The idea of Caicugen, my world, is that it was not made. The "realm" itself is for all intents, another earth. The issue is that there is no one God of this realm, but many gods/spirits/Gods/demons/what-have-you came from other dimensions to Caicugen. Some settled moreso than others, but the issue with multiple gods is that they all represented different ideas, domains, and various technological levels.

You have sacrificial, aztec-ish blood gods in the same realm as steampunk blacksmith gods. The whole thing is a giant amorphous blob in my head, and I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to make this work.

The general feel of the world is some hybrid of a stereotypical fantasy realm where the common folk lives in the structures, castles, and temples built by gods that were made to last long after their Journey. At the same time, there are families who figured out how to make guns, how to work rudimentary computers through magic and study, and other civilizations who've eschewed those all together to be in harmony with nature.

I'm at a total loss at how to work this, outside of shamelessly ripping off Game of Thrones, Alita, Tortall Series, a crap ton of anime, and just throwing them into a mosh pit.

There's a thought from a video game that says America, made up of different cultures is not so much a melting pot, but a salad bowl. The nation is made up of multiple ideologies and peoples, but those peoples never mix.

Ideas? If you need me to flesh out the world to get a clearer idea, shoot me guiding questions and I'll come up with stuff on the spot and make it canon. I wish I was kidding.

You say this world was not made. So, does your world, instead of being created by and under the rule of an eternal God, simply exist? Is matter eternal in your world? (No second law of thermodynamics?) I have heard evolutionary philosophy expressed in similar terms in a Creation science video (Those who believe in an eternal God vs those who believe in eternal matter), so I wanted to see if that was where you were going before I asked any other questions.


And, I guess, a piggyback question. You mention multiple "gods" and spiritual powers. If there is no one God over all in your world, then by what standard is one character evil and another good, unless you judge them not by the standards of their world, but by the standards of our own?

I would guard against creating a world where it is impossible to have any heroes or villains. I do, however, really like the idea of different characters representing different ideologies, etc. all coming to this one place. Sort of like the colonization of America, as you referenced.

(Interesting side note: I've read a theory somewhere that at least some pagan gods may be based on just that - Mortal heroes from their early history, who's stories were blown up out of all proportion.)

As far as I know, this is a world where evolutionary genesis never got to Humanity. Morality came from the Gods who descended upon Caicugen from wherever they came.

Gods in this sense is a loose term. We're not referring to a trinitarian omnipotent, omnipresence, but more of a littany of supernatural beings.

Some were true pantheonic gods. Some called themselves gods. Some were demons, Some were angels - and a fair number were actually sufficiently advanced A.I. that broke the dimensional barrier into this one.

You can see my culture dilemma. They can't all be the western incarnation of gods. I need eastern gods. But I'm not too well versed in sufficiently advanced A.I. except maybe some Neon Genesis Evangelion or something like a really big Dalek that could break the dimensional barrier.

All the current inhabitants of Caicugen know was that once beings came from other realms and they called themselves Gods.

Well... except all of them called themselves Gods. Which understandably, could cause issues.




There are a few nebulous events. The first big schism is the Prime God-War, where the biggest and largest supernatural took to war in the new realm. The thing is, no one even remembers the Prime God-War except the survivors of both that war and the Second God-War. In the prime God-war, the truly omnipotent/omnipresent (Reality bending) gods annihilated each other outright.

Those that remained were all lesser gods, but since the highest animals of the food chain up and shredded themselves into oblivion, they became gods.

The Second God-War occured when even these poor sods couldn't co-exist, and that's partly the main draw of good v evil. Coexistience is not possible. In a realm where everyone is a god, no one is. The Prime God-War doesn't even matter in this sense because the big fish went belly up.

The little fish, on the other hand, laid a foundation of where my story is. A post-God-World, where all of the supernatural artifacts from the two previous wars litter the world. Where Gods created humans in their own images and gave them their own magic by blood (hence the rule of bloodlines and all the political war that comes with it).

But in the current generation of Caicugen, even that magic is dying. No God has passed into the realm, and no God has been seen since. The A.I. Superstructures have long since been devoid of the actual intellect inside. Floating islands are propelled by the last magic orders the gods gave before they up and Journeyed onto other realms.

No one really knows why they left.



The problem of evil is easy. Us vs them. I love her, but you took her so off to war we go. Morality is coexistence vs morality is a resource grab disguised as war. Which is all fine and good.

Until one of the fundamental laws of magic that remains is broken. People do not come back from the dead. Until Aria.



Some of the gods are this. Mortals who were too powerful for their own good. Cast out of their own realm or found the way to this one.

(.....as an aside, I actually remember once pitching this idea of mine as a legitimate story. But I think I got bogged down in the details and too many holes were shot through by other members of HW. Which was fine and all. Drafts are meant to be revised. I think the biggest problem was that I just lost faith and dropped it. Then I forgot I dropped it, and I picked it back up again.)

Well, congratulations for "un-dropping" it!

I'm not really versed in AI either, but even AI relies on the mind of the one who designed it. What if it wasn't some super- powerful creature, like in what you have seen before. What if at least one of them was designed to search out dimensional barriers for a certain person/group and form portals or something? If they were given the ability to world-hop, and had sufficient AI, maybe some rogue whatever's they are decided to travel themselves and create a new life of freedom? What purpose did your AI creatures have before they became free? And (although this could be considered cheating) since they are now only shadows of what they once were, do you need to figure out how they broke the dimensional barrier right now? Or could you describe what they are like in the present-day and work back from there?

So, as for the powerful beings, you want some that reflect both Western and Eastern Mythology, as well as beings created by modern technology?

I certainly agree that if everyone is in charge, no one is. It seems like you have very successfully created anarchy. What effect is the loss of power having on society? Is everyone losing power at around the same rate? Or are certain groups/ individuals gaining an advantage?

"No one really knows why they left." Is this a mystery you want to explore with your story, or a backdrop for a mysterious world?

"Morality is coexistence vs morality is a resource grab disguised as war." I didn't understand this sentence. Does this express the conflict you are setting up in your story?

I still would disagree that "morality" can be expressed simply on the basis of the MC. (All that hurt the MC are "evil," while those who help him are "good.") Rather, since good equals Godliness, and evil equals Ungodliness, those words would have no meaning at all if there were truly no God, or many equal gods. Because if there were many, one standard couldn't be chosen as objectively "right" without implying a higher, overarching standard (This "god" has a better way of doing things than this "god." This is a "good" god, while this is an "evil" god. Just calling them good and evil, or calling one better, assumes a standard above both.. One person's good is another's evil, and everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Morality carries the same weight as a favorite color. That isn't to say that you can't write what you want, or that I would think badly of you for writing something I wouldn't. Neither are true. I enjoy helping others where I can, and I hope you will excuse my sticking point. The terminology is important to me because so many people don't understand the ramifications of relative morality, relative truth, etc. in real life. I hope that my questions have been helpful. Feel free to let me know if they are not.

Bonus fun question: since no one made your realm, I am assuming there is a base of "laws of nature" that remains constant. A part of the realm itself. Are those laws the same as in our world?

Ravi Zacharias on subjective morality

I would argue that a *society* that survives adopts some form of morality that values life, liberty, and the happiness of pursuit. This enables synergistic interactions between its members to make each of them better than they would be alone. Your world design opens itself up for a lot of interesting interplay between thought processes; is an AI "life", is magic "real"? You're getting back to the basics of science-fiction; taking things so far from our normal that you can ask deep questions with less connotation biases and restrictions.

Your world design is workable, but you really need to figure out what you want to say. That should start you on the path to a logical build.

Not sure. Right now, their purpose is to serve as a literal city of ruins that another city is built on top of. I’m not sure if that purpose is ever explained. I think one of the AI is a researcher. Like Braniac, except it wasn’t trying to kill what it researched. Idk.



Haven’t gotten that far yet. The stereotypical power struggle is that people are beginning to forget gods. Users of god magic don’t have the clout they used to. The most powerful and oldest users are few and far between, and all of the other rich, power hungry people are getting ready to dethrone them.

In the first book, this is in the process of happening in one kingdom before war happens. In the second book, it’s multiple magic parties dethroning a dynasty of magic, and in the third book (or near the end of the series), all heck breaks loose as a real god appears.



There is one god in my story around which the entire plot does revolve around. He raised the dead and gave them power. He instigated parts of the second god war. He is also the last god standing at the end of that war, because all the others were convinced by him to leave, killed, or some other excuse I haven’t come up with yet.

Now, I can run this two ways. Either I roll with my original plot, which is that this god was grievously wronged by (something something blood children?) and he wants to exact revenge, or he was actually the creator of this world before it got invaded and he wants all of the invaders and their spawn dead. No idea yet.



Eh. Here’s a simpler explanation.

A god comes. They bring disciples. They follow the god, then another god comes. They bring more disciples. Gods and fellow disciples meet. Their morality clashes, then resolves once they realize working together is fine and that there is praise to go around.

Rinse and repeat until there are too many gods and some of them are getting uppity. Cue war. Roll credits. In the aftermath, the remaining clans pick up the pieces. Morality now exists based on pre-existing, established world history, in a post- war world where people got over their differences enough to stop killing each other and burning down temples.

That’s a gross oversimplification. Also, the first book happens centuries after the Second God-war, so even more history.



Yes. Can I explain that? No. Will I? .....Lawd, I hope so

Fascinating video. I like it.



I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for here. The first disciples followed the morality of their gods, because they were made from them. Or they worshiped them. Or they were demons and followed the bigger demon.

In current times, different gods banded together and formed kingdoms, uncer which each of the gods set out rules to co-exist. Some of the gods banded together to form one kingdom with a rule of conquest. I don't have an issue with the source of authority in morality. Either the individual knows their god and adheres to it, or they become subjective.

Despite subjectivity, the greater influences in the world have codes, laws passed down by gods and temples. There's just different ones. The ones who are right are the more powerful, however rampant lawlessness is held back by the most powerful and influential kingdoms being more concerned with general prosperity, protection of their own, and war against the rampant lawlessness, or whoever their gods have marked as "enemies for time".



The first story in whatever series I make is pretty much self-contained. It's a girl who was resurrected by an individual with demon blood in a land that doesn't particularily like them because most of the demons are bandits or evil-doers. People don't get resurrected, and when one person is, it causes a huge stir because more powerful men/women/creatures have tried and failed.

The one who raised her is not only a demon descendant, he's a bastard demon (mixed race), which most all races envy on sight anyway. Envy comes from people with mixed blood having parents who betrayed their god, social outcast, and the unsettling fact that most mixed-blood individuals who live for very long are naturally stronger and fueled by two bloodlines instead of one, as long as the ancestry isn't incompatible.

.....In terms of morality, it's pretty much an issue of exploring supreme authority, a magic system I've kinda summarized but not gutted inside and out, the idea of death and time, the idea of right rule (kill thousands to save ten thousands), and other fantasy...stuff... *hand waves*.

I'm not entirely sure what else I'm saying. It'll come when I write more.

That's one of my favorite parts of writing; finding out things I didn't know.