When Gods Still Walked

Two gods are arguing. An entire mortal city may pay for whichever one loses patience first.

When Gods Still Walked is an interactive mythic fantasy set in an age when divinity has a physical presence and a very personal temper. Gods walk among mortals, carry ancient grudges, and occasionally mistake a catastrophe for a reasonable response. An old order of angels works to keep their conflicts from destroying everyone beneath them.

Join the work of keeping the peace

Your place in that effort develops through play: a mortal drawn into divine affairs, a young angel learning the job, or another fitting identity. What matters first is the trouble in front of you and the people who need it contained.

• Deal with magnificent, difficult gods whose motives can be understandable even when their power is terrifying.
• Learn from weary angelic peacekeepers and decide when diplomacy needs a firmer boundary.
• Protect ordinary people caught in quarrels older than their cities.

Learn the personal history behind a divine quarrel

A god's grievance may sound absurd until you understand the centuries behind it. Pride, affection, jealousy, and old promises take on a dangerous scale when the people feeling them can reshape the world. Asking the right question can reveal an opening for negotiation, but a careless assumption can also make an immortal feel dismissed.

The angels have learned to work with that complexity. A mentor can offer the benefit of long experience, while peers may disagree about how far restraint should go. Containing a conflict is immediate work; deciding what precedent that containment creates is part of the order's longer struggle.

Give the mortals a place in the argument

The people beneath the conflict have needs that cannot wait for divine emotions to settle. A settlement needs protection, someone needs reassurance, or an agreement must account for the people who will actually live with it. Your role lets you respond to those stakes as well as the magnificent beings creating them. You might become an intermediary, a firmer voice within the order, or someone whose particular relationship with a god makes a conversation possible. The warmth and humor come from people doing difficult work together, while the wonder comes from the scale of what they are trying to hold in balance.

Wonder, wit, and divine consequences

Dry humor runs through the angels' exhausted competence, while real danger gives their work weight. The order has its own politics, the gods remember slights, and a successful compromise can become the beginning of a new complication.

When an immortal asks whose side you are on, how will you answer for the mortals listening?