Setting - A Devil's Eye View of the Church
So, the Magnas Church. Here we are on the edges of the most holy city in the world, surely, a magnificent...twelve buildings, all worthy of my father's glory.
Seriously, building a hovel and calling it a cathedral would have been less offensive and detached from reality than this. That my father hasn't leveled it is evidence either of his infinite mercy, or his infinite apathy. You aren't asking which it is, and he isn't answering.
...yes, I am aware the buildings are larger on the inside, and by enough to hold several larger buildings. It is the evidence of the craftsmanship of my brothers, with perhaps some unappreciated assistance from myself. It's like I'm a god or something, and I somehow know things. You mortals just get so carried away with first impressions, some of you have actually walked past it looking for "the great city of Arceus." Hilarious.
So, let's break down the Celestial Hierarchy. Obviously, my father is at the top. You know him as Arceus, but he has a lot of names, all of them very flattering. He is our commander, and directs us when something needs to be done. He is power incarnate, and has ultimate authority over us all...for now at least.
Mother, or Mew as you might call her, created all of us, and I won't hear a damn snicker from any of you more irreverent types about how she made Arceus or her relationship with him. No one knows how that happened, and I do not pry. All business we cannot or will not handle passes by her before finally going up, so she's your last real hope before it goes to my uncaring father. She is the source of life in this world, and cares for it a great deal...perhaps too much, from time to time.
Under her are Xerneas and Yveltal, the warring and contentious gods of life and death. They determine when something comes in and when it leaves, and they are forever fighting each other over the specifics of this. Father seems to enjoy their conflict, and does not involve himself between them, feeling their ineffective and sloppy methods yield desired results.
Whatever father thinks is best. More fuel for my fires, as far as I'm concerned.
Next to them are the Tao Trinity, two warring brothers and their dragon which impressed father so much with their convictions that he elevated all three of them into Heaven to serve as Idealism, Truth, and Impotency, the last one hoping to end the conflict between the first two, Reshiram and Zekrom, who share the exact same domains up here, but still oppose each other somehow.
Perhaps you think I'm being too hard on poor Kyurem, but honestly, if father has done nothing but increase the scope of their battles, why should he believe he can stop them? He's been driven into despair and hermetic life as a result of his inability to reason with them. As a god, he's worthless, but some people choose to give a prayer or two his way...likely out of some misguided sense of pity for those too weak or foolish to uplift themselves. I don't understand it at all, and won't pretend to.
In charge of the stuff you don't think about are the direct heirs to Arceus's throne, Palkia, Dialga, and yours truly.
The first born, Palkia, covers space, distance, connections, matter and dimensions. My wild and imaginative brother has the authority to double the number of dimensions you interact with from three to six. If that feeling in your mind was utter terror at mathematical incomprehension as you tried to grasp that idea, that means you are still sane, and smarter than you know. He doesn't really like visitors very much, and is certainly the most aloof of the three of us.
Dialga is the second-born of us, and he controls the flow of time and causality. The Celebis answer directly to him, and he has final authority over what constitutes acceptable travel into the time, and what does not. I'll give you a hint: he really hates it when you go into the past, or try to co-exist with yourself in the present. I have a couple tickets to such times, though, if you want to discuss prices with me after we leave the "city."
For now, we get to my favorite topic - me, the youngest of father's three children.
I may be the most misunderstood of the three. I'm not a bad guy, you know. You mortals see me as the judge of the dead, the assigner of the damned, but that is not quite accurate. What my job entails isn't the dead, it is entropy itself. I determine where EVERYTHING goes once it is gone from this world, from spirit to matter.
Palkia and Dialga might be able to create space and time, but I determine what happens to the excess space and time. I create boundaries, the invisible line separating that seat from the air from your buttocks, and from one second to the next. I am the reason time only goes in one direction, instead of both at the same time for infinity. I am the lord of antimatter itself, the antithesis of existence.
My side job is being the judge of the dead, and that is because your spirits don't quite fit into the purview of the other two. Most of you, I will simply pull the darkness acquired from this world out of your spirits and send you to Xerneas after Yveltal sends you to me. You don't remember this procedure, and you never will, but I personally know the measure of each and every one of you before you are born. Most of you are worthless.
A few of you, however, fail to make good deals with me and then are dumb enough to die with more darkness in your soul than you have soul. A dire fate awaits you; you go into the Furnace, with the rest of the antimatter that is burned up to keep this wonderful existence of yours what it is.
I'll take offers for deals after we leave, thank you. It's for your own interests. After all, you don't want to ask me here and now, and have your neighbors wonder WHY you feel a sudden need to discuss your ultimate fate with me, do you? Know that of my three brothers and my father, I am the one who has the most interest in you.
Perhaps you should consider that the next time you pray to a god.
On to the next triad of gods, you have the gods of weather and of the world itself: Rayquaza, Groudon, and Kyogre, or sky, land and seas respectively. While respected within the Celestial Bureaucracy, they are less what I would call "gods" and more akin to "forces of nature." Killing one of them would have a devastating effect on your world, and these three are fully aware of that, so they tend to react with more than a bit of hostility and trepidation whenever one of you blunders too close to them.
They take offerings, but every now and then they have fits of pique about one thing or another and decide they really could care less about your pitiful attempts at bribing them. Most of the time, however, they appreciate the prayers and thoughts. I prefer more consistent co-workers, personally, but at least they understand how power works, and they are competent in their niche, if nothing else.
Now we get to the gods who work in pairs, the Duos. First we have the Lunar Duo, Cressalia and Darkrai, who cover destiny together, and dreams and nightmares respectively. These two have the job of policy direction in the Bureaucracy, a very powerful and prestigious position. So far, all policy leads you mortals straight to me, so at this point I have nothing to complain about when it comes to the calls they make.
Cressalia is flowers, happiness, sex, love, inspiration and very, very annoying - which naturally means simple-minded mortals think she's the best. I thankfully have little overlap with her. Darkrai, however, intrigues me, as his job often entails devouring evil that you humans can create from nothing, evil that often would go into my furnace instead. He is both the bringer of nightmares, and their destroyer.
If he had any ambition, he could just use that power to charge himself up, dispose or overpower his co-worker, and then see how sharp I am at dealing with a challenge to my position. I would relish the chance to test my power and wits against him. Sadly, he's content with his job, and refuses to accept a transfer to my department.
And finally we come to the Tower Duo, Ho-Oh and Lugia, backup deities of sky and sea respectively, and the ones who are in charge of making sure these elements are safe for you. They claim to hide away from the world to prevent their power and talents from being abused, and to prevent themselves from altering the world for the worst with their power.
Frankly, I find their moralizing contemptible. It didn't stop either of them during the Great War, and it won't stop them if your kind is ever inspired to kill themselves off a second time. In fact, I'm just going to break each of them down, right now.
Ho-Oh doesn't withhold the gift of resurrection from humanity, much less do it for their own good. His price is just less upfront than mine: he wants to know just how badly you want it, and how many hoops you are willing to jump through to get it. He's the same as me in the end, just with more wind, fire, moral posturing and less to offer for the same price. I wouldn't surprise me if he secretly enjoys your suffering and despair, while pretending to hold distant compassion for you.
Lugia, on the other hand, is a coward who lacks the self-discipline to learn how to control his own strength, choosing instead to withdraw from the world and act through proxies. He claims his strength could destroy the world if unchecked, and to his credit he's probably able to back that claim up. That said, he lacks the courage to control himself, and would rather withdraw from the world than face himself and his weakness of character. He's almost as useless as Kyurem.
And now we get to the gods who work alone in their departments, starting with Heatran, my...our first challenge.
When my brothers and I were born at the Spear Pillar, this one was born at the base of it, in the center of the world, as my father's bastard. Having no higher purpose or guidance, my wayward brother knew only the imperatives to destroy and reproduce. It inflicted far more damage than it should have, because it turns out that getting two arrogant self-absorbed fools to step out of their projects and deal with a problem you need their help to solve is actually hard. Imagine that.
It was after the three of us intervened and successfully stopped it, that father put his foot down and said, "We need a task force to deal with Heatran in the future." What remarkable foresight and wisdom father has! What worthiness of the right to rule could be better demonstrated, then in his impeccable timing?
And thus, he made the Lake Guardians, or rather he commanded it be so, and mother actually did the work, as usual. I'll go into them later, as they are Terrestrial Bureaucracy, but in short they are emergency God-killers, here to insure father has to actually do as little personally as possible.
As for what Heatran actually does that is useful...well, they power my furnace, from the center of the world, safe and contained until one of you mortal morons somehow manage to cut them loose again, regardless of how many "keep out" signs we hang around them. I am still calculating the damage they inflicted during the Wars.
The next fellow is Regigigas, usually depicted in art as holding up the world. Originally, his job was landscaping and the education of technology. However, you mortals learned of something called "empathy," which I have been told is not, in fact, some kind of exotic dish, but the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
I can get one of those things, but while the other sounds like a complete waste of time, it apparently is not. I have been told this is what allowed you to bond with your Mons down here in the world. Regigigas had less understanding of this then I did, and rather than doing what I did and asking mother what was going on down here, he decided to take your bonds as a personal affront on his job of grand taskmaster of the world and starting crushing as many of these new Masters as he could reach.
Instead of the Mons running away from the humans to save their lives from being crushed by an angry god, for some insane reason they stood by you and fought their former boss, frequently sharing the fate of their masters. Several of the gods, myself among them, debated the pros and cons of Regigigas's bender, and we decided that he had overreached his boundaries and needed to be taught a harsh lesson.
He and all his children were imprisoned beneath the world until they all calmed down after a massive joint effect between Heaven and Earth. His kids have been allowed out after they got the message, but the big one himself views us all as traitors now, and is now quite insane. He'd probably burn the world down if he could, and no one was insane enough to crack his seals, not even during the madness of the Great War.
A coalition of deranged Pokemon Nobles almost busted them during the Aftershock War, but they were thankfully stopped. They literally did not understand what their actions would have meant, or why we were killing them. War can make a monster even out of me.
Moving back to the topic...he's the reason earthquakes and volcanos happen. That's him trying to break out. And failing, as he will always do.
Then there is Victini. That little disreputable bastard of a god.
Spare me your gasps; I'm the devil, remember? I'll say whatever I feel like saying about whomever I feel like saying it about. You are big on praising the little vermin, so let me give you some perspective and some - clearly - well needed criticism.
Father was impressed by mortal valor during the conflict, despite the fact they needed our help to make that valor worth more than a glorified suicide and despite the fact that if they had just remembered their place and not sought to overreach it, none of this would have happened...
But father was impressed with you lowly mortals actually doing something for a change...for some reason. Even though it got a perfectly effective god who understood his job imprisoned, because watching others forget their place inspired him to forget his.
The point is, he decided the Lake Guardians didn't need to do all the work, even though they were doing a fine job. So he petitioned mother to make this little abomination to help you mortals defeat the powerful, up to and including gods.
I have faced this little bastard more times than I care to recall. I have had numerous plans derailed, impending antimatter reduced or even entirely lost, because of this dishonorable self-righteous rat! Father even gave him to the right to rewrite the destiny of mortals!
I sent my objections of this to mother, and she told me to take it up with the Lunar Duo. I did, and Cressalia apparently had no problem with it. She had taken a shine to the little creature, so that meant I was getting nowhere with her.
So I tried seeing what I could get Darkrai to do. He informed me, and I quote: "I am not stepping into this feud. I will not fight your battles for you, Giratina, and this is not my problem."
The gall! Fate is his job - it is his ONLY job! I petitioned to allow me to investigate them for possibility of internal corruption.
I was denied, by father of course, and then subjected to such an indignity myself, by none other than Darkrai! I was absolved, of course, but the sheer humiliation! Victini's charm is unnatural, causing people to forget their place, upsetting natural and divine order alike.
He runs rampant, doing whatever he likes with no oversight save mother, who spoils him like a child.
I require no oversight. I keep my word. I maintain the universe, because I take my job seriously.
He just does whatever he wants, and no one sees a problem with this loose cannon. Well, during the war, I killed plenty of loose cannons. I was ordered to let this one live.
Today, I consider him a loose end, one that I eagerly look forward to tying off.
Enough about the so-called god of heroes, hateworthy vermin of heaven as he is. Let's move on to father's final mistake, Zygarde, the Harbinger of the End.
There are many gods, mons, and civilizations which are not mentioned anymore, and this monster is the reason why. This monster...is THE killer of gods. He's worse than Heatran, Regigigas, or even the rat by far.
Understand my fear: when the Harbinger devours something, nothing is left. No body, no soul, no essence, no antimatter, nothing left to reenter the cycle, as he devours that too. All is dust before the Harbinger.
His avatar was unleashed during the Great War, and that inspired my father to finally turn around and realize there was a war going on, and that maybe he should actually stop it before the avatar released the original form and killed us all. So he did, finally...by inspiring mortals to kill it, of course.
I don't know why mother created this thing, and I understand less why father tolerates it. I do not know what purpose this...thing...could possibly serve in the greater scheme of things, or in what situation its release could be seen as a positive force. I wouldn't unleash it even in a mutual destruction gambit to kill the rat - it is far too dangerous to everyone!
I don't know its purpose, and I hope to never find it out.
Enough of dire talk from me. I will move on to the Terrestrial Hierarchy next.
