TheHoverpope/AoLSGods

The Gods

Gods in Creation

The littlest gods have not been receiving a great deal of supervision of late. In fact, many of them are quite afraid of receiving any sort of attention from the higher ups. Any road spirit or nymph knows that the best that they can really hope to do these days if they want a life span is to do their job, to stay quiet, and to be ignored for as long as possible.

One would think that without the greater gods supervising, the little spirits would try to just hold to their jobs as much as possible, secure in the knowledge that in a month their masters will return, and maybe the whole thing will blow over. Of course, many of them are not so cautious. Within days, some of the less intelligent or more ambitious spirits started to try to expand their domains and areas of influence. Some small gods began appearing to mortals, abandoning their duties, and demanding prayer and sacrifice. Others tried to seize control of land controlled by their neighbours, given the lack of oversight. Still others thought of the tale of Ahlat and other great spirits, and decided that acts of heroism would improve their standing. Still others got carried away in their domains while lacking supervision. While most of the small spirits prudently kept to their business, there were still many neglecting or working against their tasks. While this did not completely throw the world out of focus, it was more than enough to cause significant disruptions. In most of the civilized parts of the world there were severe food shortages; enthusiastic blight spirits, laxadasical harvest spirits, zealous hunger spirits, road spirits demanding tolls, even just spirits doing their jobs no longer being carefully balanced against each other. Countless small infractions by the gods led to widespread famine throughout the world, diseases either spreading far faster than they should or not at all, and countless other problems.

Yu-Shan

Yu-Shan was, of course, the hardest hit of any city in or out of creation with the exception of Malfeas. The gods died, the Lions and other guards died, the gates stood open, and the littlest gods panicked. Master of Reaped Grains, God of Agriculture in The Lap, was one of the smaller gods who was swayed by dreams of Ahlat's promotion for valour; he broke into Lytek's cabinet of essence shards in just hours. Many of the remaining small gods realized that anybody could do something similar, and that the Celestial Lions guarding the gates were now gone. Bound to never oppose the servants of the primordials directly, they knew that Yu-Shan would be completely undefended if the Autocthonians walked through the gates and so they panicked and sealed them. Many of the sidereal exalts left were trapped in Yu-Shan, unable to significantly affect creation, hopelessly and helplessly watching the loom of fate twist and knot itself with every passing hour. The pattern spiders are creatures of Autocthon and are safe, but they alone are unable to protect the world from the fate tearing that will ensue.

The Sidereals

With the death of all of the high essence sidereals, there are now few exalts who can truly understand the difficulties and the requirements for settingfate aright. The sidereals are in a bit of a panic during the first month of the new age, and arenot heavily considering the ramifications; but these will be extensive. Given the germination time of a sidereal exalt, it will be a while until they have even significant numbers left - after the plague, only 23 sidereals live. All of their elders are dead, and all of their secrets died with them; there are only a few gods who can reteach the basic principles of Sidereal martial arts, and only some of the deathlords and the mightiest gods now have first hand experience in their use. With the passing of all of the entrenched power structures of the Bronze faction, the balance of power now turns to the gold faction; they were usually younger, but they too have been left without a leader. It is likely that they will no longer control the solars of the cult the way that they once could. On a similar note, it will now be impossible for the Sidereals to retain any sort of real control over the other exalts.

The sidereals are, for the moment, more critically weakened than any other exalt group. While the lunars lost their mad gods and the solars are potentially in a stronger position than they were before, the sidereals are crippled, and will be for many lives of men.