Double Capybara

Divinus: The Divine RP, Mk. III

Urhu, the wanderer

Urhu

She who walks the frontier. The middle. The mercenary. The wanderer.

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Sphere

► The Purlieu (Chthonic Sphere, near the surface of Galbar) ◀

These are untamable wildlands that deny the civilized of their little delusions. The most refined of metals rust away in days, mighty forts crumble into ruins covered in weeds in mere weeks. This is however not a land of entropy, but instead, an ever-shifting frontier with jungles, swamps, forests, oceans and mountains rising and disappearing, in a constant churn of new and unknown lands, home to the most fierce of storms and beasts.

It connects itself with Galbar at random, mimicking a misty forest or lone road so people walk into the endless wilds without even noticing, or luring ships to its shores once they no longer have the eyesight of any true land.

It is where the seasons go to when they are not ruling over Galbar.

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Portfolio(s)

► Passage ◀

‘Passage’ is perhaps the core aspect of travel, it is the process of moving forward, the act of going through or past something plus the obstacles and permissions that need to be dealt with to avoid stillness, it lacks the aimlessness of wander but also has no objective like a journey. The passage is ultimately transition, the middle point when one has left behind the safeness of stability but have yet to establish a new routine, a concept focused only in the present, with the start and the end being merely eventualities.

It rules and guides those who are away from both their home and their destination, in that fragile moment where they are left only with the most essential of their survival. Those who offend the goddess or have wronged honest travellers will often find themselves stuck in this transient state, straying off their intended path or never once again satisfied with the familiar.

Innate Abilities of Passage

► Innate Traveler (Travel, Acclimatization)
While all gods are skilful travellers, this one is a bit more. They may walk over raging rivers and lava with the ease of walking on still water or walk across storms and blizzards unphased. This, however, does not make them faster, just stops their normal godly speed and senses from being reduced in extreme environments.

► Free Passage (Travel)
A short blink-like ability. This deity may enter into any closed room, walled area, cavern, among other areas, provided they are near the boundaries and that there is a passage into it, it does not matter if it is as small as a nail sized hole. (It doesn't get into the subatomic level, things considered 'vacuum sealed' are immune to this.)

► Pathfinder (Travel, Senses)
A metaphysical sense that naturally finds passages and paths across the landscape, even if the deity has never seen the location before.

► One With The Road (Travel)
This deity can traverse mortal-made roads with ease, at speeds faster than the godly default. This ability is enhanced by the presence of wayside shrines to this deity.

► Gatekeeper (Senses)
This deity gets a small peek into any mortal that cross a gate, doorway or other similar passages within her surroundings. It is also possible to mark a few gates or doors to connected with no matter the distance.

► Passport (Mind Reading)
This deity may discover the location of origin, the settlements which they have visited and the desired destination of any mortal within her sight without having to focus to perform mind reading.

► Deny Passage (Travel)
Provided the deity has within her range something that can be defined as a passage, be it a strait, bridge, or gate (which include actual gates or things such as two boulders on opposites side of a road) this deity might set up something to deny passage at their discretion. This can include magical barriers, smiting (in the form of strong winds, crashing waves, flash floods) or curses. If this is an innate ability (portfolio related), spending might on it makes it so it may target any marked passage even if the deity is not near it.

► Trailblazer (Travel, Divine Trail... ish?)
When walking into wildlands, this deity may leave behind paths that look as if they were made by herds of animals. This does not count as a mortal road for any travel ability.

► Innate Mutations (Mutation)
• Internal Compass (Example: Birds with Magnetoreception)
• Location Memory (May remember paths they traversed, where they were born, etc. Example: Sea Turtles)
• Genetic Path Memory (Example: Monarch Butterflies multi-generation migration patterns from Mexico to the United States)
• Enhanced Stamina
• Innate Wanderlust
• Migratory Animal
• Misc Mutations related to overcoming passages (Make things as invasive as cockroaches and mice, or as persevering as salmon jumping up a waterfall)

► Innate Blessings and Curses
• Sense of direction: May alter one's ability to know where they are and the path they must take. Can keep someone on track even under heavy fog or make it so they are lost even in their own neighbourhood.
• Traveller luck: How likely one is to cross path with bandits, to slip down while crossing a river, to find a tree fallen in the middle of the road.

► Sacred Paths (Blessings and Curses)
When doing a greater blessing/curse (using might) this deity can choose to apply it to an entire road.

► Innate Expert Crafts and Skills
• Building Bridges, Palisades/Gates, and Tunnels. (Passage makers/deniers)
• Defining and building things with the aspect of calendars, such as interactions with equinoxes and seasons (Passage of time)
• Expert traveller, swimmer, climber, door kicker.

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Persona

Chaotic Neutral. She self-describes herself as ‘simple’, she seeks that which she likes, food, carouse, love, combat, treasure, and has no time for intrigues and otherworldly concepts. She is a wanderer, finding herself at home in the frontier between wilderness and civilization, this habit is half wanderlust and curiosity, half boredom and dissatisfaction.

For one with such a focus on personal joy, the deity is not always pleasant company. Ever frowning, she is abrasive and judgemental, and to those who fall on her bad side, she is cruel, firmly believing certain lessons can only be taught by the medium of anguish. Sometimes she can be encouraging, telling others to keep trying and that not all is lost, and yet other times she can be extremely confrontational, questioning people on how sure they are and if they are not just wasting what little time they have as mortals, or sometimes taking beliefs and making one suffer by the logical extremes of their own ideas. While there is an aspect of changing the mood to this, there is also a certain method, as she is friendly to the unsure and antagonistic to certainty and social entropy.

As a deity, Urhu’s paradoxes show up the most. With a slight acosmist view, taking all at face value, finding it all dull excuses for power, believing the universe is a kratocracy but hating all hypocritical order established by might, it is complicated to establish a consistent approach to divinity. As such, her realm of overseeing travels is both one of blessing and one of extortion. She is not haughty towards mortals but knows they are not equals, yet she does prefer the mortal realm to the godly spheres, travelling mortal lands as a lowly traveller, expecting basic hospitality to be kept, and if it is not, it will be enforced.

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Form and Appearance

The goddess’ main form is that of a tall human, with freckled light brown skin and hazel eyes, preferring to keep her brown hair braided even if she allows it to be unkempt. Along with mortals, she likes to dress no different than what a local hunter might wear, albeit an accomplished hunter, on more divine occasions she prefers a clashing style of loose and light textiles with accessories of thick leather and adornments in precious metals.

Alternate

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Music
M

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

I myself will keep posting here until a certain point of Mesathalassa's history. Though I will also do MKIII. I made my character in a way that is not too intensive so I think I can handle it.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Imagine having your sphere just be some orb in the middle of the endless void

- This post was made by the chthonic gang

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Cyclone

I don't understand the symbology behind the distinction you're trying to make.

The symbology is just to represent distance. The big difference is what is part of Galbar and what is part of the sphere, meaning Galbar has a Sky and an Underground and these cannot be the sphere of Air and Earth as Aristotle says.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Crispy Octopus

The problem with that proposal is that some spheres have been described as a planet, including the sun and the moon, and overall, with the way spheres work, it won't make any sense.

Say the god of the sphere of the sky is isolationist, but the god who has a magical forest planet and the god of war who has a great arena battleground for a realm are active and constantly connecting with the earth. This is your new order



Does this mean the sphere they saw before as some distant planet is now right above their heads and covering the sky?
Hell, what happens if the sphere of the sun gets closer than the sky?

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

<Snipped quote by Double Capybara>

Since one appeal is that everyone can design their own Sphere to be the source of its own 'magic' and have its own effect, I think forcing sweeping things like this to be the case would be detrimental even if they help unify the Upper/Lower Spheres thematically.

@Cyclone

Ok, so you can make a sphere without regards to whether it's celestial or chthonic? In the last post, you mentioned wanting a strong thematic difference, so I kinda assumed picking Celestial or Chthonic was not trivial.

<Snipped quote>

I'm interpreting this as you saying that examples are warranted, yes? I intend to add quite a bit to the Doc today and could give 5 or 6 such examples.

@Cyclone

Definitely, I think an example model will do wonders.

<Snipped quote>

See, what you say about trees is due to one very poor example that I gave. The example in question was a forest god's Sphere perhaps being the upper canopy of some jungles, but back a page or two age when we chose to go with option B we more or less killed the idea of ta forest god having a Sphere like that. It's just too accessible, too tangible, too real. As the Spheres are partially metaphysical and magical places, that's why I think BBeast gave really good examples with the sky god's Sphere being the upper sky but great storms making it hard for just anything to fly up, and the dirt god having a Sphere that's underground but can only be reached by digging a long, long ways beneath some sacred hills.

To clarify, in keeping with the theme of Spheres being very magical places that are hard for mortals to access, I don't want someone to just claim "deserts on Galbar's surface" or "the rivers on Galbar" as their Sphere. Something more along the lines of the desert god having the sun (or perhaps some fiery subterranean realm) as his Sphere and then connecting it into the depths of deserts through some sort of portal is more of what we're going for. Instead of just claiming rivers as his Sphere, a river god could do something like claim the subterranean depths where all springs draw their water from.

Do you think that I addressed your confusions/objections adequately, Capy?

@Cyclone

I think the main source of confusion on my part is the difference between the proposal and the linked Celestial Spheres.

In aristotelian, it kinda goes like this

[The sky (sphere of air]
[Galbar]
[The earth (sphere of earth)]

From what I understood of the proposal, it is not a layered cake deal, it is more like

(Sphere of air)
↓
↓
[Galbar - including the sky, which is the influence of the sphere of air, and the earth, which is the influence of the sphere of earth]
↑
↑
(Sphere of earth)

Which I would say is a more Dungeons and Dragons Planes thing? But then wouldn't that not be physical but instead purely magical?

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@BBeast

I think a big theme in your post, and one that I think is misguided, is to see the difference between upper and lower as a physical difference. It is a thematic difference, and I think treating each sphere as a formless blob with no content is detrimental.

Take magic.

Celestial magical sphere: Linked to stars and the sky, maybe be related to the movement of the stars, the time of the day, definitely related to the "star" that is how Galbarian mortals see the sphere.

Chthonic magical sphere: Related to earth, likely more telluric in nature, if a mage in the former case would raise his hand to reach for the magical realm, this one needs to connect with that which is bellow, walking bare-feet, channeling magic through the body, whatever.

Take soul

Celestial soul sphere: Probably Heaven or Valhalla like, angels and Valkyries, sky burials and funeral pyres

Chthonic soul sphere: Hades for example, boatman and reapers, crypts and graves.

There is a big change, and that goes beyond portals and physical place.

@Cyclone

One thing I expected in the docs, but couldn't really find, is a model of what you are thinking. With examples, models, something like a few example spheres and how they interact. It clearly isn't the Aristotlean model what we are doing here, there is a weird mix of Aristotles like layer spheres and orb spheres, and each time these things are discussed, I go out of it knowing less and less, with mixed messages like "There are no exceptions except the exceptions"

The disadvantage of the Galbaric Middle is that it introduces significantly more complexity to an already potentially confusing system. Having a divide between the Upper/Lower gods along the lines of the Aesir and Vanir, Aedra/Daedra, or any other example was a topic I found intriguing and was a primary reason behind me conceptualizing the distinction. Where would the middle gods under Galbaric Middle fit into this? Would they be neutral and of neither side? That might make the whole thing less thematic, but then again, I expect that some gods won't really see the universe in such a divisive way and won't care so much about exactly where any other given god lives so much as what said other god does.

It is better to have a complex system that deals with its issues than a nebulous unclear system. I think if you want a strong thematic difference between Celestial and Chthonic, you need to at least state that and what you overall view on what is Upper and what is lower. Once the themes are put on the table, we can discuss them properly.

Speaking of which, I still think land gods are a problem, from what I see, the Chthonic realm is way too limited, and throwing trees to the sky because of canopies is... eh. I don't know crap about the nordic myths since I found them boring, but in terms of Aedra/Deadra, all Aedra would be Celestial, and... most of the Deadra as well, since they are outer gods, Azura, Clavicus, Hircine, Vaermina.

It also makes the metaphysical maps of the world weird, with the realm of rives, trees and the fairyland all side by the side with sun, with the stars. It makes sense in a world like Tamriel where all worlds are outer worlds, but is this what we are going for here? Weren't we going with Aristotlean layers, with a realm of wind, a realm of fire?

We need to have a guide, a base, we can't have cake if the invitation says "bring ingredients for pastry, maybe?"

Then we can decide what to do about connections, if we are to have a separate mini realm of the skies or have it be the layer which we call the sky. What to do about land gods, what differs the underworld from the upperworlds.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Scarifar Hmm? Who has light?

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

<Snipped quote by Cyclone>

Ninja'd!

In that case, I'm going to throw my hat into option B. I don't see why a god should be linked strictly to Galbar as a sphere when their sphere could still be linked closely to a physical aspect of Galbar, such as forests or wildlands.

And just because a sphere like that isn't so accessible, it doesn't restrict you from finding ways for inter-sphere travel to happen thematically. If a little girl gets lost in the woods, you can easily fudge together her unnoticed stumbling into the sphere of forest god by mere chance and then having a hell of a time finding her way home, all the while the rangers of the previous woods having no idea where she disappeared to. Any other contrivance can be made to facilitate stories.

@Muttonhawk

Wait, so even with option B you can still make spheres exactly like option A and C? I thought B meant a ban on the 'fairyland' non-euclidean sphere, going from Octopus' posts and the whole 'no middle sphere' allowed.