Deities

Deities or gods are higher beings of faith and creation. They fall under the Divine<ref name=":11">With many of the practices in the Divine line, you're dealing with greater powers (not necessarily gods) and forces that are essentially at the 'ground level' of the universe, fabricating it, taking a broader hand in events above human affairs, etc, but the vast majority of these are capricious. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> and Structural fields of Practice.<ref name="8.1e2">“Right now, those of us who are canny enough are changing roles.  Used to be we provided definition and structure.  Now your species is doing that for itself.  We’re smaller, we keep more to our own selves and family branches, and we game the systems if we’re smart.”

“Structure, you said?” she asked.  “We put gods under the broad umbrella of structural practices.”

“Your call.  It works.”

“Why does it work?”

“Because we build, we create from raw clay, beams of light, and from ourselves.”

“Create what?” she asked.

“Life.  Weather.  Rules.  We don’t create-create, but you can cut a statue out of raw clay and say you made that, can’t you?  Creating from scratch is a dying art, left to other forces.”

“And this is how you heal.”

“Sure thing,” the god said.  He smiled.  “Blow a bit of life into a vessel, doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a clay dog.  Or do a bit of repair to their fundamental structure, patch a hole, carve something out.  Most gods get to be gods because they have that faith backing them and they have the tools to do that creating.  Sometimes it’s one and the other follows, other times?  We’re like this, right out of the tin. Grown and gorgeous.” - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref> Beings and power related to the gods are known as Divine<ref name=":8" /><ref name=":12" /> (athough this can include things linked other Greater Powers)<ref name=":11" /> or Deific.<ref name=":0">Some think dragons are what happens when something feeds into itself. Every dragon is different, and some are more elemental, or mostly elemental, or spirit, or deific.  Something like a lesser god that worships itself, or an elemental that takes in more than it puts out. - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.3</ref> Gods gain power from worship,<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":8" /> and have the ability to manipulate and define the underlying structures of things - to create, not ex nihilo, but out of existing materials and their own power.<ref name="8.1e2" />

Nature

It is said that the least of gods is similar to the greatest of spirits.<ref name=":1">The spirits collected and gathered, drawing in the emotion, feeding on it, altering themselves.

They congealed.

A greater spirit, the least of gods, the line was thin between the two.

They wore the form of a bird. - Excerpt from Interlude 11</ref> In terms of cosmic significance, they are second only to Angels and Demons.<ref name=":2">You can bind a god, which is technically on a lower tier than an Angel/Demon. You can bind a Primeval, again, on a lesser tier. But gods and primevals, even if bound, are little more than really big, really dangerous batteries to draw on, and they're a danger every time they're tapped. Usually you're just binding them to get them to be good and to restrain their impact on the world.

Making one a familiar (or hosting them, or forming any direct connection to them) is like having sex with a bear. You're not in a position of power and you're liable to get mauled. They don't understand your behavior and you really, really need to understand every last detail of theirs. When it comes to primevals there's just no reality where it's doable. They're a big fucking bear/wolf/bird/bramble, and they're always mad.

Angels and demons are worse on that front. They're so inevitable and permanent as forces that you might as well be trying to stop the world from turning or rotating around the sun.

In cases where gods or angels are in a place where they understand humans and they develop a rapport, there can be interactions like hosting or familiar bonds, but this is a pretty one-sided relationship, forever one misunderstanding or godly whim from you being turned into a pillar of salt or having a metaphorical, nine hundred pound bear fuck buddy crawling out of the tattered skin of your one hundred and fifty pound self.

So just to outline:

Really frigging hard. Same goes for other 'high tier' Others like Primevals, Gods, and Demons. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

Despite their power, without connections they can fall into Limbo and become part of it<ref name=":3">In the midst of that cavern, a face stood out from the wall.  It wasn’t stone, but it looked like something close.  Bone, perhaps, or calcified flesh.

I had to wrestle with the idea that it was simultaneously further away than it looked and very, very big. Especially for a face.

It could very well have been as large as a mountain.  The area between it and me was empty of anything, vast, a chasm as wide as the gap between countries, maybe.

It rested at an angle, leaning against a distant solid surface I couldn’t make out, surrounded by cracks that cities could have been built in.  It was cracked as well, with gaps running along its pale features, almost to the point that it looked like it might shatter any moment.  The eyes were open, and a light radiated from the eyes, as intense as the sun.

The noise it was making, the size of it, I couldn’t comprehend it, not cognitively, but in my would-be heart?  I felt something swell.

Light shone from the open mouth, too, and the drone emanated from the mouth, deep enough to touch me in the core of my body.

The size of it, the sheer base… I wasn’t even sure how to phrase it.  The simpleness of it?  No, that was wrong.  The appearance, the light, the utter monotone of the sound it generated, it was more like it was at the heart of simplicity, at the heart of something from which more complicated things could emerge.

A lesser god?

Forgotten, fallen through the cracks, swallowed up by this place that had existed before the Drains were Drains? - Excerpt from Null 9.5</ref> or even fall out of reality entirely and become Lost.<ref>The reaches are realms which may have been a part of reality, a part of the abyss, or a fragment of collective unconsciousness, which has come untethered from just about everything.  Without history, human attention or human logic to help pin them down, these places and their denizens unspool.  A lesser god with no connection to reality will fall to the Abyss.  When she is entirely unrecoverable, she may find herself drifting across the Paths, where sustenance is so little and so far between that she is forced to hibernate for centuries at a time, insofar as time has any meaning in those places.  Beings such as this once-god often wake only when practitioners approach. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> (Although a maenad implied to Blake that the gods in Limbo may simply be too lazy to leave.)<ref name=":4">“They’re endangered,” the maenad told me.  “Can’t breed, no gods old or rough-edged enough still around to make more.  Except maybe where you’re from, but any that crop up there still aren’t going to be adventurous enough to move.  Everyone knows it isn’t right to touch a giant.  Or they should know.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.3</ref> They can lose power if their relevance to society fades, or if they spend more power than their actions recoup in worship.<ref name=":8" /><ref name=":7" /> They are tied up to their patterns far more then even practitioners and a course change can heavily drain them.<ref>“That tight a pattern?” Matthew asked.  “She does one thing.  Suddenly breaking from that to include Others doesn’t work.”

“If she has a certain power source or origin point?” Verona asked.  “If the power, say, came from a god and then the god changed its mind?”

“Even gods tend to hold to patterns.  It can cost nearly as much to change direction as it does to get the thing started in the first place,” Matthew said. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.2</ref> Deities also have issues with innocence which is something they can't go against easily.<ref>“Gods are such a paradox,” Miss said. “They have so much power, but so little ability to exercise it. With the barriers of innocence so firmly in place, if you stand up too tall, you get knocked down. Otherwise, the innocent might see you.” - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.9</ref>

Conjuring a god in physical form is a major task, of the sort an advanced Astrologer might build a city-sized ritual circle to achieve.<ref name="Astro">Dedicating the Star - Carefully tended diagrams can be a source of power that is then used to call forth a specific being, on a date relevant to that being.  Can be a way to call forth deities in physical form, great Historics, the souls of dead loved ones (with caveats), and so on.  Essentially the result of a magic circle drawn out on a city-sized scale. - Pact Dice: Astrologers</ref> However, gods will often send lesser splinters of themselves to attend to minor tasks.<ref name="8.1e1">“Gods tend to send splinters or aspects of themselves to tend to minor matters,” Ms. Durocher addressed the class.  “You’ve done so, yes?”

“I wouldn’t fit in here at full size,” he said, laughing through the sentence. - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref><ref> “Are you giving this pep talk to the others?” Nomi asked.

“Some.  Others are resting.  That’s more important for them right now.”

“Not exactly an exclusive rah-rah for me, then, huh?”

“Oh, but it is,” Maricica told her.  She stroked Nomi’s hair with a hand almost as big as Nomi was.  “I can address multiple people at once and give you exclusive attention at the same time.  I’m a goddess.” - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.a</ref>

Even injured-seeming and in the Abyss, a god's body was immensely vast - Blake speculated it's head was as big as a moon, surrounded by cracks that could contain cities.<ref name=":5">“If we send it elsewhere,” Johannes spoke, “My familiar can strike at the demon.  There are old, forgotten gods in the Abyss.  He can put this demon right in front of those gods, and they can kill it.”

His familiar.  I noticed Faysal Anwar wasn’t in the room.

“I know about the gods in the Abyss,” I said.  “I met one.”

Johannes smiled.

“It was losing,” I said.  “Slowly, but surely.”

The smile faltered.

“Gods range in power,” he said.  Picking up right where he’d left off.

“I can’t say for sure,” I said, “But the one I saw was maybe the same size as the moon.  Or his head was.  I don’t think you can pull that off, resting in the Abyss, unless you have plenty of power.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.9</ref> When Rad Ray Sunshine conjured an image of two gods fighting, they appeared as figures bigger than mountains, so tall they might extend into space.<ref name=":10">A figure, taller than any mountain, loomed over them, glowing softly from cracks along its body.  Clothing was hard to distinguish from elaborate skin and beard, riddled with details.

A man with a spear, so tall he might well extend into space, reached out to wrestle with a woman, cowled.

Lucy’s body was darker than some.  Jorja’s body was bright.  So was Jessica’s.

“The divine.  Capricious.  Know what you deal with.  Unlike the karmic, they get frustrated with firm rules and exact wordings.  Bore them and even the most rule-based divinity will take action against you.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.6</ref> Metaphaos' true form was far too large to fit inside the BHI hall, and even his smaller avatar was far bigger than a human.<ref name="8.1e1" />

Gods, even those associated with order, tend to be capricious and uninterested in precise wording.<ref name=":10" />

Abilities

Each god will have a portfolio, for example Dionysus has power over madness.<ref>The High Priest worshiped a deity that included madness in his realm of control. - Excerpt from Judgement 16.5</ref>

Gods are generally immensely powerful.<ref>Greater Powers

–Worship – Prayer, tapping into the well of divinity, serving divine forces.
–Labeling Greatness – Identifying gods, primevals, angels, great spirits, et al.
–Capricious Power* – Management of the uncontrollable and unpredictable.
–Overflow and Excess* – When measures to contain greater powers fail.
–Heartless Practices* – Breaching the bounds of mortality and humanity.
–Hollow Others* – Vestiges, hollows, stains, and other remnants of excess power.
–Others in Excess* – Others of unrestrained power; god-cursed, wishful, oroboros.
–Counter-Diabolism* – Mitigating harm, best practices for self-preservation. - Blue Heron Institute class list, 4.1 Bonus Content</ref><ref>“Major powers.  Are these gods?  Great spirits?  Incarnations? [...] What would you say if I asked if these greater powers are judges?  Carmine, Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum?” - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref> Gods are among the few beings powerful enough to empower someone to kill a dragon.<ref>“Dragons are so like they are in video games,” Evan said.

“No,” Tiff said.  “Um, in video games, a guy with a sword can kill a dragon.  Only way that happens here is if a god intervenes, or you’re drawing on some similar degree of power.”

“We’ve got an in with gods, right?

“Not unless someone wants to hike back to the house,” Peter said. - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.3</ref><ref name=":6">“There’s no polar opposite.  Most are amalgams of elemental and spirit and animal and nightmares, on top of whatever else.  You have to beat them at their own game.  You get the dragons that are all poison, to the point that one drop of venom can clear out a lake.  Then you have to just out-poison them.  You get the dragons in some areas of the East that are more spirit and elemental, like dragons of the mountains and… it’s like you have to destroy a mountain by hitting it with a bigger mountain.”

“How do you-” I started.  “Nevermind.  You’re saying the only way to kill ol’ firebreath there is hotter fire?”

“No,” she said.  Her voice dropped to be even quieter, as we approached the end of the street.  “There’s another way.  Most are violent, killing machines.  So… if you’re brave enough, you can try the conventional means.  Facing them in battle.  Eventually someone succeeds.  Usually with the backing of some major power.  Usually a god.  Which makes them rare.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.3</ref> Gods are powerful enough to shatter all the Demesnes in a building for their follower with a single blow and incapacitate those inside, infusing the whole area around them with power in the process.<ref>Mala Fide 10.6</ref><ref>“We’re crashing a party,” Jeremy said.  “Barriers or no, when you ask a god to open a door, that door gets opened.”

The direction they were traveling.  Hillsglade House. - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.5</ref> They could easily crush a being such as Blake at a word from their follower.<ref>“Any last words?” he asked.

“Why would I need last words?” I asked.  “I’m not planning on dying anytime in the immediate future.”

“It’s a courtesy.  I only need to say a word to my deity to lay you out flat.” - Excerpt from Execution 13.7</ref> A god might be one of the few beings that could challenge a lesser angel such as Faysal Anwar.<ref>Don’t let appearances deceive.  The angel Faysal is powerful enough that only a god or a demon might pose a challenge. - Excerpt from Possession 15.2</ref> Even a lesser god of light was able to restrain and injure Ur.<ref>“Ur,” I murmured.

It was working its way into this place that lay through the cracks. Into the Drains.  The only thing that had stopped it, cutting it off from the heart at the source of it, was the accidental uncovering of this ancient forgotten god.

[...]

I screamed guttural, as close to the same tone as the god that shone its light into this dark chamber, fighting Ur for as long as he lasted.

I worshiped that lost god for just a moment.

The light grew more intense, and Ur burned away.  Even the pieces in my arm. - Excerpt from Null 9.5</ref> Johannes believed that there were gods in Limbo that could kill Barbatorem, although Blake disagreed.<ref name=":5" />

Gods have a unique power to shape and define creation. This makes them especially adept at altering fundamental rules, creating life, and healing.<ref name="8.1e2" /> For example, one god was able to create an entire race of super-fast-reproducing humans from the seed of one man.

Origins

The first gods emerged crude and loose in form as each telling and culture that outlined them varied.<ref name=":8">The background noise of internet and online communication allows for the natural emergence of accidental rituals.  Repetition, default or common responses and collective imagination allow for a kind of false worship to take place.  Much as the first gods emerged, crude and loose in form as each telling and culture that outlined them varied, the digital avatar is a force akin to a god that arises from the spirit world, often linked to a phenomenon and then crystallized by the public consciousness.  As figures of a more spiritual and divine stripe, what one often sees is often the tip of the iceberg for a larger effect.

Lesser gods spawned by a public consciousness, Nex Machina stem from the digital, not from dreams, other worlds, or reality.

[...]

In some ways, the Nex Machina has the same vulnerabilities as a god and spirit both.  They are reliant on ‘worship’ and through no fault of their own can fade from relevance, and as a worshiped entity, the well of power they draw on works much as any prayer or divine system does, with power gained or fostered and then spent in hopes of an investment paying off. - Beastiary - Nex Machina</ref>

Blake and Faysal speculated that the gods may come from some primal font of creation, the opposite of the destruction that is the Abyss.<ref>I pulled my hands from my pockets and spread my arms.  Look at me. Entropy wins.  I’ve been to the Drains, but I haven’t come across anything suggesting that there’s a force of creation that’s working just as hard.”

“There are two possible answers,” Faysal Anwar told me.  “The first is that such a place exists, but creation spews forth, it does not take in.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Gods come from somewhere, don’t they?”

“Maybe,” he echoed me. - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.5</ref>

Attaining godhood seems to be a possibility for lesser beings, that supposedly enough worship can make a god.<ref name=":14">“Twist bloodlines enough, and you get subhumans.  I’ve met three of these groups.  A little island close to Greenland, the population center small.  Toothless, wide-eyed devout worshipers of an opportunist Other they were unwittingly elevating to godhood. This is remarkably common, mind.  They are often Aware, which can be fascinating, and they may resemble early practitioners.  In this case, it was early worship.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref> It has been claimed that godhood is a possibility for Heroes,<ref>“Are you gods?  Were you gods?” I asked.

“We were men,” Cranaus said.  “The sorts who were brief-lived legends, to the point that godhood was a possibility. Nothing more.  We subsist now by a long existence of being familiars for one master after another.  Chronomancers like to draw the greater legends from history for such a thing.” - Excerpt from Malfeasance 11.3</ref> although whether this means literal godhood or just being worshipped is unclear. The Wraith of Molly Walker claimed that "in the right time or place, an idea can become a spirit, and a spirit can become a god", and hinted that she might be evolving into one.<ref>“Sometimes, in the right time or place, an idea can become a spirit, and a spirit can become a god [...] I’m not saying I’m becoming a god.  It’s… only an idea.” - Excerpt from Execution 13.2</ref> The powerful Spirit of Montreal is said to have become a lesser god, among other things.<ref>The Spirit of Montréal was a spirit of trade, then a spirit of the city, then a lesser god, among other things.  An ever-changing spirit that has settled down for now. - Mile End: Awakening</ref>

In some cases, it is known that complex confluences of power can come together to birth a god with little or no human influence. See "Glitch Gods", below.

Usage by Practitioners

The usual way for a Practitioner such as a Priest to interact with a god is to provide them with worship and obedience in exchange for occasional acts of overwhelming divine power; with the god aiming to recoup more from their worshipper than they invested.<ref name=":12">They can be used for divine power, but the Nex Machina is so mercurial and inconsistent in power level, prone to the vagaries and the rise and fall of the internet’s interest, that the act of building up the favor to spend on a greater act is often too risky. If successful, the Nex Machina may be invited to appear, swiftly enveloping an area with the power offered.  Oftentimes this is just faster than summoning, but with a steep and precarious price paid in advance (by way of the favor garnered). - Beastiary: Nex Machina</ref><ref name=":9">“That snake was his.  You killed it.  You maimed his servant’s hand.  For all intents and purposes, there is a gun pressed to your head as we speak.  There has been since you hurt that snake.”

[...]

“Or I crack.  I call on my god to show the way, and in the doing, I disarm myself of my primary source of power.  You hurt the snake, and that counts a great deal against you.  I could probably assume that’s enough that he’d grant me the favor, despite the disappointment in me.  But probably isn’t certainty, and   I’d normally be unwilling to call on my god for three great acts in a single week, let alone a day.” - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.6</ref> This is fairly inexact, with the god deciding whether they will respond and the exact manner they do so.<ref name=":9" /><ref>“I have my own responsibilities,” he said.  “When I wield power, it isn’t with lines on the floor and carefully worded contracts.  I only ask. I can change the wording, pick the phrasing, decide the poetry of it, and read old texts, from my god’s days of glory.  But when I want to practice, I only speak.  A single word will suffice.”

He wasn’t murdering me or getting us all killed while he talked, so there was that.

He continued, “My challenge is to show I’m worthy.  In the heat of the moment, I don’t need to do anything special.  Outside of those moments, I have to curry favor.  There aren’t any gauges, no measurements I can take.  I have to watch for signs and trust him to show me his pleasure or displeasure.  If I overstep, asking too much for how little favor I have, he may punish me.  If I hold his favor but do not spend it, he might revoke it.”

“Easy to get wrong,” I said.

“I don’t shape how it manifests.  He does.  But when he works…”

“He can knock down all the barriers in a house that’s supposed to hold up against a pair of angry chronomancers and enchantresses.” - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.6</ref><ref>“You’re telling me you went after the one person in Jacob’s Bell who has the most dangerous knowledge around, the one person who can tap into world ending forces, who’s maybe a little hard to anticipate to begin with, and you got her drunk?”

“I’ve been led to believe my god impaired her faculties,” Jeremy Meath said.  “As I said, doing what I do is far from an exact science.” - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.6</ref><ref name=":10" /> Entertainment or struggle can be another reason to give power, for a certain sort of god,<ref name="dance">“You leave, I find her, we mutually prevent anything stupid from happening, and Sandra gets to do whatever she’s planning to do to Mags and Molly,” I said.  “You and your god win.”

“It’s not that simple.  When my god created this situation, he posed a challenge to me.  If he simply gave me what I needed, what would that be worth?  I have to work for it a little.  His era of gods are especially fond of making the little mortals dance,” Jeremy said.  “If I walk away from that challenge and fail to dance, I disappoint him.”

“Seems to me,” I said, picking my words with care, not breaking eye contact with him, “Following a god like you do is very nearly as tragic an existence as being a diabolist.” - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.6</ref> as could because the target offended them.<ref name=":9" /> Others such as a Chosen increase the fame and power of a deity with their deeds, with success or failure on their part effecting the diety.<ref name="champ" />

Certain times and events are important to gods and how they operate.<ref name="Astro" />

With a positive enough relationship, a god can be used for Host Magic or as a Familiar, but due to their immense power and alien mentality this is a very one-sided relationship with the Practitioner at the god's.<ref name=":2" />

Gods can be bound, but this is usually done simply to compel them to stop causing problems. A bound god can be drawn on as an immense battery of power, although this is dangerous every time it's drawn on.<ref name=":2" /> Their diffuse, abstract nature makes them immune to most bindings, however.<ref>Binding: Much like a God, cannot be bound.  Can be contained, however, with attention and steps taken in advance.  Technomancers have the tools necessary to limit the reach of a Nex Machina with any presence. - Beastiary: Nex Machina</ref><ref>Strengths: The Nex Machina is a spirit, not a physical entity, and exists as a scattered, ephemeral thing across the digital landscape.  It is an advantage to the Nex Machina that it is not a thing that many are equipped to deal with because it is new to the lists of Others, and it is too ‘big’, in a sense, to easily encircle and bind.  In this, it is similar to a great spirit or deity. - Beastiary: Nex Machina</ref>

Types and Derived Others

Demiourgos

Colloquially Demiurges, literally meaning crafter, is used to describe those deiforms that focus primarily in the cultivation and shaping of their specific Realm, can have any number of origins and are completely sovereign in their space with the consequential problems that makes in reality, continual expansion of its realm attracts unwanted attention so some Demiurges will make minions or items or contract with a Caller to bring in the means to empower itself.<ref>The Demiourgos (technically correct) or Demiurge is a divine being that is first and foremost a craftsman of its own realm and/or universe. They may originate from a variety of sources but as they encapsulate a large region or are given the means of seizing a place, the first tools to their hands are those of realm creation, and they often swallow up a place or define a pocket realm. Most are some form of Other that already has some ability to swallow up places or influence the people who then influence the place (Nex Machina, Bugges, Celestial Horrors, Harbingers, some other practitioners). Most deities have demiurgic power, but the Others labeled Demiourgos lean heavily into it and place it primary in their capabilities.

Because the means by which they seize a place and the power of that place and thereby become deific is so haphazard, the Demiourgos is often somewhat reckless. They manage and manipulate their domains and may be mad kings or arbiters of draconian rule, and because they dwell there, the place must be penetrated for the (oft nascent) deity to be defeated and those trapped released; a place where the Demiourgos manipulates reality itself.

Draoidhe often interact heavily with such, protecting and/or expanding the place in exchange for the ability to unload the divine being's power with but a few words or simple practice. Demiourgos can go in three directions, either expanding recklessly by their own hands and exposing themselves to being found, targeted, and exterminated, expanding out through a mechanism (such as items of divine power, living rituals, bugge glyphs), or entering a stasis state and relying on a Draoidhe to do the expanding work for them, a keen mind with understanding of the landscape of man finding the times, places, and potential victims to swallow up an area and add it to the demiurgic domain. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>

The Blue Heron Throne is one such example.

Human Gods

Most gods start out with human faith empowering them; either starting out with the power of faith and having that propel them to a god's powers over creation, starting out with divine power over creation and acquiring faith later, or being born with both.<ref name=":13">Durocher looked up at him.  “And many are like yourself, others are, hm, what would we call them?  Raymond?  Glitches in the system?”  She looked to Raymond, who sat off to the side.

“Emergent gods,” Raymond said.  “Sometimes we’ll term them cosmic rounding errors.  Complexities of a deific scale?”

“Complex, in that case, being used in the same sense we talk about complex spirits, elementals, and such?”  Durocher asked, pacing, looking at the class and not Raymond.

“Yes,” Raymond said.

“You have to be careful with that lot,” Metaphaos said.  “Messy.  Interesting, but not fun.”

“Why?” Durocher asked, pointing at him, without turning around.

“They don’t always have humanity and humanity’s faith giving them a push from behind from the outset.  You can get less human forces, and that gets out of control fast.  They might not speak your languages, they might not have very good aim, or they might not care either way.  [...] Most gods get to be gods because they have that faith backing them and they have the tools to do that creating.  Sometimes it’s one and the other follows, other times?  We’re like this, right out of the tin.  Grown and gorgeous.” - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref> They aren't necessarily known to Innocent society at large, however. They may be primarily worshipped by Practitioners, people in pocket Realms, or the like.<ref>I’m not one of your gods from the books, and very few of the gods who practitioners will deal with are.  Being bound up in history is too constraining, too formalized, it comes with too much baggage.  You only find the best gods if you go looking in places unknown. - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref><ref name=":14" />

Glitch Gods

Also known as "emergent gods" or "cosmic rounding errors", some gods are born with little or no human influence, a complex snarl of inhuman forces. Being less shaped by humanity, they tend to be less personable.<ref name=":13" /> Nex Machinae are examples of this, born from patterns in the spirits of the digital and online traffic.<ref name=":8" />

Lesser Gods/Deiform

Some have been noted to be lesser gods, like the god of light that remains as part of The Drains.<ref name=":3" /> A Deus ex Machina or Nex Machina is considered a type of minor god.<ref name=":8" /><ref>“Years ago, there was something on the horizon that clouded my Sight. It recurred as an image. A teenage boy dressed as a king, sitting in a chair with water running over him, repeating the same nonsense phrases over and over again. If I gutted a bird and pulled out its entrails for a simple fortune telling, I could find papers in the guts, with the phrases on it. It was… obnoxious. I traveled from Toronto to Winnipeg, met with other Practitioners who had run into the same problem, some of your parents, as a matter of fact. A company that managed and experimented with server architecture had rented out three floors of its building to a startup and had unwittingly played host to a group of technomancers trying to get users to engage with rituals they’d programmed. They abandoned their work, killed by Witch Hunters or run off by Others, and their work was deleted. As Raymond Sunshine would be sure to tell you, however, deleted does not mean gone. Just as you can pull something out of your trash bin on your desktop, their work was still there, gradually taking form, reaching out into the rest of the servers in the building until it could become a small god. After that, it started expanding out, until it was interfering with my Sight. [...] It had taken over the building and the running of the company that managed the servers. Within was a world of its own that would take a month to cross. I went to deal with it, and ran into someone else who was doing the same. A young lady who would be best described as being very interested in the most vast and uncontrolled parts of conventional practice,” He indicated Mrs. Durocher. “She had already contacted a colleague of hers from a previous errand, a man who was just then achieving notoriety for his first practitioner-facing website.” He indicated Raymond Sunshine. [...] Together with Mr. Bristow and Mr. Musser, we annihilated the god, shared out its power, and we drank together that night. For Mr. Sunshine, Mrs. Durocher, and myself, it sparked a close friendship that has lasted ever since. One of the things I hold most important about that experience was the epiphany I had, during that night of conversation and light drinks. It wasn’t the power that I was happiest with -and I was as power hungry as they come- but the moments I had been with other practitioners and felt purpose and felt like we were all better for those deals. Better informed, and we all know having the right information makes us strong. Dealing with other practitioners makes us safer, better equipped, stronger, and more capable of covering our weaknesses. That epiphany would eventually lead to us starting the Blue Heron Institute alongside Mr. Bristow, Mr. Musser, and others. We named it after one of the faces the god in the machine had worn.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.5</ref> A lesser god might be on a par with a powerful Incarnation or greater Goblin or Spirit; the sort of being that might create a Ritual Incarnate.<ref>That much power that fast has to come from somewhere, and then be given form as a ritual by someone or something.  A strong incarnation, a lesser god, a great Goblin.  If it had appeared in the last month, I might think it had something to do with the current state of the Carmine Beast.  That could be a big enough power source… perhaps.  [...] There are things that have that kind of power, like gods and strong incarnations, but I’m not aware of anything that strong that could have any connection to the Choir, and I’ve done some extensive searching. - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.2</ref> Numerous Others are mentioned to be able to become equivalent to a god given the right circumstance and available Power,<ref> “So he’s like a god.”

“He is like a god,” my driver said.  “And we could go into a deep discussion of the common elements between gods and incarnations, the abstract versus the straightforward, but that’s outside of the bounds of your agreement with the firm, and I believe we’re on your street.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.1</ref> such as the right Heroic figures.<ref>Heroes themselves are far, far stronger as entities. They are human and not human, incarnations without a set theme, gods but more material. A true Hero is an incredible weapon or tool and often the culmination of generations of a family’s work.- Pact Dice: Heroics</ref>

Corvidae could be compared to the least of gods,<ref name=":1" /> as could the empowered Wraith of Molly Walker<ref>Jacob’s Bell is going to become a new attraction in the Abyss, complete with a spiteful lesser god and a perpetually tolling bell.  - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.1</ref>

A lesser god which worships itself is one of the feedback loops that could develop into a dragon.<ref name=":0" />

Giants

Only the oldest or roughest gods were able to create Giants.<ref name=":4" />

Icon

Artifice animated and given a well of, usually finite, power, incredibly varied.<ref>A god had put some of its essence into a statue to breathe power and existence into her.  Not life, exactly, but animation.  It was possible her skin was ivory, as a matter of fact.  Icons served as decoration, representatives, errand-runners, and sometimes guardians.  They had a lot of divine power, but it was a finite source that didn’t tend to replenish without the direct attention of the god that made them. A lake’s worth of water that didn’t refill when it was drank from, used to grow trees, used to put out fires.  When it was spent she would go still and never move again. - Excerpt from False Moves 12.z</ref>

God-Begotten

Applied to any children of the gods though usually those that are not pleasing to the eye. In previous ages their parentage was instead explained as a curse.

Other Creations

Dieties are know to create several diffrent varieties of Other to serve their purposes or advancement.

Notable Gods

• Dionysus
• Enyo<ref name=":7">Tromos, Steed of Enyo (T):  You may call me Tromos, we can do without the title to hurry this along.  I was the steed of a goddess of war and ruin.  The gods I served, fought beside, and fought against have grown weaker in recent years.  While my gods withered and grew small, their worshipers few, I turned to creating dreams of utter terror, and I have survived the centuries. - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref><ref>Enyo - Wikipedia, some relevant sources from Theoi</ref>
• Lesser god of light in The Drains
• Metaphaos and his *Unnamed Sister
• Prometheus<ref name="champ" />
  • Prometheus's colleague<ref name="champ">“Only one I won’t tell you the name of.  By his gospel, the one we came to name Prometheus had peers, and it was not the one who tried to seize the original Fire, but many.  All who tried, succeed or fail, were punished.  I found my deity nine miles beneath the surface of the earth, thoroughly protected so none might disturb his eternal punishment.  Had he succeeded, our campfires might not be wood we’ve set alight, but something else entirely.”
    
    “Your god’s a loser?” Kevin asked, sneering a bit to drive the question home.
    
    It did seem to nettle Ulysse.  “He was the greatest of them.  So they placed the most obstacles in his way.  Now he is my god and I am his sole worshiper, his champion.”
    
    “It’s my understanding that if you pick this fight and lose, your god’s power will dwindle.”
    
    Ulysse nodded. - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.a</ref> God of Ulysse Miraz
• Maricica

Chronology

The Primevals could be classified as gods even if they came before the ancient conception of them.<ref>Ray: All hands on deck. Let’s do this right. That means bringing Durocher and her pre-human divinities. Talk to Alexander while you’re at it. The school is a resource we maintain for just this reason. We’ll use it. - Out on a Limb bonus - SunnyDay Logs</ref><ref>[Durocher] taps into primeval spirits, things so old they predate human language, or even the pre-human conception of animals having categories.  Beasts arguably older and more raw than any gods.  No form or boundaries. - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.4</ref> Titans are something like proto-gods or the prototypes of gods; individually more powerful but no where near as sophisticated.

Once, particularly old or rough-edged gods created the Giants. Those gods eventually died or fell into Limbo, leaving true giants - which cannot breed - a dying race.<ref name=":4" />

The champions of gods, along with others backed by similarly-great powers, have slain most of the dragons.<ref name=":6" />

Based on when gods were created they may have certain proclivities.<ref name="dance" />

Many of the gods have grown weaker in recent years,<ref name=":7" /> presumably because society has largely stopped worshiping them.<ref name=":8" />

References

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