The World is always growing, always dying
Score: 6600 | 1/28/23 |
The world is flat, and the creation of life depletes a kind of energy from the land. The world is surrounded by an unformed Void which mortals can work their will together in an act of Formation to create new Regions filled with raw psychic energy.
This tends to force a permanent pattern of long-term expansion and migration, with older territories becoming Depleted, newer territories requiring settlement, and all territories being dangerous in their own way.
The fact that there's geographical locality to voids and territories drives political competition and conflict over resource scarcity, made worse in that arcane magic uses raw psychic energy as its fuel; in regions which are on the verge of being fully depleted, you might see license requirements for the use of arcane magic, or even outright bans!
Land comes with raw psychic energy, which is formed into soul energy with every birth, seed germination and bacterium fission. Soul energy is effectively static for the lifetime of the organism, but generates a well of refined psychic energy; it's this refined psychic energy that can be used for the Formation of voids when enough people have enough of a common idea what they're trying to Form.
Gods are worshipped by mortals, wherein the mortals' refined psychic energy is voluntarily transferred to the gods' mantles. The gods use this energy to sustain themselves, their deific houses and to enable them to grant favors and power to their worshippers. The gods are organized into a system of houses and peerage, and political games are played with rank and power. If a god isn't doing a good job with their assigned mantle, their worship income will go down, and higher-ranking gods within their house may seek to take that mantle away; a weak mantle means a weaker house.
Everything is a perpetual experiment by and for the Eldest, who spend eons to study the cleverness and strife of mortals and gods to find their own redemption in an unknown answer to the forgotten question. What will they do if they find their answer? Worse, what will they do if they do not?
(Image by Midjourney)