Microscope on Zodiac Gods

Tonight we played Microscope by Ben Robbins exploring the history of a universe populated by the gods of the Zodiac. We start with the Ascension of the Gods when the gods coalesced from the porto-matter of the Big Bang into their canonical forms. Then each god creates the heavenly bodies associated with each sign, and the group combine their power to create the Earth. The next period is when humanity and the gods come together. The god Keron manifests as a king in order to sire progeny among humanity, and at one of his weddings, his bride’s sister creates controversy as she fails to recognize the gods for what they are, but humans are but a blink of the eye to immortal gods. Keron’s bride and her sister are long estranged until eventually the sister tries to kill the wife, so Keron transforms the sister into a particular species of snail. Later Capricorn and Sagittarius appear at a festival and convince many attendees to become worshippers, and Cancer bestows the power of light upon a the pearl in the clam idol created in her honor. Trying to compete, Pisces and Aquarius create an amazing water and air show that threatens to bring the heavens down to Earth, which threatens to destroy the balance of the universe until Capricorn stops them.

This is the beginning of the period when the gods are directly competing for control of humanity. A human war is stopped when Leo and Cancer become annoyed and descend upon the battlefield in their canonical forms and routed both armies. Virgo and Gemini have an argument about who will gain the dedication of a library built by a group of Mercury worshippers, with Gemini as the patron of words winning the dedication. One of the bystanders, a fruit seller, who helped adjudicate the argument has a daughter named Petra who creates a diorama out of cherry and peach pits of the library that is displayed in honor of Gemini in the library itself. Mysteriously, the gods ability to manifest on Earth wanes, and when the gods meet their conclave devolves into open warfare between them. The war eventually ends with the gods agreeing to leave the human realm, but some continue to manipulate the world by manipulating the natural world directly.

This leads to the Nature Wars when the ability to manifest is quite limited. Taurus manifests as an indestructible vine that threatens to overrun the world and disrupt the ecosystem. Aries and Cancer manifest as wolves to teach wild wolves how to protect nature from the vine expansion and gives them elevated intelligence, which leads them to using the illuminated pearl to signal and communicate with each other over vast distances. Finally, we come to the Death of the Universe and the end of our history. During this period, Virgo, Capricorn, and Taurus hit the ancient diorama of the library, causing the pits to erupt into a massive tree that bear a combined fruit with beautiful blossoms. This brief moment of beauty before precedes the gods working together to destroy the universe in order to reform it anew in a different schema.