What's wrong with the gods?

(Excerpt from Colt's Guide to the World of Dragon Metal)

The Gods

Ancient gods exist. Gods started messing with humans as soon as the first mortals stepped out of the primordial soup of creation. Some tried to influence humans for good, others for evil.

Nature of the gods: Gods don’t have souls or use magic. They are living batteries filled with a cosmic essence that gives them their power. Their true origin is unknown, but they existed long before man, some coming from the Heavenly Realms and other planes of existence, and others coming from our dimension as early as the big bang, made of the stuff of creation itself.

Gods had unique powers that caused humans to associate the divine beings with different aspects of our world. A god that hurled bolts of lightning became a god of lightning and thunder, for example. A god that hurled fire? God of fire. Etc., etc.

Appearance of the gods: Although gods are made of energy, they’re gods. So, they can take on any appearance they want, solid or spiritual, seen or unseen. Most gods, however, settle into a favored form after a few centuries.

First Pantheons: Some of the earliest gods of record appeared in Ancient Sumeria and Babylonia: Tiamat, her mate Abzu, and their offspring.

God Fall: Hundreds of Schools of Magic existed when the Age of Gods was at its peak. Schools tended to rally around different Pantheons based on their locations, believing their own gods responsible for gifts of magical power. The Greeks had Schools revolving around the Greek gods, the Ancient Chinese had Schools revolving around their gods, and so on.

But eventually, one of the smallest Schools of Magic, the Sefirot, became usurped by a greater entity that called itself the Great School of Magic. The Great School of Magic waged war against the gods themselves, defeating many, in a mysterious conflict called the God Fall.

The details of the God Fall are unclear, but it left many of the gods as demons, complete with cursed auras, no longer in possession of their cosmic power or essence. Other gods retained their cosmic power, but at a diminished capacity.

God Fall allowed the Great School to expand its power, until it fractured into what we now call the Three Great Schools of Magic. With the gods defeated, the Three Great Schools began to wipe the smaller Schools off the map, and then eventually, turned against each other in the first of the Mystic Crusades, a war that began more than a thousand years ago and continues to this day.

After the Veiling: After the Heavenly Realms split from the Mortal Realm, only the “evil” gods remained. Any god that would have championed the cause of humanity vanished.

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