!Angels

Celestials

Of Earth-15-108-781-610-A46-505-200 (AKA, this one)

(Angelics, Messengers, Malakhim)

Benevolent denizens of the nicer parts of the Astral Plane directly neighboring Earth. They serve the Empyrean, who is the Lord Of Hosts, the Heavenly Father, the Primal Mother, the King Atop The Earth, the Queen Within The Sun, the Shining God and many other titles.

He, It, They claims stewardship over the Earth but is almost childlike and very naive. He normally only intervenes against supernatural and magical threats and then normally only through intermediaries. This is because they is nowhere near omnipotent or omniscient, only very and dedicated to protecting the health and happiness of those who reside on Earth from those denizens of the dark that would prey upon them.

By contrast, Its creation are more intelligent and pragmatic than It. These angelscelestials of the Empyrean are fully aware of the angels of Yahweh, and even though their creator has expressed approval of these outsiders, they remain suspicious. Still, they are filled with their creator's will and seek only the health and happiness of terrestrial mortals.

There are four "castes" of angelscelestials, serving different roles and each more powerful than the last. They are about equal in number, because each one is actually a step in the angelscelestials' bizarre life-cycle, where the natural death of an angel births one of the next caste, an entirely new person. To them, this is another joy of sacrifice, giving one's self for the life of another.

Nephilim

Nephilim start their lives as motes of light, smaller than a marble, but over thousands of years will grow to the size of a basketball. They serve as the messengers of the angelscelestials, communing with potential mortal recruits that may become His divine instruments. They have the easiest time manifesting in the material and even then it's hard. When they die, they explode. From out of the crater, a cherubim emerges fully formed.

Cherubim

Cherubim take the form of tauren creatures, with the head of a bull, an eagle, a lion and a human, each facing a different direction with a halo above each head. They are the warriors of the angelscelestials, fighting upon the astral planes against the predatory forces within and manifesting upon the material when they can. A whole company manifested into the material during the Invasion to do battle against the horrors of the Consortium. As they age over thousands of years, their four halos grow and merge between their heads, turning into a sphere of concentric rings. Finally, these rings open their eyes and the newborn ophanim flies away. Soon after, the cherubim will die.

Ophanim

Ophanim start their lives about the size of basketballs until they grow to the height of a man over thousands of years. They serve as the sages and spymasters of the angelscelestials, seeing much with their many eyes and remembering it too. The mightiest of goodly wizards may summon them once in a lifetime for help or advice, or they may manifest on their own in rare, dire times. When they grow to full size, they become "pregnant". The silhouette of a human fetus is emblazoned inside of a fire at their core. Over centuries, this fetus grow from babe, to child, to adolescent and then adult, breaking each of the ophanim's rings as it goes. Finally, the last ring shatters, the ophanim is destroyed completely and the seraphim emerges, fully grown.

Seraphim

Seraphim, presumably, look human, but constantly cover themselves with their six wings. They are the priests and prophets of the angelscelestials, who speak most directly with the Empyrean and pass along more concrete edicts of His will to the other angelscelestials. It is said, once, a Seraphim was able to manifest into the material to light our darkest hour. Over tens of thousands of years, nephilim will slip between the cracks of their wings. This small litter of a few dozen eventually drains the seraphim to death.

edited 9th Feb '18 8:39:05 AM by God_of_Awesome

!Demons

Abyssals

Of Earth-15-108-781-610-A46-505-200

(Demonoids, Accusers, Satans)

The Empyrean was born from the idea of good, a mindless ideal of benevolence. Morbidity, however, has humanity* place a great deal more thought into what is evil. Good men ache with discontent for their failures and people wonder why they must suffer at the hands of their fellows. From this is born are spirits of human* adversity, for humans* and by humans*, into the astral plane where dreams comes to life.

*Humans, in this case, is a humanocentric shorthand for earthlings.

The Adversary, the spawn of guilt and despair, is the first and greatest of these, for it is only in good conscious that we have a concept of evil and only in the pain that it cause is evil evil. It is the central thesis from which all its siblings and subordinate branch. In its misanthropy and loathing, it bounden these things to it. It damned itself and dragged them into damnation, swallowing them insides of its hellish worldbody.

The Poison, the spawn of hate and fear, The Blind, the spawn of ignorance and apathy, The Sadist, the spawn of thoughtlessness and excess, The Miser, the spawn of selfishness and greed, The Prince, the spawn of arrogance and vanity. These are just some of the spirits The Adversary dragged into hell with it. The Wanderer, the spawn of madness and nightmares, The Adversary would not touch, for it is innocent and suffers enough already. The Disaster, the spawn of entropy and misfortune, cannot be controlled by mere human contemplation.

These festering pus-wounds upon the darkside of the realm of souls seek only to propagate themselves. They are almost primordial, bestial in this, more intelligent animals than people, if that makes any sense. They reach out from their den into the material and feed back into the aspects of humanity that gave birth to them in the first place.

Bound together in The Adversary's hell, the closest thing to a contemplative mind, these spirits of suffering visit torment upon one another in constant clashes. The detritus and weapons of these conflicts are demonsabyssals. Made to suffer and to cause suffering, their only purpose is as proverbial suicide bombers. They live for such a short time, often less than a decade, their lives marked with monumental pain and ending in screams.

The Adversary binds these demonsabyssals to servitude as surely as it bound their progenitors and it is to that one they owe their fealty to. It is difficult to truly manifest in the material, so they are often cajole and empower. It sends them to do what they would naturally do on their own, but with backing and a plan. They find that the Children Of Damned Enlightenment, Melancholy's people, are their most willing pawns.

There are, in fact, too many varieties of the demonicabyssal hordes to name. There is the degree by which they reflect their progenitor and not only the nuances of the suffering they represent but the nuances between them. Hybrids exist, where the the shed essences of clashing spirits melt and fuse into one another to create strange new aberrations.

edited 9th Feb '18 8:39:22 AM by God_of_Awesome

OK. First of all kudos to all of you for your research and/or creativity.

That said, religion is a spiny subject to tackle in a superhero setting, for two reasons: First, because the focus should be on humans (if superpowered ones); and second, because it is supposed to be a kitchen-sink where All Myths Are True, and by their very nature every religion claims that only THEIR beliefs are the true ones.

I offer the following solution:

Concept: God, Angels and Demons

The being known as God (and many other names, though the most appropriate would be The True One) is the ultimate cosmic entity- it has no form, it has always existed, and it has unlimited power. However it almost never interacts directly, not even communicating except by visions. It concerns itself with the creation, maintenance, and destruction (for renewal) of universes. And even then it tends to do that by creating lesser entities to do its work for it. The Narrative Titans were among those.

As mentioned elsewhere, the gods of Earth are nowhere near The True One's power level (or even those of most cosmic beings.) They are effectively just super-races, mistaken for gods by people. Further confusing things is that there is at least one (and possibly more) Earth god claiming to be the One True God, or an Avatar of it, but its just an impostor with at best Zeus-level power (and an attitude to match.).

Angels fall in the super-race category, even if they were created directly or indirectly by The True one. This is why there are two known sets of angels, as one comes from a parallel universe.

Important: Depending on their nature, some 'demons' might be truly evil, or they might not. If they are eldritch abominations born from chaotic forces then likely are irredeemable, but a Fallen Angel might be reasoned with, and perhaps redeemed under the right conditions.

Yeah, that makes sense. The one from the alternate dimension that goes by Yahweh is the true God of his respective universe, however in the realms of the Multiverse/Omniverse that could change with a snap. So I'm happy to go with a larger, unidentified Omniversal being as the respective highest, with everything else slipping into the cracks between.

bork

So, can The Empyrean, The Adversary and their servants still be a thing?

They're literally creations of humanity and earthlings, so they have nowhere near the same gravitas.

Yes they can be a thing. My post above was a way to reconcile all of our ideas into a cohesive whole.

edited 4th Feb '18 6:27:45 AM by Sijo

Huh, we, mostly me and Enir, were actually discussing a lot of neat ideas that involved Enir's YHWH and my Empyrean not being the same thing, and the similarly named entities from either interacting with each other.

That is OK. My only real contribution is that there is only one, true God, for all the Omniverse; but there are other beings running things at lower levels.

Also, note that there is a difference between an entity an a character: A character is free willed, can talk, change its mind and is not cosmically potent. Entities are more forces than beings. So yeah, if you want your angels to be say, characters and not forces, do not make them entities. (They can be avatars or empowered tho.)

I think this is good point to remind you tat one of our cardinal rules is that once a concept is established it cannot be substituted. That's the whole point of having a Concepts list- you're supposed to read it first and then decide how your idea fits in. You cannot contradict what has already appeared in-game.

So for example, we cannot have two version of the god of a monotheistic religion- that is by definition contradictory. One might be the real one and the others stand-ins, as I explained above.

Above everything, you cannot use the same name. You cannot, say, have a new race called mermaids because we already have mermaids. Call them something else instead.

And no, you cannot get around this with the "but this is the version from another universe" excuse. The point is that you if call two characters or concepts the same, people will get confused.

So I'm afraid that, as far as Spandex is concerned, Enir's race is The Angels; GOA's must be called something else (even if its functionally the same.)

edited 6th Feb '18 10:27:47 AM by Sijo

Okay, okay, now hear me out.

What if-

Hear me out.

What if we ripped straight from the goddamn 80's and we gave 'em just, like, the silliest substitute names.

I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, "Angelics" and "Demonoids".

The "-oid" is important because holy shit.

Edit: Enirboreh and I discussed it further and suggested "Celestials" and "Abyssals".

edited 6th Feb '18 1:50:05 PM by God_of_Awesome

Angels and Demons are OK. But only group of each can be named that.

Celestials and Abyssals works for the others.

edited 7th Feb '18 8:09:33 AM by Sijo

You wanted to discuss time wars here? Special Research Division is rather heavily involved in that, so I'm not mentioning either concept until everyone's sufficiently happy (or apathetic) for a final verdict.

You mentioned a mess of alternate realities. I actually had a mental model of how time travel could work to avoid that (especially as parallel worlds already exist, so time travel would be a little tautological were it to work the same way), but decided not to add too much, lest others wanted to have their own versions of time travel.

Imagine time as a river. Shouldn't be too hard, since that's the main present interpretation. Now imagine that it's flowing merrily along, on a slight downwards slope, straight line, until it hits the ocean. That's our 'base' timeline. Now say that someone invokes Godwin's Law and goes back in time to do the whole Hitler business. That's like putting a dam somewhere in the path of the river; there's still the possibility of it taking the original path, were you to change things back to how they were, but there isn't any water there; there's no "other world" created.

Incidentally, now the new river can also be dammed, leading to more and more branching. Some changes will take the world closer to how it originally was, moving the flow (and the meeting point between river and ocean) closer to the 'base' timeline. Others will diverge even more, moving further away. Hypothetically, one could alter the world enough that it would be indistinguishable from the hordes of parallel worlds as "the place where [blah] never existed", or "Earth, but [foo] instead of [bar]". Naturally, this would require a rather monumental amount of effort in order to pass the threshold of sufficient difference, but it's possible enough that you could write a plot about it.

Finally, some changes could potentially either stop the river entirely, or cause it to overflow, flooding the landscape. This is paradox, and it is a Very Bad Thing that usually results in writers having nightmares about Q&A columns for months. I'm not going into paradoxes in this model because most examples are covered sufficiently by the damming example above (for instance, the Grandfather Paradox is 'solved' because you could take a drop of water from point B, take it back up to point A, drop it in, and then put a dam between the two points).

If that is insufficient coverage, however, one could also argue that a time traveller "snaps" to where they should be after the timeline changes; one could even say that after the initial time travel, fate (or whatever you wish to call it) changes such that no matter the cause, that person will die, in a reversal of causality.

These are all just ideas I'm throwing out; they're not exactly the most polished, nor are they comprehensive. If you want to add, edit, whatever, feel free. Also, sorry for the miiiiiild wall of text. It turns out explaining time travel takes more space than anticipated.

Ok, first of all I want to make clear I wasn't mad at Mistfader, I just wanted proper discussion in the right place (and to post my own ideas in the process.)

To sum up his idea, the Omnitech Industries -which have already been approved- will discover time travel in this universe' near future. They then begin meddling in the near past (our present.) It also discusses the nature of Alternate Universes.

As I mentioned, I have no problem with either of these ideas on their own, I just want to be careful with the application. We have a shared story to watch over here.

Personally I prefer the "alternate realities are created by time travelers" theory. It explains why there aren't alternate universes just because a butterfly did or did not shake its wings, and more importantly allows adventures in alternates settings without the "real" one being changed.

Now, I'm not saying that history in the Main Timeline can't be changed. But for that happen, a real crisis has to happen. (Read: The game gets rebooted for some reason.)

Mist is this OK? Anyone else can comment as well.

Edit: If we're going to allow Time Travel, then we need Time Guardians as well- because logically, no matter how many times you prevent someone travelling in time someone else will invent a time machine sooner or later.

edited 15th Feb '18 5:40:04 AM by Sijo

Should I bring back the Editors?

Sure, but they'll have to be re-approved.

Note I'm not a big fan of predestination either.

I'm fine with that interpretation, Sijo. The main reason why I suggested parallel worlds be separate from time travel was because I thought people would like it more that way; if you prefer that they intertwine, more power to you.

I do, however, wish to clarify that there are (intentionally vague) other factions in the bid to control the timestream, partially to keep Omnitech's meddling in check, partially to allow any interested parties a springboard for their own time travel ideas. So it's not just some megacorporation quietly altering history :P

edited 15th Feb '18 5:38:50 PM by Mistfader

Status of the Pantheon

---

A list of currently known Pantheon members and their... well, status.

• Jåg~ßofeçkh◊ - The Benevolent Nebulous: God of the cosmos and the stars.
  • Current Status: Forgotten

• Gilarganog◊ - The Genuine Diplomat: God of persuasion and agreements.
  • Current Status: Forgotten

• Zaranthos - The Rift Inducer: God of interdimensional portals.
  • Current Status: Active (being kept alive by interdimensional travel, although heavily weakened)

• Hazranya - The Grand Industrialist: Goddess of industry and inspiration.
  • Current Status: Forgotten

• Okkakaron - The Deceitful Opposer: God of lies and opposition.
  • Current Status: Forgotten (a small amount of cults still worship in his name, but to no avail)

• Kavalarkium - The Instiller of Visions: God of precognition and dreams.
  • Current Status: Forgotten (although still reaches out to people in their dreams)

• Xilantes - The Screaming Warmonger: God of bloodlust and warmongering.
  • Current Status: Active (being barely kept alive by cultists worshipping his name)

• Lhdwnr◊ - The Childlike Putrefactor: Goddess of filth and impurity.
  • Current Status: Active (Previously forgotten, now bonded to Rebecca Raleigh)

• Leviathan◊ - The Oceanic Guardian: Patron deity of the ocean.
  • Current Status: Active (Bonded with Jackson Rainer)

---

So that's a thing. Honestly the only reason I made this is because I like both Angelarium art and making up god names.

edited 23rd Feb '18 3:53:02 PM by Enirboreh

bork

• Noname◊ - The Faceless One: God-thing of witchcraft and wizardry magic and sorcery
  • Current Status: Active (Reincarnated as Mohan McKenzie)
• Grog - The Messenger: God of death and damnation
  • Current Status: Active (Kept alive by taking up new mantles, Odin style)

edited 18th Feb '18 9:32:52 PM by God_of_Awesome

Before I forget: Omnitech Phase 2 and the Time War are approved.

As is the Forgotten Pantheon, by default.

Concept: The Creators

These beings are a mystery. Their origins, purpose, full extent, even their appearance are only partially known.

It is known they have created lands, worlds, even universes. However, they are definitely not THE Creator aka God. (They might be empowered by it.) The Narrative Titans (or some of them) might be Creators.

They have appeared in a variety of forms, but given their power and attitude, none are reliable. They usually take human form when dealing with humans, but this is likely a case of A Form You Are Comfortable With.

Creators rarely if ever interfere directly. But they definitely manipulate events behind the scenes. Exactly how varies with each; most just control causality, but often they empower some mortal and give him or her a quest as well. Most notably, they are responsible for the existence of the Travelers.

Simon Jones only discovered their existence recently. He realized that his life-long journey wasn't an accident- some Creator caused it. Apparently, others have done the same to other people. The reason is unknown. Though Simon suspects that the Creators are in a pissing contest with each other over who has the best universe and the Travelers are the elected jury over the matter.

Jones currently is unaware of it, but he himself has the potential to become a Creator himself. How he will react to this revelation remains to be seen, but given he's never been interested in power or influencing people's lives, probably not very well...

sample Creator: Garezgax

Garezgax created an entire multiverse of magical worlds, including its gods, heroes, and type of magic. His human guise is that of an old, jolly fellow.

Note: As usual this is not official yet. Feedback wanted.

edited 21st Feb '18 9:41:58 AM by Sijo

• Definition: Māzandarān, realm of daeva and sorcerers.
• Potential
  • Inherent Powers:
    • The land itself (and even the cities) are places of almost glamouring beauty ^note (constant taints and personalized whispers in the background notwithstanding). The locals find them helpful and charming.. That said, the directions...take some getting used to. A good (and benevolent) guide could get a group through the realm and back in a matter of hours. Māzandarān does not lack for modern transportation in addition to the portal network. An unwary traveler may take a step in and out and find himself 1000 years and 100 kilometers from his starting position or spend centuries lost in the place only to return to his fellows, who've aged only minutes. One shouldn't have too much trouble staying on the beaten path. There are maps. (They do trade with the world after all).
    • The population...well to start with, they take a special joy in blinding those intruding and not invited to the realm. They are daeva and human mostly (with migrants over the ages). The realm shares a special untouchability to the ways of mankind. Deities avoid the place, leaving it to the lost and the damned, only aiding the greatest adventurers for the most worthy purposes to penetrate sheer volume and power of the arts at work there. The daeva are well, daeva, sharing a fraction of Aka Manah's antigodly powers of druj and uncreation. The others among the populace are granted fractions of that power or import their own arts to the realms. They certainly do not all share a specific hat, but they all share a place past a certain base power, or else they wouldn't be living and free. Still, to any who dares go, Māzandarān has much in the ways of libraries and potential teachers in all types of works.
  • Inherent Weaknesses: The people of Māzandarān are certainly not of one mind. And even the most fearsome of their paramount chiefs can only keep them in one purpose for so long. Aka Manah is also inferior to Vohu Manah (a 'spark' of Ahura Mazda) and can hardly impede a traveler under Vohu Manah's protection for long.
  • Skills: Māzandarān is still a realm with cities and the like. They're awfully good at producing quality capital goods, and they tend to boast about completely clear skies while they do. (It's true. Magitek has given them an edge in green tech). The realm also has more than its share of knowledge brokers. And, on the rare occasions they are truly united, they form into an armed force and home front that devastates opponents. No force has ever truly conquered the realm, and even great Rostam only managed to free his home's army and extract some tribute. Many fear that Aži Dahāka is preparing for the day when he can lead the united realm out to scour the realms beyond—which already reel from the comparatively micro campaigns of border magnates and evil adventurers.
  • Equipment: Standard first-world material goods—albeit with some magitek twists.
• Appearance: To hear such diverse characters as Matten and Aži Dahāka describe it, Māzandarān is a place of beauty of rolling hills and bountiful plains and tending shepherds and 1000 polished cities of fine architecture, protected from the realms partly by walls of stone and largely by only partly being situated in the same dimension as Earth. It's even sweet-smelling. The realm does look like its shrouded in an endless partial eclipse though, with somewhat dim sunlight.
• Governance and Culture:
  • General: Māzandarān is a direct democracy^note More or less Athenian Democracy. It's consistent in its behavior, but details can change whenever a different group of voters show up. Aži Dahāka is the paramount chief, but he's but one of ten, and has to go through annual re-election bids—and still is basically carrying out assembly policy anyway. (Even if most of the time he can convince them to go with his plan).
  • Specific: The people of Māzandarān are, for the most part, uninterested in the cosmic conflict.^note Even if the dominant cultural questions of each generation revolve around what do you do when the victor, who is guaranteed by prophecy and visions, has pretty solidly set your future genocide and perdition in stone. The exceptions are the paramount chiefs who spout about fighting the good fight, but...^note  only a slight plurality of the chiefs of Māzandarān seriously believe in final victory, and Aži Dahāka in particular is focused on simply dooming as many as possible to share his fate at the end. The civilian population is mostly focused on paying bills, the latest movies out, and keeping up with the Joneses. It just so happens that that includes work on their various experiments, which often require human 'volunteers' and their indulgences, like excessive violence, unfettered wanderlusts, and shameless manipulations. While technically united, a constant low-level strife permeates the land as each tries to one up the other or have fun at the expense of the others. Status matters a fair bit, and with shifting alliances and power up for grabs, people can rocket tot the top and enjoy all the perks of chiefdom and hit rock bottom in an instant.

edited 24th Feb '18 9:01:13 AM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

Hello! I just signed up. I have a list of questions.

Can anyone help provide me a summary of the story so far? What are the major threats happening right now? How do I introduce my character? Do I just have them standing there, do I have them do a dynamic entry? Can I have a list of rich/snobby villains to put on my character's hitlist (cause she's a thief)?

Much thanks!

edited 22nd Feb '18 1:00:01 PM by JumpingFruit

I wear the skin of the Elder Things, having come unto my own.

You gotta wait for Sijo to give you the OK first.

Wake me up at your own risk.

Welcome, JumpingFruit! I'm El Sijo the current gamemaster. I already saw your character and approved her. I will be adding her to the list very soon.

As for how to play, you can either run your own plot -yes, with your own cast if you want, including people to rob- or you can jump into an ongoing one. Of course, you must allow other players to jump into one of yours if they want.

Keep in mind that the players decide how their characters are affected. So even if say, Magpie is attacked by a more powerful character, only you can decide if she gets hurt. Of course the same applies when you attack other characters. In case of disputes the GM decides.

As for the story, there's been many events but most of them are not important, only the currently ongoing plots. Just read the last few pages of the game; every plot is identified with the name of the location in bold letters like this. I do suggest you check out the Concepts section in the Sign Up thread so you become more familiar with the setting.

Currently, there is a plot regarding a high school homecoming that involves a crown with magical powers and an ancient evil goddess wants it. Sounds like something Magpie might want to steal, only to regret it!

edited 22nd Feb '18 3:48:14 PM by Sijo

Emotional Embodiment Entities

Definition:

Emotional Embodiment Entities are emotion personified. There are two types, Greater Emotional Embodiment Entities and Lesser Emotional Embodiment Entities.

Origin:

They manifest whenever there is a sufficiently large amount of people feeling a specific emotion, thereby generating a specific type of emotional energy to power them. If there is not enough emotional energy to power them, they will fade away until there is enough, at which point they are reborn.

They originally had the Weaponmasters working for them, because the EEE of Pride and Superiority (the oldest and therefore the "best" EEE) said so. The Weaponmasters' hatred for their "corrupt" masters catalyzed the birth of the first Lesser EEE: Magpie. The new EEE felt sorry for the Weaponmasters, and so helped them develop the weapons they needed to rebel. When the time came for the revolt, Magpie was the first one they turned against. The rebellion of the Weaponmasters marked the end of the EEEs' golden age, so many EEEs dislike Magpie for her role in the rebellion.

Influence:

They are mostly villains, but a rare few decide to be heroes.

Edited by JumpingFruit on Jul 10th 2020 at 2:57:14 AM

I wear the skin of the Elder Things, having come unto my own.