God

A god is generally an individual that has transcended the material plane and become the beacon of a groups faith in ideology. Divine power comes the will of a large population believing in a god, and even if that god does not exist.

Creating a God

Gods are generally created by a cult of personality or a strong leader. Once enough people truly believe that their leader is actually their god it may actually cause the leader to start generating divine power. Once a faithful population forms it is nearly impossible to kill an ascended individual so long as there are some people who believe in that god still.

Killing a God

Gods are not immortal but incredibly powerful beings. They have the ability to shape reality and the planes of existence and commonly create their own planes of existence for their followers souls to reside after death. Because a god generally creates their own plane for the souls of their followers even if you where to kill every follower of a god their souls that exist still know of the god and will keep its divine power alive.

At the moment of death of a god their soul attaches itself to the soul of the most compatible living being that it can find. Compatibility has been historically observed by how similar they are personality wise to the original mortal who ascended to being a god, how ideologically aligned with the core beliefs of the god, and in some cases if there are living blood relatives to the mortal who ascended.

To truly kill a god you would have to kill every living being that believes in the god and all of the souls of the believers would then have to be destroyed or moved to another plane that would not allow them to interact with the known planes of existence. Simply put if no soul in existence is aware of the deity, the deity dies.

Ascension

A gods ascension process follows a few general steps. The catalyst, selection, attenuation, and finally ascension.

Catalyst

One of 2 things will cause the creation of a new embodiment of a god. Either a god was slain and some one new must ascend to take over or enough belief around a person or idea has formed that it has triggered the free flow of divine power to the catalyst.

Selection

Once the catalyst has been triggered there is nothing that can stop the new formation of a god. That doesn't mean that the individual that would be expected to ascend would ascend to god status. Sometimes the ideas that are being preached by the obvious person creating the faith are not as strongly believed as some of its new followers, or maybe a population creates a god out of an irrational fear. Once all of that divine energy is directed towards a concept it will permanently attach itself to the life force of the most aligned living being.

Attenuation

New god or reincarnated after death the new selected being may not be aware of their divine power for some time. This slowly manifests as the being stops aging, starts sleeping less, becomes subtly stronger without any change in physical appearance. Beyond the stop in aging it may take decades for the other powers to manifest.

At some point during the attenuation process if a ascension began from the death of a prior god the new incarnation of that god will gain access to the soul of the old god for its council, this is always a plus for the new incarnation of the god because the selection process finds the being that is most like the previous incarnation. This also makes killing a god only a temporary solution to affecting its power as all future incarnations will have the knowledge and experience of previous incarnations.

Once the god has become fully attenuated to the divine power their perception on reality changes and they realize the full power they have. This comes faster for gods that have been slain because at some point the previous gods start influencing the newly ascended being.

Ascension

Now with the full power of the followers the god is free to do what it wants. Most gods are formed out of a belief and agenda so they generally work on that tirelessly and endlessly fighting with the other ascended beings to further their agenda and by proxy that of their followers.

Power

A gods power can be assumed by its age and the number of followers. This is because divine power comes from the belief from the soul of a living entity. Gods create reapers to collect the souls of their followers and take them to a non material plane for them to spend eternity in after death. Gods invest heavily into protecting those planes of existence because it becomes a source of their power. And even in the case of a genocide of all of their living followers it ensures that the god will survive from the souls of the dead believers.

The gods power is only limited by the number of souls they have collected over the eons and therfor are technically omnipotent. The biggest limiter on a gods power is the other gods vying to destroy them limiting the direct effect they can have at any given time.

The most common and frequent use of a gods power is from their clerics and paladins in the living plane.

Manipulation of Planes

Gods have the power to create and alter planes of existence. One of the first things gods do is create a fortress dimension for the souls of their dead devout followers as a permanent power base to their deity.

Creation of Matter

Gods can create and destroy matter in the planes of existence. They are not bound by conservation of mass, but their ability is not unlimited, they can infinitely create, but all things take time.

Creation of Demi Gods

Gods can direct a portion of their power into devout followers to further the agenda of their deity. Those chosen by a god to become a demi god retain some of their former selves, similar to those who ascend but much of their personality is driven by the divine insight they achieve by having a fraction of the gods power.

Reapers

Gods create Reapers to deliver the souls of the dead to their own dimension or plane.