Primavera, Sandro Botticelli, 1482.TL;DR Summary
- Fantasy World
- Each player controls a deity in a pantheon; they may be part of the current pantheon, the child of a god recently raised to divinity, a human given divinity or part of the pantheon that came before and was overthrown.
- The father of the Pantheon is dead; a conspiracy brought him low. His position is vacant and being fought over.
- There is more than one dynasty of gods; there is a prior generation of exiled/outcast/overthrown deities and they are playable and they are powerful, particularly with the King of Gods overthrown.
- Some deities are the patrons of a city or nation, but this is not really a nation RP.
- Greco-Egyptian-Mesopotamian style pantheon; in the style of the Greeks, the Gods will be flawed, jealous, striving among each other and deceitful bastards for the most part; they may be divine, but they sure as hell aren't omnibenevolent. They are the tantruming child-kings of all they see, indulgent and spoiled.
- Advanced Standards; 2 paragraphs minimum
- Active collaboration; suggestions welcome from players regarding setting and so forth. Creativity and initiative encouraged.
- Important: Keep the OOC civil, bring up concerns about other characters and players to the GM in PM and do not harass people to post, bring concerns to the GM in PM so he can handle it.
- This isn’t a nation RP. If you’re interested in proving strategic genius rather than creating a cool RP with a story, this isn’t your RP at all.
- Contested and uncontested actions; if you don't want to contest an action all is well -- plot away. It becomes collaboration where two players work out the conflict amongst themselves. A contested action means that you're throwing it to the ground ruling of a GM.
In Character Summary
Aroesus, the King of the Gods is slain, the victim of a conspiracy among those he ruled and kept in line. The heavens rage and seethe with plots and anger, with ambition and lust as the many strive to overtake the throne he once held.
A prophecy of his demise prompted Aroesus to increasingly erratic and paranoid behavior, such as restricting other deities to his court in the palace of Krona on Lake Miphas in Hevas, the realm of the Gods. Always a ruler prone to authoritarianism and rule through strength, he started to become nervous of his own subjects, and began to spend his days brooding over the most trivial of imagined slights and became more prone to punishing others for crimes they didn't commit by sending them to the islands of Lake Sharzunates, the underworld equivalent of Miphas that is linked to it by the Great Nasan Falls, where beings of power were imprisoned for transgressions against the pantheon.
While there had always been jealousies against Aroesus and those desirous of seeing him deposed, there was now an impetus for a conspiracy. These deities came up with a plan; Aroesus, as his sanity dwindled, become more a creature of lust than he was before. Before, he was known to rape other beings and egregiously cheat on his marriage. But of late, Aroesus became obsessed with the young Lyrikes, the beautiful son of a nymph and a god, whom he sought to seduce. Lyrikes, no fool, used this adoration to his advantage to gain power quickly in the court, though he never quite became the lover of Aroesus. He always teased Aroseus, drove him mad with desire until he was willing to shower more gifts upon Lyrikes in his lust. This, of course, worried the other gods, who resented this newcomer, who was vicious to most of the others and was arrogant to the point of offending many; he did not lack for enemies, and he treated them harshly, largely by convincing Aroesus to condemn them to Sharzunates for various reasons.
When the gods resolved to kill Aroesus, they decided to do it through his greatest vulnerability; the young Lyrikes, whom so many of them loathed but upon whom Aroesus lusted for to the point of insensibility and blindness. These gods destroyed the soul of Lyrikes while keeping his body alive; they poisoned his body and sent him to Aroesus' chambers. When Aroesus took the suddenly receptive Lyrikes in a fit of lust, he felt the poison course through him, weakening him. That is when the other gods struck with blades crafted from the flames of Mount Nynos, a great volcano whose fires were said to be all-consuming. Both Aroesus and Lyrikes were not merely killed, but their souls utterly destroyed, so that even in death, they could possibly be summoned forth to give account of what happened to them.
With the death of Aroesus, those beings imprisoned on the islands of Lake Sharzunates are freed, as are the gods who were functionally imprisoned within Aroesus' palace on Lake Miphas. There is no one strong enough to take the throne and govern, and therefore the gods are thrown into anarchy, with the many fragmenting and pursing their own agendas.
The gods themselves thunder away at each other. It has gone beyond words and into the realm of war; and as in heaven, so it is below in Lymaeus, with the mortals warring among each other as prophets and their followers murder one another in the streets, while armies march and burn the lands of their enemies with a religious fervor.
The world itself trembles, as old enemies see their opportunity to reclaim their right and take revenge upon their oppressors and tormentors, new enemies see the opportunity to attack the structure where it is weak and cause it to crumble, and meanwhile the Gods themselves wrangle among each other, divided and distracted.
Glossary of Original terms
- Aroesus - King of the Gods, slain by assassins
- Mysia - The dowager queen of the Gods, she has gone into a state of extreme shock and secluded mourning; some say she's been driven mad. When sane, she was the epitome of the grace and pride of rulership, a deity of power and patroness of the aristocracy.
- Lyrikes - The slain male demigod lover of Aroesus, instrumental in his assassination as a vessel of the venom that disabled Aroesus and made him vulnerable to the knives of his killers.
- Lymaeus - The continent, full of strife-ridden city-states/nations. Also a deity essentially on life support -- she was smashed by Ventu.
- Ventu - A primal deity of cosmic creation and destruction that created Aroesus and his siblings. Cast down by Aroesus and the Pantheon.
- Lake Miphas - the Lake at the center of the realm of the Gods, Hevas. It is dominated by the Krona, the palace that holds the court of Aroesus, but contains many smaller islands that have homes to other deities in good standing with the Pantheon. It is parallel to its dark sibling, Lake Sharzunates.
- Nasan Waterfall - The waterfall that links lake Miphas with lake Sharzunatesin the underworld. It is also the location of the Gates of (Insert the name of relevant deities here) spirits that are born and that die pass through these gates respectively as part of an eternal cycle; they reside in Hevas and Malebazus as a temporary reward/punishment before being reincarnated, the length of time determined by their deeds in life.
- Sharzunates - The lake in the underworld that corresponds to Miphas. Despite being part of the underworld, Sharzunates is not technically ruled by the god of it. It is a place of exile for deposed gods, a prison for evil spirits. When Aroesus died, Sharzunates' rather formidable guards disappeared, leaving this area anarchic to say the least.
- Hevas - The plane upon which Lake Miphas resides, akin to Arcadia in Greek Myth.
- Malebazus - the plane of the Underworld, akin to Hades. Some deities, especially those that are outcasted, make their homes here, if they are not specifically imprisoned on Lake Sharzunates.
- Krona - The Palace of Aroesus, quickly starting to show signs of wear as Aroesus is gone and his wife Mysa has gone into seclusion. Nonetheless, it is still a meeting place of the deities.
- Caesilinus - The (former) holy city of Aroesus on the mortal plane, the most honored and wealthy city-state in Lymaeus...and also the one most thrown into chaos by events. It holds the Megali Naos, the Great Temple of Aroesus, which is a repository of great artifacts collected from across the continent.
Out of Character Info
So this was set up largely on a request for a Gods-themed RP, so I am posting the interest check first and I'll work on the mechanics, and even specific names (I've got code for a programmable name generator that spits out Greek and Persian-style names, using the consonant and vowel patterns of the names in those languages) if there is sufficient interest to do so (and I will share the code with you, of course.) I prefer to use the Greek body of mythology as the root of this, or at least for the flavor of it all, because the Greek gods were petulant, flawed beings, often hubristic as all get-out and there's the whole cycle of son killing father and father killing son, not to mention the scorned women and the general insanity. The Greeks, in my mind, have the richest mythology, and that's what makes them the most fun.
Each player will come up with a deity that has a portfolio, though there can be some portfolio overlap between gods (a source of great conflict) not to mention the concept of deposed gods, up and coming usurpers (former half-mortal sons, powerful spirits and so forth) that will create a lot of strife within the realm of the Gods. The intent here, of course, is to create a war among gods, and more than likely create immense suffering among the hapless mortals as well. It's not so much good versus evil as everyone having a point of view and feeling justified in it...if everyone was a self-sacrificing paragon of virtue, this would be no fun. The fatal flaws will be the most important aspect of the characters.
The idea is that there will be alliances and conflicts from within and without, as each being strives to get on the throne or get someone they support on the throne so that they enjoy the position of power from which to keep the others in line. With interest, there will be a fleshing out of the realm(s) of the Gods, as well as a rough idea of what the mortal world is like, though the mortal world is obviously very secondary to the realm of the Gods...though the possibility of a Trojan war scenario, where the gods wrangle over mortals, is highly possible.
History
(Not at all complete; this will be added to as characters are)
Ventu was a primal deity of fire, creation and destruction, but also the absolute ruler of the world. He was content to rule the cosmic forces without doing too much with them, being a simple being of simple tastes. He sired, upon the stars, other beings, including Aroesus and Svanus, who were of a more creative, cultivating bent. They created and Ventu destroyed before the creations could get out of hand and his children become empowered. His final child was Sileon, who was like Ventu in so many respects that Ventu favored this youngest over all. And yet, Sileon stood in awe of the things he didn't entirely understand, and learned from watching his elder siblings as they moved through the world and created things, including fickle humanity and spawned their own progeny.
Lymaeus saw Ventu's children and desired some of her own; Ventu sired upon her Svanus and Mysia. Desiring more children, she found a way to create beings within herself, though they were unsightly to the eyes of Ventu and took much from her. They were allowed to live for a time, these powerful children of the world. But she gave too much of herself to her children, her power weakened.
The time came again when Ventu was inclined to destroy the works of his children and the other things that came to being in the world, and that was when Aroesus and Svanus (and others) rebelled against them. Lymaeus, weakened from her births, was smashed down by Ventu, her children shackled along with Aroesus and his siblings for their rebellion. It was Sileon, left free, trusted, who Ventu thought understood the best, who freed them from their imprisonment in Sharzunates, who decided that he could not bear to see the works of his siblings, whom he loved, destroyed.
Aroesus and his host organized, a thing unknown to Ventu, who ruled in singular absolutism, and revolted against the king of the gods. After the death of Ventu, there were other mighty beings that tried to take Ventu's place in turn and Aroesus' Pantheon fought them under his leadership. The other siblings found roles in the court of Krona that befit their talents; but Sileon inherited the raw strength and primal of his sire, and became a force of destruction akin to his father, though he voluntarily put himself into slumber in a mountain so that the creation might thrive, electing to hold himself aloof until needed. From time to time, Aroesus would call upon Sileon to assist in maintaining the order of Krona, to bring other deities and beings into the order, and for this, he would be awakened and unleashed upon enemies. Even if they were powerful, they were brought low by the combined cooperative might of the sons of Ventu.
In time, Svanus became discontented with the primacy of humanity, whom Aroesus had created, and the favoritism it was shown. Svanus became critical of Aroesus' unwillingness to create new things to populate the lands, and the way he harshly regulated those that tried. Aroesus eventually became enraged at the dispute and struck his brother down. This marked a turning point where Aroesus began to distrust his siblings and created contingencies to use against a rebellion by those he formerly trusted and relied upon.
Family Tree of the Deities
*(Ventu)
**(Aroesus)
**(Svanus)
**Mysia
**Vaela
**[Paichnidi]
**Sileon
*(Lymaeus) – Slumbering
**(Svanus)
***Dihira
**Mysia
**Dinn
* - Sire
** - Child
*** - Grandchild and so forth.
( ) - Being is dead.
[ ] - Being is imprisoned.
