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[Zangi]

Here's a thought. Giving the God of Death an ability that kills off something that is inhibiting the growth of towns and cities. In a farming sense, it is tending and fertilizing the crop. Killing off Locusts that are eating the local wheat farms allows for a surplus of food, which in turn boosts that population. Fertilizing the fields with Death.  Then, when Death finally chooses to "reap" the seeds that he has sown, he'll have a harder job of it do in a large part to the fact that there is a larger population, but his yield is much greater.  His reward for helping a city to grow is now that there are a lot more people in that city that are going to die.

  I dub thee Farmer Death.

Farmer Death - The reason for its being...
Old One who's power is replenished and augmented by the death of the sentient creatures scurrying across land, be their individual ends from violence or nature.  It is naturally at odds with the Old Ones who's actions would bring an actual end to all those sentient creatures. 
It also gains a significant boost to its powers when masses of sentient creatures die within a short period of time.  In comparison, a single large city(of 50k for example) being put to the sword would bring significantly more power then 50k deaths over a year's time. 
Where the concept of Farmer Death raising up the population of a POI only to have its inhabitants wiped out comes in.

Exactly!  And that's the kind of thing that makes for fun mechanics and abilities that avoid the typical undead zombie apocalypse snowball. 
Death seeks the quickening.  Everything so busy growing, screwing, and dying, that they don't have time to move out of the caves and start developing medicine and culture.
Human mayflies.  Culture is idolatry, medicine and science are outright defiance.

I dub thee Back-to-Nature Death.

Back-to-Nature Death - The motivation, the goal...
This Old One dislikes science, medicine and knowledge.  It seeks its destruction, for whatever reason.  Its armies and agents may be used to destroy centers of knowledge... to kill those who could pass on such knowledge.  To destroy possible points of past knowledge.  To bring the sentient creatures back to where they naturally belong.  In mud huts or whatever.
Well, if there is a mechanic to destroy and kill enough to send the little people back to the tribal stage...

I'd mix Farmer Death and Back-to-Nature Death together.  It would be like some mix of a luddite/hippie and death.  Mechanically, it'll have options where it can infiltrate governments and convince the heads to set-up policies that suppress technological/knowledge progress.  Or support barbarian tribals in their looting of the civilized world, if they would also destroy knowledge centers when they come upon it.  (Unite the tribes against civilization?)

[ventuswings]

Hmm, mechanic-wise perhaps you could set it so that his most relevant abilities are always dependent on death "stock" (MP that only increases via # of death which occur)? So if you make your debut by killing off large part of population you nurture, you have more "MP" available to do many complicated options. This also keeps the pressure up even when you are steam-rolling, since you must maintain the high casualties such that your MP expenditure isn't in the red - or at least try to keep the engine running so that when it eventually patters out and your powerful abilities are mostly locked out, the world is so weakened that it can't even resist the unsupported zombie army led by decidedly fatigued Death God.

The idea is that if you decide to pull out the "zombie apocalypse" card early, there won't be enough fuel in the tank to sustain it. This could further be augmented by having zombie hordes be very weak against God & religious supporters, so either weakening religious institutions or establishing enough strength via "smart harvesting" is important before actively revealing oneself.

[ventuswings]

double post - used quote instead of modify.

[Cthulhu]

Personally I think zombies are pretty boring at this point.  I wouldn't be opposed to just leaving that god behind.

[GobbieMarauder]

The biggest issue with that, though, is convincing a player that making their ultimate enemy stronger is worth the time and effort required when they could possibly get the same results by trying to kill everyone now. I suppose one way you could motivate the player to go down that route would be that some of their more powerful rituals cannot to be used (or at least used effectively) unless there is some sort of status effect on a certain number of POI's that can only brought on by casting another, earlier ritual.

A passive that any POI under the effects of one of your positive boons is more likely to divert their religion to you - after all, you're keeping the people happy, healthy, and well-fed, surely you are a merciful god. In other words, Unitologists.

[birdy51]

Which is why I find the idea of an Old One personifying the reaper aspect so interesting. It's not just zombies that death can utilize. Death needs power, but he has to plant the seeds first. This might also might mean simply corrupting graveyards. Larger graveyards would work better though, especially for when the final "reaping" occurs.

So... Set em up and knock em down. When you stop helping them and produce a blight, disorder spreads quickly and rapidly. Which will let Death subvert smaller villages with ease while the capital deals with famine.  But in turn... Enemies do become stronger, which counters death just killing everything. It's both intuitive and counterintuitive at the same time!

Flaws are beautiful!

[rylen]

Perhaps put an additional obstacle in the scenario choice. You get your death powers, but there is a reason you can't immediately throw them around unrestrained. Some examples:

Choice: What bound death?
"You are a force. An essence. The ultimate telos, or goal, of all living things. But they found ways to constrain you. And until that chain is broken, you are limited."

Option: Towers of Life
Honking big magic artifacts that make some death powers more expensive, noticeable, or otherwise inconvenient within a large radius. There used to be a bunch of them. Part of your release comes from several falling into disrepair or being cannibalized for other magic-style purposes. They could be directly attacked; a difficult and revealing choice. Or, you could convince nations to destroy them. Heroes, if they figure you out, will want to repair as many as they can.
    (I'm reading Glen Cook's Black Company and this is a ref to the Barrowlands. Also Watt-Evans' Vondish Ambassador.)

Option: Order(s) of the Secret Name
Those who bound you were not content to seal you away and frustrate you. They branded you and wrote spells to keep you out for any who know the brands. That knowledge still persists though the guards are scattered and fractious. Similar to the above, though keyed off the guild system instead of POIs. Gives the AI a leg up on fighting you if you don't get this suppressed before going public. You can start throwing things around immediately, but it is extra dangerous. I trace this to the ancient practice of wearing amulets and inscribing runes to keep hostile presences away.

Option: The Dance of Life and Death
You were never understood. Your goal was never THE end but each end. Deaths, many deaths, at a time of your choosing. Perhaps you would nearly fast between them, but that made the gorging all the richer. Get a variant Old One who requires a large number of deaths at a single time to unlock new abilities and fast power recharges. You were bound by interruptions in the dance and will need an ever increasing body count (chained combos are better than individuals) to again follow the steps. Playing this version may be difficult because careful timing is important. This is my attempt to write in Farmer Death.

Option: Death of the Mind
You object most not to things that crawl or grow but to those that think. Knowledge, any awareness, is an irritant. Questions are even worse. Your peers bound you by putting thought behind so many eyes. Only when they cease looking will you find peace. This is my attempt at the Back-to-Nature death. I think it wanders a bit too far from the Death God concept to really belong here.

Option: Strangled by the Puppets Strings
You wanted motion without life but your children betrayed you and pulled you down. You are again free to raise your family, but if you do not tend them carefully, comfort their needs, and discipline them properly, they will turn on you. This is a straightforward undead raising death god. But making too many undead, too quickly, spawns undead heroes. And some of those will oppose you.

Another option or two would be good. These are the ones I've can see.

[KingDinosaurGames]

Wooooooooooooo you guys have got some great ideas - I think we're pretty much married to Death as "The Lord of Undeath" and absolute oblivion, but some of this would be great in either Rival Old Ones or in a possible later update. 

[Xantalos]

For Death, how about each agent has a timer. This is how long until they die from being exposed to the power of Death. Now, this would be long enough to last an average game if left unattended. However, their power can be boosted like with normal agents, with the caveat that now the timer goes down faster. The Prophet's timer would accelerate as you get closer to waking up.

[Mithras]

If you're married to the god of death being the god of undeath then a solution may be to de couple death from undeath. Thematically your awakening is breaking down the gates of the underworld, the more ancient power you have the more undead you have at your disposal. However, since the souls of the dead are pretty much infinite adding more souls to the underworld does not increase the number of undead avaliable to you, as they go straight to the underworld. This prevents your classic zombie horde but means you actually have a resource to manage rather than snowballing by creating your own resource doing what you're already supposed to do. It also opens up a couple of ritual ideas, an agent opening a second gate to the underworld would provide you with more undead to throw around but be comparatively easy for the heroes to close. An agent putting up a barrier between life and death would allow you to play as the old broken undead old one who snowballs for a while, but generate a massive quest, something that makes literally every hero turn up to try and stop it, drops clue tokens everywhere and makes your agent certain to be hunted down.

Just my two cents. Create an old one of death and undeath but keep the two mostly distinct and unable to feed into each other. (the idea of killing a specific part of the animal or human population and then raising them back up again seems really cool to me, how do you deal with undead locusts which never stop eating? Are the undead sages you made going to be discovered and hunted down, or is their knowledge seen as to valuable for them to be destroyed?"

[lemon10]

With the addition of the endless mode, I’ve been thinking about a cyclical old one. With standard old ones the goal seems to be to gain as much power as you possibly can in a single attempt, and if you really need to go back to sleep or you get sealed then you take another chance later.

My idea is an old one that is only able to gain a small amount of power within any individual cycle and could only stay awake for a limited time (which increases with every cycle) without causing yourself harm. Over multiple cycles you would slowly get stronger, and once you free yourself from the seal you would be permanently awakened.
One power tree would be unless within any single cycle, but would give you powers that would be useful over longer time periods.

For example:
1) A power that corrupts the seed/womb of (captured?) individuals. It would be useless in the current cycle, but it would allow you to corrupt their descendants much easier when you run into them in a later cycle. Or it could be something more interesting, making their descendants passively weaker/more cowardly, or simply make them more and more monstrous with each passing generation. Or make them turn all into monsters (with a strength based upon how many generations its been) when you activate a trigger.
2) Freeze some agents/corrupted heroes/captured individuals in hibernation until you awaken and unfreeze them. Your agents would be able to rejoin you at their current power (allowing you to keep some strong agents for another cycle), while kings that waken later could cause chaos in the nation they used to rule (but don’t anymore due to being “dead” for hundreds of years.  You can freeze as many agents as you want, but there is a significant cooldown between each use, which means that to freeze many agents you would have to take the first of them out of action long before you go back to sleep.
3) Curse a nation, making their actions worse on average. This would take a long time to take effect, and while you are awake it would be unobtrusive and minor, but over the centuries the game runs in endless mode it could have a pretty huge effect, and could even result in the eventual destruction of the nation (via civil war or conquest) where it would have otherwise have thrived. You can only curse one nation at once.
4) Whisper into the mind of immortals as you sleeps, corrupting them over the centuries. Obviously wouldn’t work with rival old ones or Those That Remain, but dragons (if they are in), elves, and monstrous immortals would be significant targets. The ability must be targeted before you go to back to sleep.
5+)

The other power tree would give you shorter term powers which you would use while you are awake. I’m not quite sure what this tree would consist of, although my current thoughts of it mainly consist of it largely revolving around sleep. For example:

1) Puts a target into an enchanted sleep for 5-10 turns after a few turn delay.
2) Prevents the target from sleeping. When used on heroes it slowly driving them insane (but doesn't corrupt them). When used on agents it increases their efficiency, increasing the speed at which they complete rituals and travel by 10-20%.
3) Temporarily awaken the sleeping elemental forces in an area, creating an earthquake/tornado/volcanic eruption/flood depending on the primary elemental force nearby.
4+)   

[Digital Hellhound]

Failbetter Games, they of Echo Bazaar/Fallen London and Sunless Seas, just recced That Which Sleeps on Facebook. That should provide a nice little boost.

[KingDinosaurGames]

Failbetter Games, they of Echo Bazaar/Fallen London and Sunless Seas, just recced That Which Sleeps on Facebook. That should provide a nice little boost.

I have long been a fan of Fallen London, this is great news for us.

With the addition of the endless mode, I’ve been thinking about a cyclical old one. With standard old ones the goal seems to be to gain as much power as you possibly can in a single attempt, and if you really need to go back to sleep or you get sealed then you take another chance later.

My idea is an old one that is only able to gain a small amount of power within any individual cycle and could only stay awake for a limited time (which increases with every cycle) without causing yourself harm. Over multiple cycles you would slowly get stronger, and once you free yourself from the seal you would be permanently awakened.
One power tree would be unless within any single cycle, but would give you powers that would be useful over longer time periods.

For example:
1) A power that corrupts the seed/womb of (captured?) individuals. It would be useless in the current cycle, but it would allow you to corrupt their descendants much easier when you run into them in a later cycle. Or it could be something more interesting, making their descendants passively weaker/more cowardly, or simply make them more and more monstrous with each passing generation. Or make them turn all into monsters (with a strength based upon how many generations its been) when you activate a trigger.
2) Freeze some agents/corrupted heroes/captured individuals in hibernation until you awaken and unfreeze them. Your agents would be able to rejoin you at their current power (allowing you to keep some strong agents for another cycle), while kings that waken later could cause chaos in the nation they used to rule (but don’t anymore due to being “dead” for hundreds of years.  You can freeze as many agents as you want, but there is a significant cooldown between each use, which means that to freeze many agents you would have to take the first of them out of action long before you go back to sleep.
3) Curse a nation, making their actions worse on average. This would take a long time to take effect, and while you are awake it would be unobtrusive and minor, but over the centuries the game runs in endless mode it could have a pretty huge effect, and could even result in the eventual destruction of the nation (via civil war or conquest) where it would have otherwise have thrived. You can only curse one nation at once.
4) Whisper into the mind of immortals as you sleeps, corrupting them over the centuries. Obviously wouldn’t work with rival old ones or Those That Remain, but dragons (if they are in), elves, and monstrous immortals would be significant targets. The ability must be targeted before you go to back to sleep.
5+)

The other power tree would give you shorter term powers which you would use while you are awake. I’m not quite sure what this tree would consist of, although my current thoughts of it mainly consist of it largely revolving around sleep. For example:

1) Puts a target into an enchanted sleep for 5-10 turns after a few turn delay.
2) Prevents the target from sleeping. When used on heroes it slowly driving them insane (but doesn't corrupt them). When used on agents it increases their efficiency, increasing the speed at which they complete rituals and travel by 10-20%.
3) Temporarily awaken the sleeping elemental forces in an area, creating an earthquake/tornado/volcanic eruption/flood depending on the primary elemental force nearby.
4+)   

Take a look at our most recent update, the Genealogical Generation segment would be how we represent vast passages of time - allowing you to implement the kind of corruption over time that you are suggesting.  We have the Generation dumping out to a Scenario File, and if we can create a reasonable import from Scenario to Generation we could support cycles of time passing between plays.

[nenjin]

Failbetter Games, they of Echo Bazaar/Fallen London and Sunless Seas, just recced That Which Sleeps on Facebook. That should provide a nice little boost.

Hopefully that will be enough to nudge TWS past the $53k mark.

[KingDinosaurGames]

If you're married to the god of death being the god of undeath then a solution may be to de couple death from undeath. Thematically your awakening is breaking down the gates of the underworld, the more ancient power you have the more undead you have at your disposal. However, since the souls of the dead are pretty much infinite adding more souls to the underworld does not increase the number of undead avaliable to you, as they go straight to the underworld. This prevents your classic zombie horde but means you actually have a resource to manage rather than snowballing by creating your own resource doing what you're already supposed to do. It also opens up a couple of ritual ideas, an agent opening a second gate to the underworld would provide you with more undead to throw around but be comparatively easy for the heroes to close. An agent putting up a barrier between life and death would allow you to play as the old broken undead old one who snowballs for a while, but generate a massive quest, something that makes literally every hero turn up to try and stop it, drops clue tokens everywhere and makes your agent certain to be hunted down.

Just my two cents. Create an old one of death and undeath but keep the two mostly distinct and unable to feed into each other. (the idea of killing a specific part of the animal or human population and then raising them back up again seems really cool to me, how do you deal with undead locusts which never stop eating? Are the undead sages you made going to be discovered and hunted down, or is their knowledge seen as to valuable for them to be destroyed?"

This is also a very interesting interpretation - part of the difficulty for me in introducing a concept of the underworld is I want to truly integrate it into the game - it also may trod a bit on the feet of the Gods.  But I'm going to let this idea percolate for a bit, and see how it feels.  I'm trying to purposefully not think about the Death God right now (because it's a tantalizing problem) so we can focus on more fundamental mechanics until we want to tackle him again, but it's good to try and figure out how these other implementations may work within our system.