Divinity and Its Origins

"There is certainly something that separates the true gods from everyone else: lesser 'gods,' demigods, and the like. Is it a vast store of divine magic? Something else? We do not know. We may never know." - Unknown divinologist

This is a largely objective, top-down view of Divinity in Emaxus and Yophas. There is a small section that explains the prevailing theories surrounding this subject, but assume that almost everyone knows nothing close to the reality presented in this article.

Vivrah and Yamma

Before the Reshaping, there was Vivrah. Vivrah was the God of everything. He was also a Mad God. He sought to reduce all of reality to only Him; to assert His Right to Exist over any and all things until He was all that remained.
When He reached Emaxus (not this Emaxus, but The One That Came Before) on His universal crusade, He met the Silver Dawn, a group of demigod heroes who struck Vivrah down and ended His universal winnowing. This battle (now known as the Obsidian War, where it is remembered) broke Emaxus and cost the Silver Dawn their lives. And, with Vivrah's death, the universe was left Godless.
Vivrah, as a true god, returned to raw Divinity upon His death. The souls of the Silver Dawn found this and took it (save for the Five Fragments, the nascent essences that would become the Obsidian Lords) and coalesced into Yamma, the first new god of Emaxus. In the brief moments between Vivrah's end and Yamma's apotheosis, reality unraveled wholly---but more on that later. When Yamma touched Vivrah's Divinity and usurped it, Yamma met Ita, the Dream of Reality. Through Ita, Yamma achieved true godhood and mastered his Divinity. And, upon returning to the unraveled universe, he Reshaped it.

Ita, the Dream of Reality

Ita is God, as that concept can be understood in Emaxus; however, Ita does not interact with reality in the slightest. Ita is simultaneously the root of all creation and beyond creation itself. Ita is the Root of Divinity, as Ita grants gods control over its dream: all of reality. It is only through Ita that true Divinity can be granted, yet Ita is impossible to reach (at least, no one's found a way to reach it). Yamma and Vivrah are the only entities in all of objective history to see Ita, for they have controlled the greatest shares of Divinity in history.
Ita cannot be understood. Vivrah Himself shrinks before Ita (though one could theorize that He sought to wipe out all of reality to force a confrontation with Ita, as He would be the only dream left in the Dream of Reality). Ita exists as the Engine of Creation, the beginning and end of all things and stories within Emaxus. It could be said that Ita exists only to give me, Brian, a way to understand what delineates true gods from pretenders; of what defines Divinity and "divinity," like divine magic.

Upper-case and Lower-case Divinity

The difference between Divinity and divinity is relatively simple: Divinity is granted by Ita (or someone who has received it from Ita) and allows for total control over reality, to a point; divinity is the mortal understanding of Divinity and is, in fact, simply an umbrella term for divine magics. But what does that mean? If the highest echelons of divinity can mimic the total control that Divinity allows, where is the line drawn? What does "total control over reality, to a point" mean?
Consider, for a moment, the gods of Emaxus: the Ten and the Five, Yamma and his Children and the Obsidian Lords. Yamma met Ita. Vivrah, who sired the Five in His death, met Ita. To put it simply, Yamma and Vivrah are the only true fonts of Divinity in reality. Yamma granted his Children smaller pools of his Divinity, and the Obsidian Lords were born from the remnants of Vivrah's Divinity that were left after Yamma usurped most of it. It is by this lineage that these gods have Divinity.
Divinity allows one to understand that reality is simultaneously real and a dream, and to shape it accordingly. It allows one to impart their will, in all its facets, upon reality, up until the point where another Divinity counters them (it is by this logic that Laaelum was unable to wholly rewrite the lunar-arcane; Alindr's Divinity countered hers, as best as it could). Divinity is the reshaping of Ita's Dream of Reality into one's own Dream of Reality.
Lower-case divinity is not this. Lower-case divinity is access to divine magic. All mortals have the capability for divinity, either through sheer will or by the grace of Divinity, but not all mortals use their divinity. This divinity can grow to extreme heights, such as demigods and greatwyrms, and it can border on Divinity, but the key delineation is this: Divinity is the shaping of the Dream itself to one's own Dream, divinity is the imparting of one's own will on the rules of the Dream to cause change.
Here's an example: say someone has lost their leg and it is being restored by healing. A god uses Divinity to rewrite the Dream of Reality and restore that person's leg. A cleric uses divinity to pull together the lunar-arcane and heal the leg. One rewrites reality itself by their will, the other uses their will to influence reality through the rules present therein.

What People Know

People, generally, know absolutely nothing about any concept present here. Even divinologists and expert scholars of theology know almost nothing about the truth presented here. Ita doesn't exist as a concept to people (though some have theorized about the foundations of reality and dreams, in the ravings of madmen and disgruntled academics), and the difference between Divinity and divinity is misunderstood, at best.
Those who have studied dreams, however, have posited the strange relationship between dreams, our subconscious selves, and reality (like visions). These theories are... loose, at best, but some scholars, arcanists, and scientists have hypothesized that dreams are a special sort of lower-case 'd' divinity that mortals have to see new creations, futures, and memories; to have their own Dreams of Reality. (This is, in fact, why Lythaelos and dreams exist: to root mortal dreams in Divinity and, even if they aren't always important, understand that mortal dreams can be Dreams of Reality, specifically of new futures and potential realities buried in memory and subconscious thought. But people don't know that. I just put that here because it fit best here.)

Type

Metaphysical, Divine

What Ita Isn't

It should be noted that Ita is not a Sleeping God (like the Godhead of Elder Scrolls; there is no CHIM in Emaxus) and all of Emaxus and Yophas is not a dream, at least not in our conception of it. It is a dream in the sense that it is subconsciously generated and watched by Ita. It is not a dream in the sense that one can become lucid (like CHIM), or that Ita is lucid and takes an active stance. The reality of Emaxus is Ita, yet Ita is a separate observer, as well. Ita has never and will never take an active stance in reality. If Vivrah was trying to reach Ita, it is unknown what would have happened.