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

[LokiLeo789]

@Frettzo That's fantastic to hear! Good on you for making the moves. I glad you're in a safer spot. We're still alive over here and will be for a while, so we'll be ready for Astarte with open arms :)

@Muttonhawk

Especially Vestec.

[Antarctic Termite]

This was everything I had in mind for or ever planned to write for Jvan's distant origin story. It's not particularly relevant, but it's been on my mind.

Over the next few weeks I'll try to wrap up more loose ends and catch up on more posts.

ed: as always, some explanatory notes in the summary

[Muttonhawk]

This was everything I had in mind for or ever planned to write for Jvan's distant origin story. It's not particularly relevant, but it's been on my mind.

Over the next few weeks I'll try to wrap up more loose ends and catch up on more posts.

ed: as always, some explanatory notes in the summary

@Antarctic Termite

That's some nice tying-together-o'-things.

I wonder if the experiences and scars Jvan picks up along the way influences her future iterations? It's probably outside of the scope of this RP to answer narratively, but I am curious whether the porcelain shard she picked up is going to stay along for the ride and cause some kind of convergence at some point.

[Antarctic Termite]

@Muttonhawk I think we'll have to see if Jvan escapes this reality alive first.

[Frettzo]

Sup, I am bout ready to get this started. Since posts are kinda on the slow side, I'd like to ask permission to post double, triple, quadruple posts. Is that alright? Of course, I'll wait a couple days between each post just in case.

Also excuse me if my writing is whacky, I'm taking the rust off and trying out my new wheels (my new laptop). Hopefully by getting back into my beloved Divinus I'll rekindle my creative fire back to its height.

[Muttonhawk]

Sup, I am bout ready to get this started. Since posts are kinda on the slow side, I'd like to ask permission to post double, triple, quadruple posts. Is that alright? Of course, I'll wait a couple days between each post just in case.

Also excuse me if my writing is whacky, I'm taking the rust off and trying out my new wheels (my new laptop). Hopefully by getting back into my beloved Divinus I'll rekindle my creative fire back to its height.

@Frettzo

Pretty sure most of us are either busy or stuck in collab hell, so go ahead.

Good to have you back! I have something to read on the bus this morning, yay!

[Scarifar]

I should probably return from the dead myself...

Maybe one day...

[Muttonhawk]

I should probably return from the dead myself...

Maybe one day...

@Scarifar

DO IT!

Here, I'll help...

[Slime]

I've been slacking off way too much too. I'll try to make a small post soon.

[ActRaiserTheReturned]

Oh this old thing, I forgot how it even works

[Double Capybara]

Whoa, you can now use Grammarly on gdocs. That is so nice, their site itself is kinda bleh. Here is a prayer I won't need 3 months to write a post again.

[Double Capybara]

Hamartia: "a fatal flaw leading to downfall"

What's in a name.

[Lauder]

“Welp. Ugly thing with wings, check. A child with a badass magical arm, check. And finally a giant behemoth of thing that snapped the ugly guy in half, but not killing him, and writing in the dirt check. I will chalk this day up as ‘slightly above average’ until something spontaneous comes out of the sky.”

”Look! Something spontaneous coming straight toward us!” Orphan exclaimed, pointing to a streak of white light head towards the group.

“Ah, now it’s above average!”

Teaser

[Kho]

Oh, we're doing teasers? My turn

Remember to bring boats

Teaser, spoilers, bewarned

[Double Capybara]

Sorry for the double post, but I really want to finish the Tsoti and Dzanya stories before this RP comes to a close, and there is quite a long road ahead, even if the pacing should start to grow a bit faster in the next few posts. I also can't make the posts too big since that is too exhausting, I have no pretty pictures for most of the dusklander and mesathalassan cultures and I do need the khookies to justify a lot of the tech and social advancement.

[Muttonhawk]

I hereby forgive Capy's double post on the grounds that the post included the collective noun for owls.

[Lauder]

ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

a post.

[Cyclone]

As this RP has started to slow down and the old plots that I started years ago have begun to grow stale, I've been thinking a lot about a new installment for Divinus. In past months I've advocated for us planning to begin the slow process of seeing arcs to their end, so I imagine this comes as no surprise. Anyways, I've realized that there needn't be a linearity here. I could stick around here and simultaneously start a new Divinus.

So some ideas have taken my mind by storm over the past day or two and I figured I'd share them here, both to test the waters for interest and also get some feedback.

To start with, I'm of the opinion that it's high time we took a collective dive into the deep end and made a Divinus in the Advanced RP section. This is basically the opposite approach of what was done with Godspeed some time ago, so I'm interested in seeing how it might turn out differently.

Another idea I had to differentiate it from past Divinus RPs was to bunker down bigtime on the mythology, magic, and divine aspects. Basically I'd canonize the metaphysics as being more or less completely Aristotelian; the universe would be composed of a series of numerous concentric spheres and would be Galbar-centric. With Galbar as the middle sphere, there'd be upper 'Celestial' spheres with the stars and such embedded into them, as well as 'lower' spheres that might contain an underworld and the like. In this hierarchical system, objects and life would be very intrinsically connected to their sphere of origin. Travel between the spheres would be quite difficult but not impossible. Most magic could be explained as energy (or essence) of other spheres leaking into Galbar's, and gravity would exist because the objects of Galbar's middle sphere long to be united with Galbar. Birds cannot simply fly up all the way to the Heavenly Spheres; that'd be absurd, and they're bound to Galbar!

When you do mythological stuff, go big or go home, as they say.

Anyways, the concept of the spheres would tie in to the nature of divinity and the powers of the gods. Though divine beings would be powerful enough to traverse throughout the various spheres (this would probably make for a good definition of divinity, actually--it also fits in with our current limitations of demigods being incapable of unaided interplanetary travel) they would be most closely connected with one of them. Some gods might well choose to attune themselves with the middle sphere (Galbar) and exist among the mortals, a la Thor. But many others would probably choose their own spheres, so the god of death might have his underworld, and the fire god might have some infernal sphere that'd be like Muspelheim, and so on. This provides a very solid in-universe explanation for how personal planes would work and it also might allow some tensions. Since these spheres are physical places, they aren't entirely cut off from others; it'd be much easier to trespass into others' places, and in some cases it might be necessary to travel through somebody else's sphere to get to where you need to go. The gods of the upper spheres and those of the lower spheres might also come to dislike one another.

So spheres would obviously be very important and defining aspects of a god. For the most part they'd become manifest very early on in the RP and then stay the same, but perhaps a few resemblant of Persephone could change spheres throughout the course of things. Given the much greater emphasis on personal planes by lieu of this concept of spheres, I am tempted to make modifications to the Domain(Portfolio) system. Specifically I find myself tempted to say that 'Domains' as we call them are no longer necessary; I could rename Portfolios to something more like Foci. A god could then take completely unrelated Foci, like Horses, Earthquakes, and Seas (a la Poseidon). Though you wouldn't start with one, our notion of 'Domain' could perhaps be renamed to Cluster. Taking multiple closely-related Foci like Volcanoes and Forges would give you a cluster over that sort of thing, in this case Fire. Having the cluster of Fire would imply some level of mastery and control over all things Fire-related, even if they aren't technically Foci.

And all this talk of spheres leads in nicely to one thing that I very much liked about Godspeed--the usage of Mater Lei instead of some all-powerful yet vague and enigmatic figures like Fate and Amul'Sharar. They wouldn't be exact parallels, but I would have a figure that I'll nickname 'the Architect of the Spheres' as the informal leader of the pantheon. The Architect would be the god that found the void that would eventually become Galbar's universe, slowly crafted the various spheres, and then after spending so much time creating the empty shell of Galbar decided to enlist help for the monumental task before him. Enter the other gods, who he promptly offers control over many of the spheres so that they can help him to realize his vision. Of course, all the millennia of solitude have made the already oddball Architect into even less of a people-person. So given that as well as how he'd only be slightly more powerful than the other gods rather an overwhelmingly so, the situation would quickly spiral out of his control. Much to his chagrin he'd be unable to micromanage and gods would start doing what they want, but as they'd come to be attuned to the various spheres, it'd be too late to kick them out. So he'd just have to make the best of it and try to maintain some semblance of order.

Well that was quite a bit. Thoughts?

[Lord Zee]

I loved Godspeed and was saddened when it died, I had a fun time with Larwen and Maeve (Thanks again @Kho that story was beautiful). So when I heard talk that one day there might be another Divinus Rp, I subscribed here in the hopes that it would come to fruition. I have patiently waited, and will continue to do so. I do love those God Rp's XD.

Anyways, I feel like Godspeed became advanced anyways, so I don't have a problem with one in the Advanced Section. I like the idea of spheres, reminds me of D&D a bit. Also another tidbit I liked from Godspeed was the Prestige system for heroes, any chance that might see a return? Everything else looks great and has my support, with what that's worth. I look forward to seeing what comes of this!

[Cyclone]

@Lord Zee

Yeah good to see you again; I remember Larwen and likewise thought that you and Kho did very well together. It's a shame that you and I never got to interact much.

I agree that Godspeed spiraled out of control and started to look like an Advanced RP. That's a large part of the reason behind why I advocate for the 'deep dive' that I mentioned.

Also another tidbit I liked from Godspeed was the Prestige system for heroes, any chance that might see a return? Everything else looks great and has my support, with what that's worth. I look forward to seeing what comes of this!

The Prestige system indeed seemed to work quite well, save for how that one guy with Promus was able to make like five heroes and had mountains of prestige...

Perhaps modifications to how prestige is earned are warranted, but as for the system itself and how it was spent on titles, I do think that Termite was onto something. Back in the old days, we used khookies instead of prestige, and Kho would read every single hero post, rate it, and bake an appropriate amount of khookies as an award. That became too time consuming and thus we came to the more formulaic approach to prestige that you saw in Godspeed, but perhaps a compromise can be achieved. Specifically I'd look at the quest system and give it more attention. I think it makes things a lot more interest to award prestige for heroes when they actually do things of significance and/or meet failure and make sacrifices.