Motif · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The gods

'There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege.' A war gauntlet that warns it can transfigure a worshipper of the god Grull into the god himself, and Mordecai's solemn insistence that Grull is not real — nor is any god in this game. Zev, in passing, mentions that a hostile government could 'spring for a deity sponsorship.'

Segment appearances

Progression

The shrine takes its five per cent (ch. 3); Carl's god passes through the realm (ch. 10) and a temple to Hellik, his brother and enemy, stands at the edge of Donut's town (ch. 10). Boons are low-tier loot boxes (ch. 24); Samantha names gods in the Nothing (ch. 24) and explains what a minor goddess is goddess of (ch. 26). Carl breaks a forest goddess's shrine and becomes an Enemy of the Church (ch. 36); her dryads turn every town hostile (ch. 39, ch. 45); she is summoned by the dryads and bought by a mantis queen (ch. 55). Shunned by his own god for killing a worshipper used as a shield (ch. 60). Then the theology: Diwata's birth-power and the pantheon's disgust (ch. 62); Apito's protections, her gospel, Yarilo banished, Taranis's rage (ch. 64, ch. 65); memorial crystals from fallen gods (ch. 69); the loophole that keeps a god on a floor (ch. 70); soul armour and its driver, and a god sent home by a cat's stripping spell (ch. 76); a memorial crystal for a goddess who is not dead (ch. 77).