Motif · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

The Celestial Ascendency

The Cookbook's warning: the big gods are always sponsored by some rich prick who paid to play a game called the Celestial Ascendency, contained on the twelfth floor, with its own followers and storyline; Grull is one of its few trueborn heirs. 'The gods are invulnerable except on the 12th and above floors.'

Segment appearances

• Chapter 19 — The ruling; the ceasefire ends
• Chapter 43 — Odette hosts; 'It's coming'
• Chapter 49 — Bijou, Theia and Khepri
• Chapter 53 — Super Heavyweight Temple Battle Grudge Match Extravaganza
• Chapter 55 — Head Banger; Milk
• Chapter 56 — Justice Light; the Nest
• Chapter 57 — Thirty-two boxes; the last prisoner
• Chapter 60 — Meatus; the King's Point erupts
• Chapter 61 — The War Mage Rebellion
• Chapter 66 — Rolling Battle Formation
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 76 — The Oak Fell
• Chapter 85 — Zerzura
• Chapter 86 — We just need to kill you
• Chapter 87 — The Nothing has been broken

Progression

Odette onboarded as Nekhebit (ch. 43); fifteen light gods with temples in Club Vanquisher, and Travel the Path (ch. 49); the ogres who hold the Basilica door (ch. 55); a court where someone is killing sub-pantheons (ch. 57). Ferdinand's action item forces sponsors to ride their gods (ch. 61); Eris's Ceremony of Chaos belongs to its throne (ch. 66); the shutdown triggers when it ends with no crawlers left (ch. 69). A city lands in its cotton fields on a convent of nuns (ch. 85, ch. 86); the Nothing drains into its halls (ch. 87).