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Description

The early millennia of Assembly’s Golden Age were a prime of the Godhunters Order. An organization patronized directly by Founders, and tasked to observe, control and occasionally eliminate the so-called elder gods – supernatural creatures who, despite being all artificial creations, had managed to accumulate enough power and influence to become de-facto divine beings.

Over the course of its existence, the Order had produced numerous offshoots and side branches, occasionally going as far as engineering entire new races to fulfill particular purposes – and one of the most infamous among such branches was the heretical Cult of Apotheosis.

The very word "apotheosis" was often used in the Order’s charters, but it was always meant to be metaphorical – renouncing will of the higher powers, perfecting oneself mentally and physically, making the world around you into what you want it to be, and so on. But the heretics, on the other hand, decided on a much more literal interpretation of the term. Believing that the most efficient way to fight gods was to steal and appropriate their power, the cultists had envisioned the rite of deification – infusion of divine essence into their own flesh-and-blood bodies!

But regular assemblian flesh and godflesh were like water and oil – similar-looking, but ultimately unmixable, with resulting chimeras all coming out unstable and self-destructive. This issue had deterred many followers from the Cult, but the most zealous of them had remained – and eventually solved it by going all the way through, and replacing their tissues with godflesh in their entirety! These turned neo-gods had become some of the most fearsome members of the Order, and were employed during the toughest of confrontation – but over eons, their minds failed to handle the sheer power of their new vessels and eroded, and they turned into the feral deities indistinguishable from those they once used to hunt.

For that reason, the Cult of Apotheosis was eventually abolished, but its legacy continued to affect the Assembly it a lot of subtle ways – with the rite of deification becoming the basis for the now ubiquitous biocompatible arcane inclusions (a.k.a "mana particles "), and the premise of using gods’ flesh against them manifesting in a far more convenient form .

And epochs later, that legacy had caught an attention of one particular figure – a former member of the Order himself, albeit unaffiliated with the cultists – who, purely out of scientific curiocity, decided to find out whether or not it was possible to create a stable neo-deity after all.

Hundreds of thousands of centuries he spent refining the ancient ritual to its utmost perfection.

And now, all that is needed was the right subject…

* * *

The whole story can be read here .

Description

The early millennia of Assembly’s Golden Age were a prime of the Godhunters Order. An organization patronized directly by Founders, and tasked to observe, control and occasionally eliminate the so-called elder gods – supernatural creatures who, despite being all artificial creations, had managed to accumulate enough power and influence to become de-facto divine beings.

Over the course of its existence, the Order had produced numerous offshoots and side branches, occasionally going as far as engineering entire new races to fulfill particular purposes – and one of the most infamous among such branches was the heretical Cult of Apotheosis.

The very word "apotheosis" was often used in the Order’s charters, but it was always meant to be metaphorical – renouncing will of the higher powers, perfecting oneself mentally and physically, making the world around you into what you want it to be, and so on. But the heretics, on the other hand, decided on a much more literal interpretation of the term. Believing that the most efficient way to fight gods was to steal and appropriate their power, the cultists had envisioned the rite of deification – infusion of divine essence into their own flesh-and-blood bodies!

But regular assemblian flesh and godflesh were like water and oil – similar-looking, but ultimately unmixable, with resulting chimeras all coming out unstable and self-destructive. This issue had deterred many followers from the Cult, but the most zealous of them had remained – and eventually solved it by going all the way through, and replacing their tissues with godflesh in their entirety! These turned neo-gods had become some of the most fearsome members of the Order, and were employed during the toughest of confrontation – but over eons, their minds failed to handle the sheer power of their new vessels and eroded, and they turned into the feral deities indistinguishable from those they once used to hunt.

For that reason, the Cult of Apotheosis was eventually abolished, but its legacy continued to affect the Assembly it a lot of subtle ways – with the rite of deification becoming the basis for the now ubiquitous biocompatible arcane inclusions (a.k.a "mana particles "), and the premise of using gods’ flesh against them manifesting in a far more convenient form .

And epochs later, that legacy had caught an attention of one particular figure – a former member of the Order himself, albeit unaffiliated with the cultists – who, purely out of scientific curiocity, decided to find out whether or not it was possible to create a stable neo-deity after all.

Hundreds of thousands of centuries he spent refining the ancient ritual to its utmost perfection.

And now, all that is needed was the right subject…

* * *

The whole story can be read here .