Golden Xan

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Hey everyone,

Some time ago I started to wonder how deep will be the participation of Gods, Elder Gods and the like in the Deadhaus universe. Lovecraftian themes have been a mark in most of Denis' games. In Blood Omen, you were transformed into a Vampire and manipulated by many individuals, but mostly a God from another realm. In Eternal Darkness, you are manipulated by 4 Gods, all at the same time in parallel realities.

Yet, the more I thought about it the more I saw that Gods, or any other variation of them, are not really that great. Sure, they are powerful, they can influence the lives of lesser beings, mostly humans or self-centered individuals. Sure, they live a long time and often have monstrous appearances, to our standards. Sure, they are often shown to be gigantic creatures and they have an incredible presence on so many little things.

But they are still flawed.

They still make mistakes that cost them their lives. They are still prone to a very human error: overconfidence.
In Blood Omen, the Hylden god (also known as Dark Entity) thinks he is more powerful than Kain, who he created himself. Yet it still loses to him in battle quite easily.

In Eternal Darkness, Mantorok is the greatest of the 4 gods we see, but he was still bound by a Liche using a simple spell powered by a single lesser god. The other 3 believe they are all-powerful and that nothing can stop them now that the greater one is gone, yet time after time they set up challenges that end up being overcome by ordinary individuals. Individuals that, despite their bravery, are only really capable because they have access to the gods' own powers. And in the end, even though one of the gods can see it is being "betrayed" by its main pawn, it still thinks everything is going according to plan... and dies because of that.

Not just that, all the gods in Eternal Darkness depend on the humans to manifest themselves. They can influence the world, they can summon creatures somehow, they can smite humans who oppose them into a pulp... but they still depend on their pawns to influence the world. They still have to risk themselves and their plans by trusting their powers to individuals who very much oppose them. And even though they are often portrayed as patient and all-seeing, they still make the same mistakes that all other gods made in the past, in this and other universes, in current and past games, where they always over-confidently believe that they will win, despite all evidence to the contrary.

If you look at the gods themselves, they are amazing creatures. They are big, they defy nature, they have a tremendous capability to plan and manipulate, they are powerful, they inspire awe and fear... but they are still mortal. And if they don't die, they can still be stopped, trapped, blocked... their plans can be thwarted, their powers can be cancelled by the powers of lesser individuals with even less capability, and they are still so heavily dependent on things outside of their control.

Perhaps even worse than all this is that they have no idea what to do with their existence. Absolutely no idea.
The best thing they can think of is to try and perpetuate themselves for all eternity. All they think of is eating. All they have as a purpose is to try and create a system where they can rule without opposition, but only so that they can eat forever and ever uninterrupted.

They don't have any meaningful goals. They don't use their powers to try and find out what they are or where they came from. They don't think of making friends with other beings to achieve their objectives together. They have no desire to help others. They have no curiosity, no desires, no spark of creativity towards anything that isn't related to filling their bellies. If they were to achieve what they wanted, they'd be nothing more than eternal blobs.

That's their main issue. Gods are instinctual. They are not much better than animals. They just happen to be large, freaking ugly, long-living alien animals. If they are given what they want, they will just be for all eternity.
That's why I say they are Giant Alien Turtles. They live a long time, they are powerful, and they are ugly. But that's all there is to them.

A great exemple of a truly powerful and evil god is the Entity in Dead by Daylight.
The Entity lives on a dream-like realm where it controls. When a dark event that is really filled with emotional energy happens on some world, such as a disaster or a grotesque killing, the Entity creates a fissure in the location of that event. Any being with a soul that comes near that fissure is sucked into it and transported into the Entity's realm.

The Entity feeds on their emotions. Fear, desperation, pain, thrill, relief. So it creates an environment, completely made of thought, where the individuals are put on an eternal cycle of suffering. It sets up a monstrous individual, the Killer, to hunt down four Survivors, who are mere passers-by, victims of the Entity. Their goal is to fight each other, over and over. If one of them loses, a portion of their soul is eaten by the Entity. If they win, they are brought back to the beginning to fight again.

As a god, the Entity is still exactly what I described: it has no purpose other than to perpetuate itself. It is a monstrously gigantic formless alien being. If it achieves its goal, it would resume its existence to the maintenance of that goal. But its difference from other gods is that it is so great that there is no possibility of opposing it.

The Entity cannot be reached. You cannot refuse to participate, for all you have to do in order to participate in its macabre game is exist. You cannot convince the Killers to stop chasing you, because they are soulless pawns of the Entity. If you somehow were able to do that, it wouldn't matter, because given time the Entity would consume you just the same. Escaping from the challenge only resets the killing. There is no way of knowing the Entity exists unless you are in its realm. The only way the Entity can die is from starvation, but it has countless souls to eat, and even if they were to eventually end there is no shortage of supply outside its own realm.

The only way to fight against it within its kingdom would be to stop existing, and there is no way to do that.
The only way to fight against it outside its realm is having every living thing be so good and ascended that there is no violence, harm or disaster in your world. But even if that somehow could happen, there are other worlds, other beings coming to life, other gods trying to play, accidents happening...
The Entity is virtually unbeatable.

THAT is a truly monstrous being. And yet, all it happens to be is... a giant, alien, long-living being. Like an imortal turtle, it eats, grows and ages.
Despite how powerful it is, it also happens to be inconsequential. Aside from the unfortunate souls that wander into its realm, or the small influence it can have in reality, it is literally nothing but a leech of a much grander universe that goes on despite its existence.

In some ways, the very fact that there is a world beyond its own makes the Entity meaningless. And the Entity is as closest to the definition of "Elder God" as can be.

And that's why... gods are nothing.
They are as nothing as we are.
They are only called this way because we are smaller and less powerful.
We can influence the world in a lesser scale than them.
Even if we can get to their level, we will still have beings who are bigger and more powerful than we are.
And they will also be as inconsequential as we would then be.

In some ways, we are lead lives even more meaningful than gods. Because we have our own ideas and goals we can choose for ourselves. Our lives can be what we make of them. We are still bound by the rules of the living, as humans, but we don't have an obligation to follow any particular path.
Gods don't have that freedom. They must do that which sustains them in a specific way. They can find multiple ways of getting to their sustenance, but they are bound, destined to be what they are.

That makes us more than godly, even if we are weaker.
Gods, on the other hand, are still turtles.
They just happen to be giant and alien ones at that, doing their own thing. :)

And since I have this freedom, I might as well exert that freedom by showing them what they really are.


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This began as a rationalization of the nature of godhood in Denis' games and developed into a spiritual thinking. Finally, it ended as a goal. If it is truly possible to kill Gods, Elder Gods and other powerful beings in Deadhaus, I will make it the goal one of my characters to do so with mastery. If nothing more, to prove they are just as feeble as we are.

If you got this far, I hope you enjoyed the reading. :D

Perhaps you have different perspectives of the Gods' meaning and presence in Deadhaus? You can share below.
At the end of the day, all I based myself on was the games that already came to pass. All this was from a human perspective... What would an undead think instead? We don't know what DHS has in store for us yet. :)
 
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I've tried in the past to understand God's motivation, the big question of why we are here. This is what I came up with and I have adapted it to fit deadhaus as best I can.

Every God's true form is a reality or dimension of their own, Heaven is the true form of God. Within an empty dimension where its God either died or went dormant they created worlds, filling them with all manner of creatures from their dimensions that were free to do as they please and part of their own reality that we call realms. Each God then projected themselves onto these worlds in various forms that restricted them to whatever they were capable of, from what were perceived as powerful beings that could be regarded as Gods on their own by the locals to lowly nobodies with nothing at their disposal. They did this to experience things they were unable to in the true forms like chaos, hardship, defeat, and powerlessness.
 
So here's what I'm thinking: why would giant transdimensional beings bother messing with humans? What do they think they can gain from influencing a civilization that is so meaningless and tiny compared to them? Why do they prefer this activity over dealing with each other, living in a society made of giant transdimensional beings?

Because the beings we get to see (and who like to perceive themselves as gods) are social rejects. Nerds, people with unconventional views, or lack in social skills. Most of these beings would never think of meddling in human affairs, because they understand that there is nothing in it for them. The ones we do get to see are those that everyone else thinks are crazy.

They isolate themselves from their kind, to focus deeply on a meaningless, tiny world that has little impact on their reality. They somehow gain satisfaction from controlling these people, from influencing their decisions. Maybe some of them are just jealous of the situations these people are in. They want to feel what it's like to be like them, to make decisions in this world they can never be a part of.

In other words: gods are just giant, disgruntled gamers.

...wait, what?
 
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I like that @derula makes you think... When i play sim city and decide to cause every disaster to happen... Am i doing exactly what they are doing to our characters... But the only thing is these elder gods are stuck in the game with us.... Almost matrix like...
 
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Hahaha, that's a funny way of looking at it. The idea that the gods we get to see are the worst kinds or the lower castes of gods is interesting. And I think it makes sense.

In any case, here's hoping that Deadhaus' gods will have something more to them. I want them to be an interesting part of the story, because otherwise what would be the point in looking up to them and naming them such?
 
The name of this thread just made me think of the Disc worlds giant space turtle, the Great A'tuin. But in regards to why gods would mess with people, I'd imagine it's because they're bored. I have a hard time keeping myself satisfied for long amounts of time, so imagine if you had to keep yourself occupied for eternity. We've all done really twisted things in games just to see what would happen. Heck if you have a god who oversees time, they'd probably keep messing around with time to experiment just to see what would happen in they changed one thing in one place. (IE abusing saving and loading game files like gamers like you said @derula )
Another way you could look at them is a lurking horror, something that spends so much time sleeping that when it does awake, everything starts falling apart because it's wondering why there are small things walking around on it and why they've built small buildings for them.
 
it's wondering why there are small things walking around on it and why they've built small buildings for them.
i knew i shouldn't have left sim city open with auto manage while i went on vaction for a week......
 
This discussion reminds me of those about lovecraftian deities, in the end for us asking why they do what they do is just once again us thinking everything is centered about ourselves (humans). The reason the humans in the stories (while opposing them or not is irrelevant) inevitably drown into madness it that such beings are simply outside of the realm of their comprehension (let alone identifying their motives and what we would call moral compass), just like a fruit fly that is crushed by your car while you are driving (with the fruit fly being our planet). I think the "big guys" in the pantheon not only don't care about humans they don't probably even acknowledge their existance (a recurring theme is the despair caused by the sudden awareness of humanity being and ever been powerless and insignificant against something far too big and alien that cannot possibly be understood).

How will the developers would represent them is really a good question, but i think entities like this don't necessarily exclude the presence of a more classical pantheon of gods expecially if you consider they could potentially allow players to become part of this: which could also mean that all the currently existing gods are not how we traditionaly picture them but simply (once) mortals or monsters that managed to accumulate a lot of magical power ( just imagine a simple mage visiting a far away village that does't know what magic is, for them it would be basically a god visiting you). Or they could make like different "aspects" to wich a deity is linked, so if your character become one you would be like "god of" (insert whatever aspect you can think of) in the sense that you belong to the panteon related to that aspect, for exemple x number of gods for the war aspect, x number of gods for the death aspect ecc.
Or maybe gods are divided by factions much like the mortals, or are simply moved by individual agendas (similar to Loki for example)... Maybe both?
I think it has also been mentioned a house with a lovecraftian-like theme in a past video (mind flayer class incoming? 😁), and we also know there will be different planes of existance to visit so... there is definetly a lot to speculate about


Ah, and Derula post was an accurate description of polytheism at it's finest. Humanity had so many nerd colorful and different deites to choose! Good times...
 
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But the only thing is these elder gods are stuck in the game with us....

I like to imagine that they aren't. After all, they're of a higher dimension. Just how you can just walk away from a two-dimensional screen, they can probably just turn their back on a three-dimensional space. (The comparison isn't 100% accurate: if they are "only" four-dimensional, our world would be a hyperplane in their world. Imagine a 2D plane of infinite size that cuts our 3D world in half. You can't walk around it without passing through it. A five-dimensional entity could walk "around" out world, but not go "above" or "below" it - think an infinitely long straight line in 3D space. It would need a six-dimensional being to completely move around our 3D space in every direction without intersecting with it. Think a single dot of infinitisimal size in 3D space. At this dimension it starts to become truly unfathomable why in the world this being would want to mess with us.)

What we see of them in this world, and the part that may be stuck here, is merely a projection of their true nature. Like how your photo can be stuck on a hard drive in your broken-down computer. You wouldn't say that this traps you inside the computer as well, that would be... a bit weird.
 
my reference was more torwards, we may be able to kill the elder gods and possibly take their place. but i do understand what your talking about.
this is a video i watched a while back, explaining the 4th dimension.
 
Great discussion!

Some True Detective Dialog (Or more appropriately, Thomas Ligotti). Anyway, the piece at this timestamp is very interesting and relevant to this thread - overall some of the best dialogue I have heard, which got me on to Thomas Ligotti, which I recommend everyone check out - it is a good introduction to philosophical horror.


In Blood Omen, the Hylden god (also known as Dark Entity) thinks he is more powerful than Kain, who he created himself. Yet it still loses to him in battle quite easily.

Not something I would have done and valid criticism in my eyes.

In Eternal Darkness, Mantorok is the greatest of the 4 gods

There are 5 Gods and he is Mantorok is a Great Ancient, meaning older and one that has come before (like a great grandfather). However, if you look at the gods in Greek Mythology, titans came before the gods and were defeated by the gods.

;) and they do have motivations, not all explained although I tried to hint at them. I have many ideas in this area and look forward to rolling them out! :) I hope these concepts will be well received.
 
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There are 5 Gods
Thanks for reminding me of my own fan fiction. I still like the idea of Alex trying to live a normal life after the events of the game, marrying a dude named Frank Loof, and ending up using "aloof" as an online nickname. All she wanted was to turn back into a fool, but ended up distant and hard to communicate with as she started to be affected by the fifth god.