Cyclone

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

I suspect that some might feel that I'm being needlessly nitpicky or acting in poor taste when every other review has something along the lines of, "We're concerned about what you'll do IC; please assuage our fears by telling us about your plans!"

It's quite typical for a huge fraction of applicants to mysteriously vanish early on in an RP on this site, presumably because the creative juices stall out and they realize that they didn't actually go in with a plan and they don't know what to post. We truly believe that by holding sheets under an above average level of scrutiny and mandating that everyone indicate at least some level of planning, we'll be able to stave off that problem which plagues much of RPGuild. So I just hope you can see this from our perspective and that you all don't think I'm beating a dead horse as much as I feel that I am as I write these reviews.

Without further ado, here's two more:

@Turbowraith for Foe

Hider

Your sheet is in a pretty good position.

In particular, your Sphere is to be commended. You have a very nice and thematic natural connection with the Pit. You've also explicitly considered the essence of your Sphere and its effects, and on the topic of effects, Mourner's Hollow does some cool things on Galbar. It opens the potential for all sorts of spooky places and mischief.

Your Portfolio is also quite nice. I think that our talks went well and that you have a good niche in that Foe offers an alternative to Katharsos' afterlife and throws a sizable monkey wrench into the plans; they'll be natural rivals. I also note and appreciate that you've also left some breathing room for others to do things with undead.

Where weakness enters your sheet and character design in is the persona section. The 'collector of souls' is a tried and true creepy trope and you apply it well here, with the added twist that Foe collects souls moreso out of loneliness than malice or morbidity. The only qualm that we have with your sheet is that Foe is set up to be quite passive, probably even more passive than Katharsos. His ambitions seems quite simple and limited, and ultimately it looks like he won't have much in the way of natural conflict or friendship with anybody else. What will you actually do IC, especially in the very early turns before there are things to have as undead? And after that, what sort of interaction (besides a simmering mutual distaste with Katharsos) can you foresee between the other gods? Have you got any plotlines brewed up?

The three of us are quite concerned about your ability to find things to do IC. If you can address that, you'll have alleviated our sole objection and you'll be left with a very good sheet. I'm hoping that doing so won't be too hard.

But until then, sheet rejected with some questions that we'd like answered. Don't give up because you're almost there!

@Doll Maker for Ekon

Hider

I will begin by saying that Ekon treads a bit on the toes of some of our other 'edgy' gods that have already been accepted. Some overlap is acceptable and indeed almost inevitable; however, this means your sheet gets held to a somewhat higher level of scrutiny. It's not entirely fair because it gets harder tostand out or occupy a unique niche as we get more and more crowded, but we need to try to avoid overlap where we can, and we won't ask those that have already been accepted to make many changes to their sheet.

I didn't say that to lead into an immediate rejection on the basis of your Portfolio, so much as to emphasize that you should talk to those with similar gods (probably Melantha, Orvus, perhaps even Eurysthenes) to make sure that you're going to be able to branch off along your own path and not make one or both of your characters feel redundant or like repeats. I seem to recall from the Discord that you've expressed interest in taking a Monsters Portfolio; if that's the case, then I'm glad to hear that you've planned ahead a bit and that you've found a path to take that hopefully will give you some more breathing room.

Bearing all of that in mind, your Portfolio is still acceptable. You describe it well, have powers that make sense, and have a character that fits. I will mention that making someone's fears truly come alive to create an actual bogeyman might often warrant MP expenditure even with your Portfolio, although your adding the caveat that they are "limited in their lifespan" certainly helps justify you doing this for free in some cases.

Your Sphere is thematically solid and nice mirror of the Palace of Dreams. I can see interesting potential for you and K'nell to interact. On the topic of interaction, we wish you'd solidify your Sphere's position more thoroughly and talk with some more people about natural connections.

Ekon's persona has drawn some criticism from Muttonhawk, and he raised what I find to be an interesting and perhaps valid point, "[Ekon's persona is a] cute for the sake of being unsettling personality and I don't think it has enough depth or longevity to go very far without extra details. If Ekon behaves this way for no reason, there's nothing to explore, nothing to change, and no stories to tell. He's just going to inflict himself on the world in this nihilstic and detached way. It's in danger of getting boring for the author just as fast as it gets boring for the rest of us."

I don't think that the idea of Ekon sometimes acting creepily juvenile to either set someone at ease or set them very much at unease is a bad one, but it probably could use fleshing out. I also think you'd definitely be overdoing it if that's the baseline for his behavior and how he acts unless he has a rare reason to behave otherwise. For instance, having him often "describing blood-soaked conflicts as 'Da big kapow kapow' and roaring monstrosities as 'snarlies'" without good reason would get old fast and I personally don't think it adds much. In short, by adopting this trope it feels like you're trapping yourself and restricting what you can do with Ekon, and for little narrative benefit.

And as was implied in the paragraph above and as I've said for many reviews now, there was some concern over what you'd do over the first few turns and then what sort of plotlines you'd line up thereafter to keep yourself busy. Have you got any solid ideas brewed up yet that you could share with us?

With the overlap of Portfolios, lack of natural connections, and tumult over persona, there was a fair amount of talk about rejecting your sheet. But most of the discussion took place a few days ago and I can see that you've made recent edits, and I personally think you're pretty close to getting Ekon to the threshold that I'd feel good accepting him.

Sheet rejected for now.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

I feel like each one of Aelius's "virtues" could have been a portfolio on its own. This system seems slightly unbalanced.

Edit: Just to clarify, I don't mean to specifically target the person who made Aelius. This is just an observation. He just happened to be one of the first gods I read about, and it was something I noticed.

@Not Fishing

It was suggested a few times that Aelius narrow it down, but at the time he was taking a niche that nobody else wanted so it was allowed in the end. Regarding the balance of it, there's the ruling that specific > broad as far as Portfolios go, so although he could have broken that down into 3 or 4 smaller Portfolios and been much more powerful over each aspect, as is he can just have some more shallow powers over all four under Virtue.

Here's a list of free Portfolios that seem interesting to me:

Space, storms, authority, law, hunting, dying (we have a god of death, as in the afterlife and the fate of dead souls, and a competing god of undeath, but neither focuses on reaping or the aspect of murder or dying itself), music, domestication/animal husbandry, luck, mana, love, lust, beauty, pride, envy, greed, fraud, wealth

Additionally we had someone apply with a god of cold, but @jetipster seems to have vanished. Unless he comes in here protesting otherwise, you can consider that on the list of open Portfolios.

Come say hi on the Discord! We can talk this over in more detail there; I'll PM you an invite link.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

Kho and I have decided to talk out any remaining obstacles to his acceptance directly over Discord DMs, so there won't be a public re-review here anytime soon.

Before I returned from work, BBeast addressed your response, and I thank him for taking the time to do so and clarify my statements in such a succinct manner.

Because I know that almost everyone reads these public reviews and have their own things influenced by what I say about others' sheets, there nonetheless remain a few remarks that Kho made that warrant a response here for everybody to see.

---

If the GM team has personal issues with the practice of reusing previous characters, whatever the reason for reusing them, then that is a personal gripe and should not - in my view - be held against a sheet when judging whether it is to be accepted or not.

I certainly have biases, however this one against the recycling of characters is my own. When delivering these reviews, you may notice that I often switch between saying 'we' and 'I' because I try to make the distinction between my personal opinion and that of the GM collective. There are the occasional few topics on which a review's feedback comes from me alone, or from Mutton and BBeast without me, and I try to make such instances somewhat clear through my wording.

I understand that you believe that this act of recycling has resulted in actual issues, and I will cover those as we go through them.

Yes, and I'm glad that you were able to recognize that. I gave you as much feedback and candor as I did because I know you better than all of the other people that I've been reviewing, and I trusted you to not just rationalize my criticisms as being the spiteful and unwarranted judgements of someone who's salty over seeing a character that he doesn't personally like.

Martial Combat is not a broad portfolio. It is in fact exceedingly specific.

Agreed. If it wasn't clear, my objections of breadth were entirely directed at your description of Martial Combat because I thought that Seihdhara's powers (as described) surpassed the limits of such a Portfolio. I already told you this on Discord, but I'm repeating it here so that people don't scratch their heads and wonder why 'Martial Combat' was accused of being too broad. Short answer--it wasn't.

I would, firstly, like this Athena-Ares dichotomy to be done away with when it comes to Seihdhara and Narzhak.

The possibility of this dichotomy came up in some discussions on the Discord, and I had (erroneously, it now seems) thought that you were on board with it.

The word ascension refers to 'to going up'. This 'going up' refers to rising up through the sphere to the highest one of all, the Great Dark. It does not refer to teleportation. Returning to Galbar likewise refers to a manual journey downward, and not to teleportation.
This is all basicall this: A student finishes training under Seihdhara. Seihdhara gives them a grassblade. She tell them they can go home if they like, or if they want adventure they can set out on pilgrimage to the top of the world. The person then decides for themselves what they wish to do.

I think that you are still hazy on one very fundamental aspect of Spheres: traversing them is extremely hard. Ascending to Veradax is quite comparable to "ascending" to the Moon in real life. It will take divine intervention or an extremely powerful force of magic or technology for mortals to traverse the Spheres; this is something that even gods will struggle with in the beginning of the RP. Natural connections are unstable and highly unsafe, even Gateways are meant to often be somewhat difficult to traverse for mortals, and beings that leave their native Sphere can sometimes experience ill effects from doing so, because they're bound to the essence of their own plane and might well be unaccustomed to that of any other. For instance, any living being that were to pass through the Sky of Pyres would almost certainly die just because the aura of death is so potent there and the nebulae of smoke from the braziers is anathema to life itself. Other Spheres may well be much more habitable of course, but for another (more mild) example I point to Ehomakwoi and how the darkness of that cavernous Sphere of stone is such that mundane torches and the likes often don't even work there. (Good job Commodore, btw, I don't know if I ever praised you for that detail but I like it.)

The takeaway of this paragraph is that mortals won't simply walk up to the Seal, or go on pilgrimages to the Great Dark. Gods can abduct mortals to their Spheres, or eventually make Gateways that can perhaps allow entry to mortals under certain conditions, but from your tone and wording I don't think you realize the difficulty of travel and the implications of such challenges when it comes to thinking of how mortals will interact with the Spheres.

Most of the Spheres are very distant and inaccessible places to the mortals of Galbar, which is why we try so hard to emphasize that they should have a substantial effect upon the metaphysics lest they exist for the entire length of the RP whilst still managing to hardly contribute to the setting, like Arcon.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

There's a monster lurkin' in the waters...

...it's creepin' up on us from below...

Oh God! There it is! It's a REVIEW! A beast of a review! The biggest one in the seven seas! Aaaaaaagh!

@Kho for Red Sonja

Hider

Oh Kho, old friend, where to begin...

Well first off, I wasn't kidding when I said my Co-GMs had some objections here and that I might ironically be the most optimistic regarding your sheet. You know better than anybody about my anathema towards recycling characters, so it should come as no surprise that I blame many of the issues with your sheet on being due to your recycling of Seihdhara and trying to hold onto past aspects that are no longer very applicable or sensible in the context of this setting. You're trying to force a square into a circular hole; I'll mention some specific instances where I see as we go throughout the review.

Let's start with Portfolio. This is one of many aspects of your sheet that I'd say suffer from it being recycled; I'll start off by using the words of Mutton, "First of all, it's got a clear indication of wanting to be about competition in general. I feel as though Kho may be telegraphing that he's going for a competition cluster but it smacks of the vestiges being recycled from Seihdara's previous incarnation who started with a domain. Martial Combat walks the line in overlapping with war already and I would prefer that it makes more of an effort to distinguish itself." BBeast independently commented more or less the same thing, "The first paragraph of the Portfolio is extraneous and potentially confusing as it describes something far broader than the actual Portfolio. Save that paragraph for a Conflict Cluster or something."

As in for my opinion? Had I read your sheet to this point before you'd announced to us all on the Discord that you didn't even read the OP prior to applying with this sheet, I probably would have immediately grown suspicious because you're treating this a lot like we treated old Domains. Despite the plans that have you and Oraculum made to have an Athena-Ares sort of take on two opposing viewpoints concerning war, I don't think Seihdhara's powers or angle are sufficiently unique here. Even if Oraculum doesn't feel like you're stepping too much on his toes, Portfolios aren't meant to be shared.

I'd go so far as to claim that what you're going for sounds a lot more like something one would expect from a "Struggle" or perhaps even "Rebellion" Portfolio, leading into Competition later on. This is supported by some of what goes on in the Sphere as well as her generally defiant persona. So the takeaway from this is that your Portfolio feels more like a Mk. II domain; it's too broad and also overlaps a lot with Narzhak's, but I think you could do quite well by simply changing your Portfolio to something different.

Now then, I'll move on to her bear-form and involuntary shapeshifting. This is clearly a vestige of her past incarnations, but it hasn't been adapted well to our setting here. Firstly if you want to have her be associated with bears, why not give her the starting form of an actual bear and have her later gain a humanoid form once such a thing would become relevant an useful for mortal interaction? We've stated repeatedly that no god should begin with the ability to shapeshift out of their first form unless they have a Portfolio that makes a very convincing argument for such powers, and in our mind the Martial Combat Portfolio doesn't offer a good enough argument for transforming into a bear. In fact, turning into a bear seems almost anathema to what you'd expect from a Portfolio like that. If Seihdhara is supposed to be the cooler, less destructive side of war (the Athena) then why would she involuntarily transform into a presumably wild and savage creature? How is a wild animal like that the embodiment of combat?

You might like to hear Mutton's thoughts, "The werebear detail is cool. I wish it wouldn't bend the rules of multiple forms that we established, but I'm tempted to allow a compromise given its limitations -- it being only possible when under duress and it being an indiscriminate force. Where I have a more clear objection is in its role as an incarnation of 'the manifestation of Martial Combat in its pristine, primal form'. This feels dissonant with Martial Combat as a skill requiring focus and composure. Is it both composed and indiscriminately lashing out? It can be, but I would like Kho to perhaps elaborate a little more."

In general, with some elaboration and contrivance you could perhaps convince us to let you keep the werebear idea, but as things stand it seems at odds with what you're trying to do with the character. I think you should drop the werebear idea as some sort of innate power and acquire it later on as an ability or avatar, using actual MP. Or follow my previous suggestions of just having Seihdhara's first form be that of a bear and acquire the sultry redhead later on.

Now onto Persona! Contrary to popular theorizing about how your bearform would be the biggest qualm that we had with your sheet, there was unanimous agreement that Seihdhara's sheet doesn't portray her as having any ambition. Your persona makes her likable, but that's about it? What would she actually do? What motivates her? What will create conflict with the other gods and drive interaction there? There's a good foundation with lots of potential. I'll let BBeast speak for all three of us, "I like the personality. Reactionary, yes, but also always wanting to do something. A colourful character which should be fun to write." But in the end, that's just the foundation and we want you to build on top of that. This lack of depth to the Persona is the sheet's biggest flaw, but I'm sure you can answer all of these questions and address this our satisfaction very easily; it's just a matter of committing your thoughts and plans to writing on the actual sheet.

And lastly we arrive at the Sphere, the one that you call the Seal. It tries to do a lot of things. Some of them are quite cool, others are of dubious sense and should probably be removed, but hey, there's plenty for us to talk about. Let me start with the general statement that many of these ideas and interactions should be refined a bit with the owner of the other respective Sphere and then brought about IC; for your sheets now we're just looking for very fundamental "natural connections". That part about the Seal appearing as a 'fiery' constellation from Veradax and Galbar is good. That part about it teleporting people to the Great Dark? No. In fact, the teleporting to the Great Dark is so problematic that I'll write an entire paragraph to address it solely.

Firstly, teleportation between Spheres is a major feat that is beyond the capabilities of any natural connection; you'd need a full Gateway for this. That's probably a god thing, because building a Gateway IC would presumably explain the thinking thought process behind doing such a thing. Right now without context, despite the interesting potential for early interaction, saying "the Seal tests mortals and sometimes teleports them to the Great Dark that they can prove themselves!" is nonsensical and has no basis. The word 'contrived' was used a lot as we discussed this particular feature. And this also leads me to segue into how I think the whole prospect of coming to the Seal to prove one's self steps on the toes of the Pit. Perhaps this was done intentionally so as to have the two war gods' Spheres mirror one another, but eh, this rubs me as being like the cheap spinoff or a plastic replica of the "real thing" that's to be found in the Pit. I think you can make the Seal better and have it be a more unique thing than just a watered down version of the Pit that's slightly more pleasant and which happens to be in the sky.

Despite the numerous interactions you've brainstormed between other Spheres, none of these are really meaningful connections and the Seal's actual impact upon Galbar is quite dubious once you cross out the whole part about champions somehow going there to prove their mettle and then crusade off into the Great Dark. At present, your Sphere probably fails the test where we ask, "If this place didn't even exist, would Galbar be different?" Also, how would one go about getting to the Seal? You could perhaps say that Asceal's comet sometimes drifts by and you can climb from the vines of that comet into the fiery boughs of the Seal's central tree, or vice-versa. I'm just trying to toss you a few ideas to get your mind in the right place as far as what we mean by 'natural connections'.

On the topic of the Seal sometimes emboldening souls to rebel against the Sky of Pyres and its Vortex of Souls, I have plenty to say. This (along with the overall beacon energy in the Seal, and the idea of eventually sending people from the Seal to the Great Dark) was among the vague aforementioned reasons for why I thought your Sphere leads Seihdhara more to a Portfolio like Struggle or Rebellion. To address this idea directly though, I'm not a fan of the Seal somehow enabling souls to break free. Once the Sky of Pyres has yanked somebody's soul out of their body and already dragged them so high into the sky that they're racing past the moon and the Seal, it's probably got them pretty firmly in its grasp. Aside form that objection of mine, there's also that you once again have direct competition for this aspect of the Seal, because Foe's Sphere of Mourner's Hollow already offers an alternative to the Sky of Pyres, because it explicitly is a sanctuary for the dead that struggle against the Vortex of Souls and try to remain forever. Finally, what would even be the implications of the Seal empowering a soul to break free? You left that very vague. Perhaps this idea should be discussed among us affected parties elsewhere, probably after Mutton posts our updated canon regarding how souls work in this RP.

Let me go back and try to summarize this enormous review: I don't like that you recycled this sheet because many of the vestiges of Seihdhara's past incarnations feel forced and don't work, we think that your Portfolio is too broad and I think that it probably should be changed, we think that the werebear idea doesn't make a lot of sense and it needs to be addressed, we find Seihdhara's persona to be good and have a lot of potential but to suffer massively from the lack of a clear ambition or goal, and your Sphere could use some work in a lot of areas.

Sheet rejected with lots of feedback and suggestions.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

@Oraculum

I'll try to address what I view as the crux of your remaining negative sentiments.

Take, for example, undead. Even if it only manifests after a very extended timespan soul decay would inevitably affect all of them, as there is no apparent limit to their permanence in that state. The length of that timespan is ultimately immaterial, given the roleplay revolves around immortal characters who operate over entire epochs of the world; sooner or later, we would reach its end. This could only be avoided if were truly extremely great, but, if taken too far, the whole notion would at length be rendered entirely irrelevant to all purposes. Having all undead be condemned to degrade into mindless husks would heavily impair the relevance of undeath as a divine aspect, or at least greatly limit the possible ways in which it could be explored and developed.

In response to this, and your earlier objection that it limits potentially interesting storylines, I'll reiterate what I said on Discord: literally nothing from Mk. II would have really been affected by the addition of soul decay, which means that the system is far from being overbearing or too restrictive for its own good. Furthermore, I don't think that this is necessarily in conflict with what Foe does.

My (subjective) opinion is that the entire system, and by extension soul decay, adds some interesting implications and storylines for the IC. Others may beg to differ, but many of the loudest voices in that debate don't have nearly as much vested interest in the precise mechanics of souls, or in how soul decay would even affect undead. They should've made a death god if they wanted to enforce their ideal model of souls, and on the offchance that they'd actually given serious thought and planning to an afterlife or to having undead before this conversation sprung up and the revelations of soul decay through a monkey wrench into their plans, all I can really say is 'woops'. That's the downside of planning really far ahead; it makes you inflexible and you frequently get monkey wrenches like this thrown into your secret plans by other peoples' stuff. Anybody whose plans were affected can adapt or change their plans to conform to the now much more detailed model, though in all honesty I doubt most will have to adapt or change their plans in the slightest.

Another concept that has been mentioned various times is the possibility of competing afterlives. Beyond having plenty of plot potential in itself, something like this could give a whole new dimension to an eventual soul crisis arc, making it a much more personal matter for any gods who engaged in it. However, once again this would be stymied if all souls were destined to crumble regardless of what happened to them. A variety of afterlives is meaningless if all their inhabitants are featureless shells without thought or memory. Remedying this by making them impermanent would somewhat defeat the concept of an afterlife proper.

Firstly, I will point out that nobody was even discussing an afterlife on the Discord. Nobody really even made an afterlife in Mk. II. An afterlife existed in Mk. I existed but was extremely vague and not very important for the story. This is something that's always been severely neglected in my opinion, so when nobody else was doing it this time I decided to take it upon myself to make a universal afterlife and codify the mechanics of death and souls.

So I very much doubt that I stomped on (or even altered) anybody's preexisting plans.

Even so, competing afterlives are not prohibited; they're just relegated to a thing that's very difficult and costly in terms of MP, and in the best scenario most such competing afterlives will be like minor exceptions to the near-universal afterlife enforced by Katharsos and the Sky of Pyres. I see no issues with this; he's the god of death and he's devoted his entire Sphere from the beginning to being the afterlife. It should take more than a whim and a couple of thoughts to try altering the system that he's established as the default and as the canon.

Notably, there already is an alternative afterlife as well in the form of Foe's Sphere. I think your objection here is completely unwarranted.

@Cyclone I been holding this back, but I think it is important to just propose an alternative instead of simply dismissing the opposing idea. My idea to square the concept of having infinite souls and giving Kath an important role is fairly simple, have it so that the burning process is what increases the sum total of soul-energy. So the soul stuff that originally went into that person breaks down into ash, but so does their memories, experiences, etc.

The reason I suggest this alternative is that it pull the focus away from no soul should ever leave the cycle, and allows for competing afterlives, while also maintaining Kath's afterlife and refocusing it on ensuring the cycle as a whole continues, rather than making sure that there is zero loss.

@Leotamer

This is a reasonable alternative and it'd be a perfectly fine system if somewhere else were to design a similar Sphere and system; however, I personally don't like it. Katharsos' intense objection to the sequestering of souls is a big part of his persona, even if it's not so evident on his sheet. In my view this does nothing except lower the stakes and prevent a soul crisis, which you've repeatedly expressed dislike for but which the majority of us (myself included) are interested in.

Alternative afterlives and the sequestering of souls are possible under the current system, so really the only effect that your change would have is preventing a soul crisis plotline from ever happening (it's not even guaranteed to happen in the first place) and leaving Katharsos without any real reason to object to the sequestering of souls or the existence of undead that refuse to ever move on. I think that Katharsos' natural opposition to Foe and Anz (the likely culprits for 99% of soul sequestration) is a good thing to have because it allows for story interaction, so I'm naturally opposed to your idea because it'd indirectly remove this and leave me with that much less to write about.

---

...and as I said in my lengthy multi-paragraph series of Discord posts earlier today, that's the end of this conversation for now. I would have been done with reviews and the IC would have probably been up by now if I hadn't been distracted by debating souls and soul decay for the past three or four days, so for now I'm done arguing. Mutton, BBeast, and myself have talked over souls and we'll soon post an explanation of the broadstrokes of what we've decided in the wake of the debates.

I hope I didn't come across as angry or dismissive of anyone here. At times the debate got a bit heated on Discord, but all remained mostly civil and no harm comes from hearing your ideas and opinions. Thanks to those that weighed in, but for now we need to move past this conversation or we'll be stuck here in the pre-IC mud forever.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

In essence, this amounts to emulating a natural process (aging and bodily damage leading to death) which normally occurs on its own. In such a system, a being would be weakened by having a compromised body, which leads to a decaying soul. But a compromised body results in weakness regardless of the state of the soul within; indeed, even in a cosmology where souls were absent altogether, physical harm would bring one closer to death, regardless of any ulterior circumstances. In addition, a soul's health being dependant on the body's condition could lead to some strange quandaries: would someone who has lost a limb have their soul decay at an accelerated rate? Would someone who has suffered from a severe disease, and then recovered, nevertheless die prematurely because the period of illness resulted in pieces of their soul sloughing away faster than normal?

@Oraculum

It's not a thing that would come up or be mentioned often. It can explain how Loki's demons weaken souls and eat them and why Katharsos does what he does (among other things) while not being intrusive enough to warrant anybody taking note of it 99% of the time. I think you greatly overestimate how much this would affect other mechanics or the story at large.

...They might be able to extend their lifespan by some means, but they would have to keep themselves from rotting away in order to enjoy it, and no amount of consuming souls would help them with that. The lich in the example would need to, for instance, drain its victims' life force to strengthen its crumbling bones; that is not to say that it shouldn't be able to strip them of their souls for some purpose, but, as mentioned, fuelling its unlife with them alone would be a futile endeavour by the system's very rules.

If you weren't on the same page, I think we've come to decide that heroes are by default made immune to soul fraying. It's a mechanic that would only really matter for undead that stick around for a long time, or for mortals that find non-divine ways to extend their lifespan far beyond what is natural for them.

It's not very clear how this would fit into the workings of the soul as determined by the Sky of Pyres. If the decay is manifested in the soul falling apart, how would it be purified at Katharsos' hands? And, if souls crumble back into ash as they reach the end of their course, why would he need to redistribute their material by artificial means? Far from providing a justification for his work, soul decay might in fact place its usefulness into question.

The most obvious solution is that it'd be cruel to let a soul slowly go crazy and suffer as it degrades into ash over what we can imagine as a very long process. Katharsos is putting the dying horses out of their misery, so to speak. Furthermore, I'd imagined that a soul "fully degrading" would take extremely long lengths of time, so KAtharsos burning them would greatly accelerate this process and prevent the vast majority of souls being in a useless and half-degraded state at any given time.

One last note, not necessarily related to fraying but still linked with matters of death and the soul. I notice the OP still has this point, written before Katharsos was conceived:

<Snipped quote by Rules on Might spending>

Since in the new system death involves one's mind and memories being destroyed and scattered, eventually going to form new living beings, the feasibility of this might need to be revised.

This actually got raised as a point and discussed among us GMs as the other two talked over my sheet in our PM convo. We already have something of a consensus regarding it, I think.

That above point refers to taking a soul of a very recently dead person or creature and putting it back into a body prior to it being sucked up by the Vortex of Souls and eventually burnt. There's a backlog of souls sitting in the Sky of Pyres that could be rescued and the process a soul takes in order to get up to the Sky also takes time, so there's a vaguely defined (but finite) window that gives gods a reasonable chance to take this action.

Resurrecting something that died a really long time ago is rendered impossible if its soul was burnt, though. This imposes a bit of a ticking timer, which isn't something that I think to be necessarily bad.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

The train keeps on chugging. We'll get back to station eventually!

@DracoLunaris for Azura

Hider

It's cool to see a wind god--I did that in Divinus Mk. II with my god called Zephyrion, and your character contrasts quite a bit with Zeph.

I'll begin with your Portfolio. Wind is a simple and concise choice, which is good. Nonetheless, you're quite vague about what powers Azura has. We can assume that she controls the winds on Galbar, but is that all? If Wind weren't so straightforward, we would likely take big issue with your lack of specificity here.

The Blue is a nice Sphere. The Co-GMs reviewed your sheet a while back and remarked about a lack of interaction with other Spheres and with the surface of Galbar (besides driving winds) but it looks like you've already fixed that with some edits. I quite like your idea of some sky-creatures occasionally dying and falling down below, and for mortals to be able to scavenge some useful magic or rare things from their bodies; that's a cool thing for the Blue to do. Your connection with So'E and the Maze are likewise neat; have you considered perhaps connecting to a few others as well, like Fengshui Fuyou or Phystene's Worldtree? Overall your Sphere is quite good.

Now we arrive at Persona--this is also quite good. Azura has many quirks and such that will lead to interaction. One of was initially concerned that you might not have many ideas for what to do early on, but your updated persona alleviates these concerns quite nicely. Still, you (like everyone) should start thinking up a few early story-arcs and plans if you haven't already!

Obligatory nitpicking: you misspell 'idly' as 'idaly' in the second paragraph. A following sentence, "These vast temple ships do have controller on them them" also doesn't make sense. Third paragraph spells Sphere as 'sphear'. Lot more issues are present, mainly typos--I'd suggest a thorough proofreading as well as perhaps copying and pasting your sheet into a grammar checker, or using RPGuild's built-in dictionary to take note of misspelled words.

Overall this sheet was good. The numerous spelling mistakes were the only sore thumb.

Accepted with recommendations; I'd suggest you check out Grammarly or otherwise commit yourself to more thorough proofreading as you go into the IC.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

On soul decay, I propose this: An intact and healthy body inhibits the decay of the resident soul. Stuff like divine essence and the MP invested to make Heroes heroic further reinforces souls against decay to the extent of stopping decay entirely while they are alive. Part of making an immortal species is spending MP on their ability to keep their souls together indefinitely. Ad hoc solutions, such as those available to mortals, do not prevent this fraying, and self-made immortals will need to work to maintain their immortality (e.g. a lich needs to keep consuming souls so as to replenish the part of their soul which frays).

@BBeast

I quite like this.

On the death of powerful beings, typically their death is brought about by something which weakens the being to the extent that the being is too weak to not die. At this stage, stripped of power, the being (e.g. god, hero) is likely (although not certainly) too weak to resist the Sky of Pyres.

Though I didn't say so, this was more or less what I'd imagined as the counterpoint to the Discord argument of "ghost gods" running around indefinitely. I agree.

Considering the backlash to the idea of a soul crisis, I think we should ensure that we do have enough souls that natural population growth on Galbar will never deplete the reservoir. In this case, the limited number of souls only becomes an issue if someone attempts to horde billions of souls or the souls stop being recycled, that is, if IC events intentionally try to create a soul crisis. If Cyclone is wise he won't personally instigate a soul crisis. Leave that to the gods whose goals are to consume all of reality (*cough* Anzillu *cough*).

In case I haven't been clear (EDIT: In hindsight, I haven't been. My bad!), I figured this to be a given. The Architect would have brought in enough souls (by his estimation) to sustain life, and as animals etc. also have souls, it stands to reason that the rise of civilization and intelligent mortals will coincide with a decline of wildlife, thus keeping the souls in balance here.

The idea of a soul crisis is why Katharsos is said to oppose the "sequestering" of souls. So all of what you said lines up nicely with how I'd imagined things and I have no objections there.

Thank you for your input, BBeast. I bestow a chocolate-chip CyCookie to thee.

Hider

Many equations are baked into it, and consuming it will over make your mastery over physics and chemistry even more powerful!

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

It was brought up in another discord I think, but what constitutes a soul? Can you make artificial souls? Clearly demons function (albeit poorly) without souls, so basic function isn't predicate on having a soul.

What if a god dumped might into making home grown souls? What if multiple gods established a system, we'll call it 'spirit', that does the same thing as souls?

@Crispy Octopus

My thinking was that soulless beings like demons and golems can be created, but that a mortal being designed to have a soul (like a human) simply cannot be born without some soul. Note some; going back to my earlier comments about some osuls being "larger," in times of scarcity the supply of soul ash could just be spread thinner, and it'd weaken the living beings born with smaller souls.

Creating an alternative to "souls" is a solution to the finite soul thing that I'd accept both OOC and IC; in fact, it has precedence because in Mk. II my god actually created beings with something called Flickers that acted as pseudo-souls. It should probably be a really difficult and big undertaking though; in Mk. II, Fate (that universe's equivalent to the Architect) took some grave exception to my god bending the universe's rules.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

For clarity, the posts above are in response to a debate that sparked on the Discord. I pinned the message where it started so that anybody who cares can jump up to it and read through, but I also told everyone to post the gist of their arguments so that others can more easily see and that it'll be easier to keep track of what's decided.

There were a few things that came up, most related to Katharsos and the current model of souls and recycling souls as it was implied in my CS. Obviously I'm quite invested in the argument because Katharsos would become absolutely pointless were some of the proposed changes to be made, and for that reason I'm going to at least wait for @BBeast and @Muttonhawk to weigh in.

1. The souls in the universe were let in when the Architect opened up the hole to Beyond, allowing entry to the souls of both the gods and everything else. There is a finite number of souls in the universe; more cannot be created. This is why Katharsos has the Sky of Pyres and why he insists upon recycling them.

2. [This idea has since been REDACTED by Cyclone, who was swayed on the Discord, mainly through the argument that this means demigods make no sense.] Gods have souls too, just like mortals. This is supported because they were brought in alongside everything else, how some gods also have seemingly mundane backstories like having been a weatherman or a fish in their previous existence, by how Katharsos believes he must one day burn the souls of the other gods (and my OOC opinion that such an event would make a cool thing IC).

3. Souls decay and get worn down over time, which is why Katharsos believes that he must recycle them, and which can pose potentially big problems to immortal races/beings whose souls would invariably decay.

---

I feel like the finite soul thing simply contrives conflict in what I believe is an uninteresting way. The demon god and undeath god no longer become enemies or allies based on ideological grounds, but we will need to fight them because they are hogging a finite resource.

There isn't really any interesting outcome to a soul-shortage. It seems like it really just come down to having the artitect give us more souls, or bully demon boy or undeath god to shake some souls loose.

Edit : Further thoughts, My problem is that it seems like every other god has no reason to care about souls except at a seemingly random point when it suddenly an issue we need to worry about, and it will effectively force all humanity-sided characters to side with Kath since there isn't really any alternatives.

@Leotamer

I have little to say other than that I fundamentally disagree with almost every premise asserted. Most of these arguments are subjective. Concerning the last point I will say that Katharsos is extremely logical and the very pinnacle of utilitarian in his thought, and it'd be rather unrealistic to expect everyone to take his side even if it ends up looking like the "correct" one from an OOC perspective. I could go on about this more, but it's not the main point.

I think the first big thing to answer is whether souls should be conserved or if they can be created, as in 1. Personally I think it'd drastically change Katharsos' character (and render his Sphere largely moot) if it turns out that souls can simply be created and that there's no necessity behind his actions. Furthermore, I don't think this is anything more than a thematic complaint, because the way Katharsos' system works is that the recycled "soul ash" just drifts back down to Galbar and sits around until it can clump back together into a soul and be a part of some nascent lifeform. Any god could just scoop up souls and use them; they're not monopolized. Though a crisis emerging from a lack of souls could be pushed back and handwaved indefinitely and until convenient (or explained away through other means; for instance, as mortal populations rise, wildlife and animal populations will fall, keeping the number of required souls somewhat constant), I maintain that it'd be an interesting plot arc that could go several ways and potentially even have an entire Age centered around it.

Issue number 2 can be brought back up again if needed, but at this point I think it's safe to say that we're mostly all on board with gods having "divine essence" that is distinct from other souls. This may have come to be because they were gods in a previous existence, or it may be because the Architect thought he didn't have enough helpers and he arbitrarily "promoted" some ordinary souls into divine essences. The net effect is that demigods make more sense in that they have some divine essence to distinguish them from other beings, and that what happens upon a god's death is somewhat uncertain, but that could be tackled IC; perhaps Katharsos is wrong in his belief that he can just recycle gods' divine essence like he can mortal souls.

Issue 3 is a big one that's still on the table. I was going to have Katharsos explore this IC, but now it's pretty clear that was a poor idea. I'll explain now what I've been thinking: souls are like ropes, and that over time they start to fray, so given immortality a mortal soul might grow weaker and this could manifest as a creeping madness or overall weakness. Some beings have larger souls than others, explaining how some beings are longer lived with little ill effect and how heroes can be created (just enlarge their soul as part of the process). The "soul fraying" would mainly come up if a mortal, say a human, used some means other than acquiring divinity or herodom to extend their lifespan far beyond what is natural, or with undead. As undead grow older and older, they start to become less predictable and more dangerously erratic, which doesn't seem incompatible with Foe and Mourner's Hollow) and is why Katharsos would be fundamentally opposed to permanent states of undeath.

I missed most of the discussion, so I'm coming in with a very limited perspective, but I gathered that souls are a finite resource. There's a 'pool' they're drawn from and recycled into when things are born and die.

However, what I'm not understanding is why this exists when we, as gods, can hocus-pocus things into existence. I understand we're not omnipotent, but we have the means to create. So why are souls so distinct?

@Aristo

You have a point in that the distinction is somewhat arbitrary, but in laying down the metaphysics for this universe the owners of the relevant Spheres get a big say in what is canon. In my case for Katharsos, souls being finite is a core idea. The obvious reason that I'm so opposed to that idea being overturned is that it largely renders Katharsos (as he's currently portrayed) unusable for the RP; he'd be transformed into something evil, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted him to be.

Ultimately the creation of souls can just be handwaved off as a power beyond the capacity of our gods, much like teleportation and time travel.

"It oculd lead to a Thanos situation where more souls are needed, so some gods see the solution as being to eradicate a significant fraction of life so as to free up souls
...or it could lead to trying to ask the Architect for more souls
OR it could lead to trying to free the souls trapped in the undead Sphere
see how many possibilities there are?"

Which really covers only pro-Kathy options.

I feel like this might be a bit much, one of the things that got Sartravius accepted was going with "source of all flames" instead of "source of all heat", which I take establishes some limits of just how influential a sphere can be, and if truly everyone needs to dance along with Kath or risk the death of everything, eh, that is a bit more serious than the latter case.

@Double Capybara

What would you expect or want for an "anti Katharsos" option? Killing him and putting someone more lenient in charge of the Sky of Pyres, someone who might simply "temper" souls rather than fully burn and recycle them? Not unreasonable. I quite expect for many gods to hate, defy, and misunderstand Katharsos; his conception was of a god that's incredibly benevolent (probably the most benevolent), wise, and even noble, but only if you're willing to accept his extremely detached and utilitarian view of the world. One can argue that he's borderline Satanic, so I'd say there's definitely a shade of gray and that he's not completely white.

I'm amenable to other solutions for such a potential arc, too. And see my previous comment about it being believable (and honestly preferable) that not every god have the foresight and emotional capacity to see things from Katharsos' perspective and take the pragmatic solution.