Deities

Deities are immortal, ephemeral Forms of Existence that are elevated from mortals by The Ancient, and are usually granted a specific set responsibility and related powers known as a domain. As such, deities naturally rank a good step above even the most powerful mortals, and even with powerful Iserialogy or advanced weaponry, destroying a deity is a difficult feat. Most importantly, however, even destroying a a deities Physical Form will not deter it forever. Being immortal, the Spirit of a Deity continues to exist even after its physical destruction, and the deity can take measures to create a new Physical Form for itself in a time and place of its own choosing. The majority of deities start out with a Body as their first Physical Form, and then switch to a Frame after their initial Physical Form fails them, since even in spiritual form, a deity can gather the necessary Iserial Energy for the construction of a Frame without any outside help.

Deities, however, are not eternal. A deity can be demoted back to a normal mortal by The Ancient, which usually must be the same The Ancient as the one that elevated it in the first place, though exceptions of this rule are known to occur. Most of these exceptions involve Entelecheia, The Ancient of potential, who is also known as the regular god maker of The Ancient. On a related note, a deity cannot cede its status as a deity voluntarily, and must petition The Ancient to return it to a mortal. While this sounds like an unlikely event, it is actually much more common than one might think. The inability to forget anything as well as the responsibility that comes with the powers granted by The Ancient often wears a deity out over the course of centuries and millennia, until eventually the point is reached where they just want to return to the everlasting cycle of reincarnation, and start over as a normal mortal. On average, deities reach ages between 1,000 and 10,000 Absolute Years, with only very few going on to exist past 100,000.

One of the most notable abilities of Deities often granted to creative deities that may need to operate over extended timespans is a limited exemption from the laws of time and space as well as causality, which allows them to make changes to a world at an early stage and observe how it alters the world later. This also allows them to cover large geological time frames within only a few Absolute Years. The limitations of these powers usually grew tighter as a world gets populated by life, and usually default to "skip forward only" as soon as the first Cemarelij start to appear.

The number of deities that exist in a world varies wildly between worlds and also over time. Some worlds have hundreds of deities, while others - especially Sealed Worlds - may not even have one. Also, due to the ephemeral nature of deities, the number of deities within a world may in- or decrease over time.

## Deities and Worship

Worship is a central element to the majority of deities. This can be active - such as the performing of rituals or ceremonies by followers - as well as passive - such as upholding and living by the central values represented by a deity.

Deities - while already reasonably powerful on their own - gain a substantial amount of power by being worshipped. This occurs by way of the worshippers either consciously or subconsciously offering up some of their Iserial Energy to the deity or deities they worship. During active worship the amount of Iserial Energy is usually significantly higher than during passive worship, but even the miniscule amounts of Iserial Energy transferred during passive worship quickly adds up over a large enough base of worshippers.

## Deities and Souls

Deities can exert a certain amount of control over the souls of their followers, as well as the souls of those associated with a large enough number of their followers. The classical example for this is the heaven/hell concept. In this concept, one or more deities create a pair of Explicitly Created Worlds, one of which serves as a place of reward for virtuous souls, and the other as a place of punishment for sinners.

After a follower's death, the deity or deities judge the soul, and then re-incarnate it in one of the two worlds, usually in a form resembling the follower's appearance during his last life and with his memories intact.

More notably, however, is that a deity is also able to judge the soul of a non-follower in such a manner, given that a sufficient number of followers have a sufficiently strong connection to that person. In that case, the deity still has the option to reincarnate the soul in one of the two planes as if it were one of its followers.

If multiple deities hold a claim on a soul, then the effective claim weight is important. The effective claim weight is a function of a deity's overall strength, whether the soul was a direct follower, as well as how many direct followers were associated with that soul. On top of that, the amount of effort a deity is ready to go to secure a certain soul also is a primary factor. In practice, most of the time deities don't want to spend a lot of time arguing with other deities of their calibre and just allow the soul to go to whatever deity has the higher claim weight. However, in some exceptional cases, deities may negotiate, bargain, and even go to war over a particular soul.

For example, the champion of a war deity who killed countless followers of the shepherd deity has fallen. The war deity has a strong claim on this soul since the champion was a follower of his, and also all of his other followers respect him. The shepherd deity meanwhile also has a reasonably string claim from all his followers the champion killed, as well as their families. The war deity wants to reward the champion, and the shepherd deity wants to punish him. However, since the shepherd deity has no interest of going to war against the war deity, it might instead offer to relinquish its claim on the souls of 100 lesser warriors of the war deity in order to be able to adequately punish the champion. Or on the other hand, the war deity might offer to not attack the shepherd deity's people for a set amount of time in order to be able to adequately reward his champion.

## Deities of Ceal

The following deities are present on the world of Ceal, some of them being venerated under different names.

 Klifareta