Gods in your world

The literal gods the setting are the Neverborn Spirits, which are timeless entities from outside of conventional reality so to speak. There are six of them involved in the world in some way, where only one is a benevolent god and all the rest are "evil" beings who are trying to break into the world to steal its' metaphysical secrets and reshape it in their own image.

Now here's an important little bit of info: The title of "god" in the setting refers to one of the five malevolent semi-lovecraftian entities who are ceaselessly trying to cause about the end of the world. The one "benevolent" spirit (Arakan) isn't called a god, and if you were to refer to him as such in the universe depending on where you are you might either be looked at like you're a psychopath from Mars and subsequently be ostracised, or you might suffer an equivalent of crucifixion (which I haven't come up with yet).

There's also this fellow called Ilendor, who was thought to be the first mage and the greatest hero in ancient history. He revealed the nature of the gods as being dark and corrupting and then created the world as a sort of "shield" against their influence. The reason this happened was because Ilendor was actually also a Neverborn Spirit who masqueraded as a mortal sorceror and leader to bring humanity into the world which the Neverborn collectively created as a means of attaining enlightenment. Naturally, he would deceive the gods to remove them from their own world, and deceive mankind by turning them against their deities, thus breaking what would have been a symbiotic relationship between gods and mortals and turning them into worst enemies.

So yeah, there you have it, all the gods are evil except the one who ultimately deceived everyone. Arakan is thought of as the only benevolent deity, but even he is just a watcher left behind to ensure the success of a metaphysical plan.

/r/worldbuilding Thread