Essay

The pantheon

Every god the books have named so far (through book 4), with what the text says of each, the relations the books state, and the mythology as it accumulates: the pantheon and the Celestial Ascendency, the Nothing and the feral gods, sponsorship and worship. A god with a character page carries its pantheon section there; the rest have god pages. Relations are quoted and verified; the mythology sections are written as of the book that supports them.

The pantheon

Minor and banished deities

The feral gods

Demons

Creatures of the pantheon

Figures of doctrine and stage

Names not yet placed

Family and enemies

Stated relations between named gods (solid: family; dotted: pets and enemies). Each god's page lists its rows with the chapter that states them.

graph TD
    grull["Grull"]
    taranis["Taranis"]
    taranis -->|parent of| grull
    apito["Apito"]
    apito -->|parent of| grull
    pawna["Pawna"]
    pawna ---|sibling| grull
    hellik["Hellik"]
    hellik ---|sibling| taranis
    emberus["Emberus"]
    emberus ---|sibling| taranis
    emberus ---|twin| hellik
    geyrun["Geyrun"]
    emberus -->|parent of| geyrun
    orthrus["Orthrus"]
    geyrun -.->|pet| orthrus
    cerberus["Cerberus"]
    orthrus ---|sibling| cerberus
    samantha["Psamathe (Samantha)"]
    psamathes_mother["Psamathe's mother"]
    psamathes_mother -->|parent of| samantha
    samantha ---|kin| emberus
    pawna -.-x|enemy| grull
    hellik -.-x|enemy| emberus
    hellik -.-x|enemy| taranis
    the_oak_fell["The Oak Fell"]
    the_oak_fell -.-x|enemy| apito

Sponsors and worshippers

The mythology

No gods here

Book 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl. Book 1 has two gods' names and one rule. The names are on cards: the Enchanted War Gauntlet of the Exalted Grull, with its 1.5% chance to transfigure an adherent of the war god into the god himself, and the Krakaren's boss card, on which 'even Eris, Goddess of Chaos' wants nothing to do with the collective (B1 ch. 25, B1 ch. 34). The rule is Mordecai's, said carefully: 'Grull isn't a real god. There are no real gods in this game […] There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege' (B1 ch. 25). Zev adds the price: a hostile government can 'spring for a deity sponsorship this season' (B1 ch. 44). Prince Maestro names the Celestial Ascendancy as a season segment, like Faction Wars, that the Squim Conglomerate's Battle Royale lacks (B1 ch. 43).

The Oak Mother and the fourth floor

Book 2 — Carl's Doomsday Scenario. Gods 'don't appear until the fourth floor', Mordecai says, and defers the rest (B2 ch. 3). What the book gives instead is a religion: the elves worship Apito, the Oak Mother, the mother of all gods; three separate stories about her angels and the 'bless-ed' skyfowl, which the cult reads as making the skyfowl her angels; a sect of banished elves, the 201st Security Group, runs an Apito Education Center that the map labels a Corrupt Temple, eats acorns for a Magical Fervor buff, and awaits the Oak Fell, her antichrist, whom they identify as Donut (B2 ch. 17, B2 ch. 20). The angel was Miss Quill's illusion (B2 ch. 24). Beside the doctrine, the tiers: a Divine Guardian is a twelfth-floor Country Boss guarding a gate to the thirteenth (B2 ch. 7); clerics and paladins are barred from the Desperado Club (B2 ch. 2). Odette's last warning is that King Rust has bought a deity sponsorship, probably Grull, and that Carl's gauntlet can summon the god against his celebrants; Mordecai 'has a lot of experience in the subject, unfortunately' (B2 ch. 26).

Summoning, sponsorship and Soul Armor

Book 3 — The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook. Mordecai on Mana Genita's tiara: 'There's thousands of them. Gods, I mean. Only a few are dungeon regulars. Most of them never leave the 12th floor' (B3 ch. 2). The Cookbook's miscellaneous chapter gives the mechanics: three kinds of summoning — a celestial boon prayed for, an indentured summoning by a mage, an involuntary one by trap or luck — all of which, Crawler Coolie writes from his own short experience, end with the summoner dead; gods invulnerable below the twelfth floor; the big ones 'always sponsored by some rich prick who basically paid extra to play a game called the Celestial Ascendency', a game contained on the twelfth floor with its own followers and storyline; god-summoning gear salted through the dungeon as a revenue stream, deity slots sold to celebrities; and Crawler Tin's observation that gods are Soul Armor the aliens wear like clothes, removable in theory by a spell like Laundry Day (B3 ch. 32). Mordecai adds the arithmetic — an involuntary summoning lasts the vessel's level plus the god's in seconds; Grull is sanctum-tier, 250; a summoned god grows to fill his chamber; there is no cooldown; a god can be stolen from one summoning into another, 'I learned it the hard way. The hardest way possible' (B3 ch. 32). Grull's card in the Death Challenge gives the first genealogy — the child of Taranis and Apito, a trueborn heir to the Celestial Ascendency — and the first sponsor: Prince Maestro (B3 ch. 33). Nekhebit's crossbow tells the Fae Diaspora's origin (B3 ch. 24); Princess Formidable's Bolt of Ophiotaurus pauses a god's invulnerability for fifteen seconds if it strikes the eye (B3 ch. 29).

The pantheon, the Nothing and the feral gods

Book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods. Book 4 gives the pantheon a shape. It is a family: Taranis, god of thunder and regent to the Celestial Throne, is the eldest of three brothers; Emberus, Sun and Ash, the youngest, thinks himself the better candidate; Hellik, Sun and Life, is Emberus's twin and wants both dead (B4 ch. 31, B4 ch. 32). The two suns of bubble 543 are Taranis and Hellik, one chasing the other across the sky until, at the Red Equinox, Taranis is caught and the days go mostly dark, though the dromedarian's words are that he 'will be gone for but four hours a day' (B4 ch. 3). Grull is Taranis's son (B3 ch. 33); Pawna, peace, is Grull's sister and arch-enemy (B4 ch. 2). Emberus's favourite son Geyrun was murdered while Hellik sat in council, and Emberus plucked out his own eyes (B4 ch. 28, B4 ch. 32). Samantha's family is the same family seen from below: a minor deity banished by her father for a king's child, a mother who was sleeping with the same king, a great uncle who is also, she thinks, a cousin (B4 ch. 24, B4 ch. 28, B4 ch. 34). Mordecai: 'Think of the pantheon like a rich guy's country club'; the halls of the Celestial Ascendency on the twelfth floor are where 'some serious whackadoodle business' happens, and all gods lose their invulnerability there (B4 ch. 24, B4 ch. 28).

The Nothing

Book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods. Before the pantheon there were 'the gods from before. The immortal beasts who roamed the heavens'; the pantheon banished them into the Nothing and created the world, and the banishment drove them mad (B4 ch. 15). The Nothing is where the pantheon puts what it will not keep: the feral gods, the demons of 'the original Ascendency' such as Slit and Gash, Yarilo the god of lust, Psamathe, and Geyrun's puppy the day his master died (B4 ch. 21, B4 ch. 24, B4 ch. 29, B4 ch. 34). Anything in it for more than a few minutes goes crazy; everything summoned out of it is crazy and 'very good at pretending they're somebody they are not' (B4 ch. 20, B4 ch. 21). The Gate of the Feral Gods opens a door from one place to another at the cost of a hole into the Nothing: when the gate closes a feral god comes through on the opening side, and the portal lingers, two-way, until something comes through (B4 ch. 15, B4 ch. 23). Other gods hate feral gods and react to their release; each feral has a two-in-three chance of summoning a corresponding deity, which is how Ysalte nearly arrived and why the Syndicate blocked some secondary summonings (B4 ch. 27, B4 ch. 33). In book 3 the Nothing was only a spot on the Desperado Club's roulette wheel (B3 ch. 9).

Worship

Book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods. Seeing a god, finding a temple, or finding a scroll of prayer unlocks the option to worship (B4 ch. 30); a Divine Epiphany achievement gives Carl the option to worship Grull (B4 ch. 2). Clerics and paladins must pick a god at class selection, and the only temples Carl has seen are the entrances to Club Vanquisher (B4 ch. 32). Sinjin's note gives the rules: miss a day and the god turns her back, two days a debuff, three a fall from grace with a coin-flip smiting; leaving the faith is an automatic smite; a sponsor can treat the worship as his own; Azin's note after it: 'Stay the fuck away from gods' (B4 ch. 30). Carl becomes an adherent of Emberus on a falling biplane: Acolyte rank, no ascending past Devotee without a cleric or paladin class, a five per cent tithe, church quests, a shrine that appears in the saferoom — a sun disk with a cup and a skull — two sun tattoos, a boon, and two quests: find out who killed Geyrun, and kill Hellik before the twelfth floor for a Celestial God Box, with a warning that killing a god may have unintended consequences for all crawlers (B4 ch. 31, B4 ch. 32). A Celestial Grenade — developed by the nuns of Enyo when the gods competed for worshippers — summons the thrower's god for sixty seconds, or a random god if the thrower worships none (B4 ch. 14); Maggie's would have summoned Algos, Carl's summons Emberus onto the nose of a biplane (B4 ch. 14, B4 ch. 31).

See also the gods (the mechanic, traced from book 1), sponsorship and the Gate of the Feral Gods.