Idea 93

I’ve been thinking about LOTM a lot recently and I really want to write a story that’s inspired by it. After a lot of thinking, a plot has slowly been coming together.

There are some kinks that I’m trying to work out but here’s the general gist:

MC is female: Lucia. She was just an ordinary village-girl until her village is wrapped up in an evil god’s descent. After disrupting the ceremony and causing the entire village to be wiped off the world map, she finds the evil god residing within her body.

In this world, power is granted by “constellations”, and you go from Rank 1 -> 7 by being granted “boons” by the constellation or God you follow. Usually this involves some sort of prayer and merit, but Lucia can unlock all of the boon restrictions within her body at any time, if she doesn’t fear losing control. The evil god trapped within her wants to take over her body but Lucia isn’t so easily tricked.

Ranks 8 and 9 are Angels, and at Rank 10 you can become a new God.

I was thinking of incorporating a “time loop” theme into it, but I also feel like that could undermine the core themes of the novel, or render Lucia’s journey rather meaningless. A timeless conundrum: would it be more meaningful for a character to discover themselves, or would it be more meaningful for their future choices to be decided by their future -> past selves? If time loops are done poorly, it also makes the plot complicated for no good reason, so I’m most likely not going to go with that route.

As for the purpose of the Gods, I’m still trying to hammer out the details in a way that makes sense. For now, I’ve been toying with the idea that constellations grant boons to those who pray to them in order to gain “faith” to counter the madness. The madness is the urge to converge into one, but the constellations refuse to become one with others (ego) so they use faith to ground themselves.

There are a limited number of constellations in the night sky (true gods), and most constellations are sealed beyond the “false sky”. Back in an ancient era, constellations invaded the world, but some managed to achieve godhood and overthrow some constellations, becoming the “Orthodox Gods” of the current world. These Orthodox Gods created a false sky that serves as a barrier against the outside or invading constellations, keeping the world temporarily safe.

At the end of the story, Lucia will become a constellation and join the Orthodox Gods in the battle against the outer gods.