Dakkareth
First Post
The process of ascending to higher states of power or existance is very simple and yet there exist so many possibilities it becomes complicated again. Let's take a few examples to see, how it happens.
All magical energy comes from the spheres. What they are exactly is unknown to most sentient races. For simplicity's sake one could say, that they are raw thought energy, so strong, that it condensed into stuff that looks like normal matter. Wizards have learned to open conduits to these realms and shape the energy into spells or even enter them physically for a variety of reasons including shadow walk-style travelling.
The simplest case of ascendancy is a wizard's. As he becomes more and more powerful, he learns not only to draw energy, but also break off small chunks of the sphere he uses (high level spells) and eventually to even fold these chunks into itselfes to form tiny offshots of their original sphere, which he have more control over (demi planes). As he looks for new ways to increase his power, the idea occurs to him, that he could bind such a newly created bubble to his own body and spirit. This he does (quick, in a big ritual, or slowly over the course of many weeks) and finds, that beside greater power, his bodily attributed have increased as well as it is more of a container of the wizards power than just a physical thing. Most importantly aging slows down to a crawl - in this state a life expectancy of a few thousand years is nothing uncommon.
With time he'll increase the size of his own personal offshot and thus his power until at some point (the more power-hungry you are the faster) it is not containable within anymore and the wizard becomes his own sphere. Now his power is so extreme, that most would call him a god. Unknown to the commoners, he is suddenly very limited in his options, though. Existing as a sphere of energy/matter he faces an entirely new danger: entropy. For the chaos of entropy ever gnaws at the ordered structures of the now spirit that's now unprotected by the flesh. Thus he has great and terrible power, but always has to keep an eye on his 'cohesion' budget: Turning an assassins blade away from a favored person is a minor thing, but striking down a city with fire from the heaven or some other 'godly' method might exhaust him so much he's either consumed by entropy or assimilated by one of the other 'gods'.
This leads to the importance of worshippers and other followers. Faith allows the transcended being to claim a patch of spirit for himself, a spirit that's protected by flesh and serves as a straw on which he can hold while hanging over the metaphorical abyss of entropy. That's only a small matter, though, as it taps into the subject of the dreaded necromancy, the workings of life forces and related things, which is a science in itself and one, that rarely more than two beings on the same planet have knowledge about. So the gods themselves don't even know that.
They know however, that using humans is a infinitely more *effective* way of exerting their will. Usually they have to expend only small parts of their sorcerous power, but it is amplified a thousandfold through the actions of mortals: To remove a king, that's the puppet of another transcendant, divine smiting would be a bad way to go. Using a cult to get an assassin requires less effort and is much more effective - the best part is, that even if the other god intercepts the move, he still doesn't know who made it. The game of the gods is a n-dimensional chess game played with mortals, conscious of the game or not. The conscious ones, usually wizards or priests, who are by definition conscious of it, of course are especially valueable and dangerous chess pieces, the officers on the chess board.
There are other ways of transcendancy, all the things represented by the levelling system: experience, strength of will, etc. It could happen by being exposed to raw sorcerous energy or simply with time, but it all boils down to the following:
The essential part of transcending is to bind the power of the spheres to yourself. This brings great power and proportional limitations. In the end (sometimes after seconds, sometimes after thousends of years) they fall victim to their new nature: They grow most distant all the time, cruel, corrupted by power. Then the decay sets in as their cohesions starts to vane. Finally they succumb to entropy, other gods or even mortals and are utterly destroyed or consumed. Power corrupts; to become a god is to loose yourself.
In DnD terms it would be like a prestige class wizards can enter automatically and early, while other classes need a higher level and a good explanation of how it happens. With the last level of the Prc the character gains Divine Rank 0 and various powers and restrictions relating to his new status. Becoming a full 'god' would take a new Prc, but it leads to becoming a NPC. Actually working towards becoming a god is unusual anyway, as among the immortals the restrictions of so called divinity are known.
There is another way entirely and that's necromancy. The knowledge of the very forces of life also bestows great power. This power is not subject to entropy or any related hazards, it's subtle and rightfully dreaded. The only necromantic transcendants are found among the dragons (the first race in the universe to archieve sentience) and a few others that also were among the first, hundreds of millions of years, before the stellar system in which humans eventually developped formed. They mostly live in the vacuum of space, control galaxy-spanning empires or cartograph the unknows wastes of the higher dimensions (far realms). This is the arena, in which the equivalent of Epic games would take place. Ultra-Epic actually as Epic levels in DnD are still entirely within the human scope - rare, but not far from being unknown.
All magical energy comes from the spheres. What they are exactly is unknown to most sentient races. For simplicity's sake one could say, that they are raw thought energy, so strong, that it condensed into stuff that looks like normal matter. Wizards have learned to open conduits to these realms and shape the energy into spells or even enter them physically for a variety of reasons including shadow walk-style travelling.
The simplest case of ascendancy is a wizard's. As he becomes more and more powerful, he learns not only to draw energy, but also break off small chunks of the sphere he uses (high level spells) and eventually to even fold these chunks into itselfes to form tiny offshots of their original sphere, which he have more control over (demi planes). As he looks for new ways to increase his power, the idea occurs to him, that he could bind such a newly created bubble to his own body and spirit. This he does (quick, in a big ritual, or slowly over the course of many weeks) and finds, that beside greater power, his bodily attributed have increased as well as it is more of a container of the wizards power than just a physical thing. Most importantly aging slows down to a crawl - in this state a life expectancy of a few thousand years is nothing uncommon.
With time he'll increase the size of his own personal offshot and thus his power until at some point (the more power-hungry you are the faster) it is not containable within anymore and the wizard becomes his own sphere. Now his power is so extreme, that most would call him a god. Unknown to the commoners, he is suddenly very limited in his options, though. Existing as a sphere of energy/matter he faces an entirely new danger: entropy. For the chaos of entropy ever gnaws at the ordered structures of the now spirit that's now unprotected by the flesh. Thus he has great and terrible power, but always has to keep an eye on his 'cohesion' budget: Turning an assassins blade away from a favored person is a minor thing, but striking down a city with fire from the heaven or some other 'godly' method might exhaust him so much he's either consumed by entropy or assimilated by one of the other 'gods'.
This leads to the importance of worshippers and other followers. Faith allows the transcended being to claim a patch of spirit for himself, a spirit that's protected by flesh and serves as a straw on which he can hold while hanging over the metaphorical abyss of entropy. That's only a small matter, though, as it taps into the subject of the dreaded necromancy, the workings of life forces and related things, which is a science in itself and one, that rarely more than two beings on the same planet have knowledge about. So the gods themselves don't even know that.
They know however, that using humans is a infinitely more *effective* way of exerting their will. Usually they have to expend only small parts of their sorcerous power, but it is amplified a thousandfold through the actions of mortals: To remove a king, that's the puppet of another transcendant, divine smiting would be a bad way to go. Using a cult to get an assassin requires less effort and is much more effective - the best part is, that even if the other god intercepts the move, he still doesn't know who made it. The game of the gods is a n-dimensional chess game played with mortals, conscious of the game or not. The conscious ones, usually wizards or priests, who are by definition conscious of it, of course are especially valueable and dangerous chess pieces, the officers on the chess board.
There are other ways of transcendancy, all the things represented by the levelling system: experience, strength of will, etc. It could happen by being exposed to raw sorcerous energy or simply with time, but it all boils down to the following:
The essential part of transcending is to bind the power of the spheres to yourself. This brings great power and proportional limitations. In the end (sometimes after seconds, sometimes after thousends of years) they fall victim to their new nature: They grow most distant all the time, cruel, corrupted by power. Then the decay sets in as their cohesions starts to vane. Finally they succumb to entropy, other gods or even mortals and are utterly destroyed or consumed. Power corrupts; to become a god is to loose yourself.
In DnD terms it would be like a prestige class wizards can enter automatically and early, while other classes need a higher level and a good explanation of how it happens. With the last level of the Prc the character gains Divine Rank 0 and various powers and restrictions relating to his new status. Becoming a full 'god' would take a new Prc, but it leads to becoming a NPC. Actually working towards becoming a god is unusual anyway, as among the immortals the restrictions of so called divinity are known.
There is another way entirely and that's necromancy. The knowledge of the very forces of life also bestows great power. This power is not subject to entropy or any related hazards, it's subtle and rightfully dreaded. The only necromantic transcendants are found among the dragons (the first race in the universe to archieve sentience) and a few others that also were among the first, hundreds of millions of years, before the stellar system in which humans eventually developped formed. They mostly live in the vacuum of space, control galaxy-spanning empires or cartograph the unknows wastes of the higher dimensions (far realms). This is the arena, in which the equivalent of Epic games would take place. Ultra-Epic actually as Epic levels in DnD are still entirely within the human scope - rare, but not far from being unknown.
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