Sources of Faith:
Exiles and Outcasts: Beings abandoned by mainstream society or faith, craving power or truth.
Knowledge Hunters: Scholars, mages, or adventurers who pursue forbidden knowledge and hidden truths at any cost.
Subversives: Fanatics who are extremely dissatisfied with the existing order and seek to completely shatter or reshape it.
Obsidian narrowed his eyes. This approach was very familiar to him—hiding in the shadows to spread madness, using forbidden knowledge as bait, specifically targeting those who were desperate, greedy, or antisocial.
It was highly efficient, very covert, and could even parasitize other divine systems' faith networks to drain them.
But the drawbacks were equally obvious: all his believers would be ticking time bombs.
Believers spawned by whispers were either lunatics or extremists, bound to backfire sooner or later.
Moreover, Azeroth didn't have faith gods for him to leech off of.
Plus, he didn't particularly like this style, so he skipped it directly.
Thus, he clicked on the third option.
Divine Authority Option ③: flame keeper
Type: Primary Divine Authority (Can be advanced, unlocking secondary divine authority upon advancement)
Core Positioning: Steadfast protection, Inheriting civilization Tinder, upholding sacred vows.
Core Authority:
Grant Holy Fire: Can directly bestow your "Order Divine Fire" upon devout and qualified believers. Those who receive the divine fire can, for a short period, cast specific divine spells or blessings related to your authority.
Protection Barrier: Can construct powerful order barriers in holy sites, important strongholds, or gatherings of believers, effectively resisting corrupting forces such as chaos, undead, and demons.
Vow Fire: Witness and strengthen sacred vows between believers or between believers and you. Those who break their vows will suffer backlash from the divine fire.
Special Advantages:
Holy Fire Network: Can construct a "Flame Ring" system. Core divine practitioners act as nodes, connecting each other and to you. This network can achieve efficient flow of faith power, rapid warning transmission, collaborative casting of large-scale divine spells, and other functions.
Legacy Imprint: Important knowledge, skills, and even some divine spells can be directly imprinted into the souls or bloodlines of successors through the "divine fire," ensuring the core legacy remains unbroken.
Sources of Faith:
Defenders of Order: Soldiers, paladins, guardians, and other beings who confront chaos and destruction with their flesh and blood.
Civilization Inheritors: Scholars, artisans, teachers, and others dedicated to preserving and transmitting knowledge and skills.
Vow Bound: Highly organized, disciplined churches, knightly orders, or militarized organizations united by common vows and a strict system.
Obsidian's pupils contracted slightly.
This system was practically tailor-made for his current situation; soldiers, scholars, artisans, all were pillars of civilization.
The faith power provided by such believers was not only highly pure but could also feedback into civilization building, forming a virtuous cycle.
"This is it," Obsidian thought, selecting the third option.
Compared to a tyrant who harvested death, or a schemer in the shadows, he needed a divine power foundation that could take root, expand, and endure long-term struggles.
And such a righteous god…was difficult for believers to abandon.
The divine personality emitted a soft sound, like something "closing a lid" deep within his soul.
Not a seal, but an ignition.
In an instant, the entire Serakhen felt as if it had been thrown into a furnace.
Not scorching heat, but—brightness.
The entire floating plane, at that moment, experienced its most complete "localization" since its existence.
The previously unstable floating platform structure instantly stabilized, spatial jumps between areas disappeared, and the "mirror lake" beneath the ground began to slowly warm up, with golden ripples spreading across its surface.
It had come alive.
However, Obsidian was temporarily not in the mood to observe the changes in the demiplane.
The moment the divine flame ignited, his divine personality automatically unfolded an update—the flame keeper divine authority, with its core composed of five intertwined divine authority structures:
[Protection][Light][Order][War][Knowledge]
Five.
And among them, the most striking was "Light."
Because he himself was still a god of the Shadow domain.
To be precise, his divine personality now simultaneously contained two root powers: "Light" and "Shadow."
In the DnD system, this was an extremely unusual pairing. It wasn't unheard of, but the results were always troublesome.
In standard divine systems, if a god simultaneously bound two conflicting domains, the consequences would be at least threefold:
First, divine power reduction.
The two domains would repel each other, leading to chaotic diversion of faith power.
Believers would pray for one thing, the divine personality would respond with another, and eventually, neither side would be clear about what they believed in.
Second, divine authority mutation.
Some gods would be forced to lean towards one side, with the original opposing domain being "folded" or "silenced," existing only for combat or symbolic purposes, no longer capable of creating miracles.
Third, and most serious: alignment drift.
Forcibly bearing contradictory domains would cause the god's core personality to slide towards [Absolute Neutrality]—
Neither good nor evil, neither right nor wrong, no faith, only "maintaining balance."
Absolute neutrality might sound reasonable to mortals, but among gods, it was the most isolated stance.
Because you don't help anyone, nor do you stop anyone—then no one will help you.
More importantly, [Absolute Neutrality] would not inspire fervent faith.
Most races prayed not for balance, but for protection, salvation, revenge, truth.
No one would kneel on the ground and say, "Oh God, please maintain the balance of the cosmic order."
"…So now I'm a god of light with shadow authority?"
Nothing happened for the time being, and Obsidian breathed a sigh of relief.
He touched his chest; adjustment commands constantly flashed within his divine personality, attempting to stabilize the faith channels and avoid "prayer fragmentation" among conflicting believers.
Fortunately, the current situation was still controllable.
Although the divine name he had initially passed down was [Dragon of Shadows], he had never displayed any shadow-side abilities.
So believers probably thought this "shadow" referred to the color of his scales?
But further down the line—especially when the number of a certain type of believer surged—this internal conflict would eventually erupt.
"I need to assign roles to these two domains."
Obsidian manually set in the deep layers of his divine personality: Shadow for combat and symbolic authority; Light only for church propagation and miracle projection.
He knew this was only a temporary solution.
To solve it completely, he had to find structural balance within "divine logic."
Or, simply ascend another level and merge the two into a new form of power—but that was for later.
Now, he was a god.
And a god, after all, had to first establish himself before anything else.