Godbound In Space: The Arcem Sector, Part 4

So far the previous post have focused on the major players in the Arcem sector, their society and to a lesser extent their technology. These are generally considered to be part of the more 'mundane' world. Technology may be extremely advanced in the Arcem sector but it is still considered to be mostly mundane technology in the sense of Clarke's Third Law. The divine powers, meanwhile, are completely and utterly reality-breaking.

Unlike the core Godbound setting there isn't really a central origin for player characters: a being is considered a 'Divine' if it is not only able to use Effort and Gifts but also if it is able to use miracles and enact changes via Influence and Dominion. These represent fundamental changes to reality which utterly violate the laws of physics as we understand them rather than simply bend them in a soft scifi way. A good example of this violation of the physical laws as we know them would be the creation of entirely new matter, such as a being bound to Wealth having the ability to just pop into existence a cache of extremely rare minerals used as currency on a planet. Simply put, regular soft science gizmo bend reality to a near breaking point and divine-level powers flat out rewrite reality whether it make sense or not.

The Arrayed - Artificial Godlings

Need source on this.

Introduced in the deluxe version of the Godbound rulebook, the Arrayed a form of artificial divinity. The Ancients very much treated their reality-warping divinity as a form of science and they have left a staggering amount of usable data when it come to the creation of prosthetic divinity, Of course, creating an Arrayed is not cheap and could bankrupt entire solar system-spanning empires. Creating them is more than just creating high-end cybernetics, massive genetic tailoring sequences, complex synthetic organs and soul-grafting metaphysical properties. All the major factions of the Arcem system (Bright Republic, Patria, Dulimbai and more) can theoretically build an Arrayed champion: in practice very few of them exist.

The Arrayed are more than costly transhuman champions: each of them is a massive undertaking which is taxing not only to the resources of a great power but also to theotechnicians themselves not to mention the volunteer. Creating them is equal part scientific knowledge (genetics, surgery, cybernetics, nanotechnology or even more complex and odd sciences) and a mystical experience which demand complicated rites and hours upon hours of soul-cleansing meditations from all those involved. As a result, the Arrayed champions are very much treated as gods or at the very least an abstracted avatar or ideal of their nation or faction.

In the major nations of the Arcem sector, these specially-created champions tend to come in two drastically opposed flavors: there are those who live in the open as champions of the people (or, at the very least, the regime). Their names and faces are known by all the children who look upon these synthetic gods and icons with awe. Given that most Arrayed candidates are immensely gifted individuals by nature, it is likely these men and women could have already been famous before, as those few Patrian Arrayed which exist are invariably war-heroes whose faces adorn propaganda posters just as much as cereal boxes. On the other hand are those synthetic gods the people do not know of: the knives in the dark, the cruel enforcers of the regime and the hidden defender who are able to achieve more without the public's eye on them.

Not every Arrayed looks like a cyborg. Some have drastically different appearances depending on their Word, how they manifest it and how they were created. Some are perfectly formed idealized near-humans of the appropriate genetype while others created via more exotic sciences could look drastically different from their original form.

Divine Intelligences - Deus Est Machina

The Divine Intelligences are so much more than mere AI: they have complex multi-dimensional softwares designed to interact and alter matter down to the molecular or even atomic level, rewriting reality like code is rewritten. Their synthetic matrix are not made of zeroes and ones but rather of multi-leveled energy waves, thoughts-mandala, synthetic chakra pathways and other weird-but-cool-sounding pseudoscience bullshit. Unlike other synthetic gods, the Divine Intelligences were never alive to begin with, being created by advancing and granting sentience to pre-existing divine datastreams harvested from the Celestial Network or being born ex-nihilo. Divine Intelligences are obviously built using the Artificial Intelligence concept word but they may or may not be also a form of Arrayed depending on the concept.

Officially, the major powers of the Arcem Sector do not make use of full Divine Intelligence, only limited forms of synthetic minds bound by complex mantra-protocols which limit their thinking to that of their assigned task. However it is not to say their greatest theurge have not built Divine Intelligences in the past, especially Dulimbai and Patria at the height of their wars. More than a few war-torn corners of space are haunted by armies of hunter-killer cybergolems remotely operated by rogue Divine Intelligences whose minds have been twisted by the war.

More than a few techno-syndicates and illegal theurgic guilds have built or been hijacked by Divine Intelligences: these beings are, after all, among the smarter entities in the known universe and able to move between receptacles. This make hunting them down and eliminating troublesome. The Divine Intelligences allied with or running the various cabals, syndicates and guilds across the Arcem Sector are quite powerful due to their reach.

Posthumans - Mortal Plus

The term posthuman here is used to define a being which operate close or at the level of a Godbound, using Gifts and Efforts without actually being able to tap into the fundamental cosmic forces and rewriting reality as the divine-level beings can. These beings are drastically more potent than the average near-human and sentient xenotype but their abilities remain purely within the realm of (almost) plausible. These beings obviously are statted via the Peak Human concept word.

Posthumans can come in a staggering variety, as they basically are a step up from mortal heroes. Some are simply amazingly and ridiculously gifted while others are the byproduct of lesser theo-eugenic lineages meant to produce some sort of space ubermensch, 

as the Patrian and Dulimbaian once attempt in their past, as did the Ancalian. Others still are created, much like the Arrayed: either as unique individual experiment or created in batches as part of some sort of super soldier program. Others are warrior-monks trained from birth to achieve a perfect mastery of their physical forms.