That's an awful lot of Gods. Either 99% of Gods die relatively fast, or the total number of Gods is much larger than we know.
Let's take a look at a regular Pantheon.

Only counting the major Titans and Olympians we are already at 24, counting the lesser gods and we can easily call it more than twice that.

If every civilisation lost in time (like for example Sarnor) means that most of their pantheon dies we can easily get into the hundreds of dead gods just from a handfull of lost civilisations.

Of course some of those deities would have been "adopted" into the next culture that comes in the same area, but there will still be a high rate of loss.

Edit:
Look at real life, I could name you at least 5 groups of gods that are not or barely worshipped anymore and I'm by no means an expert on the matter.

[X] egoo
 
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Book of Shades and Silver Threads

Twelfth Day of the Third Month 294 AC

Rina arrives back in Sorcerer's Deep more tired than you have ever seen her, cheeks faintly flushed in spite of the pallor of death that still clings to her, yet some of that is exhilaration, you soon learn. She had matched wits with an elder fey and come out, if not the victor then at least not the loser of the bout. You had even learned that the left eye of the Golden Seer holds some secret value for the one she had been bargaining with and perhaps even to you.

Unfortunately, you could not say what the Norn intends to do with the diamonds she eventually settled on, for she too was warded against divination, much to Rina's annoyance at the hypocrisy. Still, in the end you made the deal. The Opaline Vault's bazaars are free for visitors of all stripes to mingle in and you have no doubt one so steeped in fate and foresight would have been able to gather the coin some other way. You might as well profit from it as you can.

Gained Divine Dissolution
Divine Dissolution

Description: This tome is writ upon the stuff of shadows woven into silk, with ink like moonlight falling from on high, though the substance of the text does not seem to shift, the phrasing itself seems to change depending on who looks upon it and for what purpose. Lya suspects it is either to aid in more swiftly finding the lore the reader is seeking or to make the book itself harder to divine, though it may just as well be faerie whim. It speaks to the fading of divine energies, the rot and decomposition of that which was once terrible or sublime.

The names of hundreds of dead gods are recorded here that were otherwise lost to time, but more than that, it speaks of how new life emerges from these husks, some mirroring the deity that was, and some stranger and more arcane than any common creature of the planes.

Contents:
  1. +10 to knowledge rolls regarding dead gods
  2. +6 to spellcraft rolls to make use of dead gods or their remains

The meeting with Rina should have been the last buisness of the day... or night, as the case may be. Midnight had long since ticked over yet as you finally lay down to sleep that night, there is one more surprise waiting for you...

***​

You are flying or floating perhaps, for you cannot feel any wings holding you aloft and below you stretch the rolling green hills and cunningly cut terraces of Bloodstone. Sorcerer's Deep is a symphony of lights too distant to see from this height, but from your perch you can see a thin line of silver, fine as lace thread binding it to the roiling crucibles of Everfire Dale. It cuts too straight through the shifting paths to truly be of the Dreamlands.

"Excellent work, Wisdom," you congratulate the mage you know must be responsible, and indeed a moment later Aenie Caleris materializes from the eternal twilight of this place like painter's oils flowing together. "I must confess myself equally impressed with you being able to shape my personal dream-space..." To tell the truth that is a little worrisome.

"I'm not actually, but thank you for the compliment," she smiles and claps, and a moment later you find yourself back in a reflection of your bedroom, the warding marks upon the walls clear as day, Zathir's many colored coils filling the sky outside in reflection of the ritual he is working. "It was just an illusion, for all it reflected a true working. It's just that people don't usually use illusions in the Dreamlands, since it's so easy to shape the realm wholesale. So of course it's rare to look for illusions..."

"And you cannot break what you do not question," you finish. "My admiration is undimmed, though my concern is assuaged. It appears you have managed to draw a proper road in the Dreamland."

"I would not call it a road yet," the sorceress replies. "More a sort of guiding thread. I think the challenges we face going forward are threefold. First to make the result less expensive. At the moment covering the whole realm in dream-paths would be ruinous. Secondly, we need some sort of protection or insulation from the various Dreamlands denizens. They are less of a concern here on the island, but it is the realm at large we must concern ourselves with. And thirdly... while this is not entirely my area of expertise, we are going to have to make the resulting dream-roads much more sturdy if you want to run the energies of ley lines through them."

Dreamscaping Progress 25/4 -> Complete. Projects Unlocked
  1. Dreamshaping Cost Reduction Progress 40 Cost 10,000
  2. Dreamshaping Hardening Progress 50 Cost 60,000
  3. Progress made towards unlocking Ley Channeling
Aenie Caleris Retraining Complete: Sorcerer 8

What next?

[] Write in

OOC: No spillover into the next project this time because Aenie but that time into retraining herself and her new dragon. Not yet edited.
Here's an edited version of the chapter, @DragonParadox.
 
The Norn could have been around for many thousands of years, seeing gods rise and fall on multiple worlds in the Material Plane and beyond.

[X] egoo
Listing the Gods currently active on the Material Plane shows that they have all existed for thousands of years (if not millions for some of them). Meanwhile, about 75% of them are dead (or were dead before Viserys came around). No matter how you measure it, we can't even name a hundred real Gods active on the Material Plane even if we go as far back as the Empire of the Dawn. So if that's a representative sample, either the multiverse is dramatically older than I thought it was (letting this whole mess repeat multiple times) or every single Plane has similar numbers of Gods (this conflicts with other information though - so far, most Gods we've seen have had followers on multiple Planes, and the exceptions were Material Plane Gods which had been isolated for a while).
Or both scenarios could be true, I suppose, seeing as the Material Plane has been experiencing time very differently while magic was "dead".

But then DP posted this while I was trying to remember the names of all the Gods to list them:
'God' here is used generously as 'Anything that could ever grant spells'.
So it's mostly upjumped Mythic characters, powerful Outsider lords (or Aberrations), and big Fey?
That book really is pompously overselling itself. Fits the character of the fey we got it from, at least :rofl:
 
Listing the Gods currently active on the Material Plane shows that they have all existed for thousands of years (if not millions for some of them). Meanwhile, about 75% of them are dead (or were dead before Viserys came around). No matter how you measure it, we can't even name a hundred real Gods active on the Material Plane even if we go as far back as the Empire of the Dawn. So if that's a representative sample, either the multiverse is dramatically older than I thought it was (letting this whole mess repeat multiple times) or every single Plane has similar numbers of Gods (this conflicts with other information though - so far, most Gods we've seen have had followers on multiple Planes, and the exceptions were Material Plane Gods which had been isolated for a while).
Or both scenarios could be true, I suppose, seeing as the Material Plane has been experiencing time very differently while magic was "dead".

But then DP posted this while I was trying to remember the names of all the Gods to list them:
We only really have a good view of the Westerosi perspective of things. There are hundreds of different cultures in ASOIAF. Hell, the Dothraki very specifically have the broken idols of countless gods whose peoples they've trampled and enslaved scattered before Vaes Dothrak. Honestly a hundred dead gods is probably lowballing it, but it's understandable that even a Norn doesn't know everything.
 
We only really have a good view of the Westerosi perspective of things. There are hundreds of different cultures in ASOIAF. Hell, the Dothraki very specifically have the broken idols of countless gods whose peoples they've trampled and enslaved scattered before Vaes Dothrak. Honestly a hundred dead gods is probably lowballing it, but it's understandable that even a Norn doesn't know everything.
Yeah, but I assumed those Gods were false idols created by humans in need of something to worship (or straight-up wanting to con their tribe). Or they could have been random supernatural creatures posing as Gods (many Devils and Fey explicitly like doing that, IIRC). Or they could have been deformed non-religious teaching like that weird religion in Tyrosh.
The number of actual confirmed Gods with actual supernatural powers is very low.
 
Yeah, but I assumed those Gods were false idols created by humans in need of something to worship (or straight-up wanting to con their tribe). Or they could have been random supernatural creatures posing as Gods (many Devils and Fey explicitly like doing that, IIRC). Or they could have been deformed non-religious teaching like that weird religion in Tyrosh.
The number of actual confirmed Gods with actual supernatural powers is very low.
A bunch of those likely are empty idols, but there's bound to be plenty of real ones. The biggest issue is that in canon we're restricted to a mostly Westerosi view of things, and there isn't that much cause to delve deep into Essosi history and explore each of the fallen gods of long trampled nations. Yi Ti for example is referred to as the "land of a thousand gods and a hundred princes, ruled by one god-emperor", but in canon we explore precisely two of those gods -- the Lion of the Night, and the Maiden Made of Light.

I'm sure even if you go into the Free Cities you're going to find religions that existed before the faith of R'hllor spread. If you go to Westeros you'll find dead gods of the First Men beyond just Father Sky and Mother Earth. Sothoryos has unknown bloody gods. The Great Empire of the Dawn probably had a full pantheon that didn't survive the Long Night. Etc etc. The setting has a rich history stuffed to the brim with potential for gods. More than a few of them were probably real.
 
Yeah, but I assumed those Gods were false idols created by humans in need of something to worship (or straight-up wanting to con their tribe). Or they could have been random supernatural creatures posing as Gods (many Devils and Fey explicitly like doing that, IIRC). Or they could have been deformed non-religious teaching like that weird religion in Tyrosh.
The number of actual confirmed Gods with actual supernatural powers is very low.
Why would you think so?

We have a very definitive confirmation that the gods of Sarnor were once real gods when they were alive, or the Smith wouldn't have made a powerful dead god.
We know that the Ghiscari had a different culture (with accompanying gods), most of which most was forgottenafter Valyria broke them (only the Lady of Spears was re-invented as the Unsullied Goddes from an older deity).
We know that Valyria had 14 gods, all which died (even though as high-end mythic Dragons they might not be real gods by some definition, but the fact that the dead ones can still partially act right now speaks for them reaching true divinity at some point).
The Faceless have canonically shrines to 30 gods in their House of Black and White and they know their gods, so we can asssume all of those are not only real, but active.

Outside of Trios and his philosophy-religion we have very rarely seen false gods, but every currently worshipped god we looked into turned out to either be a god or a former god.
 
We know that Valyria had 14 gods, all which died (even though as high-end mythic Dragons they might not be real gods by some definition, but the fact that the dead ones can still partially act right now speaks for them reaching true divinity at some point).
No, we specifically know they climbed up the Mythic Ladder, then intentionally gathered worship to ascend to Godhood. Out and out, we have confirmation of that.
 
Well look at it this way.

There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of Fae right now and we know they are spirits that couldn't make it to proper godhood (iirc), lets go and assume at least 1% of them made it. That's a lot of gods.

This is not counting proper ascended mortals across the planes.
 
  1. Dreamshaping Cost Reduction Progress 40 Cost 10,000
  2. Dreamshaping Hardening Progress 50 Cost 60,000
  3. Progress made towards unlocking Ley Channeling
Should put some focus on this in the coming months, as I'm pretty certain there will be fringe benefits to de facto colonizing the dreamscape for the Imperium.

Will cost a ton of money and Imperial Steel to set up, but eh.
 
We'll build an Afterlife, and make the Sultan of Brass pay for it.

Considering we will obviously loot everything and all once we go and kick ass over there, the Sultan will be paying for something at some point.

Also a lot of our enemies have literally paid for our power ups and research, mind, body and soul.

Luckily we are never going to run out of enemies/cash cows.

Edit: Oh yeah, voting is a thing. I should vote.

[X] egoo
 
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Is there no end to the indignities we can subject our enemies to?

No, seriously, is there? I'm worried this is an economic bubble waiting to collapse...
 
Is there no end to the indignities we can subject our enemies to?

No, seriously, is there? I'm worried this is an economic bubble waiting to collapse...

Well, we only have hell, the abyss, all of heaven, nirvana, etc all filled with enemies. Then bloodstone emperor stuff, others, Deep ones.

Yeah.... Running out of enemies is the one thing we will not have to worry about. And looting them. Because we are the heroes.
 
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