Hello all! Today I wanted to do something different, and that is to discuss the meaning & placement of mythology in the world of Sovereign Soul. This links largely into the worldbuilding of Sovereign Soul, and I’ll also discuss some strategies on how I did the worldbuilding behind my series.
Since Sovereign Soul is based on a world close to ours, the resemblances and the familiarity between them must be uncanny. Besides that the Physical World has some different naming, history and religion remain much the same. There’s only one part of the world with a new mythos, but I’ll discuss that later.
Sovereign Soul largely takes place in the spirit realm. It is the place that souls go after death, split into a myriad of realms. It’s highly likely that a pair of souls may go to entirely separate realms, and never meet again. With this, there’s still plenty of room for freedom of religion. Seeing death doesn’t necessarily eliminate the beliefs of the deceased, even ones such as Christianity or Buddhism who believe in different sorts of afterlife.
This is key, as since the realms are so many, there exist almost limitless souls on our world. One question we often ask ourselves in life is, why would a god care about us? In a sea of people, why would our gods focus on us? And that is because there are many.
Gods can be divided into a few different types. Gods themselves can be divided by demi, minor, and major, depending on the sanctions of life they govern & their overall power. Gods generally have as much power as there exists belief in them, even as some is weaned from belief in gods and systems that don’t exist. Each ‘mythology’ also contends to what they call a Big Three, the heads of their belief and their most powerful. Above even the big three are the Titans or Jotunn, and then the Ancients.
Some religions don’t have a true set of gods according to the spirit realm, and so some gods take on roles of duality. Loki, for example, is a Trickster in more than one religion including Norse and Celtic. Each one gains their own strength of following, and Loki is able to fluctuate his power and abilities based on them. Greek and Roman mythologies are two sides of the same coin, as well. Each Greek god has a Roman duality. A Christian god does not exist, but there are Angels (featured more in Legendlore than Sovereign Soul, so I won’t get too into that) and other biblical figures as demigods and heroes. The religions also are known to freely mingle or be at odds with one another. Gods are also able to walk the spirit or physical realms freely at a fraction of their strength, for a limited time.
Many heroes are seen as demigods, and they wean some of the weight off the minor & major gods’ backs. They are likelier to deal with mortal affairs while they walk the physical realm, and become heroes & protectors later on. Some speculation says Ryoku might be one, while another example is Jason Ramun. In Norse mythology, Bragi is also a traditional demigod, and Teoe is another of Sovereign Soul origin – Loki’s daughter, child of a mortal woman of the same name.
Minor gods usually govern over one or two aspects of daily life, like farming, hunting, or wine. Greek mythology has many of these, such as Persephone, Hermes, or Nike. Norse had gods like Geri, Freki, Hod or Forseti that, comparatively, had less responsibilities than the major gods – though when compared to a human, are immensely powerful. Minor gods are somewhat busier than major gods with the intricacies of running the worlds.
Major gods are where most of the power in godhood rests. Hephaestus, Athena, and Ares are some examples of Greek; Bastet and Thoth are Egyptian; Frigg, Baldr, and Heimdall are some Norse. In some mythologies, the title of Big Three is fluctuating in a struggle for power, namely in Egyptian, so some of these gods are near the level of their Big Three. Major gods are somewhat less busy as their energies go to minor gods and their heroes to govern the world, while they hold host over larger portions, like the sea or the wind.
The Big Three of each mythology are considered the strongest of their mythos, and sometimes fluctuate. Loki, Thor, and Odin are infamous as the Norse Big Three, and have been so for eons. History is vague in their relations sometimes, but in Sovereign Soul, the three are brothers, though much else of their history remains similar. Loki was once to marry a human woman, Teoe, but Odin learned of it and had her killed. Despite this, Odin has had many human wives in the past and born many a demigod. Thor cares more for battle and glory than a life of love.
The Greek Big Three are Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, another set of brothers, although Sovereign Soul doesn’t delve much into them yet. One known fact is that Poseidon is not fond of Ryoku, but the reasons for it are unknown. The Egyptian Big Three fluctuates, but as of current Sovereign Soul, it is Osiris, Isis, and Ra. Anubis, Set, and Horus are known contenders and constant battlers of the Big Three, not just in their own religions. As is known, Set and Osiris are brothers. One of recent past’s most infamous trios were apparently consisting of Set and two Norse demigods, the three of whom were able to cause quite a lot of mayhem in their days.
The Titans, or Jotunn, were what came before the gods, in our age. This includes Chronos, ‘the mimic’, who was alive in the recent era and infiltrated Christianity (more on that in Legendlore!). Other examples are Gaia, Shu, and Hyperion. In general, the titans/Jotunn were stronger than the gods we know of today, and it took an ultimate uprising to defeat and seal them away. Many of the other gods descend from them in one way or the other, whether as creations of them or of relation to them (like Loki and Bragi). As Sovereign Soul goes, the Titans were the gods of a previous age.
To briefly touch on Chronos, the titan was once a human man with the ability to perfectly replicate any power he witnessed. His origin is what many have mistaken as the beginning of Christianity, as well as many other messiah-like figures who performed their abilities for the world to see. As such, not only did he have every power he witnessed, but the worship power pilfered from many gods. He saw the burning bush, and became able to manipulate fire. He saw water, and could walk upon it and control the ocean. His abilities eventually brought down the ire of the gods upon him, and he slew a great many by turning their powers against them. But, to hear more on him, stay tuned for Legendlore.
The Ancients are a step above even them, though they have no governance over the aspects of daily life. The Ancients work with the deeper parts of existence, prophecy, and the code of the world as it is. As is covered in other series, the version of Gaia existing today (all the way back to the prehistoric era) is the latest in a series of attempts at Creation, and the Ancients have been around since what historians called the Ancient World (era of the Elemental Swords), longer than the Titans, governing over the laws of reality. They rarely meddle in human or otherwise affairs. Some say that the Big Three of some mythologies are descended from these almighty beings. Ability-wise, they stand far above the Titans.
The most well-known Ancient is Dante, governor of Chaos. He is the closest Ancient to humans as he deals with those who have earned an afterlife of eternal punishment, the closest equivalent to Christianity’s Hell. Dante is known to meddle with human affairs far below his ‘paygrade’, including behind the scenes in the affairs of Ryoku and Ronyx. He carries a clipboard everywhere bursting with the names of his charges, preferring to have their files on paper before him than in his head. It is also rumored that he, although an Ancient, is of Ry blood.
Of course, there is one step above the Ancients as well, though they are not governors or gods of a particular kind. The Creator and the Destroyer are the penultimate beings of the system. Both are renewed with each attempt at an age, but root back to the original Creator and Destroyer of time. Each only has one purpose; respectively, to Create and Destroy. They are the only beings in existence with this power – save the one notable exception of Chronos. Common knowledge is that the power is too much for any other entity to handle, including the Mimic.
I won’t delve too much into the history of Gaia, the world like the one we live in, as the books will more fully uncover the length of mystery behind it. As far back as history goes, it seems the Ancients were trying to make a world where magic didn’t corrupt or ruin it, and they had to decide how magic was handled differently in each attempt at Creation.
The story of Bloodstone takes place in one of the earliest versions of our world, where humans, elves, and dwarves lived separated on Earth, their paths twisted by the ruinous Bloodstone. Another era of note was the Ancient World, an era where all magic was channeled into nine elemental swords. Both the Bloodstone and the Elemental Swords later came to exist in our world. Historians theorize that, some time ago, the grand timeline was infiltrated and many entities from the past filtered through to our world – also causing the creation of the spirit realm.
Initially the present era was without magic altogether, but something appeared to go horribly wrong as the new age rewrote itself. The spirit realm came to exist on its own, and with it returned magic. What transpired to create it is a mystery… one that one of the worlds’ heroes might uncover one day.
So that’s all for now! I’d be happy to answer any questions that don’t spoil my entire set of novels, and if you’d like to learn more, please check out Sovereign Soul book one: Akin Minds now, or hop onto Fictionpress here to read some draftwork of my other series that might shed a bit more light, including current progress on Book Two! Also, stay tuned for more blogs on the writing process and my characters, as well as news on Book Two: Serpentine Empire, coming soon!
Sovereign Soul 