"I am a petty god at the moment."

"You will find me more lordly and benign when I achieve the position of a greater god."

Those are the words of the immortal sorcerer, Prince Shool. Today I noticed that the phrase "petty god" was used in Michael Moorcock's first Corum novel, The Knight of the Swords. The term is deployed in both senses of the term, designating both a lesser god and a god with a propensity for pettiness. The novel is filled with petty gods in fact: Pilproth, the Gorged God; inadvertent organ donor deities, Kwll and Rhynn; and the sad deity who accompanies Serwde, the Brown Man of Laahr; perhaps the Dog and the Bear as well.

There's also just a suggestion of an association between giants and gods, which reminds me of another blogger's recent question of why there wasn't more interest in giants as a monster type...

Over the last week, petty gods have come up in a couple of other ways too. At last weekend's Fate of Tekumel game at Con of the North, I had a chance to use the Tzitzimine Star Demons minions and the non-canonical Eyes that I wrote for Petty Gods.

In fact, the Eye a player selected for her character was none other than the Eye of Petty Theogony! An ordinary sellsword was elevated for a good chunk of the session into a petty god in his own right, taking on the mien of a minor god of war. When I wrote up that Eye, I never dreamed that anyone would use it on anyone other than their own character! Players do find ways to do things with our creations that surprise us.

Co-creation makes us all petty gods.

The Tower Realm of Gilgamesh

Pieter Brughel the Elder, Tower of Babel (1563)

Gilgamesh, the Tower Realm which has not fallen. 

Virtue: The Smith - Productivity

Fault: Striking the Dragon's Tail - Underestimating the Challenge

Fate: Summer - Energy vs. Exhaustion

A city as populous as Everway stands at a point of brief convergence between two great rivers: the Swift River to the East, and the sluggish Silty River to the West.

Level-on-Level the Tower rises, almost to the heavens. The Tower is the work of generations. Who was the original Planner? Several competing cults point to different godlings of the city, or to one or more ancient priest kings. Go to the Great Library and do you own research. Just mind your words carefully. The Tower's Northward list is visible from a great distance. Just look away; pretend the Tower rises straight into the sky. After all,

"Better the low view of a bent neck than the bright vista 

enjoyed by heads mounted on King's Level." 

At the topmost levels of the Tower lives the Great King and his court. Immediately below him live the priests. Still lower are the nobles, and then the merchants. Finally the artisans, and layer-after-layer of workers, pilgrims and foreigners, and finally the wretched poor.

At ground level, the Tower is flooded so that food and other goods can be brought up into the Tower readily. The gondoliers of the Longshores, a guild-family believed to be a distant offshoot of Everway's own Whiteoars, control this trade. Once inside the Tower City, the goods are hoisted from the rafts and then moved up and onto the great ramps that lead up and up and up. The Sore Feet are the guild which controls this trade.

Beneath the Tower, the Foundation extends seemingly forever; some say to the center of the sphere itself.  Here are great storehouses, sufficient to withstand a hundred-year siege. There are numerous dungeons, safe houses, armories, forges, and blast furnaces. Whole warehouses with Demon Urns. Also below are the great beasts who consume the city's sewage and refuge. Beware of the Blind Shafts that connect Level to Level. Fall in one of these, and you will end up in something's stomach.

If Gilgamesh were not so distant from Everway, it would be a close and deadly rival. The city has a vast standing army, and is the hub of an inter-sphere trade empire. Gilgamesh has 36 gates, exactly half-plus-one the number of gates leading from Everway. The gates were constructed as part of the Plan. Each one binds a godling - each formerly a god - to the destiny of the city itself.

For the last 100 years, new construction has been suspended on the Tower. Some say there is a New Plan under constant revision - one which will correct the Tower's evident lean. But that is a story for another time. The various cults dedicated to the 36 Gate Godlings each assert that their godling is the unique protector and preserver of the city. For certain, something is helping Gilgamesh to avoid the isolation, confusion, and ultimate disaster experienced by so many other Tower Realms. Will this state of equilibrium hold?