So, a character in my current WIP, in the time-honored tradition of evil narcissistic villains, has decided that he is going to become a god. The MC (who, interestingly enough, is an atheist) gets sucked into this mess by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up having to join the effort to stop this from happening after her own particular problems get tangled up in it as well. The issue is that I'm trying to work out the exact method by which Villain Unnamed plans to attain godhood. Here are some ideas I currently have: 1. He attempts to steal the divine essence from one of the existing five gods by diverting worship from that god to himself. 2. He can fuel his rise to divine power by capturing and using up a large number of other souls. 3. He's discovered an ancient, heretical text that contains a ritual by which you can supposedly attain godhood. It involves assembling certain extremely rare and powerful reagents. The catalyst for the ritual would be that someone has to willingly, without any sort of coercion, agree to be a sacrifice and have their own immortal soul destroyed in the process. Ironically, none of these methods would actually work, the guy really is just delusional, if also extremely intelligent and resourceful. But most of the characters in the story, being religious, believe that it could work and, anyway, the amount of destruction all this would cause would be considerable even without the creation of a new evil god. So, the questions I have are: Is this too cliche for a fantasy novel? And what do you think about the three suggested methods?
It's your story. You should decide which path to take, without asking for permissionm or validation. Think ahead from each option, and choose the one that offers the most interesting (to YOU!) potential.
Hi, Stealing divine essence from a god is likely to be a bad move career wise - he's likely to get a little pissed off, and pissed off gods make the worst enemies. The other two seem more typical, I mean lets face it, ritualistic sacrifice is always a winner. But there's another method which pops up from time to time - getting yourself worshipped. So if he starts a cult and gets loads of adoring followers, sacrifices more of them, finds a few rare, ancients and of course divine items / potions etc, goes through the appropriate ancient magical ritual and swings bollock naked through the trees its bound to work! Is it cliche? Absolutely! So what. Right it well and you're reader will be happy enough. Right it badly and even if it was completely fresh they'll hate it. Cheers, Greg.
Cogito's right. But I also have to add that the third is ridiculous. Who, in their right mind, would willingly destroy their existence on any plane with no reward ever? Other than that, I don't believe in the soul or the ability of mortals to influence anything that could remotely be described as a god. Even in fiction I find it tacky. So I can't really comment. I do suggest you read Neil Gaiman's American Gods. (SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ->) Odin plays both sides of the game. He and Loki start a huge war between the old gods (norse, egyptian, etc) and the new gods (the internet, tv, junk food, etc) and dedicates the battle to himself so that all of the death that goes on results in him becoming stronger. It's pretty badass. (END SPOILER)
