Gods, Clerics, and The Game

What qualifies as a God?

Imagine playing N-dimensional chess on a board as big as the solar system. Gazillions of cells. Your adversaries as numerous as sand grains on a beach, each with their own unique winning condition. The Game advances at snail pace, but is constantly moving.

A mortal soul is a mere piece on the board. A speck of dust in the Universe. Insignificant to you and the other players. Yet, you need to beckon the attention of souls, since as an instrumental part of The Game, their cooperation (or consumption) is needed to come further ahead in it. And advance it to your advantage. Without pieces, there's no game.

Winning is a gargantuan task in such a complex play; out of the question. Just advancing The Game in the next favorable move in the foreseeable horizon is enough for any player like you. And remember, time is just another dimension of the board, so The game is NOT linear in that sense. Nobody even remembers what the winning price was. But you bet it must be HUGE. Or the best joke ever perpetrated: a game to keep everyone busy without any cause, effect, or end. Nihilism at its best.

That's it. A God is simply an alien creature playing a game of power against other such entities. The Game. Mortal souls are just oil for the engine, wood for the fire. An Avatar is just a manifestation of a God made simple enough so that a mortal soul can comprehend and interact with it, without having their brains immediately exploding.

Some players (Gods) prefer to keep more active and engaged. Others are more distant. Some are direct on how they interact with the souls. Others act in whispers and shadows. The chances of a playing Avatar/God to pay any mind to a mortal soul is directly proportional to how much they think acting will bring them further in The Game.

Weirdo Gods, Tim Molloy

A mortal soul may ask: how do I become a God? How do I get to take decisions in The Game, and stop being a coin to trade, a resource to burn and consume by the decision-makers? See, unfortunately despite its quasi-infinite vastness, the number of player agents is decisively finite. Quasi, remember?

Not only that, but the number of players has to remain constant. Any perished Avatar/God has to be immediately replaced by an eager side-liner. Failing to do so hastily breaks an essential equilibrium, and such a blasphemy echoes through existence, past present and future. That's why, despite insane competition in The Game, everyone is happy to see a new face replace the old one. A God has to be completely forgotten to die. Its pieces on the board completely removed, passages on tomes and writings fully erased. It takes eons for such a happenstance. But as just an additional dimension, time is an afterthought in this whole business. So a God dying does comes up.

The Cleric

There are priests, proselytizers, lecturers, moralists, atheists, and a full plethora or other individuals devoting a considerable amount of effort studying The Game, its implications, and how mortal souls interact with it (hint: as victims). Then, you have Clerics. They GROK exactly the irony of their position. Collecting thought, praise, and worship to a God that sees its devout and pious zealots as ants it ultimately has to consume (fuel-providing ants, then).

But an Avatar/God does need the work of a Cleric. Or at the very least it facilitates their position on The Game considerably. A conduit of mortal souls, a Cleric's work is greatly appreciated. Their worth unquestionable. Hence the concession of occasional Prayers to lure those juicy souls like mosquitoes in a swamp going after the lamp.

Inter-cosmic symbiosis with abysmal unbalanced power dynamics. But at least both agreed to play.

Good luck, pal! A. Shipwright

The Magic User?

Magic-Users (wizards, mages, sorcerers). Joke is on them. Their magic and powers come from the exact same source as for Clerics. The Game. And its players. A MU just ignores being part of play. Denies the possibility by principle and philosophy. Approaching everything like a black box. Taking short-cuts, trying to bend the rules of The Game. Poke it, and see what works, without fully rationalizing or understanding.

Whenever a summoning circle is laid out, pentagrams and candles on the floor, a MU is doing the exact same work as a Cleric would do. They just don't understand the consequences and price of what they're asking for. Gods will chuckle at their board, seeing that speck of dust sparkle for a second. Bless the ignorant fouls.