Generations (and kinds) of Gods

 All gods, upon ascension or birth, are subject to the law of Entropy. They age, wither and decay, though "death" is perhaps inapplicable in the traditional sense. Gods will grow in power for a significant amount of time, before they inevitably begin to wither away.

The full lifespan of a god can range from ten thousand years, to nearly a hundred thousand after ascension. This is reliant on various factors such as how hard their immortal life is, parasitism by otherworldy life, and so on. Thus, generations of gods can overlap.

It is possible for gods to find ways to reject the law of entropy. This presents new issues.

Pantheons are simply collections of gods, akin to tribes, clans, families, royal houses and so on.

I imagine this setting like Planescape but bigger, darker and a bit grittier.

(general cw for incest/inbreeding in the elder ones section, though its mentioned in the Great Ones section as well)

Great Ones

The current generation of gods, with new ideas and new power. They lack the established tradition and infrastructure of the preceding generations. They do have a certain degree of willful resilience and diversity of thought that has them split into five well known pantheons. Most great ones have a desire to avoid making the mistakes of their precursors, and so have methods to specifically avoid the inbreeding that crippled the Elder Ones. The eldest among them are scarcely a few thousand years old, while the youngest are only just approaching a century.

The Celestial Council: A pantheon that seeks to establish a new cosmic order, focused on a meritocratic collectivist ideology. They primarily propagate via fostering ascension, a difficult process that many gods struggle to understand even if they accomplished it. In this way they ensure their pantheon always gains an influx of new ideas.

The Inheritors: A pantheon that sees itself as the true inheritors of the Elder Ones, recreating their mistakes. They are yet to be crippled by their inbreeding and age. Revanchist authoritarian Neo-nobility seeking to viciously maintain their power and legacy. No less intelligent or perceptive than others, but blinded by their fervent ego-driven auto-zealotry.

The Terrestrial Clans: A pantheon that rejects the notion of living above and separate from mortals. They primarily seek to expand their numbers by having demigod offspring, who through skillfully created alchemical medicines can burnish and rejuvenate the mortal blood to the point of being nigh-indistinguishable from ascended or pure-blooded gods. With each generation a sliver of power is lost however, even with careful planning to preserve divine blood without inbreeding.

The Infernal Alliance: A pantheon that seeks to preserve personal power, rather than generational power. For this, they turn to the secrets of the Elder Ones and, very carefully, the Old Ones. They are consumed by an Individualistic and Antinomian ideology, and like all who reject the structures of society vary considerably in temperament and approach. Some are vicious tyrants who serve only themselves, some are simple hedonists and some are genuinely magnanimous.

The Wyrding Network: A pantheon that has turned to the surviving Old Ones as a solution to the issues the Elder Ones faced. If inbreeding crippled the Elder Ones, Hybridization may be the perfect way to avoid it. Thus they are practiced in the arts of divine linguistics and hold a tenuous alliance with some of the Old Ones, sustained via marriages and something akin to mutual defense pacts.

Elder Ones

The previous tens to hundreds of generations of gods. Old human gods with old ideas, crippled by the weight of innumerable ages and systemic generational inbreeding. Their pantheons have shattered, their councils have broken and withered and their final generation is little more than sterile husks of their ancestors, doomed by the actions of those they were meant to inherit. Those few that have warded against entropy are static beings, rendered either unchanging, or simply withering so slowly as to be imperceptible to even their minds.

Their inbreeding did successfully concentrate and preserve their divine power across generations, but it caused as many issues as would be expected.

The Protoplast: A "dead" god, the old monarch of the first pantheon of the Elder Ones. The corpse is a holy site for the few Elder Ones remaining, the corpse possessing still some small fragments of divine power and will, though the mind has long quieted. Few remember their true name. Tales that hold true information of their life say that they were wise, kind and had hope for the future. They could not know what was to come.

The Prophetess: First called "The prophetess" or "The guide", now known to the surviving Elder Ones as "The blind one" or "The traitor" if uncharitable. If she saw the fate that would befall the elder ones, she remained quiet. Perhaps she was a social sacrificial effigy of sorts, one they could blame for failure and thank for success, though less so the later.

Old Ones

Pre-human generations of gods, tens of thousands of them. The survivors are the ones that have learned to ward against entropy and even invert it, or the descendants of the pantheons that have passed. Their issues are the opposite of those that the Elder Ones suffered from. Due to the loss of their pantheons and slow march of the ages, they have had to survive by hybridizing with other species of gods in their generations. Thus, Old Ones are the ancestors of most known monsters that do not have origins in mortal (or immortal) hubris.

Those that persist individually, rather than their descendant divinities, are immune to entropy. And, in fact, grow with the ages. With time, they develop instability and must cast off some of their power to survive. This is done either through reproduction (sexual infusion or asexual fission), terrible events where they cast off their excess power to some consequence, or a continual radiation of their excess power into the world.

Mentally, they are inhuman. Intelligent and wise, perhaps more so than many human gods, but animalistic in temperament and basic mental structure. Thus, those human gods that do learn to speak with them must also learn to understand their inhuman perspectives. Though some also attempt to understand the human perspective, when they are not dismissive of these frail, blind and foolish newcomers.

They are the most common form of divine life, from the perspective of the Great and Elder Ones. Their pantheons are networked, porous social structures that may persist for epochs, momentary convenient associations, or anything in-between.

Tiaphodam "True Inheritor": One of the hybrid offspring of the Old Ones that emerged from the ancient saurian gods and various mammalian gods. The mother of the so-called "dragons", and rightful empress of a hundred worlds. She has learned from her ancestors how to ward entropy, and so she rests in her luxurious palace-world, her mere presence slowly fostering the growth and birth of draconic life in her image. The cosmos is lucky she much prefers to sleep and slowly accrue incomprehensible wealth in ways that affect the average mortal very little.

Baheomaz "The Landwalker": The most titanic of known Old Ones, a surviving quasi-mammalian quasi-reptilian hybrid that has grown incomparably potent with age. Somehow, he has not been known to attain any form of instability with age, his power simply flowing into his ever greater scale and size. His epithet refers not to his habitat (he is comfortable with swimming, and passable at flight), but refers to the experience of seeing him move. Mountain ranges reach what would be his "shins", thus the impression is that the land itself has somehow learned to walk.

Primordial Ones

The eldritch precursors to divine life in the cosmos. They are not individuals, so much as abstract presences and aggregates of fragmented divine mind and will. Rather than a monolithic being with great power (and a few avatars) they are more akin to strains or species, genera, phyla and so on. They all circumvent the laws of entropy, the issues of stagnancy and the flaws of instability by not being individuals at all. No single "mote" of divine power needs to survive for longer than it takes to proliferate a few more "motes" after all.

They dwell not in physical reality, but in the strata of existence that is foundational to the cosmos. As such, their presence in reality shapes the overall "character" or "laws" of whatever realm ("plane" in older cosmological texts) they infest. Many realms (such as the mortal realm) are balanced between numberless Primordial Ones, while many others are dominated by but a few.

These realms are oft reshaped over time as the presence of the primordial one grows and proliferates through the existential bedrock of the realm, the realm itself warping around its new predominant quasi-consciousness. In some cases, however, large concentrations of Primordial presence can accrue into a metaphysical-material "avatar" of sorts. Other times, Old Ones, Elder Ones or Great Ones may deepen some connection to these forces, allowing them to symbiotically infest their bodies, minds and spirits to maintain themselves or gain other benefits.

Very few realms are bereft of Primordial interference. Those that are, unnervingly, lack much in the way of anything at all. Matter, energy and even space and time can be bereft from such places.

Sh'zug-Aborath "The Great Old One": A rather unique Primordial, this "variety" seems to be the ancestral stock from which the first Old Ones congealed in the most ancient times. When it gestates an avatar, they are a horrific amalgam of seemingly all possible arrangements of animal anatomy, including some that seemingly have never existed (or are yet to exist independently). Its power grows from the presence of all previously mentioned generations, as some of their divine power is attributed to symbiotic infestations of this Primordial.

Antuda-Nraha "The Whirling Maelstrom": A primordial of incandescent energies, discharges and diffusing radiations. It favors those realms and gods prone to lashing out with bolts of divine fury, as such discharges seem to be what "feeds" this being, which blooms in these places as a lingering "charge" left behind. Those realities dominated by it contain no solid concrete place to stand, merely swirling "movement" bereft of physical vessel and charged with directionless energies.

Eternal Ones

Transcendental meta-cosmic systems, rather than entities as traditionally understood. These beings lack time, space, mass, energy, direction, action, thought and desire... At least, those that are infrequently "observed" in some abstract way.

Unliving inciting forces of the theogenesis that birthed the primordial ones, they exist external to the systems of the cosmos (and, presumably, other cosmoses). In fact, it is difficult to say that they exist in any "real" capacity. Those that are known are unchanging static hypostases, concepts reflective of the base nature of reality, though not strictly this reality, if some are to be believed.

Little more can be said for certain, as anything beyond the observed features is speculative. Are they simple or complex? Multitudinous or Grand Singularities? Mindless or Supra-Conscious? Nothing is certain, and these may have multiple answers.

The Vacuous Maw: Essential concept that precedes "entropy" and "decay" as forces. A kind of statistical tendency, which paradoxically seems to be the determinant for the direction the ineffable arrow of time flows. The force which all divine life seems to wish to overcome, though the Primordials seem unconcerned.

Below-All: While the above is perhaps described as a "hungry void" this is perhaps described as a "placid void". A kind of endless nothing that is yet pregnant with pure potential. Quite possibly one of the Eternal Ones directly responsible for the existence of divine life altogether, as a kind of "source concept" from which the initial ideas of life could be drawn.

Other Ones

What of the next generations of gods, once the Great Ones have inevitably been driven in their numberless directions?

Are there some metemperical modalities that galvanized the formation of the Eternal Ones?

Are there the equivalent of the Old Ones, yet for the other grand kingdoms of life? Or would they be the purview of some Primordials?

Some entities certainly blur the boundaries of these categories. Nothing is truly an isolated "box" existentially. What are they like?

Free will and change imply that the Eternal Ones are not all powerful, or at least that they somehow have a more dynamic "counterweight"... Their existence is inferred but not observed. Why?

Can one know the shape of the alien gods that dwell in distant corners of the cosmos, or in altogether alien cosmoi?

Is the cosmos itself a divinity? Are all cosmoi simply facets of one grand cosmos? Or are they separated by some meta-cosmic void? A kind of fundamental Lack on the level of the Eternal Ones?

Such questions are yet unknown to the divine and their scholarship. Should you join them, perhaps you may indulge the same questions, assuming you do not repeat the mistakes of your predecessors.

Maybe I'll turn this into a full setting.