The Gods & NPCs

[arkshiparchitects]

THE GODS & NPCS

The Gods

ZEIT
God of Time

Divinity Powers

1. Perfect Time

The Marked knows exactly what time it is, and with further concentration, can keep time perfectly. Can also be used as a stopwatch or a countdown.

2. A Moment Ahead

The Marked can see moments into the future. Useful for predicting attacks, dodging and countering, or otherwise anticipating another's actions.

3. Accel/Decel

The Marked can speed up or slow down the relative passage of time for one person or object.

4. Foresight

The Marked can predict an action or event up to 120 seconds in the future. This power can activate automatically if what it predicts would seriously threaten the Marked.

5. Restore/Replace

The Marked can restore an item to a previous status: location, condition, or both. The Marked must have at one point touched or held the item.

6. Group Accel/Decel

Accel/Decel can now be used on a group of up to 10 people.

7. Time Stop

The Marked stops the flow of time and may act while time is frozen. This divinity is intensely draining and has the potential to knock out the Marked or even render them comatose if maintained for too long.

As close to a leader as the gods can achieve, Zeit holds the position by virtue of maintaining the Marked in stasis and releasing or returning them as suits the needs of the gods. Zeit is an unquestioned jerk, very much the patronizing, "we know what's best, do as we say" type who's all the more offensive because he actually believes he's doing the best he can by everyone. He also has an obnoxious habit of answering questions before they're asked and has been known to send his priests, envoys, and Marked detailed transcripts of conversations with him they had only just thought of having.

PARSA
God of Space

Divinity Powers

1. Spatial Sensation

The Marked can 'see' everything within a 3m radius as a monochromatic image. It cannot distinguish details, only transitions from one surface to another. Very useful for seeing around walls, spotting those camouflaged from sight, or locating force fields.

2. See There

The Marked can see as if they were located up to 200m in any direction. The viewpoint may be moved while the Marked focuses on this Divinity. This Divinity requires total concentration and leaves the Marked essentially helpless during its use.

3. Retrieve

The Marked brings an item to their location, regardless of distance. They must know exactly where the item is; the power fails if it isn't precisely where they expect it to be.

4. Furthersight

The Marked can see as if they were located up to 150,000,000km (1 AU) in any direction. It has a certain inherent error-correcting, so a ballpark guess will usually get the Marked close enough to refine their exact view further. The viewpoint may be moved while the Marked focuses on this Divinity. This Divinity requires total concentration and leaves the Marked essentially helpless during its use.

5. Go There

The Marked instantly transports themselves within 1 AU of the Hyperion Star or anywhere within the Hill sphere of a celestial body the Hyperion Star also occupies. The gods permit free use of this power to leave or enter the arkship, unlike non-Divinity teleportation, because the Marked is returned to the ship immediately, if necessary, prior to it traveling onwards.

6. Exeunt

The Marked opens a portal to any location they could reach with Go There. They must maintain total concentration to keep it open. Objects and people may pass through the portal freely, but it cannot cause anything overtly stupid to happen, like draining an ocean or evacuating the atmosphere of a ship.

7. Simuspace

The Marked causes their immediate environs (5m sphere or hemisphere) and a similar area they could reach by Go There to overlap and exist in the same space. As with Exeunt, a 'stupid-filter' prevents catastrophe, but only for crossing out of that area; a bedroom conjoined with the lake will absolutely drown anyone in the bedroom. This divinity takes total concentration and rapidly exhausts the Marked; it has the potential to knock them out or even render them comatose if maintained for too long.

Her Divinity fuels the engines that leap the Hyperion Star across unfathomable distances, and so Parma's power is always in flux. Due to this, she rarely intervenes in any other matter and prefers quiet, both maintaining her strength for the future and keeping Zeit from viewing her as a threat or challenger. Most gods would prefer to follow her, but they and she must acknowledge the need for the Marked is greatest. Those who speak with her describe her as fair and just but completely inscrutable to the point of being incomprehensible. Some suspect she either is or is on the verge of becoming an Aberration.

APHAROS
God of Solar Fire

Divinity Powers

1. Light

The Marked emits light, enough to illuminate things clearly within 5m of their body. This power requires no concentration or effort, and can simply be turned on or off with a brief thought.

2. Light Ray

The Marked emits a beam of light from the palm of their hand (or equivalent). This can be a steady beam like a flashlight, which can be maintained, or a quick burning blast of light that harms and ignites what it touches.

3. Fireball

The Marked causes an explosion at any point they can clearly see. Just your classic old-school fireball here.

4. Blinding Light

The Marked emits a flash of light so bright it can temporarily blind anyone looking at it. It doesn't spare allies, so be sure they're facing away from you!

5. Prominence

The Marked emits one to three arcs of superheated plasma, which they can then control like whips or tendrils. The prominences have no solidity, so they can't pick up things -- they're intended for heat, light, and attacks using those components. Their effective range is 500m and the Marked can see the surroundings around their far ends to guide them.

6. Stellar Reactor

The Marked infuses themselves with energy. So long as they maintain this power, they are entirely immune to their environment (including things like deep space or lava submersion, yes!), no longer need food, water, or sleep, and can power devices by touch. Any injury instantly heals. The Marked is effectively invincible physically, although not psychologically -- disrupting the Marked's concentration is the most common way to handle this power.

7. Sun

The Marked summons a sun above their palm. This sun ranges from 30 cm to 500m in diameter. The Marked may exempt anything they want from being affected by its heat and light to any extent. However, this power takes intense concentration, and also requires the use of one hand to maintain an open palm.

Aphoros maintains the artificial sun that tracks above the Kingdom of the Divine, and in so doing expends a remarkable amount of energy towards maintaining the biosphere and thus the Hyperion Star's livability. They give off an air of deep, abiding exhaustion; life on the ship is not comfortable for them. As such they tend to be overlooked in divine debate and generally treated as less important than they truly are. On occasion, Aphoros actually seems to be angry about this, though nothing has ever come of it. To the faithful they are known as steadfast, reliable, and helpful.

ERONNADE
God of Storms

Divinity Powers

1. Gust of Wind

The Marked points, and the wind surges around them in that direction. Not strong enough to move anything over 20kg, the wind can still push against people or items to slow or stall their movement.

2. Rain

The Marked points, and rain falls down from the sky at the indicated location. No clouds are summoned, the rain just starts raining. It affects a 3m-diameter area. The rain can range from light mist to pounding fury.

3. Hail

Much as Rain, except hail drives down with punishing force into the area indicated by the Marked. The amount of hail is consistent, so small pebble-sized stones will shower down, while large baseball-sized stones will hit one at a time, with a pause in between.

4. Weather Control

With concentration, the Marked alters the weather in the area. This power does not take effect instantly, but instead over a period of minutes as it shifts the local weather. Turning clear sky into clouds takes about one minute, while turning a heat wave into a blizzard takes about fifteen. Unlike higher-Divinity powers, this cannot directly create things like rainstorms and cyclones, only the conditions that permit them to arise.

5. Tempest

In an instant, the Marked conjures up a storm characterized by two of three possible aspects: pounding rain, roaring winds, and lightning. They can direct the storm as they will, including the direction of the wind or where the lightning strikes, although doing so takes additional mental effort above and beyond that needed to sustain the power.

6. Judgment

The Marked conjures a storm similar to Tempest, but may select from additional aspects: tornadoes, hurricane-force winds, a whiteout-strength blizzard, or terrifying heat. The storm may still only have two aspects. (Yes, you can have a blizzard and a heat wave in the same storm. It falls out exactly the way you'd think it would.)

7. Apocalypse

The Marked gains additional aspect selections for their conjured storm: fire tornadoes, sheet lightning, meteors, blood rain, or any other sort of effect you could reasonably picture coming out of a truly terrifying cloudscape.

The other god most directly responsible for maintaining the biosphere, Erronade ensures that the Kingdom of the Divine receives proper weather and seasons. He maintains what he thinks is a friendly rivalry with Apharos, unaware that the other takes it rather personally. Erronade is almost unfailingly cheerful, though that can range from "cheerfully happy" to "cheerfully angry"; he is not a subtle god. He is also a bit of a prankster, and being his priest or Marked means sometimes just getting rained on out of nowhere.

FERAS
God of Nature

Divinity Powers

1. Animaltongue

The Marked can speak with animals and receive coherent replies. Animals aren't good with abstract thought or human concepts, but nonetheless can provide information. Animals aren't obligated to help or even talk back. This power is always active without any effort on the Marked's part, unless they choose to disable it.

2. Planttalk

The Marked can speak with animals and receive coherent replies. Plants are better with human concepts and abstract thoughts than animals, simply because the power has to be stronger to affect them at all. Plants technically aren't required to answer but it almost never occurs to them not to do so. This power is always active without any effort on the Marked's part, unless they choose to disable it.

3. Master of Beasts

The Marked gives a one-sentence command which a nearby animal (or animals, if smaller) must obey. If the Marked tries to get tricky with making one giant run-on sentence with semicolons and subordinate clauses, the animals bite them. Animals cannot refuse unless the command would explicitly harm them. "Bite that guy" is okay even if the guy has a sword, but "leap into that acid bath" is not.

4. Plant Growth

The Marked instantly causes plants of any sort to grow within a 5m-diameter circle up to 500m away. Plants can grow out of any surface, including liquids; only if there are no solids or liquids available does this fail. Plants are not limited by local conditions -- you can have cacti in the ocean and palm trees in the Arctic. They can grow in such a way as to attack or restrain, such as growing vines to bind an enemy. The plants retreat and disappear immediately when the Marked ceases to maintain this power.

5. Kinship

The Marked transforms into an animal. They cannot turn into anything with supernatural powers like a phoenix, but size and shape are no obstacle. This power does not cause the Mark to glow and does not take effort on the Marked's part, but it does gradually drain their energy.

6. Summon

The Marked causes one large (moose, elephant), six medium (wolf, deer), or two dozen small (cat or smaller) animals to appear. Until the power ends, the Marked may command them mentally, and the animal will follow unfailingly. These are created animals, not actual ones, so they will even follow self-destructive commands.

7. Biosphere

The Marked transforms the area in a 500m-radius around them completely into any setting they choose, so long as it has no man-made elements. The transformation is near-instantaneous and permanent, and this ability can be used in any setting outside of a city or similarly civilization-dense environment. It is entirely possible to create a sphere of idyllic forest in the middle of space, although it does tend to lose its atmosphere immediately. Normal animals and plants of any sort may be included, and the area doesn't have to maintain any consistency -- a strip of desert followed by a strip of rainforest is completely possible.

Feras is actually a wolf, an eagle, and a cheetah which together act as a single being with a single mind. Despite this, Feras identifies more with the plant aspect of nature than the animal, to the point that some feel they're neglecting that entire portion of the biosphere in favor of cultivating the flora. Feras considers the entire Kingdom their personal handiwork, and despises any change that occurs without their direct approval; needless to say, the rest of the gods find Feras intolerable (with one exception), and they are often marginalized to the point of exclusion.

TERPISECT
God of the City

Divinity Powers

1. Know the Way

The Marked immediately knows what path to take to get from their present location to another location they are familiar with or can clearly identify (such as uniquely-named shop; 'a burger place' is too general). This ability takes into account abilities and equipment the Marked possesses, such as a hoverbike, but can only provide directions to a place reachable by some sort of manmade path or technology. Dirt roads don't count, but even the crudest paving qualifies.

2. City Fortune

Upon using this power, something fortuitous happens to the Marked, so long as they are in the presence of some sort of man-made feature. They might find some money, or a discarded umbrella right as the rain picks up. Repeated uses in a short time decrease just how lucky the event that occurs is, so you can't get rich just by roaming around picking up a streak of dropped wallets.

3. You Belong

Using this power causes those who dwell or work in whatever contiguous populated area the Marked is in to view them as a friendly fellow resident, and treat them accordingly. While using this power, the Marked may also find comfortable shelter and decent food, though the definitions of both vary by location. This power does not the Mark to glow.

4. Enact

On using this power, the Marked immediately knows what to do or say to a nearby person within the next ten minutes to make a sentence of no more than ten words come true -- for example, "Find a trustworthy butcher" or "let me meet a bribable officer". Upon taking this first action, a series of remarkable coincidences unfolds to make the desire happen. The more unlikely or extreme the request, the more the power drains the Marked, so don't ask to become a god or you'll probably just wither up and die right there.

5. You Command

An advancement on You Belong, this power causes the Marked using it to be perceived as an important figure within the populated area they're in. A small town may think the Marked is the mayor, while in a large city they might be perceived as a vice-Guildmaster, a crime boss, or a chancellor. The Marked has control over how they generally wish to be perceived, but not specifically -- ask to be a criminal and you might be seen as a gambling boss or a hitman, but never as a local investor.

6. Civilize

The Marked creates a building on the spot. There are very few limits on what building they may create -- cathedrals, skyscrapers, and mansions are all possible, although a stadium or an entire palace complex are out of reach. The building is fully furnished and supplied with utilities. It lasts as long as the Marked maintains this power. Unlike most powers, the Marked may maintain this power while sleeping.

7. Omniscience

The Marked briefly knows all things happening within the city or populated area they are currently in. This power only lasts one mere moment before it deactivates to protect the Marked's mind from the sheer weight of information, but that's long enough to get the answer to any one question that could conceivably be answered by the sum total of information in the area. This power takes about an hour before it can be used again without producing only a massive headache.

Terpisect is the administrator and parliamentarian of the gods, generally keeping things going. She delights in debate and gatherings and even makes herself approachable (within reason) to mortals, Marked or Kingdom resident alike. Despite expectations, she and Feras have a solid rapport and very solid agreement on how far each of their domains will extend into the other's. In fact, Terpisect is on good terms with all the other gods, and may be far more responsible than anyone knows for the success of the Hyperion Star thus far.

OSMOC
God of the Realized

Divinity Powers

1. Analyze

The Marked identifies a specific item or device. The Marked immediately learns what it is made out of, and with further concentration on this power, its full spectrum of physical properties, and then how it functions. How long this takes depends on the item's complexity. A simple item such as a knife takes mere seconds, whereas complicated machines like a car would take hours, and a spaceship engine days. This power puts its information in terms the user can understand, but offers no improved memory or permanent recall -- might need to write this down!

2. Realize Ideal

The Marked creates a pure element from the periodic table (up to lead), a common mixture of elements (water, steel, atmosphere), or a small item made of a few elements (a knife, sulfuric acid, copper wires). This power has a built-in filter imposed by Osmoc that prevents the Marked from doing stupid things like destabilizing an economy by creating gold or killing yourself with chlorine gas. Outside of these limits, the created substance or item is permanent.

3. Repair

The Marked restores an item to its fully-functional, undamaged state. The length of time this power requires depends on the complexity of and damage to the item in question: a bent knife is a matter of seconds, a car with a wire out of place perhaps a minute, that exact same car after an engine fire several hours to a day, and a starship warp drive that took a direct hit from a mass driver is going to need weeks. This power doesn't work on items no longer recognizable as themselves, so a chair reduced to kindling and then used for that purpose isn't coming back. The Marked can sleep or do other things without needing to start over, and multiple Marked can use this power to accelerate the repair process.

4. Realize the Basics

The Marked creates an item up to the size of a large table or wardrobe. It can have any composition and assumes the form and details the Marked envisions, but cannot have more than the most rudimentary mechanisms. A switchblade, a lever lock, or hinges all fall within the scope of this power, but a pistol or crossbow would not. The item lasts for four hours without any further effort on the Marked's part, though past that the Marked must maintain the power to keep the item in existence.

5. Realize the Efforts

The Marked creates an item up to the size of a large truck or RV. The created item may be of any level of complexity so long as the Marked understands the basic principle behind its functioning. A modern-era Marked could probably describe a dumb cell phone (transmits and receives information on the electromagnetic spectrum), a TV (pixels light up based on what a signal tells them), or a pistol (pulling the trigger strikes the case to detonate gunpowder and propel the bullet forward), for just a few examples. The created item lasts for two hours, after which the Marked must maintain the power to keep it around. As a bonus, items that require external power sources or inputs (fuel, electricity, coolant) have enough to function for those two hours.

6. Realize Potential

The Marked creates some sort of mechanical form for their mind to inhabit for the duration of this power. This could range from a robot, to a car, to a treaded tank, to a spidermech, to a reasonably-sized mecha. The only limits are two main and a half-dozen sub-weapons, and general technology that could sensibly fit on the mechanical item in question. No warp drives, for example! Piloting the form takes the user's full concentration, and their body is unconscious and helpless while their mind is out of it. They can end the power at any time, and if their mechanical form is destroyed, their mind returns to their proper body without harm. Every form created by this power has Osmoc's emblem clearly visible on it, often in multiple places.

7. Miracle Machine

The Marked creates a machine that can do pretty much anything they can imagine, once. They do not have to understand the principles behind what they want to accomplish -- something like "attack at range" could produce a phasor pistol, a man-portable rail gun, or a brain melter, or the Marked could very specifically imagine any of these and get it. The device works only once, but exactly as desired. The act of using it (whether personally or by someone else) drains an immense amount of energy from the Marked, making this often a power of last resort.

Osmoc despises terms like "technology", "machinery", or "matter"; to her, all that is physical is realized from energy and imagination. She is also aware she's not going to get anyone to change their vocabulary, and sullenly settles on occasionally causing mild electrical shocks to the Marked and representatives who use forbidden terms. Creator of the Hyperion Star, Osmoc spends the vast majority of her time ignoring the Kingdom of the Divine in favor of Systems and Operations. Her goal is to develop ship systems that don't require divinity from the gods to function -- not out of resentment or jealousy, but simply because she views her failure to do so thus far as unconscionable. Omsoc is the complete polar opposite of En, which is doubtless why they are happily married.

EN
God of the Idealized

Divinity Powers

1. Sense the Flow

By using this Divinity power, the Marked gains a clear sense of the flows of energy around them, to a radius of 5m. This includes conventional energy such as electromagnetic waves, kinetic energy and inertia, and local gravity, but also includes more abstract concepts such as mana, ley lines, psychic bonds, or the horrible corrosion of reality by an Aberration. Despite the sheer volume of information this power brings, it smoothly cycles it all through subconscious layers of the brain, allowing the user to readily identify specific energies and understand them without popping their head like an overinflated balloon.

2. Runic Principle

The Marked scribes a rune on a surface, and while maintaining this power, causes some sort of energy to emerge from the rune. Although the rune doesn't emit much energy, this power makes up for quantity with diversity. A Marked could power a laptop, scribe a makeshift lantern, add inertia to help barricade a door, or any other small-scale emission of energy they can think of.

3. Deflect

The Marked surrounds themselves in a barrier (up to 3m in radius) that diverts a chosen source of energy. Most commonly this is kinetic, protecting against projectiles, or electromagnetic, protecting against energy weapons and sunburn. The Marked can modulate this power somewhat, allowing a certain baseline through so they're not preventing air inside the barrier from refreshing, for example. The efficacy and amount of drain the Marked feels both depend on the strength of what the barrier must deflect. Laser pistols are like the buzzing of flies, but if you did somehow managed to deflect a spaceships's spinal-mounted Rending Beam, you might still not survive losing all the energy it took to do so.

4. Sustain Divinity

Using this power, the Marked may partially or fully sustain another person's power. Despite the name, this power is not limited to other Divinity powers -- the Marked could sustain a wizard's spells, for example. While this power is active, the Marked may concentrate on a power to free its user's attention up, or take on some or all of the burden some powers impose, at double efficacy. For example, if a power can only be maintained for an hour before the user falls unconscious, the Marked could sustain it fully for two hours, or take on half an hour of the duration so that both they and the power's user can last an hour and a half before collapsing.

5. Shutdown

The Marked immediately drains all power from a specific device or ability. This Marked can empty a battery, cancel a charging weapon, cut off a starship's power, stop a fireball, or cancel a ward. The amount of energy the Marked drains determines just how much of their own energy it takes to use this power, so sweeping away that antimatter reactor's output probably means a weeklong coma.

6. Inscribe Command

Combining Deflect and Runic Principle, the Marked inscribes a rune that grants them control over all forces in a fixed 3m radius. The Marked may amplify, create, destroy, or redirect any force or energy within this field. Created forces are considered perfectly normal for all purposes, and thus may exit the area and still have effect outside it. As one might expect, the toll enacted on the Marked depends on exactly how much they do with this power.

7. Divinity

The final energy is Divinity, and at this level the Marked can actually begin to shape it themselves. The Marked may use this power to emulate any other level four or below Divinity power from any other god. The toll upon the user is generally double what the power would ordinarily cost its user (or that of a normal power, in the case of powers such as Feras's speech abilities that are always on without cost for the Marked using them.)

The idealized is that given form only by thought and will. No crude matter or limiting physical shapes! Such is En's thinking. One might expect her influence to show more in the Kingdom of the Divine, but its lack of magic proves where En's effort all goes: to the Chaos Field, and the containment of Hvzablin. Maintaining it occupies her efforts almost entirely, leaving her little opportunity to influence the rest of the arkship's goings and doings. Despite this she works hard to be an active presence among the gods and contribute to their debates and decisions, leaving her with more presence than others such as Parma.

The Captain

FARAH MIRAVILIS
Captain of the Hyperion Star

Captain Farah Miravilis is the second and current captain of the Hyperion Star, succeeding Captain Albarakin after the latter's unfortunate diplomatic incident with the Ivician Galactic Empire and subsequent deboning. Translators render Captain Miravilis's species as 'kitsune', as they're a race of intelligent foxlike creatures who remote-pilot mechanical bodies while their natural forms lie deeply shielded in protective stasis.

Captain Miravilis is the only known crewmember of the Hyperion Star. Doubtless there are more, but only she ever communicates through the collective unconscious. Very little open communication passes between her and the gods, and the Kingdom of the Divine appears to collectively ignore her existence on any formal level; rumors swirl that some rift exists between the Captain and the gods.

Captain Miravilis is solicitous and concerned with the well-being of all aboard the ship, though her formal and serious tone gives a different impression.
Image credit

The Aberration

HVZABLIN
The Contained Impossibility

Eldritch horrors. Lovecraftian nightmares. The Unnameable. The gods term these creatures "Aberrations", for they ignore if not actively defy every fundamental principle and foundation of all existence. The term itself is as arbitrary as the Aberrations are, defining nothing and meaning little. In the face of such monstrosities, the gods did the only logical thing: they used one as a power source for the Hyperion Star.

wHaT cOuLd PoSsIbLy Go WrOnG?

...surprisingly very little so far. The thoughts and motivations of entities beyond all understanding are just as cryptic, and their actions similarly inexplicable, so why the imprisoned Aberration decided to forge a psychic bond with everyone on the ship and let them use it like a network is completely beyond comprehension. Identifying himself as "Hvzablin" (and choosing a pronoun by literal coinflip, there's video), he now administrates and monitors the collective unconscious, makes announcements and delivers messages, occasionally pops up in people's chats to commentate, and generally is causing no deliberate trouble. The Chaos Field is an inevitable side-effect of his presence, not an active effort on his part.

That isn't to say he's precisely happy with his circumstances...

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