Terra Immortalium (WIP) School for Immortals

Hey, Leo here. For anyone who was still hoping to see Barriers: The Fallout continue, I’m afraid I kind of reached a dead end for that project. :frowning: It wasn’t coming together like I had planned, so I decided that I might as well start fresh, and thus Terra Immortalium (which I’m going to call TI for short) was born!

“Terra Immortalium” is latin for Land of Immortals (note that I don’t know Latin, so don’t quote me on this!). As one might guess, you play an Immortal, to be more specific, a young demigod. However, demigods in this world (I’ve named the planet Ankhet after the Egyptian word for “life”) are not necessarily the blood children of gods; in fact, only about 1 percent of demigods are actually the children of a god. Most are just simple mortals chosen by the gods to regain humanity’s long lost immortality.

Backtracking to the lore: in the beginning, there was nothing. And then there was the Creator. (Man, woman, something else entirely…who knows? The gods sure aren’t telling!) The Creator, well, created. Stars, planets, dust. And finally, life. It created “children”: the first gods who gained a portion of its own divine power to create, change, and shape the very universe itself. These gods would eventually create “children” of their own: the demigods who inherited a portion of the gods’ divine power.

For the first time in thousands of years, the Creator spoke. It issued a warning: the Demigods must not attempt to create “children” of their own with the small portion of divine power they possessed or it would inevitably twist into something else entirely. The Demigods listened, for a time, content to expand their numbers through natural means and come up with new non-sentient lifeforms, but the temptation remained all the same. At last, a small group of rebel demigods attempted to create a sentient lifeform with their divine power. The resulting creature quickly turned on its overeager “parents.” Hundreds of demigods died in the year that was to follow before the creature and its brood was finally destroyed. This was the First War. These were the first deaths. This was the birth of fear, of hate, of sorrow, and their friends.

The Creator took away the demigods’ immortality and all but a fraction of their divine power for throwing the universe out of balance. (But wait, was it fair to take away the divinity of all demigods? No, but the Creator does not care about fairness, it only cares about life and balance.) The resulting mortals could not truly be called demigods. They were only human.

Centuries passed and the former demigods’ population rapidly expanded. The gods soon found themselves struggling. How were they - the few - to keep up with all of their devotees?

Solution: reinstate demigodhood to the worthy in exchange for their eternal devotion as an Emissary of the Gods.

Whew, okay, that brings me to the “present.” TI will center around Imm, city of Immortals, and the training grounds of future Emissaries. It is here at Imm that new demigods learn what it takes to be an Emissary and how best to serve their God for life! (Which is normally a very VERY long time by the way.) Emissary candidates are normally selected around the ages of 15-20 years old, but there are the odd 12 or 28 year old mortal that a god (or gods) took a special liking to and elevated to demigodhood anyway.

Demigods start out as an Acolyte in the Acolyte’s Circle (first five years at Imm) with generalized courses. The first five years at Imm are arguably the most important because five years is all you get to impress as many gods as you can. After those five years are up, the gods you impressed are the gods you can choose from to serve, and if you impressed no gods at all (which is hard to do since you had to at least show promise to one god to become a demigod in the first place!) then you become mortal once again. (Ouch.) Once the choice is made, the next five years as an Adept in the Adept’s Circle begins with courses unique to your chosen God. Finally, you have to pass the demigod version of “Finals,” before graduating to Emissary status!

So what do the Emissaries of Gods do? Well, that varies from god to god and from emissary to emissary. An Emissary of Keten (God of Health, Medicine, and Poison) might heal people who come to one of his temples. Or they might be a poison-specializing Assassin masquerading as a typical healer, eliminating the god’s enemies before they know what hit them. ~shrugs~ Gods find many uses for their Emissaries. Power, immortality, and a god who basically becomes the greatest uncle/aunt you could ever wish for aren’t a bad deal, eh? Of course, there are cons to immortality. Like you blink and fifty years have passed and you’ve “suddenly” become a great aunt.

Feel free to post anything you want while TI is still in the development stage: thoughts, opinions, questions, things you’d like to see, ideas… :heart_eyes: I want to hear from you!

Demo Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/n18ci14cdimjjk4/Terra%20Immortalium.html?dl=0
Date: 5/7/16

45 Likes

Sounds coolio, Julio

4 Likes

Demigods, an unsympathetic Creator, immortality… Sounds fun.

1 Like

I’m saddened to hear about Barriers, but I’m liking the sound of this story!

Do you happen to have an idea of how many gods there will be available? And are Emissaries common place in this world, or is it a rare gift to a select few?

2 Likes

Sounds very interesting to me

2 Likes

Aw, you’re sweet. Glad you like this idea though!

Actual number of (active) gods in existence: 72. Active as in not exiled or in the gods’ version of hibernation (because gods can’t actually die).

But if I actually wrote that many choices you wouldn’t hear from me for another 50 years. :S

I currently have 22 gods written up and I’m probably going to put it up to a vote to narrow them down to 8. Other gods will feature, you just won’t be able to choose from them when the time comes. :S

2 Likes

Haha, not sure if I would want to wait for 50 years :sweat_smile:. 8 sound like a good round number of gods to choose from.
Well, my bed is beckoning, and I hope to hear more about this soon, goodnight! :smiley:.

1 Like

Good night! I’m off to bed as well, but I just realized I forgot to answer the second question you asked! (Whoops.)

Emissaries are very much in the minority if we’re talking strictly numbers here. Imm is home to approximately 50,000 students (acolytes and adepts combined) at this point of time. Sounds like a lot until one realizes that means about 4,950 (normally lose a few) new Emissaries per year to serve an increasingly growing population of 600 million people (there are reasons why the gods felt stretched thin). 5.5 million demigods versus 600 million mortals spread across the world. Of course, too many demigods isn’t exactly a good thing either!

3 Likes

As long as I can turn against the Gods, I’m ready to go.

2 Likes

This seems like a really cool new hodgepodge of all of the major religions in history, I like it!

1 Like

cool, cool but what will happen to you if one of your underlings have the same idea as you and try to steal your power?

1 Like

Then the sith will return to the universe😆

2 Likes

ok, I might join them since it sounds like a fabulous holiday destination (packs suitcase and walks out to the plane going to the universe)

2 Likes

Lol. Technically speaking you could…but that wouldn’t be the greatest idea.

Your whole existence as a demigod is dependent on staying in the gods’ good graces after all. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to like the gods (or even want to work for them!) you just have to play nice.

Yay, that was exactly what I was trying to go for! It will be the pantheon of pantheons ~ cackles ~ hopefully.

Ey, don’t we all? :stuck_out_tongue: Unfortunately the gods will crush you if you don’t play nice. Some of the gods do like ambitious, power-hungry Emissaries, just as long as said Emissaries are faithful to them! However, you play nice for long enough, and you could just earn your way into godhood. :wink:

7 Likes

Don’t forget to include the less… positive things from the religions! :smile:
I’m assuming that you don’t need to be reminded of this. Good luck!! :smiley:

1 Like

“Evil” is a subjective term. :wink:

Welp, I suppose this is as good as time as any to post more info! (Done with school for today, yay.)

First off, yes, demigods can become gods! Is it easy to accomplish? Hell no. Because while gods can turn mortals into demigods, they cannot turn demigods into gods; only the Creator can do that and the Creator tries to stay out of it all. It is very content to simply observe all the shenanigans going on without interference. However, its ultimate goal is to ensure the existence of life and maintain balance in the universe, so it will intervene as necessary. This includes elevating worthy demigods into gods every so often.

Fun sidenote on the Creator: because it treasures life so much, it doesn’t really care about mortals because they die so easily. Death is a necessary evil for balance ever since the Fall of the Demigods (first deaths), but that doesn’t mean the Creator cares for death or the existence of an afterlife, it simply tolerates them. Unlike the gods, the number and devotion of followers doesn’t affect the Creator’s divine power, so it doesn’t try to appeal to mortals either. So unsympathetic is actually kind of an understatement, hahaha.

Anyway, Yi (God of Archery and Night) is the newest god on scene. He’s been a god for only 60 years and is still attempting to attract followers to his side. He used to be an Emissary of Hengo, the Moon goddess, and rumor goes that he’s actually in love with her! ~ scandalized gasp ~ He earned his godhood after (almost) single handedly destroying the cult of a now exiled God which restored some matter of balance to the world and was enough to impress the Creator.

Sidenote #2: Ankhet is the second planet from the Suns. That’s right, suns! It also has two moons. So there’s a Sun god, Sun goddess, Moon god, and Moon goddess. Sometimes they’re allies, sometimes they’re enemies…they have complicated relationships with each other (lots and lots of history).

4 Likes

Wait, if there is an afterlife and the Creator didn’t create it, who did? Also, will we be able to lead a revolt to bring down the tyranny of the Gods?

1 Like

No worries, thought you’d answer it soon enough :D.
So many demigods to beat for godhood too, the greater the challenge, the greater the achievement!

2 Likes