Cosmology and the Origins of Worlds

While most stories don't take place at the scale of a multiverse, spanning all the different planes of existence or the totality of time, that doesn't mean those things don't inform the worlds which they contain. For example, the known, or even postulated existence of an afterlife, and the existence of a deathly plane may have a profound impact on the choices that world's inhabitants make while they're alive. In a world where magic exists, knowing vs. not know that magic flows into the world from another dimension full of fantastical creatures and beings of immense power can change the course of nations.

It is important to note, however, that in many, if not most instances, a detailed cosmology with a myriad of alternate planes, populated with mystical beasts, will simply never come into play. This means it is important to really assess where your energy is best spent. Obviously, if you just want to build out your world's cosmology simply because you enjoy it, go ahead any do so, but sometimes it may be more prescient to focus your energy on other aspects of the world, which may be of more use to you going forward.

I'll begin this section by admitting up front my personal bias against the inclusion of gods in a world. While I've definitely come around to them more recently, I've always found that when I've tried to add gods into a setting, everything just becomes a little to easy to hand-wave, which just isn't satisfying to me. It's odd though, because it has never bothered me when the worlds in content I've consumed have has some sort of god or gods, but when I'm working with a setting myself, I've had a hard time bringing myself to use them.

With that out of the way, however, I do want to acknowlege that in spite of that, I do believe that gods can serve a critical role in a setting. (as noted just above, I have actually started using them quite frequently, more recently)

There are a few factors that are important to consider when you are deciding whether or not to include gods in your setting, that will have a massive impact on the world these gods exist within. The first factor, and possibly the biggest, is whether or not the gods are active. An active god may be meddling behind the scene to tweak things in their own favour, or the favour of a mortal they prefer, or they may simply go down to the matial world and walk around. Active gods pose a much greater risk of causing a "why did the gods let this happen?" or a "why don't the heros just go ask that god over there for help?" problems. If you are interested in having active gods, it's likely a good path to go down to make them just as flawed as people are. This generally means that they cannot be truly all powerful or omniscient gods. (personally, I'd recomment staying away from truly all powerful or omniscient gods anyway, they tend to cause more problems than they might solve) The alternative is to have your gods be largely inactive. In this case, their primary purpose will be to inspire myths and legends. It's also possible that they were more active in the past (which may be what the myths and legends are about) but now mainly serve to add flavour and culture to the setting. Inactive gods tend to pose less of a problem when it comes to plot holes and inconsistency.

Another point of consideration is where your gods came from. Were they primordial beings which came into existence with the universe? Did some consmic force call them into being? Or did they ascend to godhood by amassing great power? This not only alters how they may be percieved, worshipped or understood, but it also affects how they may be interacted with more directly. For example, if they are simply ancient beings which ascended to godhood, that means it could be possible for others to do the same, whether that's the protagonist(s) of the story, or the evil villain they seek to thwart. Meanwhile, truly primordial beings may double as the personifications of different fundemental forces or properties of the cosmos.

Finally, something worth considering, is whether or not all gods are considered equal. Is there a hierarchy in place? If so, is that hierarchy a construct, or does it represent fundemental differences between the gods. For example, there may be one creator god, who created the universe, along with all the other gods. The other gods may be very powerful, but have their power limited to a particular domain. Then the children of those gods are even more limited.

One of the biggest ways that the cosmology of a world is likely to impact those living there is through myths and legends handed down through generations. Even in worlds where the gods walk among the mortals, it's highly unlikely that everyone in that world is going to be having regular interactions with them, and as such their knowledge and interpretations of them will be filtered through mythic portrayals. You need only look at our own world around us to see how different belief systems over the course of human history have altered, encouraged or even prevented certain behaviours.

The first thing to consider here is how much the inhabitants of a world know about the greater cosmos. In an urban fantasy setting, set in a world which is ostensibly our own, the fact that there exists another dimension filled with Fae might be almost entirely unknown, and what little record there is have been long since dismissed as fiction. In a high fantasy world, there may be entire univserities full of wizards dedicated to studying the planes and their relationships to one another.

Second, take into consideration how people have come to acquire this knowledge. If I continue with the example from above, our modern day records of Fae myth and legend may have come from a scattered set of interactions between humans and Fae. This likely would have required those involved in the interactions to make a lot of assumptions about what happened to them. Different people, with different assumptions, would lead to wildly different conclusions, and therefore different stories getting passed on. This is where the beauty of misinterpretationscomes into play. The misinterpretation of actual fact, can lead to conflict, misdirection and miscalculation of epic proportions. Maybe spirits exist in the form of the souls of the dead. Most spirits pass on after their death, but some stay trapped on Earth. Some of these trapped spirits are able to interact with the world of the living. It would be pretty easy for someone experiencing and interaction with a spirit (especially if their ability to interact is limited) is misinterpret what they witness as the vengence of an angry god; this is especially true if, for example, they are feeling guilty about soemthing they have done. Even if no gods exist in this world, repeated interactions with angry spirits could definitely serve to reinforce the belief that "the gods exist, and they're angry at us for what we've done."

It's easy to consider how different interpretations could effect different outcomes on a individual level. But it's important to consider how these interactions could effect your world on the larger scale of history. Looking to the real world again, there have been thousands of different religions and belief systems over the course of human history. And among many of the worlds largest religions, there exist yet thoughsands more sects, each with slight variations on how eactly they interpret those beliefs, and then act based upon those beliefs.

If you've read my article on Goal Oriented Worldbuilding you'll already have an idea of where I'm going with this. Not only does every world not need a myriad of different planes, 17 different pantheons of gods and eldritch horrors poking their heads around every corner, but even if those things might exist, that doesn't mean you have to figure them all out. Not every story that might even hop between worlds is going to visit every single one of them. If may be the case that simply establishing that elemental planes exist is all your really need to do for them, but since your story involves visiting the underworld, that plane probably requires a bit more attention.

Sometimes, simpler is better. I often see newer, or less developed authors put a lot of focus on the complexity of the cosmology, detailing dozens of different worlds and making every concept as foreign as possible. And while it can definitely be cool to talk about, many facets of the cosmology really don't serve any purpose, even within the framework they've developed. Which leads me to my final point. Try, especially when building such large-scale concepts within your world, to really consider what purpose each component serves. This can be viewed in a much similar manner to how we edit prose. One of the most common pieces of advice when editing prose it to cut the words that don't serve a purpose, that don't add to the story. In a similar vein, cutting the part of oyur world, cosmos, or pantheon that don't aserve the world can be a great way to make your world more digestable, easier to convery and function in a way that is more internally consistent.

I plany on writing a future article, going further in-depth on some of these point, discussing where it is that the stories really happen in the worlds we build, and how knowing that can help us decide where we should be spendnig our energy when worldbuilding.