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Physical Gods or Spiritual Gods?


Steve

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What becomes of a god that has no faithful nor worshipers? Do they die? How many dead gods can fit at the end of a pin? Are they really hungry when somebody revives the worship (assuming they are merely dormant and not truly cast to oblivion)?

 

In the Hero Universe, yes, gods can die if they go long enough without worship, or if they aren't at least remembered. The past timeline is littered with forgotten gods. Some of them may become dormant first, and revive if recognition of them is revived in some way. But in some cases the beliefs surrounding a particular god or pantheon of gods change over time, as for example over the long history of ancient Egyptian religion; and the gods may "mutate," altering as their worshipers' conception of them evolves (although the gods themselves "remember" their own pasts as the most popular current beliefs describe them).

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In a fantasy setting, the idea of good gods being symbiotic with mortals and evil gods being predatory is interesting. Blood and souls are the drink and meat of evil powers, feasting on sacrifices instead of prayers of the faithful as the good gods do.

 

It gives an intriguing feel to fantasy deities to divide them up this way.

 

Certain settings have relatively benevolent gods become predatory demons out of a refusal to "starve to death" when they are displaced.  Of course in the Primal Order setting while primal beings get more power from being worshipped than they would otherwise have, they aren't absolutely dependent on worship either.  They get Primal by the nature of what they are and very very old primal beings may increasingly find maintaining a following to be more trouble than it's worth since they have grown over millions of years to such a size that worshippers are small change to them.  Some never bother in the first place, feeling self sufficient or developing alternative sources of primal power.  

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One could probably do worse than pick up a weird, discredited economic theory and then base your theology on that.

 

If you find one. It seems that even the weirdest theories seem to have a surprisingly large number of adherents.

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