What happens to mortals when a god steps away from his portfolio?
I finished up a campaign about a year ago that had a few loose threads I'd like to explore in a miniseries campaign, the chief one being: What happens when the god of truth and reason dies?
Now, this is a god, so he's not dead. He's just abandoned his duties and is adrift somewhere in the Astral Plane, forgetting and being forgotten. The mini-campaign quest will be an Astral adventure to find and restore this god - or install a suitable replacement before an evil cult does it first. The question is, what effects could the death of a god like that have on reality?
Perhaps magic gets a little unpredictable? Perhaps things that have always been true (like...physics? history?) become malleable or change without warning? How could an event like this impact mortals? I already have ideas about what religious/political/divine shenanigans this power vacuum will cause, so I'm primarily curious about practical consequences in a multiverse where the gods are the ones actively keeping the lights on, so to speak. Would love your ideas!
Perhaps magic gets a little unpredictable? Perhaps things that have always been true (like...physics? history?) become malleable or change without warning? How could an event like this impact mortals? I already have ideas about what religious/political/divine shenanigans this power vacuum will cause, so I'm primarily curious about practical consequences in a multiverse where the gods are the ones actively keeping the lights on, so to speak. Would love your ideas!
You could take one out of the Invisible Sun rpg world. In a nutshell, the "actuality" in IS is a spell that cast itself into existence, and time expands both backward and forward from the moment of creation. That means that at any given time, there is more "history" than there was in the past. In a world without a god to keep an ordered accounting of reality, historical events could spontaneously have happened, or be eliminated. Perhaps an entire extinct civilization becomes "true" history.
Gods manifested as Absolute Control over their domains, not as their source.
So the forces existed without divine interference. This was the natural state. But it was not the natural state that people were used to.
We "killed" the god of life and death with a thing called the Soulforge. And as promised, it returned the plane to its natural state in life and death.
Except not everyone liked it. Especially humans didn't...
See, people no longer died of natural causes. But they did suffer from old age, up to a point of being just living sacs of dry meat. Too frail to even end their own lives.
Birthrates dropped too. So humans slowly became extinct with their miserably short spans of wellness and fertility.
Elves were the original inhabitants, before these current gods. Of course their lives weren't very different now. They had plenty of time to reproduce and enjoy youthfull years.
There was another god of rejuvenation, nature etc. Maybe if they were dead too, people would live forever and healthy too. 😄 But we'll never know.
Without that core of truth and reason that the god provided, everyone is cast adrift and each forms their own reality. Not unlike a beholder, they wander about their plane, believing that everyone and everything outside their personal reality is but a dream, an illusion.
The god of reason and truth was really good at his job, your players discover. Truth and reason crumble and unravel gradually, instead of everything crashing down all at once. The world is still in terrible danger as thought and reality decays without its care tender. A madness epidemic is spreading and the populaces sanity is deteriorating at an alarming pace. There is no rhyme or reason why the madness is spreading. It can affect anyone, anywhere, anytime. One of the strangest things about this madness is that it sometimes affects the outside world. A mad man who thinks he can fly, might sprout wings and flap about, someone who develops intense pyromania might gain the ability to burn things with a touch. The works of Lewis Carroll might be a good place to draw from.
If truth and reason are deteriorating, I think and interesting side affect might be that all intelligence and wisdom ability checks have disadvantage.
The god of reason and truth was really good at his job, your players discover. Truth and reason crumble and unravel gradually, instead of everything crashing down all at once. The world is still in terrible danger as thought and reality decays without its care tender. A madness epidemic is spreading and the populaces sanity is deteriorating at an alarming pace. There is no rhyme or reason why the madness is spreading. It can affect anyone, anywhere, anytime. One of the strangest things about this madness is that it sometimes affects the outside world. A mad man who thinks he can fly, might sprout wings and flap about, someone who develops intense pyromania might gain the ability to burn things with a touch. The works of Lewis Carroll might be a good place to draw from.
If truth and reason are deteriorating, I think and interesting side affect might be that all intelligence and wisdom ability checks have disadvantage.
I like this a lot. It's subtle, but visible. If they aren't aware of the god's death, a commoner might just think to themself how "today's society/regime is so terrible and causing people to be unwell". 😄 Wise people are debating the cause of spiking foolishness.
The ultimate, yet rare cases, are the people who think they can fly. But even as rare as they are, such cases are much more frequent than before.
I also like the lack of self control and reason sprouting actual magical abilities.
Personally I'd like to add, that maybe it's not just the Lack of these that arises. Like my friend did in his setting, maybe the Forces of Reason and Truth are as much present as they were, but the god who spread them semi-evenly, is now gone.
So the spectrum is really wild. The middle ground used to be where most people are. Now the extremes on both ends become stronger. People playing Icharos and people seeing with near divine insight how everything connects.
Also lots of pathological liars and lots of people who are unable to utter even the whitest of lies.
In a world without a god to keep an ordered accounting of reality, historical events could spontaneously have happened, or be eliminated. Perhaps an entire extinct civilization becomes "true" history.
I like this. My setting had a huge conflict in its history called the Mind Wars, between illithids and deep dragons. My players had a running conspiracy theory that the Mind Wars were starting again...with the god's portfolio finally starting to unwind, this could give me an opportunity to make their conspiracy theory truth. The mind flayers could suddenly exist in the Middledark again.
The god of reason and truth was really good at his job, your players discover. Truth and reason crumble and unravel gradually, instead of everything crashing down all at once. The world is still in terrible danger as thought and reality decays without its care tender. A madness epidemic is spreading and the populaces sanity is deteriorating at an alarming pace. There is no rhyme or reason why the madness is spreading. It can affect anyone, anywhere, anytime. One of the strangest things about this madness is that it sometimes affects the outside world. A mad man who thinks he can fly, might sprout wings and flap about, someone who develops intense pyromania might gain the ability to burn things with a touch. The works of Lewis Carroll might be a good place to draw from.
If truth and reason are deteriorating, I think and interesting side affect might be that all intelligence and wisdom ability checks have disadvantage.
I can't use madness again, as that was a huge side effect of the previous BBEG's machinations, but I like the idea that one person's belief/truth could suddenly become reality. Little kobolds dreaming of being dragons one day...are. Thieves can literally manifest their way into secure vaults if they believe hard enough. Children scared of the dark might conjure something to validate it. A little chaos is fun. A lot of chaos? That needs some tier 3 heroes to deal with.
I imagine that divination magic would be nuts because of this, too. How can you predict things or scry when the fabric of what is true can change in an instant? Illusion magic might become real. Evocation magic might stop working reliably as laws of physics become malleable. I also like the idea of INT checks being at disadvantage. Everything you know might in fact now be a lie...
In a world without a god to keep an ordered accounting of reality, historical events could spontaneously have happened, or be eliminated. Perhaps an entire extinct civilization becomes "true" history.
I like this. My setting had a huge conflict in its history called the Mind Wars, between illithids and deep dragons. My players had a running conspiracy theory that the Mind Wars were starting again...with the god's portfolio finally starting to unwind, this could give me an opportunity to make their conspiracy theory truth. The mind flayers could suddenly exist in the Middledark again.
Just to be clear, this is a confusing thing to understand.
Imagine if yesterday (12/12), the concept of classical Greek civilization didn't exist. There were no historical artifacts, and there was nothing in history that traced back to that civilization. But today (12/13), the history of classical Greek civilization appeared spontaneously, and we all know as much about it as we do in reality. Artifacts suddenly popped into existence, having been unearthed in the new version of the past. Historical events suddenly and inexplicably altered to accomodate that civilization. Reality itself reformed so that we have actually known about classical Greece all along, and it's something that we teach about in grade school. It's not quite the same as saying Greek civilization exists today. It's saying that the concept of classical Greece didn't exist, historically, until today.
Or another example. Yesterday, scientists knew with certainty that our universe was created somewhere south of 14 billion years ago. But today, scientists know with certainty that it was created 15 billion years ago. In neither case were they wrong, and at dawn today, physical evidence began to exist from the early universe in that stretch of over a billion new years between its new creation date and the old. Moreover, as of today, it is true that we have ALWAYS taught that the universe is 15 billion years old. And tomorrow, we will all have known that the universe was always 16 billions years old, which is not true today.
Weird, right?
Now here's a question to consider. If history "grew" in the sense of what I'm saying between yesterday and today, what sort of person or entity would be aware that the scope of history had changed between yesterday and today?
I'll give you a potential, related, hook for your game. Perhaps, like WW2, the Mind Wars were a consequence of some earlier, more mysterious war. Only that earlier war never existed until the god of reason died, which allowed history to reform in the way I'm talking about.
The end of the truth domain would make deception easier and insight more difficult. Say a default of disadvantage/advantage. So that if a liar uses magic to get advantage the person rolling insight also has disadvantage, even though this technically breaks the game rules of 5e. Also magic like Zone of Truth could actually be Zone of Lies, but no one, not even the caster would know about the change. Perhaps speak with dead always results in untrue answer. All new prophecies are now false. A Diviner Wizard that replaces a roll now gets the opposite result from that power.
The end of the domain of reason means that all knowledge skill checks are now at disadvantage. This would also include checks to repair damage or create mechanically functional things. When players get stuck and roll a check to solve a problem, they get incorrect information about how to fix things. Many people and entities would start to devolve into madness. Especially the highly intelligent whom are accustomed to understanding the logical progression of things.
The world desperately needs the domains of reason and truth to be claimed by someone or something, lest even the gods themselves devolve into madness.
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What happens to mortals when a god steps away from his portfolio?
I finished up a campaign about a year ago that had a few loose threads I'd like to explore in a miniseries campaign, the chief one being: What happens when the god of truth and reason dies?
Now, this is a god, so he's not dead. He's just abandoned his duties and is adrift somewhere in the Astral Plane, forgetting and being forgotten. The mini-campaign quest will be an Astral adventure to find and restore this god - or install a suitable replacement before an evil cult does it first. The question is, what effects could the death of a god like that have on reality?
Perhaps magic gets a little unpredictable? Perhaps things that have always been true (like...physics? history?) become malleable or change without warning? How could an event like this impact mortals? I already have ideas about what religious/political/divine shenanigans this power vacuum will cause, so I'm primarily curious about practical consequences in a multiverse where the gods are the ones actively keeping the lights on, so to speak. Would love your ideas!
You could take one out of the Invisible Sun rpg world. In a nutshell, the "actuality" in IS is a spell that cast itself into existence, and time expands both backward and forward from the moment of creation. That means that at any given time, there is more "history" than there was in the past. In a world without a god to keep an ordered accounting of reality, historical events could spontaneously have happened, or be eliminated. Perhaps an entire extinct civilization becomes "true" history.
My friend did this amazingly well.
Gods manifested as Absolute Control over their domains, not as their source.
So the forces existed without divine interference. This was the natural state. But it was not the natural state that people were used to.
We "killed" the god of life and death with a thing called the Soulforge. And as promised, it returned the plane to its natural state in life and death.
Except not everyone liked it. Especially humans didn't...
See, people no longer died of natural causes. But they did suffer from old age, up to a point of being just living sacs of dry meat. Too frail to even end their own lives.
Birthrates dropped too. So humans slowly became extinct with their miserably short spans of wellness and fertility.
Elves were the original inhabitants, before these current gods. Of course their lives weren't very different now. They had plenty of time to reproduce and enjoy youthfull years.
There was another god of rejuvenation, nature etc. Maybe if they were dead too, people would live forever and healthy too. 😄 But we'll never know.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
Without that core of truth and reason that the god provided, everyone is cast adrift and each forms their own reality. Not unlike a beholder, they wander about their plane, believing that everyone and everything outside their personal reality is but a dream, an illusion.
The god of reason and truth was really good at his job, your players discover. Truth and reason crumble and unravel gradually, instead of everything crashing down all at once. The world is still in terrible danger as thought and reality decays without its care tender. A madness epidemic is spreading and the populaces sanity is deteriorating at an alarming pace. There is no rhyme or reason why the madness is spreading. It can affect anyone, anywhere, anytime. One of the strangest things about this madness is that it sometimes affects the outside world. A mad man who thinks he can fly, might sprout wings and flap about, someone who develops intense pyromania might gain the ability to burn things with a touch. The works of Lewis Carroll might be a good place to draw from.
If truth and reason are deteriorating, I think and interesting side affect might be that all intelligence and wisdom ability checks have disadvantage.
I like this a lot. It's subtle, but visible. If they aren't aware of the god's death, a commoner might just think to themself how "today's society/regime is so terrible and causing people to be unwell". 😄 Wise people are debating the cause of spiking foolishness.
The ultimate, yet rare cases, are the people who think they can fly. But even as rare as they are, such cases are much more frequent than before.
I also like the lack of self control and reason sprouting actual magical abilities.
Personally I'd like to add, that maybe it's not just the Lack of these that arises. Like my friend did in his setting, maybe the Forces of Reason and Truth are as much present as they were, but the god who spread them semi-evenly, is now gone.
So the spectrum is really wild. The middle ground used to be where most people are. Now the extremes on both ends become stronger. People playing Icharos and people seeing with near divine insight how everything connects.
Also lots of pathological liars and lots of people who are unable to utter even the whitest of lies.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
I like this. My setting had a huge conflict in its history called the Mind Wars, between illithids and deep dragons. My players had a running conspiracy theory that the Mind Wars were starting again...with the god's portfolio finally starting to unwind, this could give me an opportunity to make their conspiracy theory truth. The mind flayers could suddenly exist in the Middledark again.
I can't use madness again, as that was a huge side effect of the previous BBEG's machinations, but I like the idea that one person's belief/truth could suddenly become reality. Little kobolds dreaming of being dragons one day...are. Thieves can literally manifest their way into secure vaults if they believe hard enough. Children scared of the dark might conjure something to validate it. A little chaos is fun. A lot of chaos? That needs some tier 3 heroes to deal with.
I imagine that divination magic would be nuts because of this, too. How can you predict things or scry when the fabric of what is true can change in an instant? Illusion magic might become real. Evocation magic might stop working reliably as laws of physics become malleable. I also like the idea of INT checks being at disadvantage. Everything you know might in fact now be a lie...
Just to be clear, this is a confusing thing to understand.
Imagine if yesterday (12/12), the concept of classical Greek civilization didn't exist. There were no historical artifacts, and there was nothing in history that traced back to that civilization. But today (12/13), the history of classical Greek civilization appeared spontaneously, and we all know as much about it as we do in reality. Artifacts suddenly popped into existence, having been unearthed in the new version of the past. Historical events suddenly and inexplicably altered to accomodate that civilization. Reality itself reformed so that we have actually known about classical Greece all along, and it's something that we teach about in grade school. It's not quite the same as saying Greek civilization exists today. It's saying that the concept of classical Greece didn't exist, historically, until today.
Or another example. Yesterday, scientists knew with certainty that our universe was created somewhere south of 14 billion years ago. But today, scientists know with certainty that it was created 15 billion years ago. In neither case were they wrong, and at dawn today, physical evidence began to exist from the early universe in that stretch of over a billion new years between its new creation date and the old. Moreover, as of today, it is true that we have ALWAYS taught that the universe is 15 billion years old. And tomorrow, we will all have known that the universe was always 16 billions years old, which is not true today.
Weird, right?
Now here's a question to consider. If history "grew" in the sense of what I'm saying between yesterday and today, what sort of person or entity would be aware that the scope of history had changed between yesterday and today?
I'll give you a potential, related, hook for your game. Perhaps, like WW2, the Mind Wars were a consequence of some earlier, more mysterious war. Only that earlier war never existed until the god of reason died, which allowed history to reform in the way I'm talking about.
If I were a god and wanted a vacation, I'd hire someone to take over for me while I was away.
The end of the truth domain would make deception easier and insight more difficult. Say a default of disadvantage/advantage. So that if a liar uses magic to get advantage the person rolling insight also has disadvantage, even though this technically breaks the game rules of 5e. Also magic like Zone of Truth could actually be Zone of Lies, but no one, not even the caster would know about the change. Perhaps speak with dead always results in untrue answer. All new prophecies are now false. A Diviner Wizard that replaces a roll now gets the opposite result from that power.
The end of the domain of reason means that all knowledge skill checks are now at disadvantage. This would also include checks to repair damage or create mechanically functional things. When players get stuck and roll a check to solve a problem, they get incorrect information about how to fix things. Many people and entities would start to devolve into madness. Especially the highly intelligent whom are accustomed to understanding the logical progression of things.
The world desperately needs the domains of reason and truth to be claimed by someone or something, lest even the gods themselves devolve into madness.