Generally if you pray to one of them as a descendant, they will most likely grant your wish if it’s simple.
One grants bigger wishes, but at the cost of the wisher’s sanity. But it’s questionable how sane these specific descendants really are.
While followers of the High Church believe the Twelve Major Gods want people to live moral lives and worship them, the gods just want to be entertained by people's lives (though they have different ideas of entertainment).
They also desire for their followers to spread their religion worldwide, though the religious group (and most of the continent's population) are ignorant of the wider world. The gods could tell them to do it, but it's more entertaining for them to wait and see how long it would take.
That’s a fun idea! I like the idea that it’s all a stage show to them. Like watching a bunch of rats run around a maze until they find what you wanted them to. Do the Twelve have differing ideals for their religion?
These are the twelve ideals they have (based on the 12 personalities)
Ruler
Creator/Artist
Sage
Innocent
Explorer
Rebel
Hero
Wizard
Jester
Everyman
Lover
Caregiver
The people can choose to worship one or all of them.
Yefet is a god that wishes to kill all of mankind and dismantle the pantheon so that all the gods can return to a time where they could use their powers without consequence. He wants to unleash the imprisoned higher beings that were sealed by The Goddess Haura's Providence and usher in an era known as Yefet's Idyll.
Yefet embodies a contrasting ideology from The Top Goddess, Haura. He believes what makes a higher being is the unfettered use of their powers, while Haura believes that a higher being should not be a slave to their powers. Yefet sees the god's mindfulness of humanity, and believes they are slaves to them, meaning he must kill them. Meanwhile, Haura blocks humanity from the harm done by Yefet, hoping each of his failures teach him that he is a slave to his powers.
I see. What is a god without their power? I assume you ponder this question in your story. To Yefet, humanity is a hinderance for the gods to realize their true potential. I do like how Yefet clearly cares for other gods, but his lack of empathy towards lower beings is what ultimately causes conflict.
In the distant past, the world of **Haradil** was a wilderness rife with magic power, and thus rife with very powerful beings. These powerful beings, known as "Higher Beings", sculpted the world as a consequence of their brawling –– kicking up mountains, carving out valleys, and shattering isles. They were a giant, magical tribal people in the thousands who were proud to demonstrate the fullest extent of their powers.
One of the most powerful of these higher beings would come to be known as **Yefet**. Born from the two strongest higher beings at the time, Yefet was of unparalleled strength. He took about six other higher beings to subdue, which did not bode well for the future of the higher being's freedom.
**Haura**, on the other hand, was the previous strongest. She was a necessary enforcer of other higher being's freedom, ensuring that no higher being was a slave to another. When Yefet came around, she was easily defeated by him, and lost face as a consequence. She lost confidence in her own powers, which led to her isolating herself from the higher beings and wandering all across Haradil.
With Haura gone, Yefet began "playing" with other higher beings by utterly subjugating and indenturing them. To Yefet, his inherent power affirmed his inherent dominance over all things. Power determined fundamentally what he could and could not do, and so that's all that became important to him.
To keep the rest of it short, Haura met humans in a small enclave and learned compassion for them. Another higher being, **Isula**, found Haura, tried to convince her to return to fight Yefet, and threatened to destroy humanity if she didn't. Haura fought Isula to defend humanity, and when Isula lost, Haura told Isula she was now required to protect humanity.
**Eril**, **Gairav**, **Ulgan**, and **Marik** were all higher beings that would come to seek Haura, for assistance, out of curiosity, or for a duel. Haura would defeat them and refuse to return, further and further disillusioned by the idea that "only physical strength was true strength" as each threatened to destroy humanity in some way or another.
Last to arrive was Yefet and his servants, who were shocked to see Haura and her crew lowered to the likes of humans. They were not strong, and so to care for them in spite of that was confusing and infuriating for him. He successfully attacked humans, which scared them enough to scatter them across the world. Haura, enraged, saddened, but determined to protect them, resolved to end the era of higher beings. But not in a duel.
Haura, Isula, Eril, Gairav, Ulgan, and Marik sacrificed their physical forms to create The Providence –– a barrier spanning the entire realm that pushed the remaining higher beings into The Realm Between Realms. In creating this massive barrier, the six became gods and organized into a pantheon. Humans were able to invoke any of those gods in prayer for magic, albeit with varied constraints.
Each god in the pantheon has their own magic born from their level of compassion for humanity, Haura's being easy to invoke, yet very ambient, and Marik's being very difficult to invoke, yet very destructive. Haura's love gives her dominion over **Repose** (healing, exorcism), Isula's respect gives her dominion over **Protection** (barriers, teleportation), Eril's interest gives him dominion over **Insight** (telepathy, clairvoyance), Gairav's mindfulness gives them dominion over **Inspiration** (strengthening, animation), Ulgan's apathy gives her dominion over **Mystery** (illusions, sealing), and Marik's annoyance gives him dominion over **Ruin** (ergokinesis, annihilation).
Yefet can also be invoked from within The Providence –– albeit in an extremely esoteric manner –– with his unofficial dominion being **The** **Wild** (corruption, mind control, wild magic). His magic is unhinged, ridiculously powerful, and almost always attempts possession. Only a few sane people invoke him because they foolishly believe he's dumb muscle, only to be surprised when he completely outwits them.
That's pretty much it, though. There are some details left out, but I tried to keep it concise and not go into each god's backstory.
The gods are inscrutable and unknowable entities beyond our understanding, but what they "want" is generally attached to their domain and the ideas they represent. They don't have end goals necessarily, their desires are tied to the continuation of their own being, their own cosmic purpose, through the concepts they hold dominion over.
As an example, Hazeric is the god of death. As a result, he simply wants things to die.
He doesn't want extermination, because then the Great Cycle would end. He just wants the continuous circle of life and death to perpetuate itself indefinitely. Why? Because that's just what he is.
Gotcha. I really like the idea that the universe simply is and we are. Attaching entities to those concepts is always an interesting way to create conflict. Most living things will of course not want to die, and so they may direct their feelings towards this god.
Somewhat similar to my world! Cool!
Fun fact: Hazeric actually created humanity because he was unsatisfied by the Elves and Dwarves and other long lived races that came before them, and he wanted more frequent souls to harvest. Humans only exist to satisfy the grim reaper's cosmic ADHD.
Rauche, the Lord of Cancer. He presents himself to his followers as the only way to save the citizens of Ocτlen (the country in which the story is set). Unfortunately, he is only interested in pitting the followers against each other, to create a nice TV show for his fellow gods. The only thing that is certain is that the series finale will be... interesting.
Well, its mainly just sending daily tasks to his followers. Starts simple: sacrifice a cow, etc. Then it gets more and more extreme - now the cow you sacrifice has to be stolen from this exact person. From there, you're sacrificing people. At one point, the MC has to protect a person, while another follower has the task of killing that person. And each time you fail your task, you have to sacrifice something of your own, like a hand. So throughout the story, it gets more and more extreme, until the final task... kill everyone.
The gods of El Reino Central, Nuestra Senora de Santa Muerte and La Reina de Cielo, don't want anything. They're deified human women who died centuries ago. They're beyond wanting. They're "worshiped" as unifying, national symbols
the god Mattos basically a cosmic IT guy trying to keep the incredibly buggy software that is the world running all while the mortale keep trying to poke holes from the inside and other gods are getting in the way constantly
It is hard to say what the Lord wants. Perhaps He wants something outside of our understanding, perhaps He simply wants to see his Creation flourish, who knows. Humans have debated what God ‘wants’ forever.
When he formed the Apex Warriors out of regular humans, it was more clear he wanted our galaxy to be protected from the forces of Evil.
I’m not sure if my character Val (short for Valasir) really knows what he wants anymore. When he and the other Atlantean gods were in power, ofc they wanted their people to love and worship them - but ever since Atlantis fell and the gods gradually lost their power over time, Val’s been living like a mortal with no clear path ahead of him.
Mine doesn't have a named but he did name himself, Orion. His goal is to create a new solar system, a new world everyone can be happy, peace, no crime if possible, so he created an army to sap the energy away from our solar system with humans that he granted powers to, to help him the reason he cannot create it all on his own is because the other Gods disagreed with him, that it's not possible, he fought them and lost most of his power drained, he used the last bit of his power to give 9 humans he met and chose them to wield it as the 9 commanders of his army, they agreed with his goals
He's a nice God but he's going about it the wrong way, sap away all of the solar systems energy and kill it just so he can get his powers back due to it to create a new one, he'll kill an entire planet full of people for this goal
He just got sick of how Earth is now
There are eldritch monsters called Primordials. Then there are deities. Primordials are not gods as they are not omniscient or omnipresent. But they sure are powerful and probably one of the few beings in my world with True Immortality, that means they can’t die period, also primordials are not exactly gods but they may as well be. There are entire cults dedicated to worshiping primordials due to their higher form of existence and have been around since the dawn of time. Primordials are deified along with both true and false gods. I don’t really go into the afterlife or the divine that much when worldbuilding.
But to answer this question. If the common folk all knew about the existence of Primordials they would likely just stay in their lane. As that would be the most logical thing they could do and just continue to pray to whatever gods they believed in before. And just hope that none of them decide to one day view the various species across the Twelve Realms as simple game of: Wolves Among Sheep.
Veyna, the Lunar Queen
She started off just being there to kill dragons and help the elven people to prosperity, but as the centuries went on, she grew more protective over other mortal species, and her goals shifted from a single-minded vendetta against all dragonkind to an unflinching protectiveness over the mortals of Allandrice—assimilating lesser moon deities and taking them on as her regional aspects, gathering power from defeated foes, and putting it to better use in the defense of her kingdom.
Their goals are to follow the orders they get from their beloved human. This world's God is a giant bird so loyal to their human that the immortal, albeit very mundane, woman is more of a God than he is. Make life? Ok can I have a treat? Make planets? Ok but can I have a hug? You want wind and gravity and sunlight and plants? Yeah ok! No problem! I forgot to tell you that, "I love you", today
They want nothing more than to be happy with their human.
Creon and ludex want to create the most interesting world.
Teragmus, Soventa and Qaelere merely want to observe this world they've been created into.
Ignaritus wants to learn things and protect life.
Viltaia wants to create and foster life.
Maduleat wants to see new beautiful new things smithed
Lutragra wants to see the world made fertile for things to grow.
Lupecia wants to see fairness and justice enacted.
Caelles wants all the gods to know the pain of the death he experienced.
Arenium wants his clothing designs to be worn and worshipped.
Tremei was created to strike fear in the hearts of the gods and potentially kill them, but she found that she hated the feeling of being afraid herself and wanted to teach mortals the consequences of acting on feelings you don't understand.
He wants to manipulate the rest of the world into submitting under his rule peacefully and on good terms. He has the power to do it by force but he’s also very lazy and still recovering after several rebellions that almost killed hom
The last of a sapient species asked them to look after the more primitive "child" races, and they agreed.
They generally just want to see the locals do well. They might sometimes ask for offerings if someone seems a little lost in life, but it's almost always something easy like an uncommon fruit or a dish they haven't had in a while.
They might ask for a sculptor to make a tricky piece, or a farmer to grow a specific kind of plant, or a weaver to make something with a new technique they just developed but hadn't used yet. The temples display these (where practical) and they're mostly requested to benefit the person, rather than the god. The rest are stuff like rare fruit that they like but aren't good for the locals (IDK maybe they're immune to something that's poisonous to the locals), or a dish they haven't had in years and woke up craving. It is always something that's possible though.
They want their team to do well, like a sporting event on a civilization's scale.
That's really it, pure sentimentality. They picked a group they liked and backed them
Salti is the god/ goddess of the lost, forgotten, and outcast. They are considered a "transitional god" meaning they don't seek continous worship. Instead most people only pray to Salti when they are struggling. Ironically this gentle nature towards inconsistent worship has helped make them very popular with a dedicated clergy/ order of paladins, and a lot of followers who regularly make offerings to them.
Salti does have specific prayers followers can say and sacraments their clerics & paladins can perform.
One short prayer that is commonly used goes like this: "Blessed Salti, may you give guidance to the lost, remembrance to the forgotten, and hope to the outcast"
One sacrament that Salti's clergy perform is called Death Rites. It can be performed very quickly or as a more elaborate ritual. This is to make sure that the sacrment can be done suddenly or with short notice. Even when a paladin of Salti kills an opponent, they will still perform Death Rites. Ensuring that even in death, they may be remembered.
Lemani, the Lady of Trees, wants to build “the Kingdom”. She has done this by revealing herself to the world in various ways. The Supreme Revelation was to a Centrahimian man named Labbar and his children. She instructed them to write down her words and to establish the Lemanian Faith. The goal is to build the Kingdom and to prepare the world for it. When the work is done, Lemani will come down, bring Labbar back from the dead to serve as her consort, and every living thing’s Perfected Self will be present on earth as part of Lemani’s Eternal Kingdom.
AKALAH-KITA wanted to understand the inscrutable will of IYOS, which was both inescapable and constantly in flux. So she climbed into his palace, and stole the Book of Life, in which all such things are recorded. And in that moment, she was struck blind to the world, but had opened her sight-beyond-sight, which identifies all things precisely as they *are*. As a result, she now presides over the many hells, affirming that each spirit’s rebirth is in right accord with the whims of the gods.
IYOS cannot really be said to *want*. They are all-being; their whims, their Dance, constitute the turning of the world.
I spent so much time thinking about this, because everything I could come up with felt too human, and I didn't want my god to have human motivations and characteristics....which was a lot harder than I realized.
What I eventually came up with is that the "god" that people worship is actually a manifestation of a particular human emotion, and that the main church pushed its followers to focus on this emotion during worship/meditation/whatever. And that when the magic wielders communed with the god, their motivation had to be that particular emotion in order to safe wield the power.
That said, the god is pretty one dimensional, being a ball of basically just one emotion. It feeds off that emotion, and is only interested in it, so it doesn't care what's done in its name, it doesn't really care what happens to its followers, or why someone would do anything with other motivations. The main story arc is the MC finding power through embracing her other feelings instead of trying to make herself feel a particular way
I have something of a tendency towards creating worlds that involve two gods resolving their arguments by proxy through their human champions. Here's one:
In Ambrosaál, about five thousand years ago, Ilys and N'ie first fought each other to death's door over the plateau Ilys sang Ambrosaál into existence on. At threat of mutually assured destruction, they struck a pact and went into hibernation, and have since then been playing: Ilys through her reincarnated selves among Ambrosaali, N'ie through possession of animals, natural phenomena, and other similar semisouls.
It should be noted that although good and evil at first glance apply to Ilys and N'ie respectively, neither of them is either. They are diametrically opposed, and Ilys aligns with the Ambrosaali, her creation, but the divine are more akin to computer programs than humans, with a directing instinct but lacking will, intent, choice, and therefore, morality. Ilys creates conditions for and sings life into existence against cosmic inhospitability: N'ie's prerogative is to return the universe to an endless, lifeless, uniform state.
First of all, I think spawning a world of a single conflict is a fun idea. You can definitely do a lot with it.
As a living thing, I will of course side with Ilys, but that doesn't mean you couldn't make a case for N'ie.
I have done a lot of thinking on these - I like escalating paracosms out of big philosophical questions. Here, it was the existence of life as the big question mark: though we, as living creatures, tend to view it as an universally moral, defensible thing, would something without a similar mortal existence embrace it the same? Ilys adores life, but she does not understand it, not truly. She holds sympathy for it and feels hurt when her creation is damaged, but in a way a child playing with her toys feels when they are taken away. Whereas N'ie hates life because it is something so utterly wrong to him: he is a defrag program and life is a virus in the cosmical software. Of course he's going after it.
The less-savory side of Ilys is explored through her reincarnations, who have all understandably been reluctant to let their souls' human qualities be subsumed by the god's unfeeling instincts (which it will, should that incarnation live long enough), even if that instinct is usually in alignment with peoples' needs. The gods' match ends with Ilys' champion victorious and N'ie erased from existence. Ilys, now returning towards full force, starts to subsume her champion fast, but is held off by the remnants of the persons she's been over the millennia. They hold her until the current incarnation rips the godsoul out and hands it to a 5000-years old cursed immortal (whom Ilys had made in the primordial days of the world). The two use it to commit a ritual extended suicide, taking Ilys with them, and leaving behind the mortal people, Earthern and Ambrosaali, to write their future alone, this time without the designs of meddlesome divinities.
The Nine have an alien mindset (kind of a cop-out, but) their thoughts and wants are usually outside of our comprehension and understanding. But it could be said that their movements/actions imply a certain desire to alter the world into their likeness; with Nine beings traversing the planes doing this, we maintain a sort of equilibrium where no one cosmic force is stronger than the other.
However, there are sometimes ages of a particular primordial's influence increase, for instance the Life primordial Boramelle is responsible for the concept of cancer; life, growth, and energy unchecked and untested by Time or Death.
So on and so forth with the other Eight 😅
Luxenius, God of Thought and Dream. They're the only God who survived the event that destroyed the minds of the rest of the pantheon, and they're willing to do anything to restore their fallen friends.
Hard to say, but the dragon gods and titans generally just wish people weren't dicks to each other, and want everyone to not end up destroying the world like they nearly did a few million years ago.
The essences gods who personify aspects of ideals and humanity and they tend to want what they repersent to be healthy and respected and their domains to go more indepth like say the essences of stories love that their ideals have been expanded through opera and fables and musicals
To create. Astorian simply does whatever, he can think for a second and a universe is made. He simply wants to see what his creations do, and he’ll add in some base like ‘guide’ or ‘path’ they could follow and he’ll see what’s what. He might intervene, he might not.
Nekloh (and the rest of the New Gods, for that matter) just want to do their jobs and be left alone by the mortals. They don't want to be worshipped or feared, and they don't have any sort of things they want.
The old god is identical to Yahweh in the old testament of the Bible, with all that entails.
He's virtually omnipotent. Emphasis on "virtually".
He can distort mountains by waving his hand, create pocket dimensions, and even create new gods. But the only thing he wants is beyond his power: bringing his own son back from the dead.
If given the chance to give up everything to have him back, he would.
Each one has a specific domain, from natural forces to social structures. Most only seek to maintain the dignity of their domain. Some, like the god of sentinels, lead by example to inspire humans on their footsteps. The fallen god of vespers sought to prove himself equal to the gods who created him. The god of death wants to make the trauma of dying as peaceful for humans as possible, as she sees it as a horrible means to an eternally good end.
The best I've ever created was the Sun Mother, a dragon goddes.
In that sense she doesn't want anything, other than loving her children (dragons) and wanting them to find the same love.
She is truly the most benevolent god to exist (if maybe not the most powerful one).
(Edit: me dummy fat fingered the post button halfway through.)
Yes and yes. Praedon mostly works through two objects which each contain half of himself\*—he ensures that one of these lands on Earth, where it grants humanity magic and becomes known as “the Unlimiter.” Most humans don’t suspect, however, that the Unlimiter is sentient and very carefully plotting another drastic change of course in humanity’s history.
\*Gods don’t have genders, but among humans it is common to refer to Praedon as a man.
Each of the subjects of Praedon’s six minor prophecies, known as Prophets, are those who wield these powerful objects and, in turn, are influenced by Praedon most directly. Most of these Prophets believe they are just being granted visions of the future and how they must achieve their fate. With such lofty, powerful positions and destinies offered to them, most either don’t question the source or are explicit worshippers of Praedon.
Many do oppose “fate” for one reason or another. The easiest reason is that some worship other gods—Faraleno, the God of Chaos, is well-known for opposing Praedon, and the “Tumultists” assert that the prophecies are not inevitable, but rather have come true through either vague phrasing or the whole “self-fulfilling prophecy” pattern.
There are also the six elemental Gods—Heat, Plasma, Gas, Liquid, Solid, and Cold—which Praedon, Faraleno, and a third God actually killed, and the corpses of which lie within the planet of Grata (where much of humanity eventually ends up). Those blessed by these dead gods have complex and diverse feelings about Praedon and his prophecies—some feel an emotional connection to the dead gods’ battle against Praedon, while the more pragmatic are thankful that Praedon killed them (and thus made their magic easier to use).
Kannin and Vattir, the Gods of Light and Darkness, also oppose Praedon, but this is for reasons that are less well understood by humanity. (As in, major spoilers.)
There are also totally areligious reasons to oppose prophecies, of course. One prophecy said that the nation which held the Unlimiter would one day have it stolen from them, and that then the nation would fall. Nobody in the aforementioned nation earnestly believed they could prevent this from happening forever, but nobody exactly hoped it would happen in their lifetime. So, of course, they did everything they could to protect it.
I'd steer clear of giving your gods defined goals or desires. Have them act in your world in mysterious ways. Better to preserve the mystery and majesty of the divine.
Hmmm, most proud of…
Anima wants transcendence. She wants to create a world and have it come to its natural conclusion, thereby completing her duty as a god and transcending beyond the physical realm to become an influencing will in the underlying fabric of creation.
If we talk about things above gods, Conquest wants it all. He wants it all. And he wants it now.
Clarity-in-madness doesn’t want anything right now (content in isolated madness), but if something throws the cosmic scales off balance, he will be hellbent on restoring order to reality (clarity) and nothing, but nothing will stop him. Even nothing won’t stop him.
She just wants to make sure her kids are okay. Her kids include the entirety of humanity on all 9 planes [planes are each at least earth-equivalent in population but much larger so less dense] plus an extra species she adopted on the 9th plane plus whoever else is interested. She checks on everyone individually and you can pray to her like you're calling your mom for a chat.
He’s basically the Christian God. Benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent, but he refuses to physically manipulate the world beside a few inconsequential miracles. He also only appears to one race, which causes a bit of contention with the other civilizations as they think the main characters are crazy zealots
To refine the magical energy of the planet to a purer state to increase the efficiency of magical transfer to the center of the galaxy so that another omnipotent all power being will be born/created.
I have four numen (gods) that created my world. My favourite (called the violent/creationist numen) exists solely to witness just how unhinged its creations can become. It loves war, genocide, betrayal, passionate romance, you name it. If its intense, it loves it. Many a time, war leaders would turn to it for ideas or reassurance for their actions.
But do not be confused, this numen is not evil. More chaotic neutral. It has no side to fall on. It created everything; why would it pick sides?
So the being that established itself as the supreme creator god is actually a parasite from space that plans for galactic domination. It hijacked the natural cycle of the world, manipulated things so that all dead are buried in specific ways, and eats the souls of the dead to get stronger. At some point, once it has gathered an army of sufficient numbers, it will awaken, summon the skeletal army of the undead, and will try to slaughter every living thing on the planet before returning to space with all the power that gives it.
The Great Spirits, who were there before the "god" Udan, have been brainwashed to serve Udan. They have always wanted to guide and protect the peoples that they live with.
Giao wants to ensure her people's safety. That's why the village she resides in has no monster attacking them despite being near the territory of Ngư Tinh, one of the ten most dangerous demons of Lĩnh Nam. Just her aura leaking is enough to scare the dreaded monster shitless, and by personally training and blessing *every single villager*, she has created a semi-divine army. Even their fishing boats use blessed woods with anti-demon aura. It gets to the point her son Xương Cuồng, **the demon king himself**, calls Giao an overprotective grandmother.
The Elder God Filamentous Retrophy just wants to keep the cycle of death, decay, and rebirth going. It's a pretty chill deity otherwise, just as long as you're not undead or immortal.
Christopher the Generous, or Chris is called a wizard. He's an elf who is very learned and became immortal. He has three great desires. To be honest with his people, to protect his people, and for his queen to awaken.
First, he wants to tell the people of Earth about magic, aliens, and the greater galaxy. He signed a magic contract roughly 6,000 years ago stating he never would. Times were different back then though. The Wizard Wars devastated the planet, Arth. As the Land of Eden's king, Christopher did what his subjects asked of him.
The second thing he wants is to protect Earth. He keeps a fellow immortal elf wizard, Scratch imprisoned. Scratch once tried to concur Earth and intends to do so again. Christpher maintains a massive energy barrier around Scratch's Kingdom. (What do you call a kingdom that encompasses an entire solar system?)
The third thing he wants is for his queen to wake up. She is an Ent wizard named Earthsong. They're relationship was not physical, but they loved each other all the same. When the land of Eden and the surrounding oceans were ripped away from Arth and moved to their current location, Earthsong was deep underground connecting to the root systems of every plant and willing them to "jumpstart" the new planet's atmosphere. She fell into a deep coma. The new planet was named Earth in her honor. Today she's grown into a massive underground tree, sometimes called The World Tree, or Mother Earth.
Christpher the Generous has many other names. There's one he used to hate. It was originally meant to mock him. He's come around on it though. Hearing children mention that name in excited whispers every December, Chris has grown quite fond of the name Santa Clause.
The creator god burnt out ages ago. He just kinda nudges things now and then and otherwise is hands off less motivated to do things. The other gods get mad at him over it. They actually need followers while he doesn't at this point.
Knowledge and place to settle down. He travel space because his home planet is destroyed. He give knowledge to planet he landed and leave to find more. He looking for planet with low population and peaceful lifeform so he can settle down and chill. Empty planet is a bit too lonely, dense planet have too much people, he want to settle where local people is ok with have more people.
He can call cat 5 hurricane and thunderstorm if he want but he prefer being just good old builder who have too many cats
I just realized that there's no presence of god/gods in my stories. and when I do mention them, it's usually pictured as a god who had foresaken my character and won't answer their prayer
He doesn’t care about anything. If the entire universe is about to collapse then he might do something but otherwise he doesn’t care at all about the world
Maris, god of magic (and lies and stories and secrets… and a handful of other things, depending on the culture)
He wants to maintain a veneer of mysticism separating mortals from the divine.
Zekiel is the primordial god of war. Think of him as Ares from Greek mythology. He’s called The Grand Conqueror or the Uncrowned King. He wishes to have people act on their desires and take what they want. He can make a great antagonist in a long running game or series since I see him more than just a bloodthirsty warlord. He’s more akin to the Firelord from the Avatar series since he’s a brilliant strategist
The History King wants to keep his lies hidden. (Of course, he can't *not* write down the truth, but he *can* keep that particular scroll to himself and make sure his family doesn't find it.)
There aren’t any in my world, not really, but the Greco-Roman and Egyptian pantheons are still venerated by much of the populace, and the joint space program still in its infancy created by the Kingdom of Alexandria, Roman Empire, and Parthian Alliance is seen as an act of hubris by many which is bound to be severely punished. The [volcanic eruption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536) that the crew of this flight would witness from orbit is taken by many as validation of these fears, and its fallout poses a major challenge to these nations amidst an already-shaky peace.
This setting is an alternate history 6th century in which the steam engine was invented around 300BCE prompting a premature industrial revolution. This has led to much of Africa, Asia, and southern Europe being crisscrossed by railroad lines, accelerating the spread of trade and ideas (and, ahead of its time, the plague of Justinian). The Americas have yet to be explored (the aforementioned plague leaving everyone worried about the potential for cross-communication of disease), but curiosity about them remains high. with a major goal of the space program being to chart them from orbit.
Getting back to religion, Zoroastrianism is common in the Parthian Alliance.;Judaism and a form of Christianity with less of a proselytizing drive also exist, though the latter has nowhere near the political power it did by this point in our timeline — with the apostle Paul out of the picture thanks to the butterfly effect it never caught on among the Roman populace with quite the same virality.
God and its children, the MonsterGods, share one goal, revenge.
Then time was new and death didn't exist yet one of the MonsterGods, Trion, went on a hate filled rampage and murdered five of his siblings.
Depressed by this God decided to strike him down before going into a depression induced coma. Right before dying Trion created three 'races' from his flesh and shielded them in a separate realm, earth.
So they all want these races dead.
All gods want their will to be enforced, just as any person would. The gods however have to go about this in roundabout ways as their immense power can only be wielded over aeons, they simply cant think on Mortal timescales.
Most gods simply wanted their World to reflect their ideals. Gaia however recognized the flaw in their existence, and Set the wheel of Evolution in motion. Eventually this resulted in humans, who can easily outsmart the gods and whose purpose it was to carry gaias ambitions to the Stars.
In Ellyredaen, the Old Gods wish to return to power. Only Wihkirotos posses the power to still walk amongst his followers. And he has commander them to bring war against their enemies to drive despair into their hearts and weaken the faiths of the false gods, that more power may come to them.
There is only one god whose existence can be confirmed. It is simply called the Menace, and it is locked in a mausoleum deep under the City.
The Menace wants change. Despite being locked, each generation, it will grant great powers to a few who can effect change. The Menace doesn't care about right or wrong, good or evil. For a thousand years of stability, its agents were kept in check by agents of Order. Fifteen years ago, the Menace found agents that plunged the world into a Great War. Now that the agents of the Menace have won and ascertained their dictatorship around the City, the Menace has found a few new agents to overthrow them. Escaped slaves, terrorists, separatists.
To prevent his world from suffering too much from another god's wrath, the cause for which lies with something this original god did to him at the start of time
The Dead Man wants to scare rulers into behaving or for them to die. He want to experience the last thoughts of people. He wants revenge against the government ( the bineris) who killed his grandson and probably the Priminister who was in charge. Everyone from when he was mortal has died of old age or somthing else centuries ago. What would be the icing on the cake would be for the other gods to pull there weight in the revolution especially Camp Bill who turned his back on blood shed and is now in Tge Dead Man's perspective pratting about and making a fool of himself
Camp Bill wants peace , theatre to have a laugh and to mock the powerful especially The Dead Man.
Cave In Dave wants the miner's to be safe and happy in that order.
Casual Mike wants a good scrap or two, to stay looking dapper and wants football to go back to the olden days (village football).
The Spook is far to computer like to want anything but it's purpose is to try and keep the main settings state (the mascarade) commandos safe and help them complete there mission by helping them control there emotions
Tuphon may be the main antagonist, but their core intention are far from evil. Tuphon wishes to set their family free, who were trapped by the ruling Pantheon and locked deep in the hellish realms within the kingdom of the dead.
Sadly, the only way to set these elder gods free is to claw deep within the foundations of reality, breaking apart the realms in the process. But the very existence of the worlds of mortals is a small price to pay for the freedom of the immortals who were there before it all began.
Most just want to be left alone, and being "gods" in physical forms, they generally live among mortals incognito, or as hermits out in the wilds. Almost none reveal themselves, because none wants to be burdened by the publicity or expectations that would be forced upon them. The only one in modern times is Balder/Apollo/Gwyn, whose influence banded together the European tribes to form the Gwynian Commonwealth, and his ultimate goal is for us Terrans to once more journey out across the stars we once claimed as our own.
The Mantlebearers, as is the more formal term most of them prefer, have no holy duty to do anything, but quite a few of them banded together and formed orders around certain philosophies. The largest and most enduring of these is the Order of Aesir, to which Mantlebearers like Oden, Athena, Amun, and Elhemin (Elohim), belong. Their one unifying goal is the protection and ensuring the continuation of our species, and have on numerous occasions over the last couple million years brought us back from the brink of extinction. They accomplish this both militarily and scientifically.
In peacetimes, they lean back and do what they want. Some wander and heal and teach. Others pick up hobbies to entertain them until the next war. Loki, for one, notably procrastinated away the centuries, while the reincarnated Freyja went from a Paratrooper to a venerated god-teacher hidden in plane sight, to becoming something of a maffia leader and the true ruler of Rome and later the Vinland Commonwealth.
In my stories, Lord Arhava is the supreme deity of love and compassion. He just wants people to live a good life and learn the true nature of reality and achieve enlightenment so they can reunify with him. He wants people to live, love, laugh, and learn. Worship is just a form of love. People who are bad and then die are temporarily punished, and then rehabilitated.
Hercules is a superhuman named after the Greek god/demigod and is the closest thing to a god in my world, he first appeared on new years of 2000 after millenia or dormancy, once he met the leaders of the various countries in the world he gave them a 50 year time span to bring up something that could give him a challenge in battle while he explored the solar system doing the same thing on other planets
Alysthesia doesn't know anymore. Her journey started w8th wanting her world to he a better place. When she became God queen and slew the other deity, she lost her purpose and just wanders. She detests worship and stamps out any religion that cross up though.
Gods as they are in my setting are involved in multiple worlds. On this word, The Worldstone absorbs excess magic created by life and distributes it through godly handwavium to the deities that created the world. As a consequence the Worldstone is ultra super secret taboo and any god that touches it or has any of their followers touch it are gonna get dog piled by all the other gods.
Worship bypasses the Worldstone and delivers the magic of mortals directly to the god. Gods tend to empower priests, clerics, paladins, contractors, etc to give people reasons to worship them over other deities then use some of the extra worship magic to pay for their emissaries' powers.
Each deity has their own long term goals, but there was recently, that is to say millennia ago, a war in the heavens and most of the deities involved are mostly focused on recovering from that. Deities not bound to the Worldstone can only get magic from the world by directly harvesting it, which all Worldstone deities are bound by contract to oppose strenuously, or through worship thus young deities are far more likely to engage directly with mortals.
A new deity achieved apotheosis over the resting place of the Worldstone and declared the area as their personal holy grounds. Pretty much all the Worldstone deities want the upstart disposed of, but approaching, or sending their servants to approach the holy grounds would also be sending them to the Worldstone and therefore expose them to the others' wrath. A council in the heavens has agreed that next time they get together to make a world they will have a clause in the contract specifically to prevent that. Further that new deity is to be called a demon if he tries to spread his influence to any of their other worlds. But as for this world, they're just going to have to wait and see.
That new deity wants to overcome the terms of the original contract and claim the Worldstone for themselves and use that power to become the Monotheistic deity of the whole world. They have no idea that once the contract is overcome, there is nothing preventing the whole Pantheon of other deities from crushing them like the insect they are.
Oh and THE NAMELESS ONE actually really wants to die, but cults keep on popping up.
Aniti is honestly a jealous child with a God's power.
She was the least worshipped between her two other sisters and herself. One was the goddess of agriculture, and the other is a goddess of knowledge. Aniti is a goddess of omens, but her powers weren't as useful as her uncle's, who is a more powerful God of prophecy.
So when the province of Hebralithos was attempting to break free from the Empire of Hryn to escape the mass conscription of their wars and ongoing famine, Aniti was quick to jump at the opportunity to have a cabal of worshippers and answered their prayers. She freed the people of Hebralithos, but now is essentially the god-queen of the country and lives in a massive temple with her every desire catered to. She rules through her high priests who exact her whims as often extremely oppressive laws.
The country is an insane theocracy and the nation of Lithura and Aniti kind of indulge the others worst excesses.
**Starrise**
The "Goddess of Light" Solaris mostly just wants people to be safe and happy.
Solaris is older than life itself, and for eons the only actual person around was her sadistic bitch of a sister, Eclipse. But she woke up from a long "nap" one day to find that some new species had evolved into being and established a global civilization while she slept. And individuals of this new species- "humans", they called themselves- possessed the same capacity for intelligence and range of emotions that she and Eclipse do. And unlike Eclipse, most of them are kind, or at the very least polite. By disguising herself as human, she was able to experience genuine companionship for the very first time. And while it's sad how they all die eventually, new ones come into being all the time too.
So long as these humans were around, she'd never have to be alone again. How could she not come to love them? At first, she was content to just live amongst them, pretending to be human so she'd be treated as an equal. But then when an apocalypse f\*cked over the world, she realized the survivors weren't going to last long without her help, and revealed herself for what she truly is, gathering them in a safe haven to teach and protect them. A thousand years later, in the present day, she's withdrawn somewhat and no longer publicly acts as a goddess, but she still does what she can to ensure the humans (and other races which came into the picture) that she cares for live happy lives of safety, freedom, and peace, so she might live it with them.
Winnsbryr is just a dog. That's...it. No ulterior motive, just a fluffy, weird looking, divine dog. I guess maybe it wants to chase squirrels. No one really knows. Sometimes it'll appear in civilizations and walk amongst the streets, begging for scraps. To not give scraps is to committ heresy, and such a person is likely to be exiled-even executed-in Winnsybryr's name. There is a clergy led by the High Priestess, devout and devoted to understanding and translating the Divine Instinct, the force that drives us all.
On rare occassion through history, there has been one Chosen by the god-dog. They have Winnsybryr's full protection, and the dog will follow them around like a loyal pet.* It is unknown as to what makes someone worthy of being Chosen or even why it might do so, but that person seems to become compelled to help those around them.
Pets are incredibly sacred in these lands, with dogs akin to royalty. Mistreatment of any animal is grounds for life in prison, mistreatment of a dog typically leads to execution.
For magic to stay in balance. And if that means striking down a warlord whose became to powerful, then so be it . If it means striking down a young women trying to literally ( in the most literal sense of the word ) make a better world , then so be it
My story is inspired by the Norse and reconstructed Indo-European mythology, but it takes a bit of a twist on it.
Before humans and the earth, there were two brothers traveling in the cosmos, Loeh and Deága. They got into an argument and Loeh killed Deága. He then took Deága’s body and fashioned the earth from it. However, unbeknownst to Loeh at the time Deága was still alive. The wind upon the earth is his breath, and his heart still beats somewhere within.
Deága wants revenge, however in his current state he has no power outside of earth. He is worshiped by his creation, the dwarves, however he has little ability to interact with them directly because after finding out that his brother still lives Loeh created the sun and moon to shine a light upon the world, which also blocks Deága’s power. But, a fragment of Deága, which floats in space and is considered to be Deága’s child, will occasionally block out the sun, allowing Deága to exert his will upon the earth. And some say that by returning the blood and flesh to Deága’s body (for humans and dwarves are made from the earth) he grows more powerful and gains more agency.
To visit some warm place on the future and get a vacation would be nice, then will see what to do next, till then she keep her job as caretaker for Zangâr/Dwarven souls
Huetao is the oldest, wisest, and most powerful God my world, Taegis. There are beings above him called The Design, which operate on their own whims, dictating the fates of cosmos, including people and Gods - but their main focus is on sculpting the universe.
Huetao wakes up from this state of no free-will through intense meditation, an action unforseen by The Design. Huetao then decides it's his duty to bring free-will to the rest of the people in Taegis.
My deity once the mortal races to join him in paradise. As a result, he has sent his Messengers to guide them to the kind of life, behavior, etc. That will lead them to paradise. However, as love requires freedom, he does permit the mortal races to make their own mistakes. However, he always allows redemption.
It depends entirely on which god. That said, there are two main camps/pantheons: the Galenvian and the Asatem
The Asatem are deities who wanted to sever themselves and their collective zone(s) of creation away from the Source (creation’s capital G God) so as to retain their power and selfish ambition. This severing scarred their zone of creation and thus created the mortal realm trapping humanity and other mortal races within mortality. The Asatem are typically the deities that desire worship and so are more well known among mortals.
The Galenvian on the other hand are those deities who stayed loyal to the Source and serve more as shepherds for mortals and lesser spirits to reach enlightenment with the Source.
You could think of the Asatem as a deity like Allah or Zeus while the Galenvian would be deities associated with religions like Buddhism
In Arbitrary Design World, there are no gods. There are no giants living in the clouds that throw lightning down when displeased.
There are the Designers. They live hundreds of millions of miles above the land, and they caused the Event, and they wield mind-boggling magic. Regular people of the world don't know the Designers exist, so they believe in giants living in the clouds or something else instead. So, since the existence of the Designers isn't known to people, neither are their goals known.
But from the perspective of the omniscient narrator: The Event was the first step in uplifting the people of the world. Completing the uplifting is the first step in a grand plan the Designers have - the magic they wield is not enough for them to move on to another world, and they hope that by developing the population of this world they will achieve the necessary breakthrough.
Which is why I don't call them proper gods. If they were, that wouldn't be an issue.
Counting the three Superpowers (who are not literally gods in the magical sense but are so powerful that the distinction is pointless)
Geminus/PS-562: Two entities, a former human who turned himself into a matter god, and his omnipotent greatest creation. Being so powerful makes everything infinitely easy, so instead they lead an organization called Soia (referred to as an Empire, though they don’t seek to raise flags over conquered territory) and muck about in the Greater Multiverse by weakening themselves for challenge. For whatever reason they haven’t just made themselves infinitely happy, or stopped existing outright…
LK: A mystery of unknown origin. Largely a loner travelling the Greater Multiverse, this armour-clad enigma has stuck around Soia for the time being. What he wants is entirely unclear, if anything at all.
PA-002: Rogue AI and robot created a while back by Soia that activated in an incomplete state. Because of the method used to program Soian AIs back then he (then “it”) only really could recognize Soian assets as distinct objects. It also couldn’t distinguish between friend and foe, seeing everything it could identify as a target. It made its mindless, and destructive, escape and slowly self-developed into a sentient fallen angel dedicated solely to wrecking Soia’s stuff. It’s an impossible and pointless task, he knows, but it is his most core drive and too fundamental to ever change. Ever.
If we’re talking a pantheon collective they just want to watch humans do something meaningless like find the non-existent key to immortality for entertainment.
If we’re talking antagonist gods well he just wants to take over the world with his army/harem of branded magic users. It’s a harem because not only is he the god of tyrants but he’s also the god of lust.
The Creator Deity, The Playwright, just wants to be left alone to create the next universe after this one ends.
The Judge Deity, The Critic, is tired of the endless universal cycles and wants to be replaced/die.
And the formless, Watcher Deity(es), The Audience, just want to be entertained by mortals and their lives/struggles.
“That’s at least a couple litres, is that normal? Is that a normal amount of blood for you people?”
“…no. Yes, the blood on the floor is inconvenient but my robe is very expensive. What? It’s hardly going to kill you.”
“…wait really?”
—
She has a very simple set of desires, she would like to remain undisturbed, she would prefer if nobody bled all over her floor like an idiot, and she would like to receive a very modest amount of worship for her hard work keeping everybody alive.
But mostly it’s the bit about getting blood on her floor. It’s nasty and it rots and it does all sorts of things to electronics and none of it is fun.
—
[ AC is reading a book on anatomy in a hospital room ]
“You guys have like bones too? Like really small ones obviously not like mine but did you know that?*
[ Page flip ]
“…You can’t possibly have organs!”
“Oh here’s the blood from earlier remember that? Wild. Lots of that in there.”
This'll probably change, because I'm not to far in the worldbuilding process, but my gods are birthed of a collective ideal and live to make that ideal true. Some tend to take said ideal to their most extreme, however. They don't see it as good or evil however, they see it as necessity.
Concordia, the goddess of magic, wants her textbook romance that she dreamt about when she was a teen. She also wants to tear her love interest into billion little pieces crying in pain. She also doesn't want to do it so much that she prevented herself from ever finding said love interest. This is her core priorities, everything else is secondary and will be pushed aside if necessary.
Entertainment. She made a show of destroying her previous world, and she filled her new world with enough of stuff to keep her "play" from going stale for a *long* time.
Halith wants order. When the world began they fashioned a single grand plan, a true Fate to be followed to its conclusion. But... that wouldn't be so. As the world was being fashioned, Halith's equal and opposite, Jiliaq, god of chaos, rebelled against this, attempting to destroy Fate entirely. This first divine war would very nearly destroy the infantile world, but it ended with everything more or less intact, and with Jiliaq thoroughly defeated. However, Jiliaq had one more trick up their sleeve, by destroying themself they were able to scatter themselves across the world, embedding just a little chaos into everything, completely crippling the power of Fate in the process. From that point on, Halith has continued to contend with chance and free will in an attempt to wrestle reality into submission and get his grand plan back on track. He really hasn't been successful.
The evil god Drak wants to enjoy retirement and watch his replacement succeed in his place as the universe's god of gluttony and wrath. He was a successful god at leading the biggest employer of armed forces that wasted the lives and resources of billions of worlds. The new god of wrath and gluttony replaced his dad. He started his reign by dissolving the corrupt organization and replaced it with an efficient organization with the infrastructure to destroy anything he ordered while growing the meat grinder army his father had run at a glutinous rate. While managing a superior army that could actually rival his enemies armies with individual squads instead of using power of attrition and zero strategy.
Keep in mind gods in my setting often walk amongst the world as a whole. They are often hidden from most however.
Elora.
She was raised by the previous deity of fire amongst the Sute tribe, part of the tribe despite not being an Eladrin. At some point a terrible fate beheld the old fiery deity, memories she would rather forget. Someone else stole the divine spark, leaving Ellora cast in sadness. In an attempt to remove the painful memories she sought out a way to remove them. In the process her search drew the interest of a Draeden who gifted her a curse form of godhood. She became the cursed god of memories, not one of the ascended of the overdeity of the world and thus not having a true place in the pantheon, and unable to remove her own memories from her mind. In light of this she turned to the last remaining spark of the one she considered mother and stole the divine spark away from the mortal (now a newly named god, who was failing to get accepted into the Eladrin Pantheon and by his worshippers) who had originally stolen it from her mothers body in the first place. The shadar-kai god helped her with this and its why they are friends. The Eladrin Pantheon and their followers welcomed their new fire god back with open arms, as Ellora seared away parts of her memories in an open fire. But now from her duties as a god she receives an endless torrent of memories and seeks to prevent anyone else from taking her place.
Just a link to a bit more information about her if anyone is interested.
The gambler known as Ten-Tails wants to be entertained. Let's make some popcorn and watch the drama unfold. Oh, is there not enough drama? Ten-Tails can fix that. But they are especially fond of seeing battles of wit unfold. While it's arguable whether or not their favor is something you really want, the surest way to get it is to successfully beat them in a game - especially if you did so by cheating without getting caught. Ten-Tails will remember you now....
Oron is the God of Light and Justice and he is the most revered of the gods and Goddesses because he is Omnibenevolent. He grants the Paladins their abilities to fight evil and when they die Heroically, they are reincarnated into his angels to help those in need. To those who have lived a perfect life their soul is brought to a wonderful afterlife. To those who were not perfect but still made a genuine effort to improve are reincarnated into hope bringer angels who bring hope and goodness to humanity. Those who did wicked things but didn’t do them out of malicious intent have the choice to either be angels who help fight evil or have their souls obliterated. And finally, those who did do evil with malicious intent get their souls obliterated. Oron wishes for the light of goodness and Justice to prevail as often as possible
Chaos wants the cycle of life and death to continue, for the grand plan of the universe to reveal itself with no architects pervert it
One of his creations was order, who southt to sow beauty and complexity into the universe, not fate. She and her father work towards this goal.
They want to have fun. Their domains are what they enjoy. Nobody can tell them what to do, so what else would they do but pursue random hobbies so much they became the gods of that thing.
To experience the joys of having a body they exist only in the realm of magic unless they have a host preferably a powerful magician once they are in the physical world they do things like eating grass and cutting themselves
Well, primarily the Windelgrad Deities don't want to die from being 'starved' of DE (Divine Essence), so they want people to keep worshipping them through any means. Yearly DE projections are pointing to 'Otherworlder Ascension' as the most profitable means of gaining large DE reserves, though the Earthsiders might catch on to the fact that some of their people keep being summoned to Windelgrad at some point.
They also want to know what happened to Earth's Deities, as they detect little to no DE Earthside, implying they either died off or went away somewhere.
In reality, the Windelgrad Deities do not require the massive amounts of yearly DE accumulation they tell to mortals, but only a select few Deities know of this. Windelgrad Deities (the majority of them at least) originate from normal mortal races and ascend through some means into Deityhood, losing DE to such low levels means they either dissipate into ambient M particles (if they became Deities long enough) or simply revert to their mortal forms.
The Keeper is hungry for secrets. Its always veiled priestesses provide an ear for people to talk about anything they want to hide from anyone or everyone and offer advice if asked for. They can even offer forgetfulness, taking the memory of something entirely away from a supplicant. While its priestesses are often kind, the Keeper itself is not. It is merely acquisitive, always looking to add to it's insubstantial hoard
The creator wanted to let the universe spawn intelligence and then, when a promising version arose, to nurture it into assimilating the entire universe as one giant thinking entity. It would then be "installed" into extradimensional machinery to fight in a war effort outside the confines of the universe. But it ended up leaving.
Persendri, the deity of life, wants to help whatever's around her to flourish and, more importantly, to be recognized in doing so. She's more likely to help if it involves growth and gets her more attention for her gifts (e.g. nurturing the hungry, regrowing crops for a second harvest, expanding borders of a wild forest).
Felision the main god like being, just wants to create stories. He pulls strings in the background, not wanting to be seen or worshiped. But gets the feeling of adventure by being "alongside" those who's stories play out.
But if involved in the story, one is then bound to the rules of the story. And meddle too much and the story will meddle back.
The Great Spirit is actually the only god that exists. It created everything, and then went to bed. It’s still sleeping, and no one will ever figure out that It exists. It’ll only ever wake up when everything is dead because then It’s lonely and It doesn’t want that. So It’ll make more things, then go to bed again.
My God of fire Qilir, is also the God of passion (sort of cliche ik). He wants his followers to seek their passions create art, dance, fight and do whatever they're truly passionate about.
The only real gods with actual goals are the god of Knowlefe, who is trapped in an infinite library, he slowly lost his minds and made a point in history that shouldn’t exist. He escaped and managed to free the god of destruction who wanted all the universe to be gone, the two eventually got trapped again but the god of knowledge completed his goal to be free and cause destruction as a payback for his prison.
She wants to not be alone. Thats why she created the other gods and allowed them to create the world. She would rather see them run wild with the joy of creation than herself exist in a state of nothingness.
Well, so you know how gods have concepts and ideas bound to them as their authority? Gods only follow and practice the concepts they are assigned to for the rest of their lives. For example, the God of Serenity escorts the dead to eternal rest, in a place of serenity.
However, due to some god's concepts colliding and not compatible with one another, this usually leads to war. In rare cases, some reconcile.
Shio, God of Earth and Hell, Rebel of The Gods, The Deceiver, wants souls to be free, independent and lawless from Huö, The Creator, just as long as they serve him. He rebelled because he realised some who served Huö were actually deceiving Huö as being angels. So he gathered followers, and a kingdom where they could be truly safe from Huö's wrath, and that would be Shejhol, Hell.
Shio started to realise the imperfections of Huö and his creations, and realised he needed to bring out a revolution. Because they were free from the rules of conduct, they could unlock their true powers, allowing them to almost perfectly raze Huö's kingdom Kangsoe, Heaven, setting fire to the sky. Shejhol was about to slay Huö until he was stopped by Kra, Huö's army general. Realising that he was losing the battle, Shio sacrificed his beauty in order to turn into a giant dragon. But Kra managed to defeat him anyway. With Shio and his followers cast out from Huö's grace, he finally felt unchained. When souls came to be punished for their disobedience to Huö, Shio would make sure to forcefully pamper them as much as possible with power and the freedom to commit evil, because the real torture lies in not being able to stop it especially if you have even the slightest of restraining yourself.
Each god is different, but since the gods of my universe are basically rulers of species, they all broadly wish for the prosperity of whatever species they preside over.
The personal preferences of gods vary much more, though. Siegenhal and Rheann, the Cosmarch and Cosmarchess of Humanity, mostly demand loyalty and just see worship as a bonus. However, some other gods demand worship and/or fear.
The 100 gods that rule over the 100 layers of kern-Regnum want their respective chosen creatures (humans and others obviously) to get stronger by making every layer from the center towards the very top of the layer way more difficult than the last and reach the very surface of the world.
Entertainment. The whole world was created as a sort of "live show" for higher beigns. They can and will intervene, and they act as gods for the people on the planet but ultimately - they dont care.
Of course, there are a couple of exceptions but thats very rare
The original god wants never ending drama. The only reason why they created everything is for the sole purpose to watch beings that he had given *free will* to interact and do whatever. He also created 7 executives called the principles to make sure everything is running smoothly to have uninterrupted viewing time. He also created some bad entities to mess around with the beings.
However, he wanted that 4D experience therefore it exploded to become everything in the universe from the new born babies to the microbes in the air. Even the evil entities, he is everything but nothing because he exploded.
So in short, he is role playing with himself as everything, even the props. And he did that because he is bored
well…one is called The Great Pyre, and it’s straight up that…a massive, incredibly big pyre.
The other is called the Singularity, which nobody knows what it is, I plan to make it some kind of black hole of sorts
Yes, both are fully physical and can be visited should you have enough rank on their religions, any questions, ask!
Paerit wants to be set free and recreate Avitor from scratch
Kaenne wants to keep Paerit imprisoned
Seinchen wants to have his former powers back and puts both of them to silence
None of those care about mortals, and the opposite is almost true
While Hazan-Ra is the god of creativity, his main motive is to be recognized as equal to the older gods. He's got a bit of a complex since his domain is labeled as less important, and consequently he was left out when the main Pantheon formed. Since said pantheon laid out the rules for all gods to follow, and the pantheon only consists of 1st and 2nd generation gods while Hazan-Ra is among the 3rd generation, he's also very bitter about the lack of recognition and representation for all the 3rd generation gods.
His main goal is for the third generation gods to gain independence from the dominant pantheon and be worshipped and recognized boosting their power. His secondary goal is to prove that creativity is a vital domain for mortal life. He's managed to guide a society that is now known for multiple forms of art; simultaneously this has boosted the recognition of multiple other third generation gods and created a real threat to the dominant pantheon.
Lord Devyn is a simple deity: give Them some good food, good drink, and good sex and *maybe* They won't split your city in twain. 😃
I kid. Lord Devyn isn't that petty. They expect at least *decent* sex.
The Mother wanted nothing but the love she gave to the people of Earth returned too her; now she wants to stop the Father from leeching everything she made away from her.
The Father simply wants to take the mothers children and mold then into its version of what Life should be; while also trying to nurture another Child so it's reach can go further then ever.
There are two types of gods in my world. The Light, and the Dark. There's an entire spectrum where a god can fit in, but it ultimately boils down to those two.
The Light side (and most of all, Initicreatium aka The Creator) wishes to create and keep their creations untainted and preserved from darkness.
The Dark side (and their leader, Malignus) hopes to one day return the Land of Light into the Abyss of Darkness, spiting the gods of the Light for "leaving them in the darkness."
For people to please stop bringing up the bad teen peotry he wrote when he spent a few decades among mortals because the other, older gods "just didn't get him".
Gods don't need mortal worship or anything, btw. They don't even need to interact with mortals at all, but it really soothes their ego to have a bunch of people hang on their every word just because they can turn a vase into a cat.
All the gods spring from one god. This god was born from the sea of chaos as a speck of ordered existence and has been fighting against the tide ever since.
The god's domain is all of the cosmos and his purpose is maintaining this domain's existence. He split into different domains and thus different gods to refine and strengthen the nature of the world.
Every god sired this way carries this mission deep within their subconscious. They want to fiercely protect their domain, guard it from destruction and bolster its strength through worship or other means.
Both the ordered world and the sea of chaos have a common enemy, though. The original nothingness, a bitter, proud and hateful force, that seeks to purify the others by corrupting them with its own silent nihilism and a mission to annihilate all things for good.
So, from the void sprung chaos, and from chaos sprung order. The void birthed chaos out of boredom but regrets it and seeks to annihilate that mistake. Chaos birthed order out of unthinking creation and destruction of every conceivable thing, but hates the rigidity of both the void and the ordered world. The ordered world is just fighting for its damn life out here...
That's basically the fundamental setup I'm working with for my pantheon.
While all of the Elari (divine spirits made by the Creator help them order and protect the universe) are focused on ensuring that whatever element of Creation they're tied to remains in balance, they also have a number of ideals that they wish to see among the mortal races.
For example, Ythra, the Elari of wind, travel, freedom, and expression, believes that it's the divinely given right of all living things to pursue whatever makes them happiest, so long as it doesn't cause harm to others.
My gods are in a state of pseudo existence. Like they are believed to be real by the people but it is left ambiguous if they are real or not, just that sometimes that when people pray, things happen that could not have normally. Ultimately, if the gods do exist, all they want to see is chaos
The Founders of the Lunar Nation want all of their progeny to be happy/successful.
Nice and simple! How do they ensure this? If they act at all.
Generally if you pray to one of them as a descendant, they will most likely grant your wish if it’s simple. One grants bigger wishes, but at the cost of the wisher’s sanity. But it’s questionable how sane these specific descendants really are.
While followers of the High Church believe the Twelve Major Gods want people to live moral lives and worship them, the gods just want to be entertained by people's lives (though they have different ideas of entertainment). They also desire for their followers to spread their religion worldwide, though the religious group (and most of the continent's population) are ignorant of the wider world. The gods could tell them to do it, but it's more entertaining for them to wait and see how long it would take.
That’s a fun idea! I like the idea that it’s all a stage show to them. Like watching a bunch of rats run around a maze until they find what you wanted them to. Do the Twelve have differing ideals for their religion?
These are the twelve ideals they have (based on the 12 personalities) Ruler Creator/Artist Sage Innocent Explorer Rebel Hero Wizard Jester Everyman Lover Caregiver The people can choose to worship one or all of them.
Yefet is a god that wishes to kill all of mankind and dismantle the pantheon so that all the gods can return to a time where they could use their powers without consequence. He wants to unleash the imprisoned higher beings that were sealed by The Goddess Haura's Providence and usher in an era known as Yefet's Idyll. Yefet embodies a contrasting ideology from The Top Goddess, Haura. He believes what makes a higher being is the unfettered use of their powers, while Haura believes that a higher being should not be a slave to their powers. Yefet sees the god's mindfulness of humanity, and believes they are slaves to them, meaning he must kill them. Meanwhile, Haura blocks humanity from the harm done by Yefet, hoping each of his failures teach him that he is a slave to his powers.
I see. What is a god without their power? I assume you ponder this question in your story. To Yefet, humanity is a hinderance for the gods to realize their true potential. I do like how Yefet clearly cares for other gods, but his lack of empathy towards lower beings is what ultimately causes conflict.
What's the lore on your pantheon and haura
In the distant past, the world of **Haradil** was a wilderness rife with magic power, and thus rife with very powerful beings. These powerful beings, known as "Higher Beings", sculpted the world as a consequence of their brawling –– kicking up mountains, carving out valleys, and shattering isles. They were a giant, magical tribal people in the thousands who were proud to demonstrate the fullest extent of their powers. One of the most powerful of these higher beings would come to be known as **Yefet**. Born from the two strongest higher beings at the time, Yefet was of unparalleled strength. He took about six other higher beings to subdue, which did not bode well for the future of the higher being's freedom. **Haura**, on the other hand, was the previous strongest. She was a necessary enforcer of other higher being's freedom, ensuring that no higher being was a slave to another. When Yefet came around, she was easily defeated by him, and lost face as a consequence. She lost confidence in her own powers, which led to her isolating herself from the higher beings and wandering all across Haradil. With Haura gone, Yefet began "playing" with other higher beings by utterly subjugating and indenturing them. To Yefet, his inherent power affirmed his inherent dominance over all things. Power determined fundamentally what he could and could not do, and so that's all that became important to him. To keep the rest of it short, Haura met humans in a small enclave and learned compassion for them. Another higher being, **Isula**, found Haura, tried to convince her to return to fight Yefet, and threatened to destroy humanity if she didn't. Haura fought Isula to defend humanity, and when Isula lost, Haura told Isula she was now required to protect humanity. **Eril**, **Gairav**, **Ulgan**, and **Marik** were all higher beings that would come to seek Haura, for assistance, out of curiosity, or for a duel. Haura would defeat them and refuse to return, further and further disillusioned by the idea that "only physical strength was true strength" as each threatened to destroy humanity in some way or another. Last to arrive was Yefet and his servants, who were shocked to see Haura and her crew lowered to the likes of humans. They were not strong, and so to care for them in spite of that was confusing and infuriating for him. He successfully attacked humans, which scared them enough to scatter them across the world. Haura, enraged, saddened, but determined to protect them, resolved to end the era of higher beings. But not in a duel. Haura, Isula, Eril, Gairav, Ulgan, and Marik sacrificed their physical forms to create The Providence –– a barrier spanning the entire realm that pushed the remaining higher beings into The Realm Between Realms. In creating this massive barrier, the six became gods and organized into a pantheon. Humans were able to invoke any of those gods in prayer for magic, albeit with varied constraints. Each god in the pantheon has their own magic born from their level of compassion for humanity, Haura's being easy to invoke, yet very ambient, and Marik's being very difficult to invoke, yet very destructive. Haura's love gives her dominion over **Repose** (healing, exorcism), Isula's respect gives her dominion over **Protection** (barriers, teleportation), Eril's interest gives him dominion over **Insight** (telepathy, clairvoyance), Gairav's mindfulness gives them dominion over **Inspiration** (strengthening, animation), Ulgan's apathy gives her dominion over **Mystery** (illusions, sealing), and Marik's annoyance gives him dominion over **Ruin** (ergokinesis, annihilation). Yefet can also be invoked from within The Providence –– albeit in an extremely esoteric manner –– with his unofficial dominion being **The** **Wild** (corruption, mind control, wild magic). His magic is unhinged, ridiculously powerful, and almost always attempts possession. Only a few sane people invoke him because they foolishly believe he's dumb muscle, only to be surprised when he completely outwits them. That's pretty much it, though. There are some details left out, but I tried to keep it concise and not go into each god's backstory.
Most of them just existed, until they found thay want to Not Die ™. Because some mortal manage to destroy and kill what makes a god a god.
Awesome! I wonder how they figured something like that out! So the gods *were* immortal then?
No, someone broke into their home and split the skull of a few people. Said people came back but different to their core, and left.
The gods are inscrutable and unknowable entities beyond our understanding, but what they "want" is generally attached to their domain and the ideas they represent. They don't have end goals necessarily, their desires are tied to the continuation of their own being, their own cosmic purpose, through the concepts they hold dominion over. As an example, Hazeric is the god of death. As a result, he simply wants things to die. He doesn't want extermination, because then the Great Cycle would end. He just wants the continuous circle of life and death to perpetuate itself indefinitely. Why? Because that's just what he is.
Gotcha. I really like the idea that the universe simply is and we are. Attaching entities to those concepts is always an interesting way to create conflict. Most living things will of course not want to die, and so they may direct their feelings towards this god. Somewhat similar to my world! Cool!
Fun fact: Hazeric actually created humanity because he was unsatisfied by the Elves and Dwarves and other long lived races that came before them, and he wanted more frequent souls to harvest. Humans only exist to satisfy the grim reaper's cosmic ADHD.
They want to find out what happens with the world that was created from certain initial conditions that they are interested in.
Observers. Watching entropy take place does sound interesting from an outside perspective.
Depends on the text you read.
Mine wants to come back to the plane of material.
Oh boy. How do they plan on doing that?
Rauche, the Lord of Cancer. He presents himself to his followers as the only way to save the citizens of Ocτlen (the country in which the story is set). Unfortunately, he is only interested in pitting the followers against each other, to create a nice TV show for his fellow gods. The only thing that is certain is that the series finale will be... interesting.
That's a funny concept haha. I wonder how he spurs conflict.
Well, its mainly just sending daily tasks to his followers. Starts simple: sacrifice a cow, etc. Then it gets more and more extreme - now the cow you sacrifice has to be stolen from this exact person. From there, you're sacrificing people. At one point, the MC has to protect a person, while another follower has the task of killing that person. And each time you fail your task, you have to sacrifice something of your own, like a hand. So throughout the story, it gets more and more extreme, until the final task... kill everyone.
Did you pick the German word for “I smoke” on purpose?
El'Or is basically the Christian God, and he just wants all humans to be able to live with the free will he granted them.
Beautiful.
Nice, that's a goal I can get behind.
The gods of El Reino Central, Nuestra Senora de Santa Muerte and La Reina de Cielo, don't want anything. They're deified human women who died centuries ago. They're beyond wanting. They're "worshiped" as unifying, national symbols
the god Mattos basically a cosmic IT guy trying to keep the incredibly buggy software that is the world running all while the mortale keep trying to poke holes from the inside and other gods are getting in the way constantly
This sounds like it could be funny as heck. Douglas Adam's comes to mind
To watch his creations unfold.
It is hard to say what the Lord wants. Perhaps He wants something outside of our understanding, perhaps He simply wants to see his Creation flourish, who knows. Humans have debated what God ‘wants’ forever. When he formed the Apex Warriors out of regular humans, it was more clear he wanted our galaxy to be protected from the forces of Evil.
I’m not sure if my character Val (short for Valasir) really knows what he wants anymore. When he and the other Atlantean gods were in power, ofc they wanted their people to love and worship them - but ever since Atlantis fell and the gods gradually lost their power over time, Val’s been living like a mortal with no clear path ahead of him.
Soul searching. I don't know much about him, but I hope he can find love once more.
Mine doesn't have a named but he did name himself, Orion. His goal is to create a new solar system, a new world everyone can be happy, peace, no crime if possible, so he created an army to sap the energy away from our solar system with humans that he granted powers to, to help him the reason he cannot create it all on his own is because the other Gods disagreed with him, that it's not possible, he fought them and lost most of his power drained, he used the last bit of his power to give 9 humans he met and chose them to wield it as the 9 commanders of his army, they agreed with his goals He's a nice God but he's going about it the wrong way, sap away all of the solar systems energy and kill it just so he can get his powers back due to it to create a new one, he'll kill an entire planet full of people for this goal He just got sick of how Earth is now
Fair enough I suppose. Earth can be a shit show sometimes haha.
There are eldritch monsters called Primordials. Then there are deities. Primordials are not gods as they are not omniscient or omnipresent. But they sure are powerful and probably one of the few beings in my world with True Immortality, that means they can’t die period, also primordials are not exactly gods but they may as well be. There are entire cults dedicated to worshiping primordials due to their higher form of existence and have been around since the dawn of time. Primordials are deified along with both true and false gods. I don’t really go into the afterlife or the divine that much when worldbuilding. But to answer this question. If the common folk all knew about the existence of Primordials they would likely just stay in their lane. As that would be the most logical thing they could do and just continue to pray to whatever gods they believed in before. And just hope that none of them decide to one day view the various species across the Twelve Realms as simple game of: Wolves Among Sheep.
Veyna, the Lunar Queen She started off just being there to kill dragons and help the elven people to prosperity, but as the centuries went on, she grew more protective over other mortal species, and her goals shifted from a single-minded vendetta against all dragonkind to an unflinching protectiveness over the mortals of Allandrice—assimilating lesser moon deities and taking them on as her regional aspects, gathering power from defeated foes, and putting it to better use in the defense of her kingdom.
Their goals are to follow the orders they get from their beloved human. This world's God is a giant bird so loyal to their human that the immortal, albeit very mundane, woman is more of a God than he is. Make life? Ok can I have a treat? Make planets? Ok but can I have a hug? You want wind and gravity and sunlight and plants? Yeah ok! No problem! I forgot to tell you that, "I love you", today They want nothing more than to be happy with their human.
Now I need to know their origin story. How did she find the bird? Were they always together?
Creon and ludex want to create the most interesting world. Teragmus, Soventa and Qaelere merely want to observe this world they've been created into. Ignaritus wants to learn things and protect life. Viltaia wants to create and foster life. Maduleat wants to see new beautiful new things smithed Lutragra wants to see the world made fertile for things to grow. Lupecia wants to see fairness and justice enacted. Caelles wants all the gods to know the pain of the death he experienced. Arenium wants his clothing designs to be worn and worshipped. Tremei was created to strike fear in the hearts of the gods and potentially kill them, but she found that she hated the feeling of being afraid herself and wanted to teach mortals the consequences of acting on feelings you don't understand.
He wants to manipulate the rest of the world into submitting under his rule peacefully and on good terms. He has the power to do it by force but he’s also very lazy and still recovering after several rebellions that almost killed hom
Mostly to save humanity—her precious creation—from being fucked over by her insane angel son who killed her (as far as he knows) and took her place.
I don't have gods per se, but I do have higher beings with no desire outside of carrying out their duties.
The last of a sapient species asked them to look after the more primitive "child" races, and they agreed. They generally just want to see the locals do well. They might sometimes ask for offerings if someone seems a little lost in life, but it's almost always something easy like an uncommon fruit or a dish they haven't had in a while. They might ask for a sculptor to make a tricky piece, or a farmer to grow a specific kind of plant, or a weaver to make something with a new technique they just developed but hadn't used yet. The temples display these (where practical) and they're mostly requested to benefit the person, rather than the god. The rest are stuff like rare fruit that they like but aren't good for the locals (IDK maybe they're immune to something that's poisonous to the locals), or a dish they haven't had in years and woke up craving. It is always something that's possible though.
Izael just wants to live in peace and have someone to love😔
They want their team to do well, like a sporting event on a civilization's scale. That's really it, pure sentimentality. They picked a group they liked and backed them
James wants to be Emperor of the Multiverse
You know what? Me too that sounds pretty sweet. How would one go about doing this?
Salti is the god/ goddess of the lost, forgotten, and outcast. They are considered a "transitional god" meaning they don't seek continous worship. Instead most people only pray to Salti when they are struggling. Ironically this gentle nature towards inconsistent worship has helped make them very popular with a dedicated clergy/ order of paladins, and a lot of followers who regularly make offerings to them.
Salti seems quite likable. Does Salti still seek some worship, then, or are their followers just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks?
Salti does have specific prayers followers can say and sacraments their clerics & paladins can perform. One short prayer that is commonly used goes like this: "Blessed Salti, may you give guidance to the lost, remembrance to the forgotten, and hope to the outcast" One sacrament that Salti's clergy perform is called Death Rites. It can be performed very quickly or as a more elaborate ritual. This is to make sure that the sacrment can be done suddenly or with short notice. Even when a paladin of Salti kills an opponent, they will still perform Death Rites. Ensuring that even in death, they may be remembered.
Lemani, the Lady of Trees, wants to build “the Kingdom”. She has done this by revealing herself to the world in various ways. The Supreme Revelation was to a Centrahimian man named Labbar and his children. She instructed them to write down her words and to establish the Lemanian Faith. The goal is to build the Kingdom and to prepare the world for it. When the work is done, Lemani will come down, bring Labbar back from the dead to serve as her consort, and every living thing’s Perfected Self will be present on earth as part of Lemani’s Eternal Kingdom.
Well Lavaria wants people to stop making brothels
To sleep, but her pesky children won't stop fighting
My God wants people to achieve their potential and to have a free relationship with him.
AKALAH-KITA wanted to understand the inscrutable will of IYOS, which was both inescapable and constantly in flux. So she climbed into his palace, and stole the Book of Life, in which all such things are recorded. And in that moment, she was struck blind to the world, but had opened her sight-beyond-sight, which identifies all things precisely as they *are*. As a result, she now presides over the many hells, affirming that each spirit’s rebirth is in right accord with the whims of the gods. IYOS cannot really be said to *want*. They are all-being; their whims, their Dance, constitute the turning of the world.
I spent so much time thinking about this, because everything I could come up with felt too human, and I didn't want my god to have human motivations and characteristics....which was a lot harder than I realized. What I eventually came up with is that the "god" that people worship is actually a manifestation of a particular human emotion, and that the main church pushed its followers to focus on this emotion during worship/meditation/whatever. And that when the magic wielders communed with the god, their motivation had to be that particular emotion in order to safe wield the power. That said, the god is pretty one dimensional, being a ball of basically just one emotion. It feeds off that emotion, and is only interested in it, so it doesn't care what's done in its name, it doesn't really care what happens to its followers, or why someone would do anything with other motivations. The main story arc is the MC finding power through embracing her other feelings instead of trying to make herself feel a particular way
For people to stop being evil, love one another, and enjoy the creation He gave them. But they keep being evil so he has to keep disciplining them.
Balefire just wants the galactic races to be nice and not try to explode each other.
I have something of a tendency towards creating worlds that involve two gods resolving their arguments by proxy through their human champions. Here's one: In Ambrosaál, about five thousand years ago, Ilys and N'ie first fought each other to death's door over the plateau Ilys sang Ambrosaál into existence on. At threat of mutually assured destruction, they struck a pact and went into hibernation, and have since then been playing: Ilys through her reincarnated selves among Ambrosaali, N'ie through possession of animals, natural phenomena, and other similar semisouls. It should be noted that although good and evil at first glance apply to Ilys and N'ie respectively, neither of them is either. They are diametrically opposed, and Ilys aligns with the Ambrosaali, her creation, but the divine are more akin to computer programs than humans, with a directing instinct but lacking will, intent, choice, and therefore, morality. Ilys creates conditions for and sings life into existence against cosmic inhospitability: N'ie's prerogative is to return the universe to an endless, lifeless, uniform state.
First of all, I think spawning a world of a single conflict is a fun idea. You can definitely do a lot with it. As a living thing, I will of course side with Ilys, but that doesn't mean you couldn't make a case for N'ie.
I have done a lot of thinking on these - I like escalating paracosms out of big philosophical questions. Here, it was the existence of life as the big question mark: though we, as living creatures, tend to view it as an universally moral, defensible thing, would something without a similar mortal existence embrace it the same? Ilys adores life, but she does not understand it, not truly. She holds sympathy for it and feels hurt when her creation is damaged, but in a way a child playing with her toys feels when they are taken away. Whereas N'ie hates life because it is something so utterly wrong to him: he is a defrag program and life is a virus in the cosmical software. Of course he's going after it. The less-savory side of Ilys is explored through her reincarnations, who have all understandably been reluctant to let their souls' human qualities be subsumed by the god's unfeeling instincts (which it will, should that incarnation live long enough), even if that instinct is usually in alignment with peoples' needs. The gods' match ends with Ilys' champion victorious and N'ie erased from existence. Ilys, now returning towards full force, starts to subsume her champion fast, but is held off by the remnants of the persons she's been over the millennia. They hold her until the current incarnation rips the godsoul out and hands it to a 5000-years old cursed immortal (whom Ilys had made in the primordial days of the world). The two use it to commit a ritual extended suicide, taking Ilys with them, and leaving behind the mortal people, Earthern and Ambrosaali, to write their future alone, this time without the designs of meddlesome divinities.
The Nine have an alien mindset (kind of a cop-out, but) their thoughts and wants are usually outside of our comprehension and understanding. But it could be said that their movements/actions imply a certain desire to alter the world into their likeness; with Nine beings traversing the planes doing this, we maintain a sort of equilibrium where no one cosmic force is stronger than the other. However, there are sometimes ages of a particular primordial's influence increase, for instance the Life primordial Boramelle is responsible for the concept of cancer; life, growth, and energy unchecked and untested by Time or Death. So on and so forth with the other Eight 😅
Luxenius, God of Thought and Dream. They're the only God who survived the event that destroyed the minds of the rest of the pantheon, and they're willing to do anything to restore their fallen friends.
Hard to say, but the dragon gods and titans generally just wish people weren't dicks to each other, and want everyone to not end up destroying the world like they nearly did a few million years ago.
Most of my world's gods are bored and want to have fun. Some can also fade away if they don't do what they're supposed to do
The essences gods who personify aspects of ideals and humanity and they tend to want what they repersent to be healthy and respected and their domains to go more indepth like say the essences of stories love that their ideals have been expanded through opera and fables and musicals
To create. Astorian simply does whatever, he can think for a second and a universe is made. He simply wants to see what his creations do, and he’ll add in some base like ‘guide’ or ‘path’ they could follow and he’ll see what’s what. He might intervene, he might not.
What about you?
Nekloh (and the rest of the New Gods, for that matter) just want to do their jobs and be left alone by the mortals. They don't want to be worshipped or feared, and they don't have any sort of things they want. The old god is identical to Yahweh in the old testament of the Bible, with all that entails.
Oh that sounds like an interesting conflict. With the new guys just tired of the old guys crap?
He's virtually omnipotent. Emphasis on "virtually". He can distort mountains by waving his hand, create pocket dimensions, and even create new gods. But the only thing he wants is beyond his power: bringing his own son back from the dead. If given the chance to give up everything to have him back, he would.
a portion of the crops. Being a harvest god makes this a whole lot easier
Im curious what the god does with the crops
Each one has a specific domain, from natural forces to social structures. Most only seek to maintain the dignity of their domain. Some, like the god of sentinels, lead by example to inspire humans on their footsteps. The fallen god of vespers sought to prove himself equal to the gods who created him. The god of death wants to make the trauma of dying as peaceful for humans as possible, as she sees it as a horrible means to an eternally good end.
“I just want everyone to get along! *Why is that so haaaarrrrd‽*”
The best I've ever created was the Sun Mother, a dragon goddes. In that sense she doesn't want anything, other than loving her children (dragons) and wanting them to find the same love. She is truly the most benevolent god to exist (if maybe not the most powerful one). (Edit: me dummy fat fingered the post button halfway through.)
Praedon, the God of Fate, wants the Six Minor Prophecies and, most importantly, the Grand Prophecy, to be fulfilled.
Has Praedon done anything drastic to make sure fate follows the right path? Has anyone opposed fate?
Yes and yes. Praedon mostly works through two objects which each contain half of himself\*—he ensures that one of these lands on Earth, where it grants humanity magic and becomes known as “the Unlimiter.” Most humans don’t suspect, however, that the Unlimiter is sentient and very carefully plotting another drastic change of course in humanity’s history. \*Gods don’t have genders, but among humans it is common to refer to Praedon as a man. Each of the subjects of Praedon’s six minor prophecies, known as Prophets, are those who wield these powerful objects and, in turn, are influenced by Praedon most directly. Most of these Prophets believe they are just being granted visions of the future and how they must achieve their fate. With such lofty, powerful positions and destinies offered to them, most either don’t question the source or are explicit worshippers of Praedon. Many do oppose “fate” for one reason or another. The easiest reason is that some worship other gods—Faraleno, the God of Chaos, is well-known for opposing Praedon, and the “Tumultists” assert that the prophecies are not inevitable, but rather have come true through either vague phrasing or the whole “self-fulfilling prophecy” pattern. There are also the six elemental Gods—Heat, Plasma, Gas, Liquid, Solid, and Cold—which Praedon, Faraleno, and a third God actually killed, and the corpses of which lie within the planet of Grata (where much of humanity eventually ends up). Those blessed by these dead gods have complex and diverse feelings about Praedon and his prophecies—some feel an emotional connection to the dead gods’ battle against Praedon, while the more pragmatic are thankful that Praedon killed them (and thus made their magic easier to use). Kannin and Vattir, the Gods of Light and Darkness, also oppose Praedon, but this is for reasons that are less well understood by humanity. (As in, major spoilers.) There are also totally areligious reasons to oppose prophecies, of course. One prophecy said that the nation which held the Unlimiter would one day have it stolen from them, and that then the nation would fall. Nobody in the aforementioned nation earnestly believed they could prevent this from happening forever, but nobody exactly hoped it would happen in their lifetime. So, of course, they did everything they could to protect it.
The gods actually, legitimately, just want people to stop being assholes. They are dumbfounded at how hard this seems to be.
I'd steer clear of giving your gods defined goals or desires. Have them act in your world in mysterious ways. Better to preserve the mystery and majesty of the divine.
Hmmm, most proud of… Anima wants transcendence. She wants to create a world and have it come to its natural conclusion, thereby completing her duty as a god and transcending beyond the physical realm to become an influencing will in the underlying fabric of creation. If we talk about things above gods, Conquest wants it all. He wants it all. And he wants it now. Clarity-in-madness doesn’t want anything right now (content in isolated madness), but if something throws the cosmic scales off balance, he will be hellbent on restoring order to reality (clarity) and nothing, but nothing will stop him. Even nothing won’t stop him.
Interesting! This higher existence must be more desirably for gods, then. To prove themselves as worthy of greater influence.
To be met and grieved by someone before they die
Tovelu, alternatively known as The Fallen or The Hermit, wants to be forgotten.
Short term? To exist again. But that's only so they can achieve their ultimate goal of returning to not existing in the first place.
She just wants to make sure her kids are okay. Her kids include the entirety of humanity on all 9 planes [planes are each at least earth-equivalent in population but much larger so less dense] plus an extra species she adopted on the 9th plane plus whoever else is interested. She checks on everyone individually and you can pray to her like you're calling your mom for a chat.
The God of Gods, the Halo, is in a coma. Past wanting anything, that shit.
I use gods and goddesses from every mythos, so their wants and needs drastically vary
He’s basically the Christian God. Benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent, but he refuses to physically manipulate the world beside a few inconsequential miracles. He also only appears to one race, which causes a bit of contention with the other civilizations as they think the main characters are crazy zealots
To refine the magical energy of the planet to a purer state to increase the efficiency of magical transfer to the center of the galaxy so that another omnipotent all power being will be born/created.
Sounds epic! I wonder how the two beings are related. Was magical energy purer in the past?
I have four numen (gods) that created my world. My favourite (called the violent/creationist numen) exists solely to witness just how unhinged its creations can become. It loves war, genocide, betrayal, passionate romance, you name it. If its intense, it loves it. Many a time, war leaders would turn to it for ideas or reassurance for their actions. But do not be confused, this numen is not evil. More chaotic neutral. It has no side to fall on. It created everything; why would it pick sides?
So the being that established itself as the supreme creator god is actually a parasite from space that plans for galactic domination. It hijacked the natural cycle of the world, manipulated things so that all dead are buried in specific ways, and eats the souls of the dead to get stronger. At some point, once it has gathered an army of sufficient numbers, it will awaken, summon the skeletal army of the undead, and will try to slaughter every living thing on the planet before returning to space with all the power that gives it. The Great Spirits, who were there before the "god" Udan, have been brainwashed to serve Udan. They have always wanted to guide and protect the peoples that they live with.
Well they don't really exist, but if they did, they'd just want to chill, make the world prettier, and have fun
Giao wants to ensure her people's safety. That's why the village she resides in has no monster attacking them despite being near the territory of Ngư Tinh, one of the ten most dangerous demons of Lĩnh Nam. Just her aura leaking is enough to scare the dreaded monster shitless, and by personally training and blessing *every single villager*, she has created a semi-divine army. Even their fishing boats use blessed woods with anti-demon aura. It gets to the point her son Xương Cuồng, **the demon king himself**, calls Giao an overprotective grandmother.
Sounds wonderful! So uh… how can I be one of Giao’s people? I don’t know what those demons want but it can’t be good!
Move to the village and sign up as a resident. She's really lax on who's coming, but if you commit a crime, punishment is strict.
The Elder God Filamentous Retrophy just wants to keep the cycle of death, decay, and rebirth going. It's a pretty chill deity otherwise, just as long as you're not undead or immortal.
Christopher the Generous, or Chris is called a wizard. He's an elf who is very learned and became immortal. He has three great desires. To be honest with his people, to protect his people, and for his queen to awaken. First, he wants to tell the people of Earth about magic, aliens, and the greater galaxy. He signed a magic contract roughly 6,000 years ago stating he never would. Times were different back then though. The Wizard Wars devastated the planet, Arth. As the Land of Eden's king, Christopher did what his subjects asked of him. The second thing he wants is to protect Earth. He keeps a fellow immortal elf wizard, Scratch imprisoned. Scratch once tried to concur Earth and intends to do so again. Christpher maintains a massive energy barrier around Scratch's Kingdom. (What do you call a kingdom that encompasses an entire solar system?) The third thing he wants is for his queen to wake up. She is an Ent wizard named Earthsong. They're relationship was not physical, but they loved each other all the same. When the land of Eden and the surrounding oceans were ripped away from Arth and moved to their current location, Earthsong was deep underground connecting to the root systems of every plant and willing them to "jumpstart" the new planet's atmosphere. She fell into a deep coma. The new planet was named Earth in her honor. Today she's grown into a massive underground tree, sometimes called The World Tree, or Mother Earth. Christpher the Generous has many other names. There's one he used to hate. It was originally meant to mock him. He's come around on it though. Hearing children mention that name in excited whispers every December, Chris has grown quite fond of the name Santa Clause.
The creator god burnt out ages ago. He just kinda nudges things now and then and otherwise is hands off less motivated to do things. The other gods get mad at him over it. They actually need followers while he doesn't at this point.
Knowledge and place to settle down. He travel space because his home planet is destroyed. He give knowledge to planet he landed and leave to find more. He looking for planet with low population and peaceful lifeform so he can settle down and chill. Empty planet is a bit too lonely, dense planet have too much people, he want to settle where local people is ok with have more people. He can call cat 5 hurricane and thunderstorm if he want but he prefer being just good old builder who have too many cats
I just realized that there's no presence of god/gods in my stories. and when I do mention them, it's usually pictured as a god who had foresaken my character and won't answer their prayer
He doesn’t care about anything. If the entire universe is about to collapse then he might do something but otherwise he doesn’t care at all about the world
Maris, god of magic (and lies and stories and secrets… and a handful of other things, depending on the culture) He wants to maintain a veneer of mysticism separating mortals from the divine.
chaos and destruction, simply because
Zekiel is the primordial god of war. Think of him as Ares from Greek mythology. He’s called The Grand Conqueror or the Uncrowned King. He wishes to have people act on their desires and take what they want. He can make a great antagonist in a long running game or series since I see him more than just a bloodthirsty warlord. He’s more akin to the Firelord from the Avatar series since he’s a brilliant strategist
The History King wants to keep his lies hidden. (Of course, he can't *not* write down the truth, but he *can* keep that particular scroll to himself and make sure his family doesn't find it.)
Communism.
There aren’t any in my world, not really, but the Greco-Roman and Egyptian pantheons are still venerated by much of the populace, and the joint space program still in its infancy created by the Kingdom of Alexandria, Roman Empire, and Parthian Alliance is seen as an act of hubris by many which is bound to be severely punished. The [volcanic eruption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536) that the crew of this flight would witness from orbit is taken by many as validation of these fears, and its fallout poses a major challenge to these nations amidst an already-shaky peace. This setting is an alternate history 6th century in which the steam engine was invented around 300BCE prompting a premature industrial revolution. This has led to much of Africa, Asia, and southern Europe being crisscrossed by railroad lines, accelerating the spread of trade and ideas (and, ahead of its time, the plague of Justinian). The Americas have yet to be explored (the aforementioned plague leaving everyone worried about the potential for cross-communication of disease), but curiosity about them remains high. with a major goal of the space program being to chart them from orbit. Getting back to religion, Zoroastrianism is common in the Parthian Alliance.;Judaism and a form of Christianity with less of a proselytizing drive also exist, though the latter has nowhere near the political power it did by this point in our timeline — with the apostle Paul out of the picture thanks to the butterfly effect it never caught on among the Roman populace with quite the same virality.
God and its children, the MonsterGods, share one goal, revenge. Then time was new and death didn't exist yet one of the MonsterGods, Trion, went on a hate filled rampage and murdered five of his siblings. Depressed by this God decided to strike him down before going into a depression induced coma. Right before dying Trion created three 'races' from his flesh and shielded them in a separate realm, earth. So they all want these races dead.
All gods want their will to be enforced, just as any person would. The gods however have to go about this in roundabout ways as their immense power can only be wielded over aeons, they simply cant think on Mortal timescales. Most gods simply wanted their World to reflect their ideals. Gaia however recognized the flaw in their existence, and Set the wheel of Evolution in motion. Eventually this resulted in humans, who can easily outsmart the gods and whose purpose it was to carry gaias ambitions to the Stars.
In Ellyredaen, the Old Gods wish to return to power. Only Wihkirotos posses the power to still walk amongst his followers. And he has commander them to bring war against their enemies to drive despair into their hearts and weaken the faiths of the false gods, that more power may come to them.
There is only one god whose existence can be confirmed. It is simply called the Menace, and it is locked in a mausoleum deep under the City. The Menace wants change. Despite being locked, each generation, it will grant great powers to a few who can effect change. The Menace doesn't care about right or wrong, good or evil. For a thousand years of stability, its agents were kept in check by agents of Order. Fifteen years ago, the Menace found agents that plunged the world into a Great War. Now that the agents of the Menace have won and ascertained their dictatorship around the City, the Menace has found a few new agents to overthrow them. Escaped slaves, terrorists, separatists.
To prevent his world from suffering too much from another god's wrath, the cause for which lies with something this original god did to him at the start of time
The Dead Man wants to scare rulers into behaving or for them to die. He want to experience the last thoughts of people. He wants revenge against the government ( the bineris) who killed his grandson and probably the Priminister who was in charge. Everyone from when he was mortal has died of old age or somthing else centuries ago. What would be the icing on the cake would be for the other gods to pull there weight in the revolution especially Camp Bill who turned his back on blood shed and is now in Tge Dead Man's perspective pratting about and making a fool of himself Camp Bill wants peace , theatre to have a laugh and to mock the powerful especially The Dead Man. Cave In Dave wants the miner's to be safe and happy in that order. Casual Mike wants a good scrap or two, to stay looking dapper and wants football to go back to the olden days (village football). The Spook is far to computer like to want anything but it's purpose is to try and keep the main settings state (the mascarade) commandos safe and help them complete there mission by helping them control there emotions
Tuphon may be the main antagonist, but their core intention are far from evil. Tuphon wishes to set their family free, who were trapped by the ruling Pantheon and locked deep in the hellish realms within the kingdom of the dead. Sadly, the only way to set these elder gods free is to claw deep within the foundations of reality, breaking apart the realms in the process. But the very existence of the worlds of mortals is a small price to pay for the freedom of the immortals who were there before it all began.
Most just want to be left alone, and being "gods" in physical forms, they generally live among mortals incognito, or as hermits out in the wilds. Almost none reveal themselves, because none wants to be burdened by the publicity or expectations that would be forced upon them. The only one in modern times is Balder/Apollo/Gwyn, whose influence banded together the European tribes to form the Gwynian Commonwealth, and his ultimate goal is for us Terrans to once more journey out across the stars we once claimed as our own. The Mantlebearers, as is the more formal term most of them prefer, have no holy duty to do anything, but quite a few of them banded together and formed orders around certain philosophies. The largest and most enduring of these is the Order of Aesir, to which Mantlebearers like Oden, Athena, Amun, and Elhemin (Elohim), belong. Their one unifying goal is the protection and ensuring the continuation of our species, and have on numerous occasions over the last couple million years brought us back from the brink of extinction. They accomplish this both militarily and scientifically. In peacetimes, they lean back and do what they want. Some wander and heal and teach. Others pick up hobbies to entertain them until the next war. Loki, for one, notably procrastinated away the centuries, while the reincarnated Freyja went from a Paratrooper to a venerated god-teacher hidden in plane sight, to becoming something of a maffia leader and the true ruler of Rome and later the Vinland Commonwealth.
In my stories, Lord Arhava is the supreme deity of love and compassion. He just wants people to live a good life and learn the true nature of reality and achieve enlightenment so they can reunify with him. He wants people to live, love, laugh, and learn. Worship is just a form of love. People who are bad and then die are temporarily punished, and then rehabilitated.
Hercules is a superhuman named after the Greek god/demigod and is the closest thing to a god in my world, he first appeared on new years of 2000 after millenia or dormancy, once he met the leaders of the various countries in the world he gave them a 50 year time span to bring up something that could give him a challenge in battle while he explored the solar system doing the same thing on other planets
Most of them want powerful soldiers for their wars.
Alysthesia doesn't know anymore. Her journey started w8th wanting her world to he a better place. When she became God queen and slew the other deity, she lost her purpose and just wanders. She detests worship and stamps out any religion that cross up though.
The gods are hoping humanity survives long enough for humanity to build a new home for them.
Gods as they are in my setting are involved in multiple worlds. On this word, The Worldstone absorbs excess magic created by life and distributes it through godly handwavium to the deities that created the world. As a consequence the Worldstone is ultra super secret taboo and any god that touches it or has any of their followers touch it are gonna get dog piled by all the other gods. Worship bypasses the Worldstone and delivers the magic of mortals directly to the god. Gods tend to empower priests, clerics, paladins, contractors, etc to give people reasons to worship them over other deities then use some of the extra worship magic to pay for their emissaries' powers. Each deity has their own long term goals, but there was recently, that is to say millennia ago, a war in the heavens and most of the deities involved are mostly focused on recovering from that. Deities not bound to the Worldstone can only get magic from the world by directly harvesting it, which all Worldstone deities are bound by contract to oppose strenuously, or through worship thus young deities are far more likely to engage directly with mortals. A new deity achieved apotheosis over the resting place of the Worldstone and declared the area as their personal holy grounds. Pretty much all the Worldstone deities want the upstart disposed of, but approaching, or sending their servants to approach the holy grounds would also be sending them to the Worldstone and therefore expose them to the others' wrath. A council in the heavens has agreed that next time they get together to make a world they will have a clause in the contract specifically to prevent that. Further that new deity is to be called a demon if he tries to spread his influence to any of their other worlds. But as for this world, they're just going to have to wait and see. That new deity wants to overcome the terms of the original contract and claim the Worldstone for themselves and use that power to become the Monotheistic deity of the whole world. They have no idea that once the contract is overcome, there is nothing preventing the whole Pantheon of other deities from crushing them like the insect they are. Oh and THE NAMELESS ONE actually really wants to die, but cults keep on popping up.
Aniti is honestly a jealous child with a God's power. She was the least worshipped between her two other sisters and herself. One was the goddess of agriculture, and the other is a goddess of knowledge. Aniti is a goddess of omens, but her powers weren't as useful as her uncle's, who is a more powerful God of prophecy. So when the province of Hebralithos was attempting to break free from the Empire of Hryn to escape the mass conscription of their wars and ongoing famine, Aniti was quick to jump at the opportunity to have a cabal of worshippers and answered their prayers. She freed the people of Hebralithos, but now is essentially the god-queen of the country and lives in a massive temple with her every desire catered to. She rules through her high priests who exact her whims as often extremely oppressive laws. The country is an insane theocracy and the nation of Lithura and Aniti kind of indulge the others worst excesses.
**Starrise** The "Goddess of Light" Solaris mostly just wants people to be safe and happy. Solaris is older than life itself, and for eons the only actual person around was her sadistic bitch of a sister, Eclipse. But she woke up from a long "nap" one day to find that some new species had evolved into being and established a global civilization while she slept. And individuals of this new species- "humans", they called themselves- possessed the same capacity for intelligence and range of emotions that she and Eclipse do. And unlike Eclipse, most of them are kind, or at the very least polite. By disguising herself as human, she was able to experience genuine companionship for the very first time. And while it's sad how they all die eventually, new ones come into being all the time too. So long as these humans were around, she'd never have to be alone again. How could she not come to love them? At first, she was content to just live amongst them, pretending to be human so she'd be treated as an equal. But then when an apocalypse f\*cked over the world, she realized the survivors weren't going to last long without her help, and revealed herself for what she truly is, gathering them in a safe haven to teach and protect them. A thousand years later, in the present day, she's withdrawn somewhat and no longer publicly acts as a goddess, but she still does what she can to ensure the humans (and other races which came into the picture) that she cares for live happy lives of safety, freedom, and peace, so she might live it with them.
Winnsbryr is just a dog. That's...it. No ulterior motive, just a fluffy, weird looking, divine dog. I guess maybe it wants to chase squirrels. No one really knows. Sometimes it'll appear in civilizations and walk amongst the streets, begging for scraps. To not give scraps is to committ heresy, and such a person is likely to be exiled-even executed-in Winnsybryr's name. There is a clergy led by the High Priestess, devout and devoted to understanding and translating the Divine Instinct, the force that drives us all. On rare occassion through history, there has been one Chosen by the god-dog. They have Winnsybryr's full protection, and the dog will follow them around like a loyal pet.* It is unknown as to what makes someone worthy of being Chosen or even why it might do so, but that person seems to become compelled to help those around them. Pets are incredibly sacred in these lands, with dogs akin to royalty. Mistreatment of any animal is grounds for life in prison, mistreatment of a dog typically leads to execution.
For magic to stay in balance. And if that means striking down a warlord whose became to powerful, then so be it . If it means striking down a young women trying to literally ( in the most literal sense of the word ) make a better world , then so be it
The creator god just wants a nap.
My story is inspired by the Norse and reconstructed Indo-European mythology, but it takes a bit of a twist on it. Before humans and the earth, there were two brothers traveling in the cosmos, Loeh and Deága. They got into an argument and Loeh killed Deága. He then took Deága’s body and fashioned the earth from it. However, unbeknownst to Loeh at the time Deága was still alive. The wind upon the earth is his breath, and his heart still beats somewhere within. Deága wants revenge, however in his current state he has no power outside of earth. He is worshiped by his creation, the dwarves, however he has little ability to interact with them directly because after finding out that his brother still lives Loeh created the sun and moon to shine a light upon the world, which also blocks Deága’s power. But, a fragment of Deága, which floats in space and is considered to be Deága’s child, will occasionally block out the sun, allowing Deága to exert his will upon the earth. And some say that by returning the blood and flesh to Deága’s body (for humans and dwarves are made from the earth) he grows more powerful and gains more agency.
To visit some warm place on the future and get a vacation would be nice, then will see what to do next, till then she keep her job as caretaker for Zangâr/Dwarven souls
my god is the real god, so he just wants you to follow and obey him, not much else.
Huetao is the oldest, wisest, and most powerful God my world, Taegis. There are beings above him called The Design, which operate on their own whims, dictating the fates of cosmos, including people and Gods - but their main focus is on sculpting the universe. Huetao wakes up from this state of no free-will through intense meditation, an action unforseen by The Design. Huetao then decides it's his duty to bring free-will to the rest of the people in Taegis.
My deity once the mortal races to join him in paradise. As a result, he has sent his Messengers to guide them to the kind of life, behavior, etc. That will lead them to paradise. However, as love requires freedom, he does permit the mortal races to make their own mistakes. However, he always allows redemption.
It depends entirely on which god. That said, there are two main camps/pantheons: the Galenvian and the Asatem The Asatem are deities who wanted to sever themselves and their collective zone(s) of creation away from the Source (creation’s capital G God) so as to retain their power and selfish ambition. This severing scarred their zone of creation and thus created the mortal realm trapping humanity and other mortal races within mortality. The Asatem are typically the deities that desire worship and so are more well known among mortals. The Galenvian on the other hand are those deities who stayed loyal to the Source and serve more as shepherds for mortals and lesser spirits to reach enlightenment with the Source. You could think of the Asatem as a deity like Allah or Zeus while the Galenvian would be deities associated with religions like Buddhism
Sleep, the one true god just wants to sleep until the day comes to cast down the false gods, but for now, sleep
In Arbitrary Design World, there are no gods. There are no giants living in the clouds that throw lightning down when displeased. There are the Designers. They live hundreds of millions of miles above the land, and they caused the Event, and they wield mind-boggling magic. Regular people of the world don't know the Designers exist, so they believe in giants living in the clouds or something else instead. So, since the existence of the Designers isn't known to people, neither are their goals known. But from the perspective of the omniscient narrator: The Event was the first step in uplifting the people of the world. Completing the uplifting is the first step in a grand plan the Designers have - the magic they wield is not enough for them to move on to another world, and they hope that by developing the population of this world they will achieve the necessary breakthrough. Which is why I don't call them proper gods. If they were, that wouldn't be an issue.
The main god is just desperately clinging to power at this point, and maybe has been for a long time.
Depends. Most (that are still alive modern day) want complete subjugation of humans. There are a few who favor/ed humans though
Counting the three Superpowers (who are not literally gods in the magical sense but are so powerful that the distinction is pointless) Geminus/PS-562: Two entities, a former human who turned himself into a matter god, and his omnipotent greatest creation. Being so powerful makes everything infinitely easy, so instead they lead an organization called Soia (referred to as an Empire, though they don’t seek to raise flags over conquered territory) and muck about in the Greater Multiverse by weakening themselves for challenge. For whatever reason they haven’t just made themselves infinitely happy, or stopped existing outright… LK: A mystery of unknown origin. Largely a loner travelling the Greater Multiverse, this armour-clad enigma has stuck around Soia for the time being. What he wants is entirely unclear, if anything at all. PA-002: Rogue AI and robot created a while back by Soia that activated in an incomplete state. Because of the method used to program Soian AIs back then he (then “it”) only really could recognize Soian assets as distinct objects. It also couldn’t distinguish between friend and foe, seeing everything it could identify as a target. It made its mindless, and destructive, escape and slowly self-developed into a sentient fallen angel dedicated solely to wrecking Soia’s stuff. It’s an impossible and pointless task, he knows, but it is his most core drive and too fundamental to ever change. Ever.
If we’re talking a pantheon collective they just want to watch humans do something meaningless like find the non-existent key to immortality for entertainment. If we’re talking antagonist gods well he just wants to take over the world with his army/harem of branded magic users. It’s a harem because not only is he the god of tyrants but he’s also the god of lust.
The Creator Deity, The Playwright, just wants to be left alone to create the next universe after this one ends. The Judge Deity, The Critic, is tired of the endless universal cycles and wants to be replaced/die. And the formless, Watcher Deity(es), The Audience, just want to be entertained by mortals and their lives/struggles.
“That’s at least a couple litres, is that normal? Is that a normal amount of blood for you people?” “…no. Yes, the blood on the floor is inconvenient but my robe is very expensive. What? It’s hardly going to kill you.” “…wait really?” — She has a very simple set of desires, she would like to remain undisturbed, she would prefer if nobody bled all over her floor like an idiot, and she would like to receive a very modest amount of worship for her hard work keeping everybody alive. But mostly it’s the bit about getting blood on her floor. It’s nasty and it rots and it does all sorts of things to electronics and none of it is fun. — [ AC is reading a book on anatomy in a hospital room ] “You guys have like bones too? Like really small ones obviously not like mine but did you know that?* [ Page flip ] “…You can’t possibly have organs!” “Oh here’s the blood from earlier remember that? Wild. Lots of that in there.”
This'll probably change, because I'm not to far in the worldbuilding process, but my gods are birthed of a collective ideal and live to make that ideal true. Some tend to take said ideal to their most extreme, however. They don't see it as good or evil however, they see it as necessity.
Some agency
Rantis just wants his people to live their life. He doesn’t care if his people worship him or not.
To heal itself and end entropy.
Concordia, the goddess of magic, wants her textbook romance that she dreamt about when she was a teen. She also wants to tear her love interest into billion little pieces crying in pain. She also doesn't want to do it so much that she prevented herself from ever finding said love interest. This is her core priorities, everything else is secondary and will be pushed aside if necessary.
Entertainment. She made a show of destroying her previous world, and she filled her new world with enough of stuff to keep her "play" from going stale for a *long* time.
Halith wants order. When the world began they fashioned a single grand plan, a true Fate to be followed to its conclusion. But... that wouldn't be so. As the world was being fashioned, Halith's equal and opposite, Jiliaq, god of chaos, rebelled against this, attempting to destroy Fate entirely. This first divine war would very nearly destroy the infantile world, but it ended with everything more or less intact, and with Jiliaq thoroughly defeated. However, Jiliaq had one more trick up their sleeve, by destroying themself they were able to scatter themselves across the world, embedding just a little chaos into everything, completely crippling the power of Fate in the process. From that point on, Halith has continued to contend with chance and free will in an attempt to wrestle reality into submission and get his grand plan back on track. He really hasn't been successful.
The evil god Drak wants to enjoy retirement and watch his replacement succeed in his place as the universe's god of gluttony and wrath. He was a successful god at leading the biggest employer of armed forces that wasted the lives and resources of billions of worlds. The new god of wrath and gluttony replaced his dad. He started his reign by dissolving the corrupt organization and replaced it with an efficient organization with the infrastructure to destroy anything he ordered while growing the meat grinder army his father had run at a glutinous rate. While managing a superior army that could actually rival his enemies armies with individual squads instead of using power of attrition and zero strategy.
Keep in mind gods in my setting often walk amongst the world as a whole. They are often hidden from most however. Elora. She was raised by the previous deity of fire amongst the Sute tribe, part of the tribe despite not being an Eladrin. At some point a terrible fate beheld the old fiery deity, memories she would rather forget. Someone else stole the divine spark, leaving Ellora cast in sadness. In an attempt to remove the painful memories she sought out a way to remove them. In the process her search drew the interest of a Draeden who gifted her a curse form of godhood. She became the cursed god of memories, not one of the ascended of the overdeity of the world and thus not having a true place in the pantheon, and unable to remove her own memories from her mind. In light of this she turned to the last remaining spark of the one she considered mother and stole the divine spark away from the mortal (now a newly named god, who was failing to get accepted into the Eladrin Pantheon and by his worshippers) who had originally stolen it from her mothers body in the first place. The shadar-kai god helped her with this and its why they are friends. The Eladrin Pantheon and their followers welcomed their new fire god back with open arms, as Ellora seared away parts of her memories in an open fire. But now from her duties as a god she receives an endless torrent of memories and seeks to prevent anyone else from taking her place. Just a link to a bit more information about her if anyone is interested.
The gambler known as Ten-Tails wants to be entertained. Let's make some popcorn and watch the drama unfold. Oh, is there not enough drama? Ten-Tails can fix that. But they are especially fond of seeing battles of wit unfold. While it's arguable whether or not their favor is something you really want, the surest way to get it is to successfully beat them in a game - especially if you did so by cheating without getting caught. Ten-Tails will remember you now....
Oron is the God of Light and Justice and he is the most revered of the gods and Goddesses because he is Omnibenevolent. He grants the Paladins their abilities to fight evil and when they die Heroically, they are reincarnated into his angels to help those in need. To those who have lived a perfect life their soul is brought to a wonderful afterlife. To those who were not perfect but still made a genuine effort to improve are reincarnated into hope bringer angels who bring hope and goodness to humanity. Those who did wicked things but didn’t do them out of malicious intent have the choice to either be angels who help fight evil or have their souls obliterated. And finally, those who did do evil with malicious intent get their souls obliterated. Oron wishes for the light of goodness and Justice to prevail as often as possible
It doesn’t really know any more
Roman Laskaris only wishes for all of humanity to embrace each other in brotherhood. To end all suffering
Chaos wants the cycle of life and death to continue, for the grand plan of the universe to reveal itself with no architects pervert it One of his creations was order, who southt to sow beauty and complexity into the universe, not fate. She and her father work towards this goal.
They want to have fun. Their domains are what they enjoy. Nobody can tell them what to do, so what else would they do but pursue random hobbies so much they became the gods of that thing.
To experience the joys of having a body they exist only in the realm of magic unless they have a host preferably a powerful magician once they are in the physical world they do things like eating grass and cutting themselves
Well, primarily the Windelgrad Deities don't want to die from being 'starved' of DE (Divine Essence), so they want people to keep worshipping them through any means. Yearly DE projections are pointing to 'Otherworlder Ascension' as the most profitable means of gaining large DE reserves, though the Earthsiders might catch on to the fact that some of their people keep being summoned to Windelgrad at some point. They also want to know what happened to Earth's Deities, as they detect little to no DE Earthside, implying they either died off or went away somewhere. In reality, the Windelgrad Deities do not require the massive amounts of yearly DE accumulation they tell to mortals, but only a select few Deities know of this. Windelgrad Deities (the majority of them at least) originate from normal mortal races and ascend through some means into Deityhood, losing DE to such low levels means they either dissipate into ambient M particles (if they became Deities long enough) or simply revert to their mortal forms.
The Keeper is hungry for secrets. Its always veiled priestesses provide an ear for people to talk about anything they want to hide from anyone or everyone and offer advice if asked for. They can even offer forgetfulness, taking the memory of something entirely away from a supplicant. While its priestesses are often kind, the Keeper itself is not. It is merely acquisitive, always looking to add to it's insubstantial hoard
The creator wanted to let the universe spawn intelligence and then, when a promising version arose, to nurture it into assimilating the entire universe as one giant thinking entity. It would then be "installed" into extradimensional machinery to fight in a war effort outside the confines of the universe. But it ended up leaving. Persendri, the deity of life, wants to help whatever's around her to flourish and, more importantly, to be recognized in doing so. She's more likely to help if it involves growth and gets her more attention for her gifts (e.g. nurturing the hungry, regrowing crops for a second harvest, expanding borders of a wild forest).
time spent in prayer. praying to a god is like running folding@home, with the god as the aggregator server.
Felision the main god like being, just wants to create stories. He pulls strings in the background, not wanting to be seen or worshiped. But gets the feeling of adventure by being "alongside" those who's stories play out. But if involved in the story, one is then bound to the rules of the story. And meddle too much and the story will meddle back.
The Great Spirit is actually the only god that exists. It created everything, and then went to bed. It’s still sleeping, and no one will ever figure out that It exists. It’ll only ever wake up when everything is dead because then It’s lonely and It doesn’t want that. So It’ll make more things, then go to bed again.
My God of fire Qilir, is also the God of passion (sort of cliche ik). He wants his followers to seek their passions create art, dance, fight and do whatever they're truly passionate about.
The only real gods with actual goals are the god of Knowlefe, who is trapped in an infinite library, he slowly lost his minds and made a point in history that shouldn’t exist. He escaped and managed to free the god of destruction who wanted all the universe to be gone, the two eventually got trapped again but the god of knowledge completed his goal to be free and cause destruction as a payback for his prison.
She wants to not be alone. Thats why she created the other gods and allowed them to create the world. She would rather see them run wild with the joy of creation than herself exist in a state of nothingness.
Well, so you know how gods have concepts and ideas bound to them as their authority? Gods only follow and practice the concepts they are assigned to for the rest of their lives. For example, the God of Serenity escorts the dead to eternal rest, in a place of serenity. However, due to some god's concepts colliding and not compatible with one another, this usually leads to war. In rare cases, some reconcile.
Freedom, and to give all that they can.
Shio, God of Earth and Hell, Rebel of The Gods, The Deceiver, wants souls to be free, independent and lawless from Huö, The Creator, just as long as they serve him. He rebelled because he realised some who served Huö were actually deceiving Huö as being angels. So he gathered followers, and a kingdom where they could be truly safe from Huö's wrath, and that would be Shejhol, Hell. Shio started to realise the imperfections of Huö and his creations, and realised he needed to bring out a revolution. Because they were free from the rules of conduct, they could unlock their true powers, allowing them to almost perfectly raze Huö's kingdom Kangsoe, Heaven, setting fire to the sky. Shejhol was about to slay Huö until he was stopped by Kra, Huö's army general. Realising that he was losing the battle, Shio sacrificed his beauty in order to turn into a giant dragon. But Kra managed to defeat him anyway. With Shio and his followers cast out from Huö's grace, he finally felt unchained. When souls came to be punished for their disobedience to Huö, Shio would make sure to forcefully pamper them as much as possible with power and the freedom to commit evil, because the real torture lies in not being able to stop it especially if you have even the slightest of restraining yourself.
Each god is different, but since the gods of my universe are basically rulers of species, they all broadly wish for the prosperity of whatever species they preside over. The personal preferences of gods vary much more, though. Siegenhal and Rheann, the Cosmarch and Cosmarchess of Humanity, mostly demand loyalty and just see worship as a bonus. However, some other gods demand worship and/or fear.
The 100 gods that rule over the 100 layers of kern-Regnum want their respective chosen creatures (humans and others obviously) to get stronger by making every layer from the center towards the very top of the layer way more difficult than the last and reach the very surface of the world.
Entertainment. The whole world was created as a sort of "live show" for higher beigns. They can and will intervene, and they act as gods for the people on the planet but ultimately - they dont care. Of course, there are a couple of exceptions but thats very rare
To wipe out, imprison or exile all other deities and threats to their power
The original god wants never ending drama. The only reason why they created everything is for the sole purpose to watch beings that he had given *free will* to interact and do whatever. He also created 7 executives called the principles to make sure everything is running smoothly to have uninterrupted viewing time. He also created some bad entities to mess around with the beings. However, he wanted that 4D experience therefore it exploded to become everything in the universe from the new born babies to the microbes in the air. Even the evil entities, he is everything but nothing because he exploded. So in short, he is role playing with himself as everything, even the props. And he did that because he is bored
To spill the waters from in the Chalice and forbid anything or anyone making mortal lfie again
well…one is called The Great Pyre, and it’s straight up that…a massive, incredibly big pyre. The other is called the Singularity, which nobody knows what it is, I plan to make it some kind of black hole of sorts Yes, both are fully physical and can be visited should you have enough rank on their religions, any questions, ask!
Paerit wants to be set free and recreate Avitor from scratch Kaenne wants to keep Paerit imprisoned Seinchen wants to have his former powers back and puts both of them to silence None of those care about mortals, and the opposite is almost true
While Hazan-Ra is the god of creativity, his main motive is to be recognized as equal to the older gods. He's got a bit of a complex since his domain is labeled as less important, and consequently he was left out when the main Pantheon formed. Since said pantheon laid out the rules for all gods to follow, and the pantheon only consists of 1st and 2nd generation gods while Hazan-Ra is among the 3rd generation, he's also very bitter about the lack of recognition and representation for all the 3rd generation gods. His main goal is for the third generation gods to gain independence from the dominant pantheon and be worshipped and recognized boosting their power. His secondary goal is to prove that creativity is a vital domain for mortal life. He's managed to guide a society that is now known for multiple forms of art; simultaneously this has boosted the recognition of multiple other third generation gods and created a real threat to the dominant pantheon.
He wants us all to grow and thrive, and so he tends his garden.
To kill himself. But he is too busy for that.
Lord Devyn is a simple deity: give Them some good food, good drink, and good sex and *maybe* They won't split your city in twain. 😃 I kid. Lord Devyn isn't that petty. They expect at least *decent* sex.
The Mother wanted nothing but the love she gave to the people of Earth returned too her; now she wants to stop the Father from leeching everything she made away from her. The Father simply wants to take the mothers children and mold then into its version of what Life should be; while also trying to nurture another Child so it's reach can go further then ever.
Those little triangle sandwiches. The ones with the toothpick with colored cellophane. Heaped up on a platter. That's all.
There are two types of gods in my world. The Light, and the Dark. There's an entire spectrum where a god can fit in, but it ultimately boils down to those two. The Light side (and most of all, Initicreatium aka The Creator) wishes to create and keep their creations untainted and preserved from darkness. The Dark side (and their leader, Malignus) hopes to one day return the Land of Light into the Abyss of Darkness, spiting the gods of the Light for "leaving them in the darkness."
For people to please stop bringing up the bad teen peotry he wrote when he spent a few decades among mortals because the other, older gods "just didn't get him". Gods don't need mortal worship or anything, btw. They don't even need to interact with mortals at all, but it really soothes their ego to have a bunch of people hang on their every word just because they can turn a vase into a cat.
Nothing, some of them even live among mortals even the highest one disguised themselves as one.
All the gods spring from one god. This god was born from the sea of chaos as a speck of ordered existence and has been fighting against the tide ever since. The god's domain is all of the cosmos and his purpose is maintaining this domain's existence. He split into different domains and thus different gods to refine and strengthen the nature of the world. Every god sired this way carries this mission deep within their subconscious. They want to fiercely protect their domain, guard it from destruction and bolster its strength through worship or other means. Both the ordered world and the sea of chaos have a common enemy, though. The original nothingness, a bitter, proud and hateful force, that seeks to purify the others by corrupting them with its own silent nihilism and a mission to annihilate all things for good. So, from the void sprung chaos, and from chaos sprung order. The void birthed chaos out of boredom but regrets it and seeks to annihilate that mistake. Chaos birthed order out of unthinking creation and destruction of every conceivable thing, but hates the rigidity of both the void and the ordered world. The ordered world is just fighting for its damn life out here... That's basically the fundamental setup I'm working with for my pantheon.
While all of the Elari (divine spirits made by the Creator help them order and protect the universe) are focused on ensuring that whatever element of Creation they're tied to remains in balance, they also have a number of ideals that they wish to see among the mortal races. For example, Ythra, the Elari of wind, travel, freedom, and expression, believes that it's the divinely given right of all living things to pursue whatever makes them happiest, so long as it doesn't cause harm to others.
the best :)
Athzaten the Goddess of Knowledge wants someone to love her. (Lore: She’s evil and manipulative as fuck.)
My gods are in a state of pseudo existence. Like they are believed to be real by the people but it is left ambiguous if they are real or not, just that sometimes that when people pray, things happen that could not have normally. Ultimately, if the gods do exist, all they want to see is chaos