October 7, 2008 at 11:24 am (character-related, setting-related) (metaphysics, o fortuna)
In the O Fortuna-’verse, gods appear to be pretty killable; it just takes a lot more investment of time, as well as one of several mostly obscure artifacts to do so. In fact, doing so is probably the easiest way to become a god, as it doesn’t require all that mucking about with belief or being enough of a Heroic Mortal to get upgraded in the first place.
A lot of the metaphysics in that ‘verse is mostly borrowed and patched together from any mythology with which I am even slightly familiar, really. The thing about being dependent on belief is pretty common in postmodern fantasy, but the interplay between all of the actual god characters is common to almost any pantheon in mythology, although this being the KMV it’s often more intellectual.
Some more detail on Xanatov himself, as he’s one of the two god characters to really get a good amount of history/character development… Originally he was a strategist/intellectual of some description (who is never canonically named, but is basically a Distaff Counterpart of Helena without as much obfuscation). I’m not actually sure how he would have ascended, but I’m guessing from his character that he used the basic idea outlined in the first paragraph. He was then essentially forgotten, as the previous main cleric he had was rather overly dedicated to the secretive bit of his domain and anyone judged by said cleric to be ‘worthy’ eventually died out.
Quite a while later, during her initial appearance in the O Fortunaverse, Helena somehow came across a number of sources describing the history of this particular sect, and decided that he was her best option for taking levels in Cleric. A bit of social engineering later, and it was revived rather quickly…
Both Xanatov and Helena are definitely True Neutral, with tendencies every which way but Chaotic Evil as other alignments become useful for their own ends. Xanatov himself is almost apathetic, preferring to create plans for any contingency and almost never using them, largely because it takes active power for divine-class entities to take physical form in this universe.
