Theos is the second of the Four Systems, and the product of the second major Conformity to take place upon Irithria, when the Leskeln learned of their Divinities. In the present age, it is by far the most widely used of the four Conformity-based technique systems within Pretheya, having largely eclipsed its predecessor Arcana due to the prevalence of the Rukhmarite faith.
The system of Theos allows the faithful to call upon their gods for aid to manifest all sorts of miraculous occurrences. From praying to a god of the harvest for a good crop, to petitioning the goddess of fertility to be granted a child, to asking for the god of war's direct intervention upon the battlefield. Whatever is asked of a deity, they shall answer, so long as it is within their power.
Capabilities
Theos's main usage is to manifest occurrences or happenings that fall within the purview of a deity's perceived scope of influence or domain. In this way, it is arguably the Conformity system with the narrowest scope of applications on its own, but the true depth of what it can be used for comes in the many gods which may be called upon. In essence, it is possible to use Theos to conjure any effect which it is reasonable for the god being called upon to be able to provide. There are a number of limiting factors involved in this, however; primarily pertaining to the requirement for faith on the petitioner's behalf and the strength of the god itself.
Depending on the scale of the miracle desired, more or less faith will be required for it to be granted. There is an upper limit to the amount of faith that can be provided by a single individual before they must begin supplementing it with other offerings, and so it is often more practical to call upon the prayers of multiple individuals to provide the requisite amount. Additionally, it is necessary for all individuals lending their prayers to the petitioning to fully believe in their god's ability to grant the request, otherwise they will not be able to provide genuine faith.
A deity has only a limited amount of strength with which to enact miracles upon the material plane. This means that depending on the god's power, certain prayers may be outside of its ability to grant if their scope is too great. Gods also cannot perform miracles that pertain to domains other than those with which they are associated by the majority of their followers, regardless of the beliefs of the individual petitioners. Additionally, a god's power grows weaker the further its followers travel from their heartlands, especially in areas controlled by other deities.
Finally, there is always a chance that the deity will simply not deign to grant a request for one reason or another. This may be simply because it goes against their will or greater plans, or more commonly because the petition being made requires something of the god which goes against how they are considered to act by the majority, in which case they will not grant it. Depending on the coalescence of the deity, it may also have its own motives for accepting or refusing prayers that are not defined by majority will.
Utilisation
All that is necessary in order to utilise Theos is to pick a god and pray. Individual religions may have their own proscriptions on how prayer ought to be undergone, and these can result in restrictions on the ways in which one may communicate with their deity, potentially leading to prayers going unanswered as a result. Beyond this, the only other requirement for a miracle is that one have faith in the god to which they are praying. If a person prays to a god but does not truly believe that they are real, nothing will happen. Similarly, if the supplicant does not believe in the god's power to grant their prayer, it is very unlikely that anything will happen.
The extent of an individual's faith is the key deciding factor in what they can request of a deity. A person's faith is divided into two categories; the strength of their own personal belief in a specific god or deity, and their adherence to the rites, rituals, and doctrine of that deity's religion. Generally speaking, the former has more of an impact than the latter, but an adherent who is both pious and strictly observes the tenets of their religion will have far more to draw on in terms of the fulfilment of miracles than someone who only excels in one area or the other.
Generally speaking, the average person is only capable of supplying enough faith to request a miracle that will affect at most one other person, or an equal amount in another domain; how this is measured is impossible to know and understood only by the deity being petitioned. The amount of faith required for the fulfillment of a miracle pertaining to domains other than humans is arbitrary, and can differ significantly depending on what is being asked. For example, it is understood that a single farmer might pray for a good harvest that year, and it is thought reasonable that a god would grant such a request. A single person could not however wish for a deity to lay waste to an entire town or village; such a petition would require a far greater number of adherents.
It is also not uncommon for gods to show certain individuals an unusual amount of favour, for reasons which are opaque to mortals. In these cases, the favoured souls will usually be able to call upon far more of their god's power than another of their faithful would, sometimes to the extent that they can power large-scale miracles all on their own.
Whether or not a prayer is answered depends a great amount on the specificity of its nature. An abstract prayer, such as a man praying for good fortune in the battle to come, would be difficult for the petitioner to know if had been answered or not. For this reason, although it is not clearly understood by the people of Pretheya, the gods do not answer prayers that pertain to matters that cannot be immediately and observably discerned. The reason for this has to do with the inspiration of Zeal in those who receive miracles.
When an individual has their prayer answered, they become filled with an intense religious fervor known as Zeal. Zeal manifests as feelings of intense ecstasy, gratitude and worshipfulness towards the deity that performed the miracle. The strength of Zeal with which an individual is affected depends on the scope of the miracle that they witnessed, and can range from a mild disruption of normal emotions, to in more extreme cases a near-all-consuming compulsion. Individuals can remain in a state of Zeal from anywhere between a number of hours, to upwards of weeks depending on how strongly they were influenced.
Individuals under the influence of Zeal are capable of calling upon much more of their god's power than would normally be possible. This allows them to request even greater miracles from their deity, but at the cost of entering an even deeper state of Zeal. At its highest extents, individuals consumed by Zeal have their capacity for rational thought severely diminished, starting to become obsessed with doing the will of their god. In such a state, said individuals may begin acting in ways considered highly unusual for them. Most commonly, they will begin to show extreme piety in everyday life, taking to strictly observing the tenets and stipulations of their religion to the letter. Behaviours they may previously have commonly exhibited that went against their faith, or personality traits they had which were considered to be sinful or otherwise unholy, will suddenly begin to cease being expressed and instead be replaced by actions befitting a model adherent of their deity's religion. In the event that an individual affected with this level of Zeal requests another miracle of their god, they are at a high risk of undergoing Numinous Erosion.
Numinous Erosion
Numinous Erosion occurs when an individual who is in the throes of extreme Zeal attempts to make a prayer of their god. In this state, the individual's worship will have grown to such an ecstatic point that upon attempting to ask another miracle of their deity, they will willingly offer up their soul as repayment for its granting. Upon doing so, the person in question ceases to be as an individual, all traces of their humanity dissappearing as their body becomes a puppet for the god which they gave themselves to, becoming in effect an Avatar of Faith.
Another way in which a person may experience Numinous Erosion is through petitioning a deity for miracles of a scope beyond that which can be powered through their faith. In the event that this happens, the excess faith required to power the miracle will be taken in the form of parts of the petitioner's soul, which will in the aftermath be filled in by parts of the deity's own essence. Individuals who experience incomplete erosion in this manner will find themselves bereft of large segments of their memory, and also will have had their personalities fundamentally altered in a manner similar to Zeal exposure; with sinful or impious elements being expunged and replaced with pious behaviours. This effect is permanent, and cannot be undone.
Fate of Souls Lost to Numinous Erosion
The fate of a soul that has been forfeitted due to undergoing excessive Numinous Erosion depends on the method through which it was eroded. Intact souls that are offered to a deity in a state of hightened Zeal most commonly become a part of the divine gestalt itself, living on as one of the innumerable souls that comprise the deity, devoid of any agency or sense of self. In the event that a soul is offered up knowingly and without the influence of Zeal, the god may choose to take it into itself, or more commonly will transform it into a celestial being from that religion's cosmology. Finally, in an event that a soul succumbs to gradual Numinous Erosion sustained through the repeated procuration of miracles beyond the capacity of their individual faith, their soul will neither join the divine gestalt or be reborn in another form, instead being destroyed completely.
Consecrated Objects
In addition to calling upon a god to perform a miracle, a seasoned priest of a religion may potentially also be able to beseech them to bless an item or object in some way. The nature of these blessings differs by religion, as do the rituals designed to facilitate the process. Unlike the act of prayer, which is universal between all deities, a religion may not necessarily have rites used for the blessing of objects, in which case they will not be able to create consecrated objects.
Unlike experiencing the granting of a miracle, having an object consecrated does not induce Zeal. Instead, the majority of rituals to endow an object with some sort of spiritual power or blessing require reagents. This is not a hard requirement, but rather reflective of the near-universal beliefs of the faithful in regard to this specific working. For example: Rukhmarites will consecrate bird feathers by dipping them in rose water and saying a specific prayer over them, which they believe to endow the feathers with the ability to purify water. In this specific example, the feather itself is required so that it may be consecrated, and so is the rose water to dip it in.
The majority of consecrations do not convey powerful effects, instead being limited for the most part to minor boons and conveniences. Exceptions to this do exist in the case of certain especially significant consecrations. For example, it is common for the priests of certain religions to use a holy symbol of office in their ministry. These symbols inevitably come to be viewed as holy by the adherents of the faith, and tend to develop unnatural qualities as a result of this. The most common of these is the ability for a holy symbol to ward off demonic beasts of a given religion's cosmology; this is by far their greatest strength and they are considered unmatched in this regard. A religion's relics, in particular, often tend to accrue particular powers and qualities as a result of being viewed as highly sacred by the faithful.
Avatars of Faith
An avatar of faith - or avatar for short - is a numinous construct that exists to serve a singular deity. They can take various forms, with the most common being the hollowed-out bodies of individuals who have had their souls removed via numinous erosion. Alternatively, a person can willingly give up their own body to become a vessel for a fraction of a god's power, in which case it is possible - though not guaranteed - that they may become possessed while retaining a fraction of their individuality.
The majority of Avatars come about as a result of people who have had their souls carved out or destroyed through numinous erosion. Regardless of the specifics of the erosion, it ultimately results in the physical body being left devoid of a soul. In this state, the deity responsible for the erosion is capable of reaching out and filling the now-empty vessel with a sliver of its own influence, allowing them to control its actions akin to a puppet. Such puppets have numerous uses: They can allow a god to communicate directly with their faithful when it would ordinarily be difficult or impossible, they can be utilised to physically enact the deity's will upon the mortal plane in whatever way they deem necessary, and they are also extraordinarily powerful conduits for miracles. An Avatar no longer has a soul and so cannot be afflicted with Zeal, nor is there anything to risk undergoing numinous erosion, meaning the only risk becomes channelling enough power through the vessel that it starts to physically come apart.
Owing to the nature of deities, however, they are often highly limited in how they may actually make use of an Avatar's capacities. Very often, while the prayers of one of the faithful may be within the scope of a deity to grant, they do not necessarily reflect the deity's own will. While it is possible for humans to call upon a god's power to smite their foes, unless the god themselves has reason to wish for the annihilation of a group of people, they would not be capable of using an Avatar as a conduit for such a type of miracle, even if it would indirectly accomplish an alternate goal of theirs. In this way, they are restricted to only manifesting their power in a way that directly benefits them.
The Nature of Deities
Within the system of Theos, gods are not self-evident existences that humans or other sentient species merely stumble upon; the truth is almost exactly the opposite. Divine beings of any sort do not exist prior to sentient races' belief in them, which causes them to spontaneously come into existence as more and more individuals gain faith in them. There is no minimum requirement for an amount of people to believe in a god for it to become real, but rather the more people worship such an existence, the more manifested it becomes. A god with only a single worshipper would be unlikely to be able to enact any miracles whatsoever, whereas one with hundreds of thousands or millions would possess the strength to alter entire swathes of reality.
The essence of a deity at first begins to take form from the faith used to create it. All divine beings are born soulless and without intelligence, and at first can neither think nor are they capable of cognition. In this state, their behaviour is stringently dictated by the beliefs of their followers, and the entirety of their logic for whether or not they will answer a prayer or how they do so is contingent upon what is expected of them. As a deity gains followers, however, there will inevitably be those among them who grow overzealous, and are subjected to numinous erosion as a result. When one such individual offers up their soul to a god as thanks for the granting of a miracle, the god then absorbs their soul into itself, completing the first stage of becoming a divine gestalt.
For a very brief period of time, the first soul to be absorbed into a divine gestalt will exist with full individuality, and the entirety of their personality and experiences will be used as the basis for the god's behaviours and psyche. Even in this state, however, their actions remain limited by the beliefs imposed upon them by their faithful, and so they are unlikely to be able to exercise a meaningful amount of autonomy. This stage also ends immediately the moment a second soul is absorbed by the gestalt. Immediately upon this occurring, it will blend together with any previously absorbed souls, as the gestalt itself is possessed of a single overarching consciousness that is aware of all of the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and desires of the individual souls that are part of it.
A gestalt will quickly grow in size to the point where the influence of a single soul is negligible in its decisionmaking, at which point is has essentially achieved true sapience as a new consciousness, one composed of hundreds or potentially thousands of lesser ones. This new intelligence is capable of possessing its own desires and drives, amalgamated from those held by the absorbed consciousnesses which it is made up of, and at this stage it now has the very first inklings of autonomy, and the potential ability to act in ways other than those its worshippers desire of it. A divine gestalt in this form still cannot act in ways that its worshippers would consider unthinkable for it to do, and must work to fulfill their wishes and answer their prayers as ever, but has far greater choice in how it goes about doing this. It additionally becomes capable of taking actions which were not requested of it by its mortal supplicants, but that must not go against the ways in which it is perceived by them, and must also be in pursuit of goals which are in line with how it is seen by its worshippers. This process is known as coalescence, and has no defined endpoint, simply continuing the more souls that the gestalt absorbs.
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