#pokeobi

[dailyadventureprompts]

I am currently in the process of designing my universes cosmology. It is currently similar to some of the stuff you have put out, with big emphasis on an all encompassing realm called the Dreaming (formed from the consciousness of all living things and connection to it is the source of magic). But unfortunately I am struggling to find a natural home for the gods, I want them to be present in the material world but at the same time have a separate realm from which they draw divine power.

Hi friend, I hope you don’t mind if I don’t to a full writeup on this, as there’s actually some preexisting d&d adjacent lore that fits what you’re looking for PERFECTLY. 

So in the Greek myth Based Theros setting ( as featured in Mythic Odysseys of Theros), the gods dwell in a realm known as Nyx, which manifest as a flowing landscape of nebula matter, constellations, and starstuff. Nyx is a realm apart from and “overlooking” the mortal realm, allowing the gods to view the world of their followers as if they were looking through a multifaceted jewel. 

Nyx is a plane of belief and legends, morphing overtime in accordance with the mythos of mortals and affecting that collective psyche itself in turn.  

As an example of this process: 

Say a hero earns great renown that people tell their story for generations, entering the collective canon of tales and legends, becoming a thing that is simultaneously mythic, and commonly accepted to be a thing that happened as the “reality” of the tale gets strained out with each new telling.

The starstuff of nyx would rearrange itself, creating space for that hero and their deeds to be immortalized in the infinite cosmic tapestry, living out their great deeds over and over again in the great dance of the heavens. 

Since that legend dwells in Nyx, it happened, and any mythic qualities or deeds accrued by the hero over various retellings become retroactively true, such as their sword acquiring magical powers, or the appearance of a particular type of monster at a particular location in their journey, descendants of that beast still haunting that location to this day despite never living there in the first place. 

If the gods so wish, they can reweave the fabric of Nyx to their liking, immortalizing events or reworking history as they see fit. Events stripped from the mythic tapestry fade from common knowledge over generations, the evidence of their greatness crumbling away to ruin with only the slightest scrap of starlight remaining at their edges.

This last fact is why the gods are so protective over the ways into their domain, and keep most secret portals and ascension points shut or heavily guarded. They wish sole control over the mythic history of the mortal realm, and should a mortal find their way in with the right help or the wrong kind of magic, they may do irrevocable damage to the cosmic weave in attempting to change things to their liking. 

The gods are also cable of creating things wholecloth out of their cosmic realm, manifesting these “nyx-born” or “star-wrought” creations in the waking world as befits their will. Often they will do this when mortals have earned their attention or ire, creating wonderous boons to reward the favored or great beasts to punish the hubristic. These creations are “less real” than the more gradual changes wrought by the mythic realm, as they lack the generations of belief needed to shore them up into something enduring, the starstuff from which they were made peeking through  the edges.  To countermand this fragility, the gods seek to work their creations into existing or currently ongoing stories, framing these creations as the accessories of great heroes or of heroes yet to be.  

if you’d like another example of what all this looks like, please refer to the absolute MASTERPIECE that is Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas

I hope that helps friend, honestly WOTC never explains all of this in one place, and I’ve wanted to get my thoughts down on the matter for some time. 

Art