God Bound
God Bound
Heaven has fallen, and the Words of Creation thunder from new
throats.
Into this twilight age have come the Godbound. Some say that it
is the decaying husks of the Made Gods that give them their power, gobbets of divinity falling
like rot to congeal about the souls of humankind. Others believe that it is the work of the
Creator, reaching out from Their silence to touch Their creations with new light. Most do not
pretend to know why it is that a common peasant girl should ignite with the sun's own brilliance,
or a grizzled old soldier should suddenly find half an army falling before his notched blade.
Bound by seeming chance to the Words of Creation, divine heroes in a broken world, men and
women who have seized the tools that have slipped from an absent God's hands. These
new-forged titans face a world ravaged by the mad ambitions of men and the cruel legacy of
human folly.
Undestined, unfettered, unchosen, they are Godbound, and their will is writ with fire.
Their foes are many: the jealous parasite gods that suck at the wounds of the world, the furious
Angelic Host that once held Heaven against the armies of men, and the endless legions of
sorcerers, god-monsters, mortal tyrants, and eldritch relicts that scourge the shattered realms.
The Godbound bring hope and terror in equal measure. Even the freshly-awakened among
them have incredible powers, able to hurl thunderbolts like lesser men throw stones, or spit
curses that kill five generations of their enemy's kin. They are burnt to ashes, and rise anew.
They are buried under hillsides, and shout the stones apart. They sing up gold from barren earth
or pour out an autumn harvest from their saddlebags. They work miracles, and men tremble.
Yet they are men and women, with the dreams that men and women dream. Some are saviors,
determined to lift their people from their hardships and lead them to a better day. Others are
mercenaries, lending their aid to whatever lord or sorcerer-prince can pay them in suitable coin.
And some, of course, are blind fools who wield their powers with the recklessness of children,
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building their dreams on the bones of the poor mortals around them. There are few who can
gainsay a Godbound's will, and not all these newborn divinities have a hero's soul. Some
nurture red dreams of glory and unfettered rule.
And even so, such terrible powers do exist. In the wilderness the wretched parasite gods swell
on stolen celestial power, sucking the world's blood from its wounds. Grim eldritch adepts plumb
nameless secrets and forge pacts with the monstrous Uncreated for power enough to tax even
a divinity. Hulking Misbegotten shamble from the darkness and bring their numberless spawn
behind them. These and other foes can force a Godbound to flee or perish if the newborn
wielder of the Words hasn't the help of a faithful pantheon of allies.
Into this world you have come. Your name is a Word of Creation. Your will is the shadow of God
on Earth. With these 1000WoP (Words of Power) will you be a merciful god to your people, or
will you make them dread your holy name?
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Starting Location
There are many disconnected states that float within Uncreated Night, but barring any toggles
that change it, you are fated to start your journey within the Realm of Arcem, or in the tongue of
the old world “Refuge.”
1. Ancalia
A kingdom fallen in on itself after a calamitous otherworldly invasion, plagued by warlords and
worse.
2. Atheocracy of Lom
A land embittered by the Shattering, ruled by the fearsome priests of True Reason and their
sorcery.
3. Ulstang Skerries
Witch-viking raiders from cold northern isles who enslave the dead to drive their bone-prowed
ships.
4. Bleak Reach
A ruined exile-land where the refugees and outcasts have scratched out a hard, unlucky
existence.
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5. Bright Republic
The last bastion of advanced science in the realm, threatened by the decay of its vital
technology
5. Howlers
Nomadic raiders of a lost empire who plunder neighbors and guard the poisonous words of their
sires.
6. Kasirutan Archipelago
Pirates and traders of the hot southeastern islands, the finest sailors in all the realm.
7. Nezdohva
A nation of serfs, artificers and quarreling golem-nobles under the rule of the mechanical Iron
Czar.
8. Oasis States
Pyramid-dwelling inhabitants of the desert grow much under the mad eye of the God-Pharaohs.
9. Patrian Empire
A martial state long locked in combat with Dulimbai, dependent on heavy infantry and slave
labor.
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A patchwork of city-states and rural domains with dark, potent wizards and a ferocious
independence.
15. Vissio
Former Patrian colonies turned independent city-states of merchants, artists, poisoners, and
poets.
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Origin
Man, woman, transhuman remnant, or alien refugee from the beyond Uncreated Night, it makes
little difference now that you have Bound a Word. Freely pick your incarnated form, so long as it
doesn’t give any great advantage. If it does, you still can pick it, but it will require you to buy
Facts or Gifts to support it.
Do you have a history in this world? Most who live here were born here, and you may be
counted among their number, but there’s a steady stream of people who sail in from beyond the
edge of the world, make their way here through the Night Roads, fall through an error in reality,
or otherwise are displaced. If you wish, you may count yourself among their number.
But that was what you were. And what you were is less
important than who you are now.
You may take four 100WoP Theurgy perks for free, and
discount four perks from the 200WoP tier, one perk from
the tier 400WoP, and one 600WoP perk.
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Perks
Universal Truths
There are truths universal to the Godbound, ones you share in simply for being what you are.
In future worlds, you can usually assert that a fact is still true. You are a Rich Heiress or an Elf,
so long as that fact COULD make sense. Being an Elf in Harry Potter, for example, wouldn’t, as
Harry Potter elves are very different creatures. But it probably could work in Exalted for a tribe of
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bio-engineered forest dwellers. Even if you cannot, the truths the Fact asserts about you still
work.
Alternatively, you may use facts to gain access to things. Used in this way, they are no longer a
general competence bonus, but instead enhance you in a more limited but impressive way.
You may also use a Fact to gain access to a low magic tradition as an Archmage of that school
- doing so means you support its principles yourself, so that it continues to work in future travels.
It also means that so long as the local magic isn’t completely and utterly incompatible with that
world, you may teach it to others.
There are certainly other uses for Facts, and if you’re familiar with them, you may use a fact that
way, provided Godbound are allowed to use a fact in that manner.
Additionally, you may use a Fact to give you 4 Integration points worth of cybernetics that are
completely ‘covered’ and ‘paid for’. This may be actual cybernetics, but might also be used to
represent the enhanced abilities of the ‘cousins,’ or investments from pacts with the Uncreated,
or any number of other things.
And you may also use it to pick up one of the Legacy Talents (except Natural Power. If you want
a gift, buy the Gift perk instead).
If this is your first jump, then physical Facts about you that aren’t obviously inhuman may
become part of your Exceptionalism body mod going forward.
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On the other hand you also shrug off many curses and blights that terrorize mortals. Terrible
nation-withering curses wash off you like so much dross, and you can defy and resist forces no
mortal may contest.
A Godbound is always a ‘worthy’ foe, counting as ‘more powerful’ for any effect that targets the
weak or works differently against the vulnerable. For example, a charm magic that turns anyone
weaker than the user into a slave but a peer could resist would treat the Godbound as a peer,
even if they weren’t.
You may also use it to defy that which you should not have escaped, shrug off curses and
dodging traps, or otherwise succeed when you should have failed to save yourself.
In addition to starting with more with extra purchases, your pool will also grow faster with each
extra purchase beyond the complementary two.
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As a divine force, you have an outside impact upon the world. Influence represents an ability to
twist the world to maintain an unnatural state by your say-so. Influence is ‘tied up’ as you
exercise it upon the world, and it has little persistence once no longer supported. While this
doesn’t mean everything you do with influence vanishes the moment you retract it, it does mean
that the world quickly acts upon the changed state.
If you’ve rearranged things into a new stable configuration without the intervention of Influence,
then that might not mean much… but if you’ve created a school system the culture can’t
support, or redrawn national borders, then the consequences of withdrawing Influence might be
swift. That school system will probably collapse (though the students it educated will remain
educated), and there will be national tensions and pushbacks, or even war, from people who are
unhappy with the new lines you’ve drawn.
Even if done more carefully, it might still be washed away. If the nation COULD have a good
school system, but lacks the political will to achieve that, then making it happen via fiat will
work… but once you remove that fiat all the factors that stopped it from originally happening will
come back into play, unreduced.
Essentially, Influence lets you have a completely outside impact on
things to achieve impossible goals, but eventually the world will
remember that that was impossible once you remove yourself and
recover your investment.
Dominion (Free)
Where influence belongs to you, and returns to you, Dominion is
power gathered that you can invest to make lasting changes to the
world. Dominion both leaves behind the subtlety of Influence, and
possesses ontological inertia. You are a being who can hold
Dominion once it has been gathered, and use it to engineer changes
to the status quo, to engineer reality itself.
Words (Free) Sorcery, Endurance, artifice, sword, time
Being a Godbound means you are bound to the Words of God.
Three of them to start with, to be precise. Maybe you are tied to
Fate, or Fire. From these you derive your Gifts, the divine powers
that you wield, and you manipulate them to achieve your Miracles.
Sorcery, artifice, Faerie Queen
To start with, you have from your Words 6 lesser gifts, or 3 greater ones, or a mix between the
two.
Fray (Free)
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As a Godbound, you are a being of literal divine wrath. For you, scouring away the weak is not a
challenge or an effort, but something that simply happens when they’re in your way. You can
inexorably and causally cleave away the root of life in your lesser enemies. It doesn’t really
matter what defenses they’ve raised, however you do it, it’s an expression of divine power. The
method you use is only window dressing.
You know on sight if someone is a worshiper of yours, though you don’t know if they are an
obedient one. You may accept someone’s faith and soul into your keeping even if they have
already pledged it to another. On the other hand, once someone is pledged to you their soul is
yours unless they find another who can claim it - simply turning their back on your faith or
denouncing you does not remove your claim to their eternal self. You may cast someone out of
your faith at any time if you don’t wish to claim them.
For now, and with only this perk, you may guard the souls of the dead in your charge into
dreamless slumber, or cast them out. While in this world, an unguarded soul will fall into
Damnation.
Over time you will be able to grant your worshipers the ability to sanctify things in your name,
strike down your own worshipers with curses or plagues, hear their prayers, look upon any who
follow you to see what’s happening around them, empower a handful of worshipers as lesser or
greater champions to you, appear before any of your worshipers for a time, and bless or curse
an endeavor for any group made up substantially of your followers.
As a god following the path of faith, you may gather Dominion over time based on your
worshipers. While any god may glut themselves on power if they have a large cult, by being
more demanding you can squeeze more strength from a smaller one. The greater a burden
membership becomes because of your demands, the more extra faith you may extract from
them. Just remember that you are creating unfixable problems for your own followers, for if
they’re fixable, then the strictures aren’t harsh enough to extract additional Dominion from them.
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someone else’s god. And while you’re giving up power… was it ever your power to begin with?
Being a god is a responsibility, and for you, you owe it only towards yourself.
General Theurgy
The words that you have bound don’t merely
make you a mortal who has fumbled into
divine power, but divine power that has
bound itself into mortal form. These are the
tools of your divinity. Many of these may be
bought multiple times. If you use a discount
or one of your free purchases, it only is
discounted or free for one purchase.
As a Problem, your love of reading might make a covert group opposed to you suddenly have
problems with information security, as small details start getting written down and correlated,
increasing their exposure. An angel cult might start losing followers as their members become
exposed to new viewpoints. Or a feudal lord might have a rash of sudden literacy raise
discontent at home.
On its own, a problem generated by this perk won’t be massive, though it can be the straw that
breaks the camel’s back, or it could worsen an issue they already have past the breaking point.
It is also possible for this perk to completely fail against a group that is already in line with the
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fact, or one so alien to it that it has no place to take root. You may take the same fact multiple
times, though remember you have no control over how it manifests, nor if it manifests as a
single significant problem, or a host of lesser ones.
Regardless of distance, your cult is always influenced by you, and a vector of your influence.
For example, if you had the same fact that you love to read, it might manifest as allied groups
staying unusually on top of events because everyone read all the available intelligence, or a city
dealing with a plague unusually well be informing themselves of proper precautions.
It’s possible for a group to be so alien to your nature that no beneficial feature derived from you
could take hold, though also remember this is an expression of divine presence. It usually
works.
Regardless of distance, your cult is always influenced by you, and a vector of your influence.
Trouble-Magnet (100WoP)
No, you don’t attract trouble. Trouble attracts you. It’s not always obvious what the heart of a
problem is, or what’s actually happening. If you’re trying to motivate a village that has given into
nihilistic despair by reminding them of hope through brave deeds, it won’t do you a lot of good if
the actual reason is that an Uncreated horror has stolen their will to live.
While this won’t tell you if you’re barking up the wrong tree, whenever you set about trying to
solve something, you’ll find yourself drawn towards the cause, source, or leverage point of the
issue. You may think of this as a blessing of destiny or fate, and you might have to keep your
eyes open. It’s not going to tell you ‘look here’, even though it will lead you right by it. But it’s
hard for a problem to be unsolvable simply because you can’t access or find the root of the
issue.
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This perk counts as two purchases of the Fact, that you are a Godwalker Pilot, and that you are
a trained theotechnician. More than that, it is an expression of your very nature to be a pilot, and
you may freely Commit Effort, as well as use gifts and miracles while piloting. You may use the
Godwalkers Effort as your own while linked. Generally speaking, you may treat the Walker as
your own body, though use common sense. At the same time, you are better at remembering
that a Godwalker is a tool rather than your own body. You may resist sympathetic damage done
to your Godwalker with whatever powers or fortitude you possess.
Lastly, you find maintenance a straightforward if demanding task. You may use Influence in
place of Dominion for maintenance and repair work - this includes things like training up a crew
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of theotechnicians, though remember that with influence, they won’t necessarily stay loyal and
working for you once you retract your influence.
Blade of Unmaking (400 WoP)
Much like the Angels in plotting the final fall of
creation, your might is a fell one when turned
to the purpose of destruction. When your
blows land, or you invoke terrible forces, they
cleave the world in fundamental ways that few
beings born of the laws of nature can match.
This is less about doing harm more easily, but
rather a magnifier once harm is done.
for free, and your learning rate is doubled when it’s magic.
This extends to future martial arts that you may learn in other worlds - the phenomena you
experience are teachers enough for even supernatural arts. It’s also a fast teacher, and you
learn such things with unnatural rapidity. You also cleanly integrate everything you learned into
a
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You start with one Strife already mastered, and the first
steps taken of a second.
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intentionally destroyed, or the factory could, but it couldn’t be rendered irrelevant simply
because the Engines that generate reality were recalibrated. If you craft a transhuman species,
they will breed true so long as steps aren’t actively taken to stop or dilute your work. Things you
make resist entropy, and even tend to repair themselves over time. This isn’t all powerful, but it
would take some extreme wear and tear for something you’ve made to actually get rundown
enough to break.
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represent it, as well a purchase of Best Feature Forwards for the same to represent how ruin
plays to your and your allies advantage. You may buy additional themes for an 200WoP.
But this is less a positive blessing wielded for your sake, and more a negative curse wielded
against your enemies. You gain four purchases of Problematic for the same fact. Miracles that
play upon your theme of ruin are somewhat stronger, cheaper, more reliable, and can stretch
the themes of your Words a bit farther. The same is true for any Gifts or other power you
develop that plays into your new theme. It will be slightly cheaper than it should be, slightly more
powerful than it should be, more reliable than it should be, and can somewhat stretch beyond
what you should be able to do with abilities you develop from that source so long as that
stretching is in the service of playing into your theme or into Uncreation itself.
Lastly, when calling up and binding the Uncreated, open Night Roads that lead to nowhere, or
spreading your kind of ruin, you may spend Effort as if it was Dominion, though such exertions
will take a week to recover absent other perks.
Destroying what left isn’t a crime or a horror, but a mercy. It’s not worth saving, and the
architects of that ruin deserve to burn forever for what they did.
You gain three purchases of Problematic for “Believes in Nothing” and three purchases for “It’s
Better this Way.” Your presence teaches the lessons these mortals need to hear. Any
unclaimed souls and unguarded souls around you are pulled into your orbit, such that any who
fall in your presence without a god’s mark of ownership or similar belong to you as if they were
your worshipers. And no casual effort will gain anyone access to souls you’ve claimed in such a
way - resurrection magic will fail without your permission, rituals to speak with the dead will
return nothing, and all other methods of contacting, interacting with, or detecting a soul own will
fall short.
Rather than the dreamless sleep the false pretenders offer though, you’re ready to give these
mortals what they deserve. Your ‘presence’ contains the mechanisms of torment, to keep them
awake, aware, and suffering. They know you’re doing it to them because they deserve it, and if
they don’t know that, they’ll learn. The souls you keep in torment this way count as a second
Cult devoted to you, one operating under completely crippling requirements, allowing you to
extract a steady stream of Dominion from them. You don’t have to torture any given soul.
Perhaps you wish to offer a respite as a bribe?
They also are ready made material for any use you have for souls, being readily reshaped into
what you need from them. If you’re using them to fulfill the ‘soul’ part of a project that needs
such, then it counts as one already done ‘quest’ and the souls portion of the action is completely
Plausible. Souls incarnated through such an action continue to count as if they were your
Worshipers for purposes of powers that manipulate and control such, though they no longer
count towards your Hell Cult for generating Dominion.
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To start with, double your reserves of energy and power. This extra power isn’t actually part of
you though, rather. Rather, it otherwise wasted energy that was going into ‘the laws of nature’
and ‘supporting existence’ and other useless things that aren’t about you. There probably aren’t
any short term issues from using it, at least that you’ll care about. But if you keep using it in the
same area long term you may get harassed by people who don’t understand you needed it
more than they did.
Such issues can take many
forms, usually connected to what
you were drawing from. For
example, if you were using the
Word of Fire, fires might start
burning more intensely and
faster, as you sapped the
regulating forces governing
them. Or they could produce less
heat for the same level of fuel as
you directly drained how much
fire there is. Or they could
produce energies other than
heat.
You also can make things about you. It’s easy for you to ‘suck the air out of the room’, sapping
the energy and will to act from others to bolster your own presence. While more significant
beings may resist this, you can make others less important even as you bolster your own
significance till it’s simply the natural and inevitable that you dominate whatever field of
competition you are engaged in, whether it’s speaking to the crowd, or striding the battlefield, or
negotiating a contract.
You should make sure to keep it up, as people rapidly reclaim the significance YOU claimed, as
if it was ever actually theirs and they had any right to it. Mortals never appreciate their proper
place in the order of things.
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You are a true heir to their legacy. To start with, you gain the
Fact theotechnician, but in your hands such works are no
longer merely Low Magic. Your designs, your work, is fully
miraculous. If you already have theotechnician, you “double
up” on it, your skill going beyond what is possible for a mortal.
You also receive six purchases of Best Feature Forwards
for theotechnician.
But your expertise doesn’t end there. Just as the ancient Theurgists were able to put the
discarded tools of God to good use, leaping their work forward, so may you. You are able to
repurpose sources of divine or cosmic significance into fuel for your work.
For example, the properties of faith and worship have proven that they support the creation of
miracles - what if you cut out the middleman, and directly incorporated souls into the structure of
your workings? There are plenty of them not being put to use after all, and if you don’t do
anything with them they’re liable to go to waste. You might also sabotage natural law, and
redirect the cosmic friction that caused to support your works.
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Recovering a prayer engine back into the soul it once was is possible… but it is expensive and
time consuming. It makes a better threat to use against hostages than something you should
actually carry out, though examples may need to be made. And if the degenerate nations that
opposed you collapse after you’ve made farming impossible and you want to absorb their lands
for your people, you’ll need to reengineer the necessary natural laws for those lands to support
life once again.
Even as the very underpinnings of reality warped and shifted, life clung on. Ugly, unsightly life,
life unconcerned with high ideals or pointless principles. Sometimes it changed to generate the
very principles it needed to survive, other times it learned to do without. It grew lean, refined
itself till it needed almost nothing, and learned overwhelming hunger to consume all in those
rare moments of plenty.
Though you walk upon one of the fortunate realms that never truly fell, despite what it’s
inhabitants might think, your nature has been shaped to fit one of the fallen and failed realms,
one whose heaven engines have all gone still.
Any force that depends on external reality becomes inconstant and ‘glitchy’ when used against
you, doubly so if it isn’t directed against you by a living will. You may walk off falls of any height,
wade through lava, or breath vacuum. You likewise treat their consequences more casually -
you can’t simply walk straight up a wall, but you can parkour better than any Prince, or fall
slower than a princess.
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Nonmagical directed force is largely ineffectual at the human level - you would notice someone
slamming a boulder into you but nothing less than that. Even then magical or vast forces are
only half as effective as normal, at most. If not carefully directed you’re liable to be moved by a
blow without being hurt as the very rules that govern motion twist in your favor. This does
nothing to protect you from forces that justify and create themselves. In this world that includes
true divine power, reality warping, or the hideous unbeing of the Uncreated.
You also largely don’t require an external
reality. The pillars of existence falling means
little to you, as you weren’t dependent on
them anyways. Let time reject you or fall
through the cracks of unreality… you are
ready to endure.
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Treasure
Gods and Heroes and Kings and Sorcerers are one and all, known for their treasures. Many
Godbound are all of those things. Whether redeemer of old legacies or inheritors of the Empires
that consumed heavens, yours is a legacy resplendent.
Starting Weapons and Armor (Free)
Even the greatest mortals tools are
easy enough for a God to acquire.
Anything from the finest cloth armor to
the heaviest fully articulated plate can
be yours. Likewise, whether sword,
bow, or even gun, you may take what
you wish among mortal armaments,
though remember that physics won’t
support the operations of more
advanced technology outside of
specially stabilized regions.
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If you have Divine Chariot, then any purchase of this purely for Godwalker components is
discounted.
You know how to establish a small and safe Night Road between your current location and this
realm, using a simple ritual that (baring advantages) will take you a few hours. The realm
already metaphysically belongs to you, if you have greater plans for it.
Companions
A Pantheon to call your own (100 WoP each, 500WoP for 8 ) Morgana
You may create or import a companion God, who receives all freebies and 200 Words of Power
to spend on their own perks, but may not take drawbacks. They may come from any nation or
way of life, or simply walk out of Uncreated Night and into your service.
Perhaps the most notable exception to this to this were many of the angels who followed the
Warden of Hell, Sammael. Perhaps because of the perspective his duty as the purifier of sins
granted him, he didn’t turn against creation, and continues to seek to do his original duty.
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This Angelic Regent was once tasked with managing some of the engines of torment used to
cleanse mortals souls, before they went on to their final fate. Ousted by the Heaven Host when
they abandoned the corpse of Heaven for Hell, it has drifted, purposeless since then, unsure of
how to even begin to go about following its duties.
Something about your entrance to this world has grabbed it’s attention though, and in it, it sees
a path beyond Night. It hopes to follow you from this world, believing that there is something out
there that will let it fix all of this.
A mighty but subtle angel, it is a blur of divine action and power. It governs an aspect of Fire
and Fate, but can effectively also touch both Deception and Command. It naturally
understands many aspects of creation, its insight invaluable to anyone who wishes to craft
reality.
Drawbacks
Much as the defunct Former Empires broke the world for power, you may unleash calamity to
harvest a few more Words of Power, the words you need if you are to speak your dreams into
being. Just be more restrained than your predecessors along this path, or you will share their
fate.
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There are stranger places too. Some realms aren’t just a drifting continent or world unable to
still support the physics that modern civilizations need. There are star empires, and two fisted
vigilant heroes.
You may use the Jump in supplement mode with any other jump where a sword and sorcery or
the science fantasy equivalent hero could live and thrive. The background will change to fit,
including such things as the invasion of heaven and the discovery of the empty throne, the
creation of the Made Gods, and the shattering of reality, but time and ruin may have obscured
much of that.
Keep all point totals separate, spending them only on their own document.
Any drawbacks you take will adapt to the new setting, adding in new setting elements as
appropriate.
And somehow they seem to show up wherever you are. Their missionaries sow sedition and
unrest in peaceful lands, and whip more chaotic ones into a frenzy directed at any divine object
they can see. You’re doomed to spend your time here clashing with them, unless you crush
them entirely root and stem.
It exists as an aegis both to protect the souls of mankind in dreamless sleep, and the edge out
divine predators who seek to usurp power through mankind's faith. And now you’ll find that
pretty much everyone who doesn’t have a special reason to belong to another faith is a Uniter,
uninterested in listening to anyone claiming divinity.
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So long as you don’t try and spread a faith or claim godhood, you won’t have a problem, but any
attempt to establish a cult or claim divine right is going to run into stubborn groups unwilling to
listen, and poison the well against you far and wide.
The ancestor cults are more widespread than they otherwise would be, and those ancestors are
more active in pushing their agendas. You’ll find yourself constantly dealing with politics that do
not quite make sense, as people pursue the interests, biases, and grudges of their great great
grandparents. The weight of time and ritual grows with every death, stifling the living, but to
break those chains would damn the dead to Hell. You may find yourself having to redirect your
own resources to support ancestor cults in areas you’ve come to control, if you wish to hold the
faith and worship of the living.
These are the souls who will break the world simply to prove they existed. They are like locus,
and they are everywhere. They’ll happily pillage any wonder or miracle they can get their hands
on. Lay a blessing of growth upon a field, and an army of them may show up to steal the soil in
hopes of it revealing the secrets of how you did it, uncaring that they’ll cause the very famine
you were trying to prevent.
Most of them hold little real power, but they’ll also rarely challenge you directly, and they aren’t
one group, or even one kind of group.
Every time you take this, double your time here, a maximum of seven times, but this last
doubling caps your stay at 1000 years.
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You’ll often find yourself lumped in together with groups you despise as if you were all alike, or
competing with them for the same allies for the same causes, or even discover they’re the only
ones available to work with. One way or another, you’re going to be pressured into making
compromises you don’t wish to.
You don’t have to fight them. In fact, doing so may very well escalate the situation beyond what
you could reasonably expect. But they’ll probably be happy to fight you if they discover you.
For 100 WoP, people seem to catch on that something is... off about you. Perhaps it's how you
have an otherworldly air about you, or you have strange knowledge of forgotten technology that
has fallen out of use even in the Bright Republic, or perhaps you are demonstrating substantially
more power/competence than expected from a person in your position. Whatever it is, it will
make you more noticeable to people.
This doesn't affect the average 'random Joe', but people who are competent or in the know?
They WILL notice, and while they won't draw the wrong conclusions, such as you being a Cultist
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of the Uncreated simply because you used an ability that utterly annihilates something, it will
nonetheless make things complicated.
For 200 WoP however, besides the previously mentioned complications, the various
organizations have noticed your arrival. Not you, per se, but rather that an event happened that
came completely out of the blue. This also removes the previously mentioned 'protection' of
people drawing the wrong conclusions, though it doesn't force them to make the wrong ones
either.
For 300 WoP though... Did I say that they didn't notice you? Turns out that they did and now you
are on EVERYONE'S watch-list as a person of interest.
In taking this, you must side with a faction or cause and and honestly pursue the goals of
furthering your side and thwarting the others. You become driven for your cause. This doesn’t
mean you’ll throw your life away for nothing, but you’re motivated enough to risk your life for
enough of a reward.
This is only an +100 WoP drawback if you side with one of the forces of Creation, as you easily
fit in as a Godbound. ‘Your own cult’ can be a side, so long as you are actively growing,
expanding, and proselytizing for your cult. You already have most of the people against you who
will be against you for taking this side.
This is +300 WoP if you side with the bitter angels, one of the Uncreated Courts, or another
thoroughly self-destructive group. These organization want to ruin you as much as they do
everyone else and will never stop trying to drink your bring you destruction and damnation. The
rising pantheons and heroes are focused on bringing down many of the greatest threats to
Creation, with no tolerance for a cultist Godbound. It’s hard to find someone who will honestly
help and support you, or give you shelter. Truly, you have invited destruction upon yourself.
For 200 WoP, you really are that creepy. Even when there's an easier, less morbid way to
achieve your goals, you tend to find the methods which are more convoluted and at least
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somewhat morally objectionable. Even if you've signed up to work for Team Evil, expect to have
some of your allies bothered... by your lack of efficiency, if nothing else.
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You are physically, mentally, and spiritually twisted by the transformation. And a bottomless
hunger for divine power gnaws at you endlessly.
It would take an inhuman will to keep your morals, as you find yourself endlessly driven to
expand. Expand your worship. Expand your consumption. Eat and eat and eat the essence of
the world. The more you do, though, the more you will damage the fabric of reality.
They’re coming for you. Their cults, their agents, the lesser orders who can squeeze themselves
into reality… The longer you defy them, the more resources they’ll devote to your destruction.
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assaulted by Uncreated Night. You’ll even find a decent number of them in as distant and
uninhabited areas as the bottom of the sea floor. They can be closed of course, but most of
them will have a Uncreated Lord and his or her court guarding it.
Endings
There is a time for famine, and a time for plenty. Was your time here long, or was it short,
fruitful, or nightmarish? Whatever it is, it is time to make some choices.
A New Heaven
Or perhaps your time here isn’t at an end. You can stay, if you want, if you’ve committed
yourself to this world. Will you restore it to its former glory, or are you the next horror to plague
it? Either way, this lege of your journey is at an end. Never let it be said I don’t rewards
conviction, and for choose to dedicate yourself to here, I’ll empower you with 3000 more Words
of Power to shape your new home.
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Notes
The Godwalkers are hollow divinities, avatars
of a god, who have no god, or mind, or soul
of their own. They exist to channel and
incarnate divinity. But in practice, they’re
Mechas, with a few airships and
super-barges mixed in.
Exceptionalism
It basically gives you an 16, 14, 13, 13, 10,
and 8 attribute spread. You don’t have to take
any of those ‘values’, only taking the ones
you want.
Divinity
The full scope of the state of being Godbound
is beyond the scope of this document, but the
source is freely available for legal download
at Godbound.
Facts
The main Godbound book has example facts,
as well as low magic. See Ancalia: The
Broken Towers for information on the Knightly
Orders.
Obviously, a jump story isn’t as mechanical as a game session, but that’s generally speaking
the spirit of the perk.
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Man’s Dominion
+1 dominion per month, +1 shard per year, per purchase. Like, I’m not sure if in-story there’s
such a thing as ‘1 dominion’, or if all shards are interchangeable. Maybe you get one big shard
instead of two normal sized ones… but generally speaking with two purchases you would get
roughly 1 dominion every 15 ½ days and a shard roughly every 182 ½ days. With five you would
get a dominion a little over every 6 days and a shard every 73 days.
Blade of Unmaking
In a non-mechanical sense, the perks description is explanation enough, but for people familiar
with godbound, this is the Straight Damage. For people unfamiliar with the system... In
Godbound, when you do damage, you normally use this table -
1 or less None
2–5 1 point
6–9 2 points
10 or more 4 points
This might not sound like a lot, doubly so since Godbound is built to sit on top of old 2nd DnD…
But the Godbound do damage by the Hit Dice. Some beings, for example Angels through their
Unmade trait, do ‘straight damage.’ They roll, and then they do the full damage of their roll.
Again, in hit dice. There are obviously other sources of ‘straight damage’ that you can access.
But it’s still normally a big deal.
Yes, this is a thoroughly mechanical explanation, for the purposes of jumpchain the perks
description should be enough.
For the 600WoP Enemy perks, while you can use Effort in place of Dominion in the listed ways,
a Dominion action isn’t any faster. You’ll steadily invest Effort during that time period of the
dominion action, and it will only return to you a week after the action is completed.
Unthought Bargains
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You can develop a Gift that’s basically The Cold Breath. It would be something like a Universal
Greater Gift that could be bought multiple times, acting as a opposing force to any extraordinary
powers others want to bring to bear, so that they had to tie up some of their power simply to
operate in the presence of yours.
You can find out about the Uncreated Lords and their courts in Ancalia: The Broken Towers.
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