Off in the distance, she saw a boundary. Or if not a boundary, then a terrain type she'd never seen before. Turning Cloudstrike toward the line on the horizon, she felt a frisson of excitement. Was this a newly claimed Realm, in the midst of the Unknown Realms? All the pantheons she'd ever heard about were well-established; this was definitely something new.
Celestial Worm is a fanfiction by ack1308, crossing Worm and the Celestial Wars series (by Karen Buckeridge). Janesha is a young celestial, born to someday become a goddess, who is meant to be headed home after a dispute with her uncle. But along the way, she stumbles across a new realm, one that intrigues and baffles her. Who set up all these superpowers? What were they thinking? And most importantly, will Earth Bet survive having a barely trained nascent goddess turn up and start fixing things?
The story is available on FanFiction.Net (here
), SpaceBattles.com (here), and Sufficient Velocity.com (here), and is complete.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Janesha can bend reality in all manner of ways, but her family is vastly stronger than her, and there are beings who enforce divine laws and can call even them to heel.
- Brought Down to Badass: Gods who leave their home realm (and their believers in that realm) revert to 'merely' being celestials in any other realm, stripped of all the powers that the belief grants them. (Note that celestials are still insanely powerful when compared to mere mortals, but are at a huge disadvantage when facing the gods of the realm they've entered).
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
- A celestial who is worshipped by mortals gains whatever powers and abilities the mortals believe they have, this is known as the powerbase.
- This is counterbalanced by the thrall: a celestial also gains whatever weaknesses, compulsions, or flaws they are believed to have.
- In addition, an actively worshipped celestial is immutably convinced that their current powerbase and thrall is right and proper and the natural order of things, and will fight tooth and nail to preserve it even if it's objectively horrible.
- If a celestial is attuned to a realm, all mortal worshippers within the same realm count. If not, a worshipper has to be within about fifteen feet to have any effect. In the event of multiple contradictory beliefs, whatever has the most numbers wins out.
- Godzilla Threshold: Calling in help from Janesha's family will fix whatever problem Earth Bet might face, but with a risk that they'll outright destroy the entire realm if they get upset or if a fight starts. When Janesha and Taylor get completely out of hand, Danny tries it anyway, praying to her uncle to come and save them.
- Hybrid Power: Celestials draw their divine power from mortal belief, and if they leave their realm they leave everything but their base celestial powers behind. Celestial-human hybrids, however, can believe in themselves and carry their powers with them wherever they go. Because of this, virtually all pantheons consider hybrids too dangerous to be left alive, and hunt them down and exterminate them.
- Immortal Procreation Clause: Janesha mentions that unless a powerbase gets involved, celestials breed very very slowly. First sex is almost guaranteed to produce offspring, but after that you might get one child every other millennium. This is another reason why all pantheons fear hybrids and work to exterminate them: hybrids are born on a mortal timescale, so some would-be conqueror could impregnate a thousand priestesses in a few years and have an army within a couple of decades.
- I Owe You My Life: The only reason Janesha listens to Danny at all. He distracted a dangerous monster long enough for her to recover and kill it.
- Intergenerational Rivalry: The final battle of the story is between Janesha and her eons-older aunt Armina, the War Goddess of Mystal.
- Mind Control: Janesha considers "mind-bending" to be a perfectly normal way to treat mortals. She can read, edit, and erase memories, issue commands in a Compelling Voice, and generally make anyone do anything she wants. Taylor and Danny's insistence that she shouldn't is a constant source of aggravation to her.
- The Only Believer: Taylor becomes that for Janesha for part of the story and then Danny worships Chance (Janesha's luck god uncle) for a brief time. It's a well known syndrome amongst established pantheons; since gods are shaped by the beliefs of their worshippers, having just one fanatic believer tends to make them powerful but unstable.
- Pegasus: In this setting, they are called mystallions, and are native to the realm of Mystal. Pegasus itself was a mystallion who was briefly loaned to a mortal. They are smart, opinionated and very protective of their riders. They can also fly stupidly fast, mainly because they are celestial creatures themselves.
- Stop Worshipping Me: At the beginning of the story, Janesha warns Danny and Taylor to never mention she's a celestial or to even consider worshipping her. As a teenager, she has centuries to go before she'll be deemed fit to actually get believers of her own.
- The events toward the end of the story tend to bear this out.
- Teleportation: All celestials can realm-step; this allows them to step 'up' into the celestial realm and 'down' again, anywhere else on a planet.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: With phenomenal cosmic power but limited life experience, Janesha is inclined to create a paradise through overwhelming force and Mind Control, and Taylor gradually comes around toward agreeing with her. Especially once Taylor actually starts worshipping her, turning her into a full goddess but also causing their beliefs to influence each other's thinking.Danny: Janesha, you may possess ultimate power, but sometimes the best use of power is to not use it. Trust me on this. I’ve been in and around unions longer than you’ve been alive.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Janesha and Taylor would like to turn the whole world into a paradise, and anyone who gets in their way can expect smiting.
