“I am happy to hear that Andrew. It is critically important that you learn to understand your divinity and to master it.” Ben began, and I could hear the relief in his voice. 

“The first thing that you should know is that I’ve shut off your divine essences for the time being. They are stuck in a sort of… gestational stasis until I’m done talking to you about divinity.” He revealed, causing me to sigh in annoyance. He chuckled a second after I sighed, and I began to smile. 

“Trust me, it’s worth keeping them shut off for the time being. Your divine powers are… they’re something.” The omnipotent entity revealed, and I could hear a note of exhaustion in his voice. I had never heard that before, so it was a curious thing to hear. 

“You imbibed multiple essences that all gave you some fragment of godhood, or in several cases a full and healthy spark of divinity. Because of that you are a healthy and potent god, or you will become one when the sparks within you finish coalescing.” Ben explained, causing the edges of my lips to twitch upwards. 

“So… What can a god do?” I ultimately asked, after allowing there to be a moment of silence between the two of us. When I uttered this I heard the old man begin to laugh for a moment. 

“Oh my friend… Gods can do a lot.” He replied, emphatically. I began to smile even more when I heard this.  

“Your domains are… unclear, for the most part, but the divine essences you drank are mixing in the depths of your soul and are fusing together. So far it looks like you may well become a god of magic, music, life, death, and other related things.” The telepathic voice speaking to me from afar revealed, making my eyes widen in delighted surprise. 

“Music huh? What a weird thing for someone who has never played an instrument to become a god of…” I uttered, though I knew exactly why that was likely to become one of my initial domains. I had imbibed several essences related to music, and the bard class from various role playing games. 

As a consequence of that greedy and reckless gorging, I was now a divine master of music, which was honestly rather exciting. I intended to abuse that in the days to come. 

“Oh you’re affinity with music is something a bit… special. Your soul seems to have taken to the effects of the music and bard essences quite well, which is very intriguing to me. I am omnipotent, not omniscient, and so I never imagined that your soul would mesh with music in the way that it did.” He confessed, surprising me a bit. 

I somehow heard, or perhaps I felt, him shaking his head a second later. He huffed, audibly, and then continued to lecture me. 

“Nevertheless, Andrew, we need to continue our talk.” He informed me, sternly. 

“As a god you are not just an irresponsible… douchebag filled with virtually unlimited power. Well… You could be, but that’d be very disappointing to me.” He explained, exasperated. 

“In my time as a mostly random omnipotent being, I’ve wandered a healthy portion of the omniverse. I’ve seen so many pantheons made up of incompetent or actively malicious deities who grow fat on worship and become complacent.” He uttered, sounding dreadfully tired of what he was telling me he had seen over and over again. 

“Among other things I’d be interested in seeing you become something more than just an enormous dickhead due to your mighty powers. I want to help you rise up and become something like me, but that will depend, in part anyway, on you. I am going to encourage you to become a god of… something.” He told me, and I could hear the emotion in his voice. 

“I care surprisingly little what it is that you end up becoming a god of, so long as it is something important, and that you take it seriously. If you want to become a god of monsters, savagery, and worse, that’d be just as pleasing to me as if you became a god of heroism, saints, and civilization.” The eldritch entity revealed, and I could tell he was being serious. 

“As a god you have a chance to… be more than a mortal ever could. You have a chance to do things mortals never could, and become more than a man. It would be so interesting to me if you actually… became the sort of symbol that you have the potential to be, due to your greed.” He said, almost wistfully. 

I wondered if he was somehow reminded of his own childhood, but I knew better than to pry into the business of this… random omnipotent being. For now he was intent on aiding me and giving me a chance to take control of my life, and so I would focus on that. In time… Well, in time I may choose to switch up my strategy, but for now I was intent on getting through this conversation and learning everything I could from my mentor. 

“But before I let you go, and throw one final… little curveball your way, I want to tell you at least a little bit about divine physiology.” He began, and I heard the strange fellow clear his throat as he contemplated how to proceed from here. 

I also noted that he had a surprise prepared for me, one which I figured would be at least mildly annoying from the way he spoke about it. I waited for him to continue speaking while pondering how to proceed from here… 

“I suppose I ought to focus on the big points that are relevant to you. The biggest of which is probably your nature as a weird god of death, and the afterlife. These domains are not optional for you, as you know because you read the notes when you drank the essences you drank.” He said, truthfully. I was aware that when I finished undergoing my bizarre apotheosis I’d be a god of death and the afterlife. 

One of the divinity-bestowing essences I had consumed was one of the stranger ones I had imbibed but I also liked what it came with. Among other things that afterlife domain essence provided me with an afterlife which would store the souls of any creatures I slew, thanks to the potent power it received from mixing with other essences. The power I gained over those souls was… immense, and while I hated to admit it the benefits were capable of encouraging someone to engage in brutal behavior, benefits I figured I’d get to enjoy sometime soon. 

“I can fully read your mind and I see that you seem fairly familiar with the power you wield so… I’ll instead focus on more general tidbits you ought to know as a god, generally.” Ben uttered, as he realized that I had paid attention to the notes he made for me. Internally I chuckled as he considered where to go next. 

“Okay, so as a divinity you don’t need worshipers to survive. You are biologically immortal, so long as you retain at least one of the divine sparks suffusing you, even if you were somehow forcibly stripped of all of your essences aside from one which granted you some form of divinity. That said, worshipers are one of the more handy and reliable ways that you can grow in power.” Ben revealed, now seeming to have more fully hatched a mental plan for this conversation. 

“It is by acquiring worshipers that you gain greater and greater divinity. By forming cults devoted to you that worship you as a god of something you can build a metaphysical connection to that thing and eventually become a true god of it. Similarly if you gain enough worshipers who worship you as a god of something you are actually a god of, as in that domain is a part of your portfolio, or list of domains, you can increase your influence over that particular domain.” Ben stated, confidently. 

I absorbed what he revealed to me with abject, open interest. I could sense him sensing my emotional state, and evidently his awareness of my emotional state was exciting to him, because I could feel him enjoying our conversation thanks to my sharpened sense of empathy. 

“Gods have… highly enhanced and perfected physiologies, to the point that some mistakenly believe that all divinities are perfect beings that just happen to have different ideologies. As you will soon discover gods do not possess perfected physiologies, they are just on a wholly different level than mortals and even than creatures such as demons, angels, and other soul-entities.” My benefactor informed me, cryptically. 

As he spoke to me I was a bit alarmed to see that my surroundings were beginning to go completely white. Everything around me was fading out of view and being replaced by an ethereal, blank space and I could sense my body being forcibly dragged out of the reality I had lived my whole life in. At the same time I could sense the R.O.B. who had given me my powers in the first place beginning to smile at me. 

“And now for the surprise I prepared for you…” He whispered, mischievously. 

“I have decided, just this once, to be a bit of a trickster god. And before you get angry at me, don’t worry, this isn’t meant to be hard. All I’m doing is temporarily moving you to a simulation of the Forgotten Realms so that you can get your feet a little wet in one of the worlds you’ll one day visit.” Ben revealed, which made me snarl in annoyance. I could feel a tinge of color rushing to my cheeks as I realized what he had done. 

The omnipotent being laughed in response to my actions, but the sound wasn’t harsh. A second later he began to speak to me, and I could feel his powers lightly attempting to soothe my anger. 

“Relax, this is just so you can take a beat to grow familiar with the sort of universe-hopping you’ll one day be an expert in. You’re heading to a simulation of the Forgotten Realms, and you’ll be completing a very brief adventure while you’re there.” Ben stated, gently but also self-assuredly. He knew I couldn’t really say no, at least not at my current level of power. 

As he spoke I felt my body beginning to change again. The same sensations that I had been idly feeling earlier were creeping back into me, and they were all weird feelings related to the more powerful essences that I had imbibed. 

The essences that were still taking a beat to burst fully into life were the most intense ones, such as the “Essence of the Force Conduit”, the “Essence of the X-Gene”, the divinity essences, and other beyond-epic beverages that granted whole sets of high-level powers. Unfortunately for me, many essences were at that intense level of power. As I processed the powers welling up within me I heard Ben continue to speak in the background of my mind. 

“I’ll go ahead and tell you something special… This is basically a simulation of a simulation. How you do on this adventure won’t have any effect on the setting when you actually stop by the real simulation of the Forgotten Realms whenever you step into the ‘Fantasy’ level of the ‘Generic First Jump’, and neither will actually affect the real Forgotten Realms. That’s my way of telling you to have fun and get creative with your powers. Take your time and really get used to this place.” He told me, even as the white void he had surrounded me with began to dissipate. 

“Oh and you should know that you’re not like other fifth edition player characters. As a deity you are… Well, to put it glibly you are built different. You are effectively a 20th level bard, and a 20th level cleric with powers over the death domain. As you gain experience and grow used to your powers and your domains, your classes and subclasses will grow in variety.” The omnipotent creature who was pranking me revealed with a glib smile audible in his telepathic voice. 

“Later ‘today’ I’ll stop by again and we’ll get the perks you are owed, courtesy of the ‘Generic First Jump’ sorted, but for now I’m gonna let you use your very special ‘Body-Mod’ and nothing else for the very first leg of your little field trip. Well… We’ll be sorting your perks aside from ‘Basic Requirements’, anyway. That’s one I’ll go ahead and activate right now.” Ben’s voice indicated that he was trying to be cute with me as he dumped me into a simulation of a simulation.  

As he finished speaking I heard his voice dimming in… volume, for lack of a better word, and my senses began to adjust, at blistering speeds, to the new setting I found myself in. I found myself standing on a dirt trail in the middle of the woods. I was behind a wagon, and my mind was filling with some much needed contextualization of the identity I was granted in this simulated simulation, as well as where I was. 

I was on the road leading out of the city of Neverwinter, a prominent city in northwest Faerun. Until a few hours ago the band of adventurers that I was now joining, though they’d remember things very differently than I did thanks to my nature as a jumper, all of whom stood nearby or were on the wagon itself, had been traveling on a road known as “The High Road”, and just minutes ago we had veered east off of that road, swapping a well-guarded and safe medieval equivalent of a highway with a dusty, unsafe dirt trail. 

We were making our way towards a small trading town, though calling it even that was a bit generous, named Phandalin. The dirt trail we were on had a name, it was known as the Triboar Trail. I had been warped from my modern day-to-day life and placed into a level one adventure created by the good people at the Wizards of the Coast named “Lost Mine of Phandelver”, a tutorial adventure that I knew began with a positively brutal set of battles against a tribe of goblins that began with them ambushing the wagon I was guarding. 

As I gazed at my surroundings, I clearly heard the soft pitter patter of tiny feet in the distance, and the soft and distant sounds of goblinoid hands notching arrows to bows. I chuckled, internally, and turned in the direction of the sounds. The goblins who were supposed to mark a new player’s introduction to D&D were about to attack me… In something kind of close to real-life! 

As I readied myself to alert my allies, I couldn’t help but smile. I was ready to live out the fantasies that many D&D players imagined when they fought against goblins.

HandyHelper

Oh fuck yeah! It's time for a battle baby!