The games of gods and men

[Uneven-nova]

I hum as I drift lazily through the void between multiverses, absently, when I notice a stray universe out here in the Outside, so I jump over to it with a bit of will.

As I arrive I gently grab the universe and inspect it to see what it's origin is and if I can figure out where it belongs, when I bring the tiny speck sizes ball up to my eye I see that it it is the Warhammer universe and the reason it is so far from its multiverse is because in this universe the tyranids had won completely and no other faction existed with the last being chaos who had staved with the lack of new sentient species to prey on.

"Welp, don't think the cluster will accept a dead story" See, when a universe like the Warhammer one spawns a multiverse, the World will start pruning those that no longer have a story to tell, meaning if one faction wins completely, the World dumps it into this space, but that only happens very rarely.

I hold the universe to my chest and push it into my personal cluster before jumping there myself and arriving in the massive library I call home.

I grin as I watch the infinite space expand with all of the knowledge I have gathered as I lived, and even then, it still only holds a fraction of what I truly know.

I walk towards my living area in this library, and while I do so, I run my fingers across the spines of the books I pass before grabbing the new addition.

"Oh, this place has finally transcribed the Necronomicon," I say with glee as I open the Book of the Dead and peruse its pages while batting away the Outer Gods' attempts to enter my mind with the equivalent of a smack on the hand.

For a while, I just reread the book to see if this place had properly transcribed it while fixing any mistakes I found.

"Well, you were close, old friend", I say while giving the bookcase a pat and placing the book back on its shelves, the library sends me the equivalent of a small puppy barking happily.

"Best to not leave that universe to itself for too long, it might dissipate" I jump over to the trophy room and make my way past all the dead god's weapons I had collected and the heads of the elder god that had thought it wise to prey on the being who awakened Azathoth from its slumber without collapsing the omniverse.

"Ah, here we are, an otherwise empty room" Nestled between the head of the creeping chaos and the spear of heaven, I stand before a large door decorated with all manner of shifting murals.

I push the doors open and make my way to the lone pedestal in the room and the tiny speck apon it's surface.

"Well, should probably fix the tyranids problem" With a flick of my wrist, I conjure a mirror to view the insides of the universe and start rewinding time.

"Ah, too far", I mumble as I see the war in heaven before I change the time back to where I wished to go.

"The unification wars", I say (mainly so the library's still developing mind could listen to me), when I reach the perfect moment in time for my own entrance, I start to design an avatar for my time in this universe, when I suddenly remember my favourite god I had ever met.

"Yes, this will do", I say as the small child-like body forms with playing card symbols under each eye.

When I was happy that the body had formed, as I remembered the god to look like, I infused it with my essence before placing it in the universe on a random planet.

Line break

"Wow, that's a head trip", I mumble as I shake my head to clear it of the fuzziness that comes with the possession of an avatar.

I look around at the area where I had arrived and all around me I see nothing but scrap and junk as high as the (mortal) eye can see.

"Guess I landed on a junkyard planet", I shrug, and with a bit of will, I disassemble the planet beneath me before reassembling it as disboard, along with completely changing history to make it so that this planet has always been like this and so far hasn't been found by any race, including the old ones.

I snap my fingers, and all across my new planet, the races of Disboard start waking up with memories of life on this planet.

Satisfied that I had successfully recreated Tet's home I decided to have a look around in the warp to see if my planet would have any troubles from it.

Using a bit of power, I create a portal to the warp and drift lazily through to the other side, and what I see is both unsurprising and annoying.

"God, now I see why Revelations calls them a cancer on all sentient life" I use a small flash of pure holy magic and clear the area that surrounds disboard of all demons and those like it before claiming the space as MINE and enforcing the tenets of disboard in my claimed space.

Deciding to get the probing of the chaos gods over and done with now, I set my stance and created a gargantuan bow made entirely of holy flames I had learnt from YHWH and three equally large copies of my spaces' rules transcribed into solid ORDER arrows.

I pull the holy fire bowstring back and, with a quick prayer to Artemis, who may not have existed before I made the prayer, I let the string go. The arrows blasted off with enough force for the people all across realspace to feel it.

I didn't bother watching to see if those arrows hit their intended targets and instead teleported myself into the Garden of Nurgle.

 

[Uneven-nova]

As I arrive in this disgusting place, I quickly create a peg to place over my nose to block my sense of smell before making my way to the centre of this cursed place while busying myself with creating my gift to the person I had come here to see.

As I arrive in front of Nurgles' personal cauldron, I cringe just from how it looks before turning my head to the cafe hanging above it. I pay the owner of this place no mind even as he starts to talk, and instead I jump up to the cage's door and slip through the gaps to stand in front of my intended target.

"Hi, I'm Tet, the god of games" I wave at the goddess, currently crying tears of blood as some nasty curse of Nurgle's dissolves her from the inside out, just fast enough to overcome her healing factor.

She gurgles on blood, and I frown before giving her a pat on the head while channelling more holy magic through her than most full gods' entire divinity, which subsequently purges her body of all negative effects and converts what is left over into pure life energy, further aiding in her recovery.

She coughs a bunch, and I pat her back to help her breathe even as I pay the increasingly irate Nurgle no mind. When he decides to try and do something about me intruding and healing his 'guest' I just surround the cage in a barrier and continue ignoring him.

"T-tha-ank yo-u" she coughs up a black substance that I transmutate into butterflies before continuing "t-tet, you have my gratitude for h-healing me but I must beg for your aid in leaving this a-accursed place I have found myself in for millennia" I grin as I notice her speaking getting better in real time and nod my head at her request.

"Sure miss, you can come with me. I've been wanting somebody to show my world to ever since I formed" I say with a beaming smile before warping us both cage and all to my claimed space in the warp, not before I set fire to the rot father's garden.

When we arrived at my claimed space, I quickly dissolved the cage into nothingness and created a table and chairs for us to sit at and talk.

I helped her sit in the chair (after changing its form when I saw that she had digitigrade legs instead of plantigrade like humans. Most likely a mutation from Nurgle's garden or some weird design choice of the Old Ones) I used a bit of time fuckery to bring a perfectly prepared cup of her preferred tea from the time of her pantheon's reign for her to feel more at ease.

"Thank you", she spoke softly as if she thought this was a dream she would wake from to find herself back in that garden. I smiled at her happily before I created a large viewing screen that showed my planet to her.

"This is Disboard, my planet, and if you already didn't notice from the warp around us, it has a firm set of rules all beings must follow while here", I say with a grin as I show her the incredible sights of Disboard, from the elf's homeland to the towering chess pieces that litter the planet.

"It is a lovely planet Tet and I must thank you again for your aid in escaping from nurgle" my face scrunches up at the mention of nurgle so to distract her and myself I create a chessboard on the table we sit at while also transferring the knowledge of how to play to her.

She hums as she takes the knowledge, and when I gesture to the board, she takes the distraction for what it is and makes her first move. We play the first game mostly in silence while also watching the changing view displayed on the screen when she suddenly speaks up.

"You said before that you wear the god of games. How did you manage to become so powerful as to casually stroll into Nurgle's garden and ignore his attempts to stop you?" I hum as I take her room from her and explain.

"Its quite simple and even a bit funny" I grin at her "see its entirety the chaos gods fault for my power because of a small oversight on their behalf" I form small tokens each displaying the original three chaos gods "back before the war in heaven that wiped all the old ones out the chaos gods were restricted to a much smaller area and while fighting for this space they called this war between themselves the great game" I watch her face morph into confusion before clearing up into wonder.

"And even after they came to rule almost all of the immaterial realm uncontested, they still called it the great game" It doesn't take more than that for her to form her own conclusion.

"As the god of games, you derive power from all forms of games played" I smiled at her and nodded before, with one move, I placed her king in checkmate.

"Well, how is the power I gave you settling in?" I ask out of the blue, so she stops overthinking my completely made-up origin.

"Ah, it has helped me recover almost all of my lost power from lack of worship", she bows her head a bit, and I give her a pat to make her look up.

"Don't bow to me, I don't want or require praise/worship from anyone" I shake my head before a visible exclamation point appears above my head which Isha stares at until I yell.

"You have another sibling that's alive" I exclaim, before, with minimal effort, I rip a hole into the webway and right into the black library, while also making sure not to cause any damage, otherwise my own library would get upset with me.

"I do?" Isha says as she watches me casually do more damage to the webway than all of the necrons combined.

"Yeah, I can't remember his name, but he's the god of comedy, I think", I mumble that last part, trying to remember if that was his domain or if it was something like laughter and or trickery.

 

[Uneven-nova]

"Oh, I just remembered his name", I take a big breath before shouting into the hole I made to the library.

"HEY CEGORACH COME HERE I HAVE YOUR" I look back over to Isha and mouth the word sister to her and she nods "SISTER ISHA"

I hear him before I see him, as his arrival is preempted by the sounds of cackling. When he does arrive, I look up at the very large clown-looking god, who takes one look at me and starts laughing hard.

"(Chuckle) you're an outsider (chuckle) pretending to be a mere god of games" I shuffle his words into complete gibberish before they reach Isha's ears and quickly transmit my wishes to remain as a mere god of games while here to which he sends back his agreement on the condition that I help his race which I easily agree to.

"Sister" he disappears in a cloud of confetti and reappears behind Isha enveloping her in a massive bear hug that lifts her from her seat "I've missed you more than anything" he pauses for a moment "other than maybe Vaul's special mead"

Hearing that he missed Vaul's Mead more than her Isha moves faster than I'd ever seen her move and goes to smack her brother upside the head for his comment, but he disappears and reappears behind my much smaller body, using me as a shield while he crackles at his sister's anger.

"I am starting to remember why you were the least favourite among all of us" the goddess of life grumbles as she takes her seat again while flipping the god of laughter off (I'm guessing she saw somebody on disboard use the gesture) before her face morphs into one of both great sadness and fond remembrance "but I have missed you as well brother" she says quietly.

Seeing that they most likely need a bit of time by themselves together I speak up "ight while you both talk I need to go do something" when they both look at me confused so I quickly form a picture of a watch on my wrist that I check before nodding "yep it's about time for the first outsiders to arrive near disboard" I form a portal to real space and quickly leave out from it.

When I step (read float) out of the portal, it's to the sight of a massive ship, almost the size of a continent, dropping out of warp space and almost crashing into one of the planets orbiting the system's star.

Going both intangible and invisible I float through the ship into what a quick mind read tells me is the bridge of this craft world.

"What the hell, there shouldn't be any systems near here", I hear the captain speak before he turns to the navigation and asks, "How did we not know of an entire system?" The Eldar he is speaking to just does the equivalent of his race's shrug before answering.

"While unlikely, it's not unheard of to find completely undiscovered systems even for us" I could hear the pride and sadness in the way he said the word us probably speaking of the empire more than the craftworld.

"Sir, we have complex life signs on the second planet from the star. We are also picking up readings of incredibly varied immaterium connection from the locals", one of the particularly skilled sensors quickly informed the captain.

"As you've most likely noticed, the warp here is acting very differently from how it should", a voice from behind the captain spoke, to which the captain quickly responded.

"Farseer Fanlon, it's a pleasure", the farseer waved the greeting away before the captain could finish it and continued his point. "The immaterium in this system is almost a complete inverse of the rest of the galaxy. Instead of Chaos, it is entirely ruled by Order" The Farseer used his staff to project an image into the air.

"This entire system is both closer to the immaterium than anywhere else while also being the furthest place from Chaos possible" The projected image showed a much clearer picture than most Eldar would get from trying to see the warp.

In the image, it showed not the toxic waters of the realms of Chaos but a calm ocean of silver with no ripples even from the farseer's attempts to force a reaction.

"I am not aware of the reason as to why this system is so incredibly different from anywhere else in the galaxy but so far I haven't found anything other than a single source of unfamiliar divinity" The farseer changed the image to show a small island in the centre of the ocean that held a small shrine of unfamiliar design.

"This being a naturally formed god or even perhaps a forgotten Old One prototype to our own Pantheon is the only thing I can see that would affect the immaterium in such a way", with his peace said the farseer, let the image fade and turned his attention back to the captain.

But before they could continue their talk, I appeared, hovering outside of the ship, in front of the viewport. I waved at the freaked-out Eldar before phasing through the window and speaking. "Hi, welcome to my system" I pay the weapons pointed at me no mind, even as I hear the owners of said weapons trying to fire them.

"Ah, I'm sorry, but there won't be any fighting in this system" I shake my head, and with a bit of will, I make all the weapons pointed at me start disassemble themselves piece by piece.

I make a zipping motion, and suddenly everyone in the room finds themselves unable to talk. "Anyway, welcome to the disboard system, in Tet, the god of games" I smile happily, even as the mention of me being a god makes them freak out even more.

"I'm sorry for the rude introduction but I figured this would be better than you trying to hurt somebody in this system and suddenly finding yourself punished" I shake my head as that was exactly what would have happened if I hadn't done something (I checked the future)

"Anyway, while in this system, any living being is forced to abide by the ten covenants of disboard which are as follows.

All murder, war, and robbery are forbidden in this world.

All conflicts in this world will be resolved through games.

In games, each player will bet something that they agree is of equal value.

As long as it doesn't violate pledge three, anything may be bet, and any game may be played.

The challenged party has the right to decide the rules of the game.

Any bets made in accordance with the pledges must be upheld.

Conflicts between groups will be conducted by designated representatives with absolute authority.

Being caught cheating during a game is grounds for an instant loss.

In the name of god, the previous rules may never be changed.

Let's all have fun and play together!" I smile at them, and after reassembling their weapons, I vanish back to intangibility and invisibility.

 

[Uneven-nova]

I watch as the Eldar panic while the more powerful psykers among them, like the farseer, drop to one knee from what I can assume is relief of my 'departure' back to the warp.

"Farseer, what was that?" the captain asked as he helped the kneeling Eldar back to his feet.

"A god, just as it said, but a paradoxical god of both the material and immaterial" Farseer Fanlon wiped the small amount of blood that leaked as he tried to look deeper into my being.

When he was back on his feet (with a bit of help from me undoing the damage I accidentally did to him), he looked around at the other Eldar in the bridge before speaking.

"With the new information this Tet being has given us, I find it prudent to contact others among the Farseer collective to try and discern more of the being's intentions", he nodded at the captain before making his way deeper into the craft world.

Deciding that was enough exposition I popped back over to the warp to see how Isha and Cegorach had finished their talk.

When I arrived it was to the sight of Isha strangling her brother while he tried to escape her grip.

"What happened?" I ask, and quicker than I could blink, they were calmly sitting at the table, happily chatting as if what I saw just before was completely non-existent except for the red ring around the laughing god's throat.

I shrug and create a new chair at the table, and I plopped down into it while making myself a smoothie to drink.

"So how was the chat while I was checking in on the Eldar that just entered my system?" I saw Isha glare at her brother before turning to me with a gentle motherly smile.

"It was a lovely chat, Tet, and I thank you for allowing us to have it privately", I beam at the goddess of life with a smile bright enough to light up a room, literally, as I accidentally used some light magic.

"That's good and I hope you both managed to work things out" I get distracted when I notice more probing from the Eldar, this time some from much further away than the ones in my system.

"Oh dear, those children have lost much of their subtlety since our fall", Isha says before gently swatting the prob away and instead sending a message with her signature about not being rude to her host.

I shrug and go back to looking over the disboard, and as I do, I notice that I had forgotten to convert the magic circuits of the races with magic to instead utilise the warp, so I quickly retroactively do so.

"I do wonder what you will do now that you have your freedom, dear sister?" The laughing god asked as he looked into the screen showing my planet and started taking notes (again literally as he pulled out a notebook and everything)

"I intend to stop our beloved races' continued decline into stupidity and flagrant arrogance" When she said the word beloved, I could hear the strain of her having to push the word out and not replace it with something more cruel.

We happily chat about anything that comes to mind when I suddenly stop completely and turn my head in a certain direction.

"Tet what is wrong?" Isha asks, but I ignore her as my face morphs into a scowl and I grip the barrier separating material from immaterial, ripping open a portal with none of the finesse I had used so far.

When I arrive above the disboard, I quickly start creating a massive spell circle almost the same size as the planet. Using this massive magic circle, I send out a gargantuan amount of mana in the same way as a radar system.

I find what I am looking for and again crasp space itself to crush the distance between myself and my intended target.

I arrive above a red planet quite similar to Mars except for massive towering cities and slums surrounding its surface.

I stare down at the Homeworld of the 12th son of the Emperor of mankind, Angron. I don't bother with the usual niceties and instead just teleport above the massive gladiator ring I can feel the World Eater's primarch suffering from.

3rd person view

As the crowd cheered at the coming bloodsports, a small boy could be seen on his knees above the mutilated body of his adoptive father, while the machine these barbaric people had forced into his brain tried to overwhelm the last bits of sadness he felt with pure unnatural rage. When suddenly the once normal blood red sky was gone, and in its place was complete darkness.

"You who would use my gifts to hurt and maim" a voice nobody could recognise boomed from the sky as chains of gold and black slithered and ensnared all those who had watched the boy be forced to kill his father.

"You who would laugh and cheer as a boy not even a decade old had nails forced into his brain" The chains tightened and started drawing blood from those who had ordered such a thing to happen.

"You who would gleefully force a boy to kill the only father he had ever known while stripping him of all but rage" in the arena a small child, even smaller than the boy with nails in his brain had appeared in a flash of golden lightning before placing his hand on the other boy's head and by proxy the nails digging into his brain.

"You animals are not worthy of the souls you freely give to War and Excess", with a glare at the people in the stands, the newly arrived boy started glowing, and in the hand not placed on the other boy's head, a red and black object with three cylindrical sections would appear from a ripple behind him.

"I take from you everything, your bodies and souls, your wealth and power but above all else I take from you the slaves you subject to Games as despicable as this" the boy rips the nails from the primarch's head and holds it above himself while the primarch in question looked up in wonder as the nails that had forced him to kill his own father phased though his brain and skull without killing him.

"Enuma Elish", the words weren't yelled or shouted, but every being on the planet could hear it nonetheless as the segment of the sword of rupture started spinning while a grinding noise emanated from it.

"Die and be forgotten like the mongrels you are" the boy swung the blade and in the moment it had its user's confirmation of its release the world itself shook as it's Texture was erased and all that lived on its surface and any evidence of them was destroyed down to the informational level with the sole exception of the numerous slaves that would wake up on disboard with the nails removed and a city with all the necessary things for them to live.

After a while of bickering and the slaves trying to elect a leader (while also not being allowed to fight to choose that person) the new leader would find a note in his office once everything had calmed down and the people had settled.

"I apologise for my late help, and as repayment, I shall ensure that your people will be accepted on this new planet by its citizens", and at the bottom of the page were the four card symbols the god of games claimed as his own.