Editing Acrozatarim/Appendix 2 (section)

==Mortals and Spirits - The Younger Gods==

The Younger Gods rose from the ranks of the spirits and mortals who stood against the Elder Gods in the Dawn War.  Exactly how and why the Youngers rose up remains unclear to modern theologians.  Some believe that the destruction of Elder immanence infrastructure released a wash of divine potential into the world, and that some of the Youngers were in the right place at the right time to absorb it.  Others suggest that the creation of the Youngers was the work of the sleeping Great Elementals, a second wave of dreams that anchored themselves into hosts.  Regardless of the truth, the Youngers all rose into existence across a period from the beginning of the Dawn War to just after it.  No Younger Gods have been created since.

The other notable feature of the Younger Gods is that they have all left the physical world.  The Elder Gods were all profoundly and manifestly real - even though they bent space and warped reality, they undeniably and physically existed, even if the changes wrought by their defeat may have altered that.  The Youngers, however, hold divine power without physical presence.  Without exception, every single Younger God excarnated during or shortly after the Dawn War - the last excarnation occurred within a century of the end of the War.  While, when they were incarnate, the Younger Gods were obviously powerful and infused with divine might, the excarnation is believed to have been their true 'ascension'.  The nature of excarnation is debated fiercely - it is not the same as simple death, because a number of potential Younger Gods were genuinely slain and did not become part of the Heavenly Host.

There is a rough divide between the Younger Gods who were once spirits and those who were once mortals, whether servitors or True Life.  All Younger Gods remain remote from the world - their existence is confirmed by the Celestial Bureaucracy and those divine vessels who they grant power to, but Younger Gods do not generally intervene directly.  They are believed, instead, to largely watch over their particular portfolios and guide in broad strokes from their distant, lofty perch.  However, those Younger Gods from spirit origin can and do manifest avatars.  These avatars are usually monstrous manifestations of raw primal power, tasked with a specific objective.  They are not generally present to directly lead or give guidance, and most avatars recorded have not even been able (or possibly just not cared to) communicate.  They often enact strange or precipitous events that presumably match the Younger God's agenda.  Younger Gods from mortal origin either cannot or simply choose not to create avatars.  Theological consensus is that the spirits' more fundamental connection with the world for which they were manifest caretakers has left them with a stronger link to it, even now, that they can exploit.

It is extremely difficult to directly list all the members of the Heavenly Host.  The Dawn War raged across the world, and various Younger Gods emerged in many different regions; some Younger Gods are essentially unknown outside of their particular homeland.  Making matters stranger still is that various Younger Gods appear to be admixtures of a number of different figures of the Dawn War, a number of aspects sharing most of a given portfolio but each being a specific and different person or being.  In some cases, a given Younger God's aspects include both spirits and mortals.  Picking out which of several conflicting tales may be true is essentially impossible, since they may all seem to be true complete with divine vessels, Celestial Bureaucracy servants and fierce rivalries with the other interpretations.  As such, certain traits are shared by several Younger Gods whose veneration is scattered across the world, and they may all in fact be the same God.  How this is supposed to work theologically is still subject to debate, but the Heavenly Host simply is, regardless of what mortal scholars argue should be the case.