User blog comment:DYBAD/Character Sheet/@comment-25135454-20171011120908/@comment-25135454-20171025163900

Yes. Both are correct.

The point of Heaven still is offering a happy afterlife, but by uniting with God. After this union, we will no longer be bound by space and time. I guess being nigh-omniscient/nigh-omnipresent is a requirement to being infinitely happy o.o

Because no matter how much we realize our dreams and desires, we will always desire more or begin desiring something completely different. This void will never be filled by anything but the infinite himself. And that's where my belief kicks in: we were made by God in his image. Our creator is infinite and there is no way to truly realize ourselves if not by him.

Yes, I guess you are right. I was mixing things up a bit. But I also must say that God isn't indifferent to wars. And He isn't different to suffering either. It's the opposite. God created humanity and, at least for a while, it's existence was as good as it could possibly be. He teached humanity, but humanity didn't listen, and all of it paid the price. However, rather than punishing humanity by it's sins, He gave us His only son, to live and suffer with us and, in the most unfair way possible, die by our hands. And that's the big point: by enduring suffering, we configure ourselves to Christ... We become more like him. And that's why we shouldn't flee from suffering, but rather endure it, following the example He gave to us.

If you are creating a sapient race, it's pratically bound to become flawed. While "sapient" strictly refers to a being that's on par with human intelligence, in my book I keep using the term to refer to every being with free will. Free will is the most important thing to give a sapient being. A free world, where you can choose between moral good and moral evil is infinitely more valuable than a world you are bound to choose only good. If there is no choice, there is no value to the choice taken at all. In a world you can choose only good, what value has sacrificing yourself for the sake of others for example? None, because you were bound to make that decision anyway. It didn't take any effort of your part, nor any true selflessness. But in a world you are free to choose between moral good and moral evil, choosing moral good has a very big deal of value, especially considering how easy it is to be evil and how hard it is to be good.

The First Soul doesn't view himself as the god of his own creations, but rather as their father. If you asked him, he wouldn't view any difference from giving birth to a child through natural means or creating a child through the Ethereal Arts. Being more human this way allows him to feel sadness and anger like everybody else and if he wants to say "fuck free will", then he'll do it. If he thinks that some war between his children has gone far enough, he will step in, in the same way a father would step in between a fight of his children. However, it's not his duty to step in, given how he goes at great lengths to teach them the right path. If they don't listen to him, then it's their resposability, not his.

Welp, I guess it's story time.

After the Great Guardian awakened the sapient races, he guided them through the High Priests from the Faith that existed since the very beginning. While that gave them a correct way to follow, many people didn't, as discord is just a consequence of free will. Many wars happened. Despite that, all the races managed to reach the apex of their civilization, where all needs were satisfied, leaving only desires to be pursued. It was in this time that the Great Guardian gave them their souls, granting them the Ethereal Arts. He descended to the worlds himself, to directly teach them how to use His power. Then he departed, but opened portals on all the worlds and called them to the Great Travel, promising them that all they ever desired was at the end of the Road. Thus the Great Travel began. But the Schism also happened: the Travelers were those who listened to the call of the Great Guardian and followed it, travelling all the world with the Great World in their minds and hearts, yearning to arrive as soon as possible. But the Great were those who accomodated themselves on their respective worlds, marveling at the Ethereal Arts and all the infinite possibilities that came with it, believing that they could grant all their desires. Then the Great Civilization was born: it did not began on any particular world, but on all of them at the same time and, when they expanded enough they collided and formed the Great Civilization. It would not be equaled in size, beauty, wealth, power or knowledge by any civilization ever again. It was truly a sight to behold: it's towers were so tall that they touched the clouds, made of white stone, silver and gold, streching endlessly until the horizons. The most beautiful women and the most badass of men lived on it. The Ethereal Arts granted them a sight of the Great World on the Road. But it didn't grant them what they expected. It didn't grant them the realization of their desires because whenever they got it, they wanted even more or wanted something else. And then... Shit.

They started exaggerating. The people and the civilization himself changed. Their towers got taller and wider, and blocked the sight of the sky. Their women, in a neverending search for more and more beauty... Exaggerated themselves and became monstrous. Their men, in a neverending search for power, began killing each other and destroying everything. The Travelers tried to warn them: their desires would not be realized by the Ethereal Arts. What granted them was merely a fragment of the whole, and it would only grant them fragments of realization for eternity. And since they came from the whole, they all helplessly yearned to return to it. The only way for their desires to be truly realized was by traveling to the end of the Road and meeting the Great Guardian once again on the Great World.

It didn't take much time for the Great to blame all their disgrace on the Travelers and begin genociding them. The Travelers were also practicers of the Ethereal Arts, but they focused on travelling and when they got the Orbs that they needed, they slowed down their practice or outright stopped it. However, the Great never stopped. They overwhelmed the Travelers in every way. It was a bloodbath: the streets of the entire Great Civilization became a river of blood, with little islands of corpses here and there. I don't even want to say what torture and rape become when allied with the Ethereal Arts. At this point, the entire universe was a complete and utter disgrace.

Now let's take a step back: before the Great Guardian gave the sapient races their souls, the First Soul was the only other practicer of the Ethereal Arts. It was in these times that he did what I wrote on a previous comment: in the beginning he didn't care, then he cared too much and then settled on solving only the problems the sapient races couldn't solve for themselves. While he was a presence in all the worlds, he chose to remain in human form of all creatures because it was on a human being that the First Soul was seeded. When the Great Guardian seeded souls into the sapient beings, a problem arose: the First Soul himself.

Every world has a Limit: a invisible barrier that separates the Ether in it's interior from the Ether of the Exterior. This essentialy limits the Ether to a world. If the people of this world practice the Ethereal Arts too much, then the Ether will be depleted and no more Orbs will be created. However, that doesn't happen because the limit is fairly high and since people travel, no world is crowded enough to reach this limit. However, the First Soul does just that. Easily. So all the Ether in all the worlds were on his hands, and everyone from the sapient races couldn't even create their first Orb because of him. So the First Soul understood that his job as "guardian angel" for the worlds had ended, since the worlds now could have all the powers to protect themselves and, in the time the Great Guardian was teaching the races about the Ethereal Arts, the First Soul left the dimension of the Road for the first time to create his own. When the Great Guardian called everyone to the Great Travel, the First Soul didn't hear. Yet. For reasons.

Fast forward a hundred thousand years, the Great are massacring the Travelers and very few of them remained. The Great were about to wipe them from the face of the universe and put an end to all the designs of the Great Guardian when one of the last travelers "accidentaly" (read as: it was the Great Guardian) entered the portal to the First Soul dimension. When she entered, he knew. He knew she entered, he knew who she was and knew her entire story. He saw the brutality and terror of the Great Civilization. He got angry and he cried with a hundred thousand years of suffering passing before his very eyes. He saw that the Great Guardian had called everyone for the Great Travel and that he hadn't heard it, but now he understood why. He then appeared before her, and assured her that he would save everyone and that everything was going to be good again.

Then he returned to the Road. He saved the remaining Travelers, healed their wounded and their sick and even ressurrected their dead. He also saved some of the Great, because even among them there were good people. Some didn't want to become what they became and some had no choice but to do it. The First Soul saved them all. However, he was merciless to those who had the choice to become otherwise, but had chosen the path of evil instead. He killed them all. And then he destroyed the Great Civilization himself. The perfect apocalypse.

The people the First Soul saved still could practice the Ethereal Arts so the world would be healed and rebuilt in no time. After doing everything he could, the First Soul returned to his dimension.

In the restored world that followed, things changed to ensure that something like the Great Civilization would never exist again: from the Great World, came the Guardians, one for every world. They were, essentially, big chunks of the Endless Soul that took every soul of the sapient races into their own when they arrived into the worlds. They also had power over the Ether of the entire world they guarded and, with that power, they sealed the portals that connected the worlds shut. Their function would be to give Tests to whoever wanted to practice the Ethereal Arts, to give that power solely to the ethical and moral.

And no, these Guardian can't take the First Soul from my character. His unique status as the Soul of Ether prevents that. The only one who can do so is the Great Guardian himself.