The Gods

The gods of The Realms are divided into five pantheons.

Pantheons / Gods after the Third Formation
After the Third Formation there were 91 gods divided into 5 pantheons.

The Throne
The Throne is composed of the four gods created during the First Formation. They are stronger than the other gods and are the deciding voice in the rare case that a decision must be reached between all of the gods.

The World
The gods of The World embody physical aspects, such as the seasons and the elements. They are separated into several groups known as cliques. Generally, worship will be focused on a clique rather than a specific god. The gods of each clique commonly work together and pursue similar goals. Paladins and clerics commonly gain their power from one of the cliques as a whole, but it’s not unheard of for a single god to grant power to a mortal.

The Mind
The gods of The Mind tend to embody metaphysical concepts such as justice, order, and chaos. They are separated into three main groups. The Major Gods represent vague and complex concepts while the Minor Gods represent more specific and grounded concepts. Worship of The Mind typically focuses on a specific god rather than a specific group.

The Sword
The god of The Sword are the closest to mortals. They embody the characteristics and actions of mortals. They are not often worshiped in the traditional sense, rather those who perform activities related to one of the gods will commonly offer a prayer to that god. For example, a blacksmith might make an offering to Oružje before putting the finishing touches on a sword and a thief might pray to Tyver or Diewé before a break-in. The Sword is split into three categories — the gods of workmen, the gods of nature, and the gods of emotion. The Sword gods do not commonly offer power to Clerics or Paladins, but they are the most likely to answer a prayer from a follower.

The Shadow
The Shadow gods rarely interact with mortals. They were created to act mainly as warriors during the early days of the Terminus War, and once the war ended they had little left to do. Worship of them is rare, but they are known to grant additional strength to great warriors. While the gods of The Throne may be the strongest overall, their raw strength pales in comparison to The Shadow. Tau — the weakest of The Shadow — has enough strength to destroy moons, while Alpha has the strength to destroy entire worlds. There are only a few instances after the Terminus War of any of the gods of The Shadow using their power, and each time was at the command of one of The Throne.

Spirits
On many worlds ac

The First Formation
While theories about how to travel faster than light through use of magic had been created by 225 SE, the energy required would be too much for a being residing in realspace to harness. Because of this, travelers between stars were limited to speeds below light speed. Even though every world of the realms could communicate instantaneously through the Conduit, the lack of contact caused planets to begin to drift apart culturally. As each system developed its own identity, the unifying background of having originated on Earth began to lose importance. Fearing that this could eventually lead to large scale conflict, the renowned Enchanter Noran Havelock began to put efforts into improving the viability of FTL travel.

It had been over a century since the first use of teleportation magic, which could almost instantaneously transport an object from one place to another. Unfortunately, this required immense amounts of energy and was difficult to aim and control. The further something was away, the more energy it used and the harder it was to reach your intended location. While the Conduit technically had the power to allow interstellar teleportation, if the required amount of energy was channeled by any being in realspace, it would collapse into a black hole — the very issue the Conduit was created to avoid. Even if they could, the skill required to land at your desired destination over interstellar distances was essentially unobtainable.

Havelock's solution was to create a being that would reside within the Conduit itself. He theorized that a being in Otherspace could enact changes on realspace without the energy needed to be concentrated there. On 2.10.224(2), Havelock completed what would later be known as the Godstone. The Godstone was likely the most complex enchantment ever created. Havelock never revealed the specifics of how the enchantment worked and his no similar device has ever been known to be created, so the details on how the Godstone worked can only be speculated. The enchantment manipulated energy in Otherspace in a way that created a purely ethereal mind within the Conduit.

Theoretically, this being would be able to channel enough energy to allow interstellar teleportation and would be able to successfully do this without depositing your ship into a sun. In addition, it was created with the ability to follow multiple trains of thought at once, which would allow it to teleport more than one entity at a time. On Y.225(2), Havelock announced his discovery in a characteristically impressive way, by making an appearance on Earth and then, less than two days later, making a second appearance on Driftway, a planet that was, at the time, on the farthest frontier of the realms.

While, initially, the being could only teleport five entities at once, the possibility of FTL travel created an uproar across the realms. Havelock continued to work on the design and by 230 SE, it could support around two thousand entities at once.

In the beginning, Havelock's being had very little of a personality or will. While it could respond to and execute commands, its intelligence seemed to be around the level of an intelligent dog. Over time however, it began displaying small signs of intelligence. Sometime in 233 SE, it began to respond to commands with simple words and phrases in a variety of languages — often not the language of a ships crew. Over the next several decades it would slowly grow to a human-level of intelligence, with the ability to hold complex conversations. It is unknown if this was intended when the Godstone was created.

The creation of this being, which at some point gained the name U'Amea, revolutionized interstellar travel by making FTL relatively cheap and easy. Over the next few decades, the trade would explode and the societies of the Realms would begin to grow politically and socially closer.

By 260 SE, it was clear that only having one being enabling FTL was not going to work long term. Even with continual upgrades, U'Amea was barely able to keep up with the demand for interstellar travel. Wanting to keep FTL travel relatively cheap, Havelock began working on adding additional beings to the Godstone enchantment. Three more being would be created with Stellae being created on 23.11.262(2), Rhutan on 5.4.263(2), and Chathair on 14.7.263(2). The new beings had around the level of intelligence that U'Amea had when created, but grew to human levels much faster. While these beings would eventually be known as the gods, for most of the Second Era, they would be known as the Helmsmen.

It's likely that Havelock would have continued to add to the Godstone, but on 17.9.263(2), just two months after the creation of Chathair, he and the Godstone vanished. Worried that the Godstone — the device that allowed interstellar society to function the way it had for decades — had been compromised caused markets across the realms to crash. Luckily their fears were unfounded. While neither Havelock or the Godstone were ever seen again, nothing further ever came of their disappearance. Theories about the cause of the disappearance would swirl around the realms for centuries, but no reason was ever discovered.

The Tálar and The Second Formation
As time went on, and planets further and further from Earth were settled, it became harder and harder for ships to travel further out. On the fringes of the realms, Otherspace twisted and warped, making precise control over magic harder — a phenomenon known as the Tálar. The Tálar continued to grow in strength, causing the Fringe worlds to become increasingly isolated as well as forcing them to be much less reliant on magic than most other worlds in the realms. On 4.614(2), the Tálar massively increased in strength, causing powerful distortions in realspace. Several of these distortions occurred within the moon of the planet Tauko. Over the several weeks, the moon would begin to split apart. While attempts were made to evacuate the residents of the planet, FTL travel in the fringes had become almost impossible, leaving most of Tauko's several million residents to die as the remnants of the moon crashed to the surface.

Space is vast, so while the the distortions had incredible destructive potential, they rarely hit anything besides empty vacuum. On 6.5.615(2), the Tálar struck deep within the planet Oxir, creating massive earthquakes across the planet that reduced most of the surface to rubble and killed most of the planets population. Over the next few years, the disturbances would move further and further Earthwards. By 620 SE, the planets Ioza, Condena, and Felaket would be entirely destroyed while Kimet, Riss, Krekess, Gallajin, and Retak were rendered uninhabitable (for more information read Tálar). Every fringe world suffered immense damage during the Tálar. Even though massive amounts of resources were being devoted to stopping the Tálar's advance, no solution had been found and it began to seem as though every world in the realms would be destroyed.

On 20.12.620(2), U'Amea revealed that they had discovered a way to create more helmsmen without the use of a physical enchantment like the Godstone (read Rite of AshkEnte). They believed that it would be possible to create a helmsman with the ability to control the energy of the Tálar. After several months of refinement, the Rite was performed, creating the helmsman Iyashi. The plan was a resounding success — Iyashi, once given enough energy, was able to control the warping of Otherspace, ending the threat of the Tálar (for more information read Tálar).

The resounding success of the helmsmen's plan had two main effects of the society of the realms. While they may not have gone anywhere, the joint research efforts between most planets helped to make future cooperation easier. Trade and other cultural exchanges once again increased in popularity. In order to facilitate the increased amount of FTL travel, five more helmsmen would be created over the half century — Ceratas, Mirësi, Avona, Gyven, and Natok.

While the worlds of the Core still viewed the helmsmen as basically complicated enchantments, their help in saving and their role in rebuilding the fringe worlds caused many there to see them in an almost holy light. Over time, as the fringe worlds reliance on magic and the helmsmen grew, so did their worship of what they now called gods.

Over the next several centuries, this belief would spread inwards to the core and while their worship never went above a few percent on most mid and core worlds, calling them gods stuck.

The Third Formation
The Third Formation occurred during the early years of the Terminus War. To wage war more effectively and to better emulate the gods in the myths of Ancient Earth, the began to create many more gods. Over the centuries of the Terminus War, 93  (this number is no longer accurate ) gods would be created using the same method that was used to create the gods of the Second Formation.

This would also be when the gods were given domains and organized into pantheons.