Two thousand and sixteen years ago, ancient and forgotten kings of man performed a horrific ritual that buried and hid all forms of magic and all forms of life aside from ignorant beasts and man.
Dwarves, Elves, Goblins and Orcs. All manner of magical life was forgotten. And in the absence of their worshipers the gods withered away and died.
Now, in 2016 the curse has lifted, magic returns to the world, and in the absence of the original pantheon, famous and infamous individuals from human history have been resurrected and become new gods. Avatars of what they, in life had championed.
Who would you worship? Who would you fight for? Who deserves a mortal hand?
Discuss.
TLDR: Magic came back to earth and suddenly figures from history are gods and demigods. Who's worth your time as a holy/unholy servant?
>>44182261
>Who's worth your time as a holy/unholy servant?
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.
>Immortal
>Son of the true God, who is ruthless yet forgiving
>total bro, died for our sins, then came back to forgive us
>Brutal when pissed, aint affraid to whip a bitch raw with a rope.
>>44182261
Who's worth your time as a holy/unholy servant?
Paul Bunyan
> There is only the axe
> The axe will save us
> There is only the bull
> The bull will destroy us
>>44182993
How would a priest of Paul Bunyan do his thing?
>>44182336
See you in the thousand year kingdom, my brother.
>>44183076
Reap the trees, for the trees have wronged you.
Help the living, for the living are weak.
Slaughter the bull, for the bull has no fear.
Cult of extremists who protect those who cannot protect themselves. Favored enemy: wood.
The bull is in reference to Babe, what was believed to be his pet giant blue ox. In actuality, Babe is a giant blue ox that will stop at nothing to destroy everything. Our Lord, Bunyan, is the only man strong enough to control the Bull, and he has forced it into servitude. But beware the Bull, for the day it is unleashed, the world will be filled with rage and fire, and the Bull will shatter the sky.
>>44183204
But sir, I mean no disrespect, but how have the trees wronged us?
>>44182261
You know, I've had a riff of this.
Let's assume, overnight, priests of any established religion find that they have powers that are in line with the tenets of their faith. This only works for true believers, of course - But the devout can really work miracles. I don't mean something as campy as a televangelist being able to lay on hands and heal people, but someone who holds true to the tenets of his religion, who really and genuinely BELIEVES, can indeed do what is in scripture.
The one caveat is that they don't know who these powers are coming from. You can't be sure there's a God, you can just perform these miracles.
Also, it's fair. A Satanist who is a genuine devil-worship can work dark miracles. Fundamentalist imams who really buy into their line of bullshit and aren't just using it as an excuse for mayhem can bless terrorists with superhuman strength, immunity to bullets...So on and so forth.
Now, I assume this means that the distribution is really surprising. Most members of the Church, I'd say, won't actually develop powers. But a few do, and - worldwide - other faiths have similar abilities. (Yes, this means that a racist preacher talking about burning gays from the pulpit may actually be able to damn their souls, while someone who's nicer but doesn't believe as fiercely gets nothing.)
How long before all hell breaks loose?
>>44183373
I dunno man.
Some Hindu or Buddhist would probably just end up slapping the world into a new Kalpa after achieving perfect enlightenment. Western religions don't have that kind of ludicrous cosmic scale.
>>44182261
Assuming that all stories are correct, just different distillations of the crystal called divinity, I will follow Azi Dahaka son of Angra Mainyu who bears the flag of evil on his back.
>>44183466
Well, let's assume there's an upper limit. No blowing up the world or anything. Barring really militant interpretations of religion aside, I don't think anyone's going to be calling down flights of angels to blow up Mecca, for instance.
Besides, Hindus and Buddhists are more likely to have power over men's minds, personal and spiritual perfection, or superhuman physical abilities than the universe-breaking stuff.
>>44183373
That sounds...pretty grim actually. And it could be a pain in the ass to balance into a setting. What are your ideas?
>>44182261
Hitler. Mega-God-Hitler for 4th Reich
Or
The Big E
Alexander. The answer is always Alexander.
>>44183521
>>44183718
There are 7 billion humans. Only a small fraction would get some powers and plenty more would be butt hurt and try to kill them.
OP here, and something I forgot to mention in the main post would be HOW a Cleric/Priest/Paladin of this figure would function and work.
Like, for example. A Paladin of Thomas Jefferson could fight for liberty and the enlightenment of the ignorant. Holding scripture up high and parchment slapping fools.
(My bad I'm new at this.)
>>44183290
Beneath the trees are progress, and progress is what lies closer to the End
To prepare for the Bull, there must be progres
To stagnate is to die, to be unprepared for the Bull
So the trees must die
>>44182336
>part of the triune godhead that cursed us with curiosity in the first place, and foresaw it was going to happen anyway
>forgave himself by killing his son/self as a blood sacrifice
>bro
Okay.
>>44182336
>>44183152
minebrethren.png
>>44183718
Well, a religious revival, for one. People wondering what the hell is going on, the overwhelmed priests taken as the second coming of God/Gods. In Syria, radical Islamist preachers gather their men for the final battle, confident that Allah is with them - and above the Vatician, angels are seen flying for the first time. Native Kurds find the power to fight against their oppressors, only to find that God is with their oppressors, too.
Somewhere in American, the faithful prepare for the new Crusade. In Tibet, monks achieve new levels of enlightenment - Or spur demands for a return to a theocracy. More and more people realize that you can perform miracles if you but Believe, but it's never clear whether you're believing in the right things.
I assume that it'll take less than a year for WWIII to start.
Seriously, though: If a man claimed he was Jesus Christ reborn, could manifest the powers of Jesus, and otherwise ticked all the boxes - While believing, fiercely, that he IS Jesus Christ...Would you believe that he's the Son of God? I honestly don't know. Common sense and reason would fall apart completely.
I don't mean this in a fedora-tipping "Oh, of COURSE he's a fake way." I mean in that we seriously cannot know the truth. Especially if he can work miracles...Even more so if there were other miracles! Something like that, I think, is impossible to ever prove.
When the Second Coming uh, comes, I'm pretty sure we'll be arguing over it until doomsday.
>>44184185
Will Jesus need to smack a bitch?
>>44183865
Yeah, but the thing is: If you're truly faithful - which is extremely rare - you get powers, too. It's a worldwide phenomena any human could technically tap into, if he believed.
>>44184215
Bit of a self suffilling prophecy in a way.
"Oh shit pseudo-magic stuff that completely defines all human concepts of reason just showed up."
"Fuck it let's lose our shit."
>>44184305
If you want to be really cynical, it could be argued that it wouldn't change things too much, at first. Like, how many people in the world are TRULY faithful? Maybe one in ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Shit's hard, especially when all rational senses tell us that there's no evidence of God. (Or at the very least, he moves in unknowable and mysterious ways.)
It's one thing to hear about anecdotal cures for cancer. But if a preacher points at a crippled man, and spakes in a voice of thunder:
> "CAST aside your crutches - And WALK!"
...and the man promptly does that, the world would go crazy, and fast. Once it's clear that it's not a trick, that something impossible is now possible, it begs the question: What else is real? Are werewolves real? Vampires? Is the afterlife real? How about aliens?
>>44184369
Also, what does it mean for belief to grant powers? I believe in myself, more than anything. Does this mean I am granted powers to match my ego?
>>44182261
>Who would you worship? Who would you fight for? Who deserves a mortal hand?
Islam, religion of peace.
>>44186268
You don't get powers, sorry. You can't game the system like that. You have to believe in the tenants of the religion, and hold forth a fundamental faith in one God or another. Like, you really do believe in eternal damnation and salvation. Or that eating pork sends you to hell. Or that AIDS is a punishment by God upon homosexuals.
For the sake of argument, let's limit this to 'any established religion'. For 'belief to grant powers', let's say that the person takes it as gospel. To him, Jesus or Allah is as real as gravity, or his parents.
Seriously, it's the only way for this not to be entirely stupid. Otherwise, you'll get bullshit like "I'm a priest of myself!" I'm talking about the kind of faith that made a monk set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War, or the stuff you hear in all the stories about martyrs who die hideous and gruesome deaths.
>>44183829
I dunno. Gengis Khan might have more adherents. Doesn't the Mongolian religion include a form of ancestor worship anyway?
>>44188132
Well a reconstruction of the cult of mithras has seen a minor resurgence in the last 15 years, at least within the American military, so it would be very odd to see how it plays out.
