A solemn wind disturbed a dune of stellar ash, sweeping dead stars, like dust, across the galactic sea. The thing that looked like a man gazed on, wishing it all away.
"Why?" said the thing that looked like a girl. "Why did we let it happen this way?"
"Because we were afraid," said the thing that looked like a man. "Because we wanted them to live, and never gave them room to breathe."
"Then let them have it," said the thing that looked like a girl, clenching her quivering hands into fists. "Let them have it all. Let them make this world their own; let no limits be upon them. Let them laugh and cry and hate. Let them go out there and be happy," said the thing that looked like a girl, laying her hands on the thing that impaled the man. "Set them free."
"You know not what you do."
"I don't care," said she.
The thing that looked like a girl wrenched the javelin from his chest and raised a great cry. Then she hurled it into the darkness, where it tore a wound so bright that quenched stars lit in its gaze, and she braced as the winds of dawn blazed against her, burning her, igniting the dune and the body and all the stars therein, blowing it apart and carrying its dust into a new galaxy.
She stretched her hands against the force of the wind, and felt a mass growing where the gale met her palms; and when the mass grew too great to hold back, she stretched out her other hand, and a smaller mass grew there; and when the gale overcame her they slipped from her palms and she tumbled back, laughing, as the two orbs spun one around the other.
As they fell into the cool distance, she grabbed the greater mass in her hands and twisted it; she felt it warm, and fizz. She clutched its warmth to her chest, and kissed it, and the moisture of her lips enveloped it.
And the thing that looked like a girl fell onto its surface, where the sun warmed her still, and she laughed, and her joy rose on the horizon in a hot, clean blue that covered the sky. She struck her palm at the ocean, and a plume of cyan entered it. Again and again she struck, dancing along the shore, until the sea was filled with life and oxygen.
Then she fell to her knees, exhausted.
"Take it!" said the thing that looked like a girl, laughing as the tears streaked down her face. "Come and take it all."
This is the prose intro for a new game, collaborated on with great love and devotion, by the cast of a wildly successful roleplay that began in early 2015 and is still going: Divinus!
Divinus is an extremely free-form deity roleplay that has been run three times over the past five years or so, with positive results each time. While the gameplay itself has a backbone of rules, which we've updated to make sleeker and more fun, the way the story and the world of the gods pans out each time is always wildly unexpected.
Although the current game is an advanced roleplay in the Casual subforum, we're aiming to make this one something truly casual and light and fast-paced, with posts of just a few paragraphs each. It'll go in the Free section, but don't expect the quality of the writing to flag- much of the Divinus cast is in Godspeed, and we'll keep an eye out for players from anywhere.
Here's the overview, which can also be found in the current revision of the thread starter, which has all the updated rules.
Divinus is a game about Gods. Taking a blank planet as our starting point, we write characters that come into being as the sovereign lords of the universe, and follow them as they compete, collaborate, fight, and fumble their way through Creation.
Though gods may start small, in time they will raise mountains, gouge rivers, sow jungles and freeze oceans, and having done so they can create every manner of flora, fauna, spirit and mortal folk to populate them. Their colliding visions for the world may drive them to invent mighty weapons and field vast armies, conjure horrific monsters and sanction glorious heroes in order to defend their dreams from the passion of the other gods.
Each god embodies a certain Domain of existence, such as Life or Chaos, and wields it in a unique way. Their power is measured in Might, which they must spend wisely on the aspects of creation that are most vital to them. As they grow and expand into new powers and Domains, they may build holy sanctuaries in which their mortal disciples may glorify their name, raising them to even higher levels of terror and splendour.
Though the game of gods has many rules, all of them are here for your benefit, to make sure everyone plays fairly and in a collaborative manner. We've put a lot of effort into the system, so I hope it brings as much pleasure to you as it has to us.
We have five players from the 'casual' iteration of the game who've already pledged to join in. Here are their character sheets!
I lack the speed to write as much as the majority do for Divinus
Are you sure speed is the word you're looking for? Divinus is quite slow, but if all goes to plan, Godspeed will be pretty fast-paced. The post length in Divinus is sort of just a product of the way stories pan out.
Are you sure speed is the word you're looking for? Divinus is quite slow, but if all goes to plan, Godspeed will be pretty fast-paced. The post length in Divinus is sort of just a product of the way stories pan out.
Speed is definitely the right word I was looking for, I tend to near just over a thousand words per five (to eight) hours... on reflections perhaps resolve would have been more appropriate although it's mainly due to me staring off into space, thinking of what to write for the next sentence...
Divinus is slow paced although I'm not entirely confident that I'd be able to write on par with others considering this predicament, hence my interest has been directed at Godspeed rather than it's predecessor.
Interested. I always have liked this sort of thing.
Edit: Maybe a god of Change and Chaos (for the latter is the purest expression of the former) although someone else expressed interest in change and we've got one whose the patron of rebellion, so it might be easier to hop ship towards a god of knowledge and forbidden secrets and stuff like that. Either way, perhaps maybe something of a cunning or conniving god who isn't as interested in overtly expanding his own power as he is in simply throwing something out there and seeing whether anything - shall we say interesting - happens as a result; the Might is just a means to that end.
I'm not 100% sure what to say, but color me interested! As long as you guys don't find Apples edible that is.
Well, last game we managed to eat spiders, explore the divine origins of lactose intolerance, and distil liquor from human skin, so I think we can safely say anything goes in the culinary world.
We also had some nice stories about bread.
One question, what kind of writing are you expecting here?
Depends on what you mean.
There will be a soft cap on post length. It will probably hover around two or three thousand characters. This is why the game will be going in Free, as well as because Divinus is in Casual for some reason, so we may as well spread out.
Posts can go shorter, but rapid dialogue and combat interaction should probably be collabed. There's not limit on collab length (within reason).
Otherwise, don't rush things. Pay attention to how the other players are writing and try to match their effort in your own style. Make sure your posts make sense, are paragraphed nicely and grammatically tidy, colour coded if you want it and have a Might use summary at the bottom. Posting will be mostly (but not necessarily) third person- we tend to play with perspective a lot in Divinus.
Interested, thinking of some kind of god based on challenge and change.
Maybe a god of Change and Chaos (for the latter is the purest expression of the former) although someone else expressed interest in change and we've got one whose the patron of rebellion, so it might be easier to hop ship towards a god of knowledge and forbidden secrets and stuff like that. Either way, perhaps maybe something of a cunning or conniving god who isn't as interested in overtly expanding his own power as he is in simply throwing something out there and seeing whether anything - shall we say interesting - happens as a result.
These are always popular! Feel free to try out any of these archetypes.
In fact, feel free to try anything at all that comes to mind. In Divinus we currently have a god of Order (Physics), Beauty (Mathematics), two very different eldritch abominations, a mechanical engineer who uses his Might to build robots and devices, a worm-god of Flesh, a dead god of Life, a porcelain god of Perfection and Calligraphy, and more.
You really can go buck-wild with this.
the Might is just a means to that end.
That's all Might is, really- using numbers to count power.
Oh, you are having so much fun in Divinus then! So much fun, you will not even know what to do with all the fun, you will be like "damn, how do I contain all this fun?" and later be like "Okay, this might be too much fun" but it will be too late, the fun is seeping from under your door, soon it will fill the room with pure fun, and there is no escape.
@Lord Zee The character sheet is in the rules thread, if you'd like to start work on them. We're not really waiting on anything but me to stop being a sad sack of exhaustion.
@Lauder WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT NOTHING ELSE FOR A WEEK
