Eve of the Gods--NaNo 2011-12 Prep

October 21: Government

Well, Lyn lives in the United States, and most of us are well aware of the political system within that nation. She is a registered Democrat, but pretty often doesn't vote along party lines and isn't particularly political. It makes her too angry to get involved and anger gives her headaches, so she just kind of ignores it. Um, the legislative branch creates laws in the guise of Congress, divided into the House and Senate as per the Virginia and Rhode Island Compromise. The executive branch executes the laws (very creative, yeah) in the person of the Presidency, as well as the EOP (Executive Office of the Presidency), which includes the cabinet, the VP and the Office of the VP, the joint chiefs, and all those department thingies that are represented in the cabinet (like Homeland Security, State, Treasury, etc). Laws are officiated and examined, and punishments are doled out, by the Judiciary, which Hamilton called the weakest of the three branches. These are the courts and whatnot.

As far as the gods are concerned. You have the Upper Courts, which are mostly Heaven and Hell, as these entities were created directly by God himself. Angels, Demons, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God, etc. These are the Upper Courts. They are, as per God's orders, largely forbidden from taking part in the affairs of humanity and/or the Lesser Courts. Following the birth, life, death, and subsequent resurrection of his Son, God stays out of humanity's business. No more floods and/or swirling vortexes of fire. Mormons are crazy and even Jesus thinks so. Islam is legit, but it's the last time God got directly involved with humanity and they didn't get it quite right (neither did Christianity, really, or any human religion--damn that Free Will thing).

The Lesser Courts are all the others. Hinduism is something of an exception as their Brahma is actually God in a different guise, but all of their other gods are lesser gods as humans created them and not God himself. With the advent of Free Will among humanity, they were able and often did create other forms of belief, which then became real. This is a concept in Tibetan Buddhism called tulpa, or thoughtform. Strong enough belief makes something real. These gods, goddesses, and other entities are, however, completely reliant upon human belief and have, thus, become less and less powerful as said belief has waned. They now exist by wringing every ounce of belief that they can use out of humanity (often belief in sports teams, which can't use them because sports teams don't possess consciousness) and are in a lot of danger if humanity ceases to exist. Also, they are not bound by God's decree to remain out of human business because they kind of can't stay out of humanity's hair. They live in their own Courts (Greek, Celtic, Norse, etc), called Olympus, Asgard, Tir Na nOg, whatever you wanna call it, the sum of which are called the Twilight, but prefer to spend their time in our realm (because their realms have become thin and stifling without the power of belief sustaining them). They only go back to the Twilight to collect power, and if they are forced to remain there.