as the birds feel, for a brief time at least, as they slowly drift upward.
But the pulling never stops, so they accelerate. Galbar's sharp details fade into obscurity below as they begin to race through space, soaring past the other Celestial Spheres and witnessing a great many strange things that most are fated to never understand. All the while, the light of the stars grows ever closer. In silence and in the void of the space they have a few days to contemplate their lives before they finally reach the Sky of Pyres, and then the pulling finally ceases.
It is then that they are met by Katharsos. He is not a cruel god, and he is a very patient one that looks far into the future, so he is wont to allow many a mortal soul some time to wait for their loved ones or prepare for the final step of the journey, should they desire such. But in the end, all must eventually step into the Braziers.
Burning
As the Pyre is lit, all suddenly goes to black. The soul retreats deep into its memories, reliving every sensation and every joy once more before letting go and surrendering it forever. If they hold on too tightly, the memory itself becomes increasingly hot, the black turns to red, and with a piercing scream they eventually give in to the pain and let it go. The infernal heat returns to a gentle warmth, and they find the next memory to clutch onto and then release.
In the end, when there are no more memories to grasp onto, they are met with reality once again. Despite all of Katharsos' mercy and magic, honey can only ever make brine so sweet. Without any memory or comprehension left, the confused souls behold their own crumbling and blackened forms within the blinding light of the fire, and then they loose a few final wails of utter agony before it is done. For all the horrors of the final step, Katharsos still loathes it less than the preceding part where he must slowly unravel all the souls' memories, dreams, and thoughts--all the very things that made the living being itself. That is the saddest part of it all, but it's necessary, so he does not falter and carries out his work tirelessly, thanklessly, and with resolve.
Katharsos is often demonized, but he knows deep down that his work is just and necessary. Leaves will fall from trees come autumn, but then they must rot and be recycled once more into the earth, or eventually the whole forest will die; there is only a finite amount of nutrients in the soil, and it cannot all be sequestered into dead leaves. Something must combat the ruinous entropy.
The others might understand him better if he spoke with them, but he sees it as ultimately somewhat futile. Regardless of what they think, his work must go on. He would like to know them more, but he can justify being distant because he believes that one day they will all finally meet him--when their souls come to the Sky of Pyres. And then as their souls are burnt so that another god can be born from the ashes, he will witness each of their memories and come to know them perfectly. He looks forward to those times with both yearning and dread, but never with denial, for his mind is cursed with a lucidity that clings to him like the scent of smoke.
While it will (initially) only be connected by gateway to Galbar, in the form of the Vortex of Souls, all Spheres eventually lead to Galbar. Through their various gateways and connections the Sky of Pyres extends its grasp; it can attract stray souls like a magnet, no matter which Sphere they reside within. However, the souls within Spheres that are many connections away (especially Cthonian ones) experience a far weaker pull. Those who die in such places might take years instead of days to reach the Sky of Pyres. Some spirits of exceptional willpower might even be able to indefinitely resist the pull of the Vortex of Souls, given sufficient distance.
In this way the Sky takes from Galbar and all other Spheres, but it also gives back. Even as the Vortex inhales souls, it exhales the ashen remnants of those that have passed through Katharsos' braziers. These ashen souls are formless, but given time they can ultimately clump together into globules, find their way into nascent life, and ultimately be recycled. Or, those with the knowledge and magical power to do such things could potentially manipulate the ashes and use them for their own ends...
In general, the soul ash will be much more prevalent in Galbar and Spheres that are closely connected to the Sky of Pyres. Those Chthonic realms that defy the Vortex' pull with their distance just as easily spurn the gift of life and new souls that it brings; in such places, life will struggle. The souls and spirits of what life does exist will tend to be weaker on average, and there will be far more stillborn and deformed infant creatures should any lifeforms dwell in such a place.
The noxious clouds of smoke that have come to exist within the Sky of Pyres are contained there by its power, and Katharsos tries to make a good neighbor by taking great care to avoid allowing any such contaminants to pollute Galbar or any other Sphere that might come to be connected to his realm through a gateway.
Edit 1: Added the codewords Edit 2: Sky's effects Edit 3: Mass murder of typos Edit 4: Killing a random rhyming line I saw. Death to poetry!
And pay no attention to the warnings of this abomination of a collab that I'm cooking with BB and company; RPGuild's character limit shall most likely shelter your eyes from the full extent of its wrath!
Divinus will be a story about a pantheon of gods, their creations, and the world of Galbar as it is shaped by our collective actions.
One great and enlightened being, the Architect of the Spheres, tried to create an entire universe on his own. After toiling for unknown aeons in maddening solitude, he accomplished nothing but the bare shell of a planet called Galbar and the blank cosmos that surrounded it. He reflected and ultimately realized the limits of his own strength. It was then that he made the fateful decision to open a rift to What Lay Beyond, allowing several spirits to enter the realm of his making to help him see his vision fulfilled. Regardless of whatever those spirits might have been before, they were, in the Architect's arms, made as gods over this universe. Though his expectations are reasonable, the Architect nonetheless expects the gods to ‘earn their stay’ by not slacking in their duties, and to show him some measure of gratitude and fealty. Incurring his wrath can have consequences, for he is a powerful being; however, he is not infinitely so. Through the combined might of many rebellious mature gods, the Architect could perhaps one day be overthrown.
Though these gods may start small, in time they will raise mountains, gouge rivers, sow jungles and freeze oceans, and having done so they can create every manner of flora, fauna, spirit and mortal folk to populate them. Their colliding visions for the world may drive them to invent mighty weapons and field vast armies, conjure horrific monsters, and sanction glorious heroes to defend their dreams from the passion of the other gods.
Each god will be important. Each will potentially wield great influence over reality and all the life that comes to arise, as every god will control a ‘Sphere’ that can be thought of as a piece of the intricate system that constitutes Galbar’s universe. The gods’ power is measured in Might, which they must spend wisely on the aspects of creation that are most vital to them. As they continue to grow their powers and shape the world ever more, the gods may build holy sanctuaries in which their mortal disciples may glorify their name, raising them to new heights of terror and splendor.
Before going into further detail, I would like to give some credits to where they're due and offer a brief history of the RPs that have preceded this one. Divinus existed even on the Oldguild more than 5 years ago, and in various forms it's managed to survive all this time. To any who are interested, here is a list of all the Divinus RPs that have come since then:
Divinus Mk. I, which was GM'd by @Kho and @Rtron. Divinus Mk. II, which still lives! Initially Gm'd again by @Kho and @Rtron as well as the new addition of myself, it has since been turned over to @Muttonhawk, @BBeast, and @Antarctic Termite. Though it still lives on as we're in the process of wrapping it up, it's slowed down to the point that many of us have decided to prematurely launch Mk. III so as to explore new characters and story ideas. And finally, there was a Divinus-inspired foray into the free section that was called Godspeed, launched by @Antarctic Termite.
Credits to everyone above; they all contributed greatly to the foundations of this latest attempt. To anybody who participated in any of those RPs I'd love to welcome you back to this new one, but to anybody new to the series, fear not! This RP inherits the spirit of the past ones as well as some of their mechanics, but this RP will stand alone and you needn't be familiar with the lore or canon of any of those others.
By all means feel free to peruse them if you want to gauge a feel of what Divinus is like, or look at the OOC of Mk. 2 where we've been planning out much of this new installment. My post here began that conversation.
There is a Google doc in which myself as well as @BBeast and @Muttonhawk (who are coming into Mk. III as GMs again) have been writing what will be the OP for Mk. III's actual thread, which will hopefully be going up within a few days.
Here is the link to said document; the link should confer commenting permissions, so by all means feel free to give us feedback on anything at all that you see there.
A much more detailed explanation of the RP's mechanics (as well as the character sheet template, if you want to join) are available on that Google doc. Several people have already expressed their intention to join this RP when it goes live; beyond hopefully recruiting a few more people new to the series, my hope for this interest check was that it could provide a centralized location for everybody to post all of their sheets where they can be seen by others.
So if you're interested in joining the party, say hello and post a sheet!
We've also got a discord channel that can be found here.
@Crispy Octopus said I should check this out! I understand there's a reboot in the making?
Yup! Nice to see you here Aristo.
Lots of ideas have been thrown around for the rework; if you want to sift through some of the plans, here's where it starts.
You can expect an interest check to get pitched up sometime very soon. In the meantime we have a WIP Google Doc. Much of the mechanics are already described there, so I'd read that if you're interested in potentially joining. The link there should also confer comment permissions for the doc, so feel free to give us feedback on it.
...stop using the word 'portal' because it's misleading and makes one think of a 'wormhole' that could go anywhere. Let's just call them connections, or gateways.
There. Usage of the p-word to refer to the connections between Spheres is now punishable by beheading! Let none say that they were not warned!
Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I got started with writing online on the Spore forums. Man, those were the days. We're talking like 12 years ago!
I've been here on and off for almost as long, and have GM'd a bunch of different things to varying success.
Discord: VMS#8777
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I got started with writing online on the Spore forums. Man, those were the days. We're talking like 12 years ago!<br><br>I've been here on and off for almost as long, and have GM'd a bunch of different things to varying success.<br><br>Discord: VMS#8777</div>
Member
LokiLeo789,
NoriWasHere,
Lord Zee,
Crispy Octopus,
DracoLunaris,
Vec,
Timemaster,
CFProxy,
Monkeypants
