The Forge

The Forge is not one world but a cluster of them, and not a system but an economy. The gods here are real, numerous, and hungry: they run on mortal belief, and everything mortals call magic — classes, blessings, levels — is a grant from a god with motives of its own. A class is a loan. A miracle is a withdrawal. Belief freely given is the only currency that matters, and enough of it, gathered in the right hands, can make a brand-new god from scratch.

The stories range across the whole map of that economy: a dead village on the Veridian frontier rebuilt soul by soul, a Roman-Renaissance port whose priest-cartel refuses classes to the working majority, an island nation that has forgotten the invasion is coming back, a desert continent crossed by a dead Australian truckie turned god of travellers, a drowning water-world with a century left on its clock. Different worlds, different registers, one rulebook: power is a bargain, and the price is always paid by someone.