cosmic horror scifi

Here is the background for their entire multiverse. It came into existence after our universe faded away. The previous universe was the real world, there was never any way to travel faster than the speed of light, no psychic powers, no ascension, no technologic singularity, quantum computing turned out to be shit, and no free energy. Humanity still conquered the universe, but it took them 58 billion years to do it with relativistic spacecraft, and they never knew that they had actually conquered all of it since the universe was finite but unbounded. They essentially just circled back on themselves. Each stellar system was a state of its own unless other stars were very close. In those cases bloody wars were fought and entire systems laid to waste over millennia of slow attrition. And eventually all the stars burnt out, all the black holes withered away, all matter disintegrated, and humanity prepared to die alone in the darkness. But as the universe ended the physical laws began to break down. A kind of mania gripped humanity as it died and they started to destroy themselves. As this happened monstrous supernatural beings manifested throughout the universe and devoured huge swathes of mankind, destroying the fabric of reality wherever they went until the universe was completely unmade.
But that was not the end. Because supernatural forces actually existed, all the human Gods existed in one form or another, and humans actually had souls. But as per Abrahamic and Chinese tradition the soul is not the same as the mind, it is this crazy supernatural thing attached to the mind and body. So essentially in death human souls are little gods slightly less powerful than a Greek Daemon. And the uncounted quadrillions of humanity that had lived and died through the ages continued existing in the land of the dead. Here some souls serve gods while others do their own thing. The shapes they take are diverse and can be beautiful or hideous but all instill a sense of dread in those that face them.  The things that had burst forth from beyond space and time were the dead of countless generations. The physical laws had broken down enough for them to rip their way into the physical world. And no longer separated from the physical by the veil they could exact far more control over it.
Now it is time for the new multiverse created after the old universes destruction to come to an end. The humans seemed to have had some small influence in the how the new universe was made, so many things they always dreamed of achieving were physically possible. This also explains stuff like the unusual number of humanoids in the setting; the laws of the universe were manipulated in such a way that they produced humanoids. But this wasn’t done to help the people the new universe; it was done to make the torture all the greater when they had it torn away from them. They have bodies and minds but no souls. The only Homo sapiens sapiens has souls, and there is no reason why other than to impress upon everyone else how cruel, uncaring, and arbitrary the gods are. They have all these technologic accomplishments that will mean nothing as the laws they manipulate to create that technology cease to function. And all that hope for the future, that the universe can be made into a kind and loving environment is revealed to be a hopeless farce.



Here is the hierarchy that I made of for the cosmology.
The Absolute. Called God, Brahman, Azathnoth, The Groundstate, or Heaven. It is very hands off in its rule. Some of the humans and gods deny it exists, whether this is because they don’t believe in it or they are just being petulant is not going to be revealed. Everyone is its puppet, its dream, even if they act in defiance of it they are still doing what it wants. It is the cackling God, the nuclear chaos that birthed existence. And it finds existence absolutely hilarious. Some say that it will tire of its creation and unmake it one day, but as a being beyond even supernatural causality it is doubted whether it can actually get bored. It doesn’t experience things as a series of events, it simply is as it always was and always will be.

Aspects of the Absolute. These beings are seen as perfect and complete manifestations of the Absolute and vast wars are fought by their devotes over their perceived interests in the lands of the dead. They include Jesus(including trinity), Buddhas(theistic schools), the Three Pure Ones(as aspects of the Grand Pure One), God of Sacrifice(for Voodoo), Everlasting Sky(Iroquois), Jupiter(in his near monotheistic late Roman form), and the Jade Emperor(as an aspect of Shangdi). These will be shadowy threats whose appearance will herald the end of existence. Depending on which aspects followers are triumphant the universe will end in different ways.

Fragments of the Absolute and Fathers of Gods. This is the place for incomplete versions of the Absolute and grand beings that are Kings among gods but not omnipotent. They are much more involved with their followers. Odin, Zeus, Jupiter(early Roman), Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, Baal, Amaterasu, Ra, Marduk, Tiamat, Uranus, Quetzalcoatl, ect. For the story they are involved in the same way as the greatest of the Outer Gods and are terrifying to lesser gods, the dead, and erase souless beings(the party) from existence with their presence.
Heroes of Gods. This is the circle for martially inclined gods. Thor, Michael, Mars, ect.
Greater Gods. Your well known members Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Aztec, Celtic pantheons and the like. They have about the same amount of power as the lesser members of Outer Gods but still represent in comprehensible cosmic forces that cannot be defeated.

Lesser Gods. Minor gods of pantheons similar to high level Great Old Ones

Heroes of Men. These are the souls of great heroes, villains, religious leaders, political figureheads, and those that committed acts of great valor, sacrifice, depravity, or evil even if they were never known to anyone.

Shades of the Dead. All human descended organisms had souls in the previous universe, no other beings possessed them. They are the beings that manifest themselves in the physical universe.

The main factions in the land of the dead.
The Holy Court and Choir. These entities were known to Abrahamic, Chinese, Hindu, Voodoo, and other monotheistic religions as servants of God. They believe they were made by the Absolute to be the enforcers of its will, and take their guesses at what it wants very seriously. They are mostly interested in action to fulfill the will of God as they see it. The dead under their command are very goal oriented and often have no ability to feel sensations of pleasure or pain.
The Pantheon. These entities are the allied gods of the pagan and new world Religions that were not monotheistic they seek to maintain order in the lands of the dead and to gather followers. They take the protection and reward of the dead allied to them as their primary purpose.
The Forces of the Void. These are primordial destructive forces and their followers.

None of these factions is good. All are cruel, but they are cruel in differing ways.