Do gods have Asperger’s?
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That would explain so much!
Actually, some gods do change their interests over time, particularly if they migrate to different pantheons over time.
However, their elemental affiliations tend to be a bit more fixed, so they typically don’t change dramatically, and it’s often gradual.
Also, it’s often the less famous/smaller gods that change their focus most often. Zeus has been doing his “thing” for pretty much ever, but a lot of that is keeping power.
Hephaestus himself moves back and forth between both fine and applied art over time. He’s very technical as an engineer, but he is also an artist and sculptor, a designer. So his focus does move across a fairly wide swath. He hadn’t been making as many weapons as he used to. The weapons of the Olympians that he made were in the very distant past.
As Ptah, he is also involved in architecture and building, and ship building Actually, there are rumors that I will neither confirm nor deny that he created the original multiverse, that he thought it up an willed it into existence.
He’s the one I can really speak to, well, him and Loki, and well Loki has so many interests…the only consistent one is screwing with the Aesir.
Also as far as Tiernon, on some worlds he is more Justice, other worlds he is more War, sort of depends on the time and place. He has his palaestra, but also his library of books and machinations on justice.
But in the end, I do think the humdrum of the same old thing is a lot of what drives the gods to the Phoenix Cycle. They are not required to do it, they do it of their own free will (most of the time, obvious exception for case at hand). This is when you will most likely see a shift in focus, but again typically not hugely divergent.
I’ll post this here since you don’t have a Cosmology section (hint, hint).
Consider, gods have portfolios, or areas of oversight, like Hera and marriage for example. Now these beings are millions of years old, and yet they still, to some extent or another, maintain interest in these areas. While we’ve seen that Tiernon has been somewhat lax in his supposed interest in justice, at least in a couple of specific cases, he does watch his knights battle every morning. That has to be several million, several hundred million fights he’s watched over the years, and he’s still interested in it? Same with Phaestus, he and Volund have been smithing for the same amount of time, yet neither have shown any divergent interests, say picking up golf, or learning how to needlepoint for a few millennia.
So how do the gods maintain this focus for so long? Phoenix cycling doesn’t reset their interests, so it must be some inherent part of their nature.
Okay this is a really old post, but I don’t think the psychology of millennia old beings is the same as that of mortals. Age really makes a difference. In my opinion, a 100 year old retiree who spends all of his time on one hobby is very different than someone with Asperger’s. Now multiply that by a million or a billion. They have tried everything, and know what they like. Tiernon might have experimented with chaos back in his college days, but now he’s an adult and knows that he’s all about justice. Phaestus might have once spent a couple millennia just destroying stuff, but he decided that building was more his style. And it’s not like they only do what they’re famous for, that’s just what they are worshiped for and what they advertise. Phaestus isn’t going to advertise when he binge watches a TV show, or gets high with Tizzy, or develops a top secret prison in the abyss, but he will tell people about the weapons he made, or the building that he designed. Its all about building the brand.
And again…this actually comes up in Book 4 and beyond–and in Oak Orks and probably again in COA.
As we will learn, some immortals Phoenix Cycle; others–do other things. And the perspective of truly old beings is very different than much younger ones….
Immortals are very much aware of this–they are literally existentially aware of this and so have ways to cope and deal–one is the Phoenix Cycle. Others may do smaller versions of the PC.
Some bi-furcate themselves or even tri-furcate and come up with dualities and trinities to experience life on multiple levels simultaneously. Sort of like incarnating as a mortal with partial or nearly complete amnesia to pass the time and all sorts of things like that.
If you look at the history of Astlan, there are quite a few immortals, demonic or otherwise, who spend time on the material planes pretending to be something they aren’t.
There’s an entire gamut of possibilities of how to kill an eternity.
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