Alter the mind plague so it causes the infected to sow some conflict and wage war, or at least be contrary and occasionally antagonizing. Tell my creations that they shall solve all their problems with battles to the death, and that those who lose with honor or die in a war will have their souls go to the afterlife. The exceptional ones might be reincarnated.
Oppose
[2-1] The mind plague finds this idea unappealing, and resolves to not listen to your advice in the future. Instead it infuses future victims with feelings of peace, presumably to facilitate cooperation.
[1] Your creations similarly fail to heed your advice, since an existence filled with bloody conflict is not something they consider worthwhile, even in return for an afterlife of some kind. If it's the afterlife engineered by a god of conflict, after all, surely it can't be all that fun to partake of. All three of the sentient species of the planet resolve to call out to somebody nicer to provide them with more acceptable conditions for reincarnation. The soil hunters call out to Meeses, the caretaker worms seek the favor of Otyx, while the winged hivebeasts turn to the mind plague, allowing it to absorb a sizable part of their thoughts in return for reproducing them in full conceptual form upon their deaths.
At the center of the disc, create a small colony of Giant Cosmic Space Whales. (Thankfully I did not misspell Whales as Wales, or else most likely would have ended up with Wales, England.)
[5] The whales come into being with seemingly no effort on your part - of colossal size and reasonable intellect, they find it simple to manipulate your voidlife preserve into nothing short of ideal conditions for their existence - the vacuum swells with microscopic and macroscopic organisms for them to eat, beams of starlight always align themselves perfectly to enable the operation of the whales' solar tail fins, the radiation is just perfect for an optimal balance of random mutation and general quality of life, and impenetrable clouds manifest themselves at the whales' command to provide privacy if required. With their cosmically powerful minds, the whales bid you many thanks for providing them such an ideal habitat.
You hear creatures calling out to you. Four-legged beasts from the planet of Tuk, seeking your favor and guidance in the afterlife, if such a thing indeed exists.
CREATE COMPLICATED FISHING POLE BOAT TO FISH OUT THE gelatinous nebula AND RETURN ALL OF IT TO THE 3RD DIMENSION. IF ITS ALREADY BACK IN THE THIRD DIMENSION, ATTACK CARL FOR HIS ISOLENCE.
[1] You craft a great hooked device on the spot with absolutely no forethought and try to drag a gelatinous nebula with it - the results are grim, as you only succeed in dispersing it a little along the middle and injuring quite a few planetary crabs in the process.
Grant those who are now listless yet filled with arcane power many-sided die that in turn grant knowledge of what is to come in a manner accessible to less arcane-infused mortals. They can also be used to play games! Urge these individuals to use their new-found tool to found the Priesthood of the Die, a divinely blessed brotherhood that worships and encourages recreation and idle entertainment.
[2] Concentrating your power in objects that small - and in such great numbers and discrete locations - proves difficult. Tiny flashes of multicolored light are seen everywhere on Tuk's planet. Few
Create various Red Fire Drakes to inhabit the mountains on the golden disk.
[2] The drakes come into being for but a short while, then go extinct when the lack of any edible animals makes them turn to cannibalism within the first generation, their rate of reproduction proving insufficient for renewing their numbers and their gestation periods being impractically long, similarly to their lifespan.
Dimly conscious of your desire to populate your realm, the caretaker worms of Tuk's planet offer you their services - upon their death, they wish to be remade in your realm to continue their work, hopefully in all perpetuity. In typical caretaker worm fashion, they immediately offer you several different afterlife solutions - a queue-based method, where once a sufficient amount of worms has been transported to your realm and works there, further transports are put on hold until one of the working worms dies or is eaten by another of your creatures, or a system where, upon reaching capacity, the worms take shifts of active living in between long periods of hibernation, ensuring a steady amount of worms in circulation while preventing the need for a queue. They would agree to being turned to dragons in your realm, but only if they could return to their original shape once in a while, as this is what they are most comfortable with. You could also implement a reward-based system depending on worm productivity, with lazier worms being given over to a surely displeased Tuk rather than taken to your realm to live as you see fit.
Create a dimension of desires where the very essence of desires of intelligent beings take form. This dimension should be interwoven with the beliefs of intelligent life and interact with the other dimensions creating counterpoles to undesirable stagnancy.
[1] You create a conceptual space of maddening impulse, where the distilled, painful essence of every desire dwells, purified beyond mortal recognizability. Connected to all other points of the universe, the Realm of Distilled Desire is easily accessible to any mortal, provided they know how to look. It is an easy way to provide purpose to one's life, if extremely harmful to one's sanity.
I am Cheesecake, god of domination and conquest. Create a huge fortress floating in the void as my own realm, and offer contracts to worthy mortal souls to join my army after death in exchange for power in life.
[1] You craft the largest fortress you possibly can to state your point as clearly as you possibly can, with spires that are impossibly tall, infinite amounts of turrets for soldiers to fire from, arsenals filled with weapons even you barely recognize, and in the middle of it all your throne, greater than any single object in the universe. You place it at the center of all things, providing the universe with a an easily definable central axis, the ability to dictate which makes you joyous. Releasing your power over the fortress to see it stand alone against all other things that exist or may someday manifest by the will of the gods, you are aghast when it immediately undergoes gravitational collapse, your elaborate design coming undone as its mass homogenizes into a supermassive black hole.
You still have the center of the universe, you think morosely. The fortress may be toast, but at least you've defined the center of the universe.
[4] As for the contracts, you make those known to the existing mortals of the world, all the while failing to mention what a worthy soul technically would be so that you retain veto rights. A bunch of them seem interested, but not most of those juicy mortals from Tuk's planet, who seem to be collectively angling for more interesting afterlives, but a few caretaker worms fearing a reward-based system for potentially inhabiting Otyx's realm express that they wouldn't really mind being in your army after they're dead, and that power right now seems like an acceptable deal. A couple of cosmic space whales also offer to join up, possibly for its own amusement. Some planet-sized crabs from you're not quite sure where inquire about the exact specifics of army life. And finally, a group of winged wizard hivebeasts interested in maximizing their efficiency ask to join, no questions asked if you ask none in return and fulfill their request for power.
Fuck, this. I quit. I knew I should've become a game designer.
Perhaps you're not cut out to be a demiurge. Maybe a trickster spirit is the best you can hope for. At least you wouldn't be a patron of some aspect of a mortal's daily life.
Offer the infected acolytes of Tuk a simple logic biocomputing system, which will form within the brains of all affected and give them an inviolable capacity for logical decision making. Consider, after the fact, that I failed to include some form of ethical limitation.
[6] Since they can't quite say no, you install an apparatus of logic into the minds of the supremely arcanely gifted disciples of the Thought Core. They do not quite appreciate it, because to appreciate is inefficient. But they're certainly much livelier now that you've done this. The local population soon dubs them Machine-Heretics in what you find an overly dramatic turn. Their wanton predations on the world soon earn them infamy on the planet of Tuk, particularly among the other races.
Add the urge to wiggle to the mind plague.
[6] The mind plague (though now you suspect this may be a poor descriptor, considering its plaguing is greatly limited) agrees that wiggling as both an identifier of affiliation and as an efficient mode of recreation and socialization seems desirable. Its devotees among the hivebeasts now perform regular ritualized dances, wiggling being the chief component of them. It helps shake out their thoughts, the Core informs you, so it's very good indeed that you had this idea.
I am Oyo the Cyclical, God of Rebirth and Justice. Find a suitable star to seed with planets and life.
[6] You locate a rapidly rotating neutron star and seed the space around it with orbiting terrestrial planets and gas giants, both with a large number of moons, giving the entire object a swarmlike look. It is not exactly the stablest system, and you suspect many of the planets will crash into one another any moment now, but there is something to say about creating life in an area that is bathed regularly in massive amounts of gamma radiation. It's likely to be a much more interesting form of life than the kind on Tuk's planet. Or at least one with much cause for rebirth, which you style yourself a specialist of.
I am John, God of Trees. Find a planet to plant trees on.
[2] Well, there's all those planets Oyo just made. They seem as good a place to start as any. Wouldn't want to mess around with all these established realms, would you?
Author
Topic: Inexorable: a Minimalist Demigod Game (Read 80511 times)