The Blessing System

The blessings are a package deal, but there are actually two ‘packages’: one has four blessings and the other has one. All souls (sapienti people and animals with souls) born in the Pentagonal Dominion are born with all five. Heretics lose the first package when they become heretics. Nobody can ever lose the second one, no matter how bad of a monster you are.

Package 1 contains: Lucognidus’s Blessing, Flamboil’s Blessing, Windesoar’s Blessing, and Cherribell’s Blessing.

Package 2 is just Sawyer’s Blessing, also known as the Contract of Souls.

Lucognidus’s Blessing: Nightmare-free sleep. The blessed person’s mind shall not be tormented by stray, cruel mental thoughts while sleeping. This doesn’t stop a person from thinking up terrible things while awake. It doesn’t stop ‘neutral’ dreams. It also doesn’t stop Vinoc, the Demon Lord of Terror. Vinoc has the power to induce nightmares, though he will typically only do it to blessed people if he has been tasked by a summoner to do it.

Flamboil’s Blessing: Immunity to intense heat. Blessed people cannot be hurt by fire, lava, boiling water, extreme temperature, or even super spicy food. (Note that some ‘chemical burns’ are beyond his control since their effects are within Liqua’s domain). It’s common for blessed people to bathe in boiling water, to cook with their bare hands over fires and touching hot plates/stoves, and to live in places that might otherwise be too hot for comfort.

Windesoar’s Blessing: Immunity to toxic gases. This blessing will prevent dangerous gases from entering a person’s airways. However, it won’t create oxygen/breathable air, so a person can still suffocate if there’s nothing safe for them to breathe.

Cherribell’s Blessing: Flavorful food. Perhaps the most boring blessing, but that’s partially why Cherribell chose it. She didn’t want her blessing to be a life-or-death matter for mortal people. Blessed people will find that food generally tastes better, even if it’s not seasoned. It’s not such a drastic change that a heretic will never experience delicious food again; they might just have to buy extra spices and herbs to get the same level of enjoyment.

Sawyer’s Blessing: The Contract of Souls. Prevents a soul from ever being destroyed or consumed. In the PD, it’s specifically only demons who can do this, so it’s often called an anti-demon spell. However, it theoretically protects souls from any other entity that could destroy/consume them.

Package 1 (the four excluding Sawyer’s Blessing) can be lost by people if they become a heretic. What determines if a person is a heretic? All people are born to a certain element, their biological element. The God of that element determines what actions/thoughts a person must have in order to be deemed a heretic.

Heresies according to each God (note also a person must be an adult according to their species (usually age 15) before they are eligible to become a heretic):

Sawyer/Death elementals: breaking a solemn promise (rarely applicable, as few volkhvs perform the ceremonies involved in those vows anymore), abusing a child.

Windesoar/Wind elementals: murder, torture, denying his divinity, disobedience to him/his Hierophant, purchasing/using a slave.

Cherribell/Plant elementals: denying her divinity.

Entomothy/Life elementals: murder, torture, abusing a child.

Flamboil/Fire elementals: murder, torture, abusing a child, bigotry.

Sparkato/Lightning elementals: refusing to have sex when asked.

Machenerate/Stone elementals: murder, torture, abusing a child, killing/torturing any animal on purpose.

Lucognidus/Mind elementals: denying his right to rule the dominion, believing he is not fit to be a God.

Liqua/Water elementals: denying the superiority of woman over man, denying her divinity.

Icsnow/Ice elementals: n/a.

Note that there are people of elements which don’t have Gods yet. Light, Darkness, Sound, and Force elementals make up their fair share of the population. People born to these elements never have to fear losing their blessings, or at least not until their elements receive a God who imposes their own laws.

So why did the Gods develop the blessing system anyway? Flamboil put the idea forward to the other Spirits because he hated the idea of innocent people, children, and animals being killed by fire. For a while, he’d watch over the world and intervene personally whenever a house caught fire or someone got dangerously close to lava. But it quickly became too much for him to handle, especially since even the Gods need sleep and he couldn’t watch people every second of the day.

Lulu’s powers granted him knowledge of how magic works, even for other elements. The Mind core taught him how he and others could cast dominion-level spells and combined spells.

Dominion-level spell: Basically a very powerful magic spell, only castable by a God, which affects the entire dominion. Very difficult, and requires a lot of mental and physical ability by the God whose blood is going to keep the spell going constantly.

Combined spells: When two magic-users (Gods, Godbloods, Demigods, etc.) use their respective magic in a synergistic way to create new effects. Some spells must be combined to be useful such as object-enchantment (what Zakuro and the merchants of magic do).

In the early days of Spiritism, the Gods were fairly new to their powers. They didn’t have powers suddenly, and in the case of Lulu, he’d gradually be taught (by the Mind core) how to do things. Sometimes he’d wake up knowing a new language, or how to do advanced calculus, or knowing the history of a country he’d never previously known to exist. One day, the Mind core taught Lucognidus that he and Flamboil could combine two dominion-level spells to achieve the effect Flamboil wanted. With that knowledge, Lucognidus figured on his own that he could combine his spell with other Spirits’ spells to perform a vast array of magical feats.

It’s similar to juggling, though. Lucognidus + Flamboil’s spell would be one ‘ball.’ Lucognidus + Windesoar’s would be another. Lucognidus + Cherribell’s would be a third. It would soon become such a strain on Lulu’s blood that he wouldn’t be able to do anything but lay on a bed and concentrate entirely on magic. But if he combined all the spells into one ‘ball’, it would lessen the strain on him.

Then came the arguments. Liqua found out exactly how Lulu’s part of the spell worked—his magic finds ‘minds’ so it knows what to bless. It won’t bless a random tree or a chunk of dirt. However, it can also modify itself based on a specific mind’s behavior. The magic could be programmed, for instance, to leave a mind if that mind had a certain thought or if the body controlling the mind performed certain actions.

Liqua and Windesoar both said they would not grant blessings out of generosity. They wanted it to be a reward system for obedience and good behavior among their followers. They insisted Lulu put the restriction that a person must obey their God’s orders to keep their blessings.

Even though it might seem out of character for Lucognidus and Flamboil now… back then, it made sense. They weren’t widely worshipped as Gods, the Conquering had only just begun, and it seemed like an easy way to encourage people to obey them.

Now you might be asking what Liqua has to do with this when she doesn’t have a blessing. That’s because she used to. Liqua’s Blessing allowed people to breathe underwater. Well, that’s what she wanted it to do anyway. Turns out, it only let people breathe underwater in rivers, lakes, ponds, and other non-Deep Sea bodies of water, because if Deep Sea wanted to kill someone, he would, regardless of Liqua’s opinion. Secondly, actual Water elementals got very little benefit from it since they can already breathe underwater. Liqua later decided it was pointless to be part of system utilizing her magic if her worshippers couldn’t even benefit from it. However, by that point, Lucognidus’s part of the spell had been cast. If they wanted to change the aspects about heresy, they’d have to erase the spell and start over. Unfortunately, the magic must be placed upon a soul when the soul is created. Therefore, if they started over, they’d be fucking over everyone who was alive and enjoying their blessings already. They couldn’t stop Liqua from leaving, but they decided not to end system because they didn’t want to upset everyone else in the world.

Meanwhile, Sawyer’s spell, the Contract of Souls, is his alone. He saw the writing on the wall when the other Spirits were bickering over the details of the blessing system and he wanted nothing to do with their nonsense. Furthermore, he strongly disagreed with the notion that people should have to obey him to keep their souls. It does have the same requirement of having to be placed upon a soul at creation, so it still gets lumped in with the others as a ‘blessing’ even though it’s not even part of the same package deal. Sawyer does contribute some of his magic to the other blessing system, though he has had a change of heart over the centuries on what his heresies should be. Like what happened with Liqua, however, he cannot change it because it would have to be remade from scratch.

So what’s the deal with heresies? Technically, the blessing system can be thought of as mostly Lucognidus’s project, with Flamboil, Cherribell, and Windesoar combining their magic with his. The others contribute magic to assist Lucognidus, but do not have dominion-level spells in effect. So what does the opinion of Sparkato and Machenerate, etc. matter? Why can a Lightning elemental lose their blessing because they refused sex? Ultimately, a lot of powerful magic which affects people of other elements needs their God’s ‘permission’ to work. The Godless elements will acquiesce to Lucognidus’s magic by default, since they recognize themselves as being ‘masterless.’ Other elements will notice they’re being manipulated and seek their God’s approval before letting another God fuck around with it. So when the magic of the Mind, Fire, Wind, and Plant Gods are trying to meddle in the body of a Lightning elemental, that person’s biological elementrons will be like “hey, we have a God already. Are we allowed to let these other elementrons affect us?” But if the God’s will is “yes, but only as long as that person accepts sexual advances” then the elementrons must obey.

Each element has power over a certain body part, and some magic can circumvent needing a God’s permission to work if it only affects the body part in question. Sawyer’s Blessing technically only affects the soul, which is considered the domain of the Death element, hence why his blessing affects all souls no matter what their God thinks of them.