Category:Deities

Deities are an immortal class of beings, also known as divinities or gendered as gods and goddesses. This species of entity populate our cast in bulk, and generally most of traditional Greek mythology.

For deities of the Norse pantheon, please visit this page, as the information provided here is specific to the Greek pantheon.

Former mortals who have been transformed into deities fall under the separate category of "apotheosized deities," an index and summary of which can be found here.

The existence of deities on a cosmic scale serves to supply the universe with things, as every single deity is responsible for a realm. Deities can represent a realm for literally anything and everything with no limitation: any noun, verb, or adjective can be, and often is, a scope of expertise for a specific deity. There are deities in charge of places, like the Underworld or Olympus; forces of nature, like wind or light; actions, like sleeping or dreaming; human conditions, like dying or falling in love; even emotions, like vengeance or sadness. Some deities have multiple realms of varying importance; some cover just one very small subsection of a specific thing. Sometimes gods overlap with each other, but they are designed to work in tandem with each other. Gods don't necessarily pick their realms - the illusion of choice certainly exists but whatever they end up doing, in a cosmic sense, was destined already by the Fates at the moment of birth (conception, even) to fulfill specific purposes for the universe.

Though obviously they are all unique in accordance to whichever area of expertise they were created for, every deity shares some specific universal features as a species. =Physical traits= Most notably, deities have none of the mortal human restrictions when it come to color palettes. Deities can be any rainbow of color in every way: varying in skin-tone, hair color, eye color (as in iris and in rare occasion even sclerae, AKA the "whites" of the eye). No color is off limits; there are even deities with metallic tones. On some occasions, the hair color of deities can naturally be multiple colors.

Most deities have glowing auras that surround them physically, which can be visible or invisible at will. Each deities' aura is specific to them and is a stationary color regardless of mood.

Deities can sometimes have extra features such as appendages (tails, additional limbs), wings, multiple eyes - these are features that are typically found amongst daemons, which of course are a class of deity. Anatomically, instead of the blood that is found in human mortals, a blood-like golden fluid called ichor runs through the veins of the gods.

The physical "genetics" of deities are strange - as is typical for classic Greek mythology, incest between gods is not typically considered taboo, and the offspring born from unions such as these do not experience any negative or significant genetic effects. Offspring from unions of deities usually do bear combinations of traits of their parents, but sometimes can look completely and randomly different with no "logical" basis. Sometimes fully acquired traits can be passed along to offspring as if they were inherited - a deity with dyed hair could birth a child with hair naturally the same dye color. Deities and deities who have children will produce children who are deities. Deities and nymphs who have children will produce deities, nymphs, or demigod mortals - deities who have children with mortals will produce demigod mortals.

Finally, deities (of the Greek pantheon) are unconditionally immortal (discussed in the following section) and cannot die - they also do not physically age in perpetuity, and most of them present as the same eternal physical appearance somewhere within young to mid-age adult. There are exceptions to this rule (for example, Melinoe, who appears eternally to be 8 years old); it's not clear what may cause a deity to stop aging at which point.

=Universal powers & abilities= Deities, depending on their realm, vary as far as specific powers and power-levels that each of them have - however, as a species, there are some basic abilities that each deity possesses.

All deities of the Greek pantheon have the ability of full, unconditional immortality, meaning they are unable to die naturally or be killed. This is a power that develops while in utero, but not immediately upon conception - immortality may take a few months to develop in a fetus, leaving a fetal deity briefly susceptible to death. As mentioned above, past a certain point, deities will no longer physically age and remain preserved at an arbitrary point of eternal youth that varies from person to person. They are traditionally immune to mortal-type illness, in part due to innate magic, but in part due to a mandatory diet based of ambrosia and nectar, food and drink of the gods. Though they cannot be killed, they are able to be injured and can be permanently scarred or disfigured.

Typically, standard deities are able to teleport, and can be specifically summoned and called to an area/person by an action referred to as beseeching, essentially "paging" a deity and compelling them to follow the urge to teleport to that spot. When teleporting (colloquially referred to in and out of universe as slang "poofing"), the signature way a deity will appear and reappear varies depending on their more unique powers. Universally, most deities teleport with a small sound and visual effect - some deities poof in clouds of smoke, flashes of light, showers of flower petals, puddles of blood (that last one being Ker, specifically). An exception and continuous running joke is the teleportation style of Epi, Daemon God of Nightmares, who notably makes zero sound, instead just appearing silently and suddenly out of thin air, usually when being discussed, and always behind you.

Deities also have the ability to summon/"poof" objects at will, pulling them from wherever from their mind's eye and manifesting things instantly within their hands. Teleportation and summoning abilities are powers that usually develop during puberty and is a skill honed only through practice.

The Olympian Twelve
The Greek pantheon upon Olympus features a set group of deities referred to as The Twelve Olympians, or Olympian Twelve - each of the twelve within this group, additionally to the standard deity powers and each individual set of unique powers, also possess a bonus set of standard abilities. These twelve deities each universally have the ability to shapeshift, into people, animals, whichever. They also each have the ability to metamorphose others into new shapes (animals, plants). They are not the only deities who have these abilities, but they are the only deities who have these abilities as part of their birth-given standard of powers.

=List of deities in the Elysium'verse= A comprehensive list of deities in the Elysium'verse can be found below. The characters on this list make up the majority of our cast, though some of them can also be classified as daemons - every daemon is considered a deity, but not all deities are daemons (like squares and rectangles, y'know).