All living things cause a disturbance in reality, a displacement of time and space commonly known as Free Will. Normally, this disturbance is microscopic and largely undetected amid the backdrop violent orchestra of space. Animals, plants, and even bacteria leave there own faint mark on the fabric of space-time merely by existing. Humans themselves, as well as other creatures, leave a stronger disturbance in reality—a hole where one has died, a pressure of love or hate in the lives of those around them, imperceptible by modern technology but nevertheless undeniably existent. Planets and stars themselves dance to the great patterns of Will, and when they do man calls it gravity.
At the most basic level, this disturbance can be divided into the pull of two opposing forces: light and darkness, death and life, good and evil.
Where plants, animals, and humans normally displace and exert a small amount of influence on their surroundings, the will-matter of some creatures is so condensed, so distilled that one can actually alter metaphysical reality. This manipulation is responsible for those effects commonly known as magic, psychic abilities, etc., and lies in the realm of nature spirits, witches, werewolves, vampires, and others with some power.
The Pagan Gods are on another level entirely. Merely by their existence, the Pagan Gods displace reality to such an extent that they actually generate a small amount of space-time around themselves. These pocket-dimensions are called gravitas and include such places as the top of Mt Olympus, the underwater city of Atlantis, and gardens of Babylon. While these realms can be traveled to from specific places on earth, they do not exist on the same plane of existence as the regular world. Many of the Pagan Gods combine their God-realms into larger regions known as Pantheons. Some of the more prominent Pantheons include the Norse, Greco-Roman, Aztec, and Underworld.
The Underworld is an expression both of the Gray Wardens’ combined gravitas, but also that of the souls of those who have died. All sentient creatures have souls, and sapient beings such as humans have immortal ones that exist well beyond the spans of their mortal lives. Humans in particular combine their gravitas so that the whole is greater than each individual human by him or herself. The greater Gravitas a Pagan God has, the harder it is to enter another powerful gods’ realm without permission. Such was the power of Ysue that when he sacrificed himself and broke the chains of the Underworld, he freed all Pagan Gods from the need for sacrificial communion with their followers, and gave mortals hope of immortality.
In modern times, with man's scientific need to describe and measure everything in his environment, the amount of reality generated by a god, known as the gods “gravitas”, is used to measure the individual power of each god. Gravitas is measured in square kilometers of God-realm generated by multiples of five. The weakest gods, with a gravitas of 1, generate between 1 and 5 square kilometers of reality. Zeus, who is widely considered the most powerful of the Pagan Gods, generates 3,574 square kilometers and has a gravitas well over 700.
At a much greater level, the earth itself is the manifestation of Gaia, Mother Earth, as are each of the other planets the manifestation of a Primordial, the Solar System is the gravitas of the Great Creator, and the entire universe itself a mere manifestation of the Will of the Almighty.
Much of the gravitas of the Pagan Gods is afforded them through their Affinities for certain groups of people, actions, places, creatures or objects. The youngest gods are often the least powerful partially because they do not yet have specific Affinities. For example, the Gray Lords have affinities for the spirits of the dead. Ra is tied to the power of the sun, while Poseidon is linked to power of the sea. These affinities define the powers and personalities of the gods to some extent, so while it is true that gods can technically change reality in any way they wish (as long as it is within their strength of power to do so), they almost always manifest their power in ways natural to their Affinity. The Morrigan may disappear by changing into a thousand ravens that scatter to the winds, but she would probably never cause flowers to bloom all around her presence, although she is equally capable of both actions. The Pagan Gods which linked themselves to mankind’s endless expressions, passions, and intellectual capacity, grew in importance and power until they had overcome their own progenitors and became the new rulers of the earth.
The great Affinity for Fate is the talent to read into the highly complex interactions of gravitas in the world and be able to predict the future. They do not cause the future by predicting it. Fate is a hard Affinity to reach for, a harsh taskmaster requiring absolute truth and complete mystery.
There are several distinctive types of the Pagan Gods, divided mainly by their reactions to humanity. The most well known and frequently most powerful gods are those of Civilization. Their power arches over grand concepts like Love, War, Weather, or Agriculture. Closer to humankind, though much less powerful in their Affinities, are the gods of Community. These gods are concerned with smaller matters, such as particular towns or cities, homes, the husbandry of a particular animal, or even the descendants of a certain family. Contrasted with the gods of Civilization and Community, the Pagan Gods of Nature are concerned primarily with the natural world and largely ignore humanity as long as they do not intrude on the wild god’s territory. Gods of wild animals, mountains, rivers, and seas, these Beings vary widely in their level of power and ability. Some are even quite a bit more powerful than the celebrated gods of Civilization, although they were anciently overcome by the combined forces of their children against them. Diametrically opposed to the gods of both humanity and nature, the gods of Destruction and Chaos want to end all existence other than their own. Children of strange stars, imprisoned at the beginning of civilization, the Pagan Gods of Destruction are worshipped only by the totally depraved and represent a real threat to all life.
The gravitas of the Pagan Gods is such that merely being in their presence causes mortals to die. Therefore, the gods assume many guises when among mortals, changing into lesser material forms with the weaknesses of the flesh. A Pagan God can make many of these forms and interact with many people simultaneously in different places, like fingers of the hand typing. Forming these Avatars allows the gods to leave their center, their God-realm, and wander the worlds. There are roughly twenty thousand Pagan Gods currently in existence. Many Pagan Gods are sleeping through centuries, some have died, and many more have come into being.
Because the Pagan Gods exist on multiple levels of reality and can be only partially harmed in any one reality- no more than a human can be seriously harmed by a (non-diseased) mouse. They can exist in multiple places at once and have the intelligence to allow them to concentrate in all of those directions on at least a human level of intelligence. Gods often have several Aspects, split personalities, because of this multiple-place phenomenon. Gods are not truly physical beings and as such are highly morphic. They can also change their immediate surroundings and people around them. They can see inside a person’s soul, see into the future, see across vast distances, or see through obstructions such as solid objects and darkness. They can hear as well in a similar manner. When a god takes on a shape, they also take on the limitations of that shape i.e. a god can change into a storm, but they are not longer so concentrated as to attack a single individual, can change human, have human limitations, etc.
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