I am going for several things with Copernican Sovereignty both in the setting and with the rules.

Copernican Elect (Gunka no Baltzar)

The setting is not supposed to be gonzo in the genre-bending sense, but it does shift aesthetic and technological registers dramatically between campaign regions. The lowlands controlled by the Copernican Elect serves as a kind of metropole in contrast to the adventurous hinterlands. The style of these two areas is thus intended to be different. I see the Elect with a vaguely Napoleonic or even Axis styled militaristic demeanor, though not mapped to any particular Earth culture. The more extravagant Elect may present themselves in a fantastic and less conventional manner. Ideologically, they are half scheming Roman patricians building family dynasties and half messianic modernists. They have managed to subdue the gods and harness their power for mortal benefit and certainly this is Progress with a capital P. Many “monsters” in the lowlands are creations shaped from god-matter or artifacts powered by god energy, such as the multi-hued Dractonothopter airships or the giant Panzer armor suits piloted by Copernican Knights.

Adventurers (Final Fantasy Legends)

The simultaneous existence of different levels of development, with adventurers coming from the wild side, is something that deserves a separate post. I want to emphasize that the Elect are not supposed to serve as an evil empire. Though particular members of the Copernican Elect may be adversaries, I could just as easily see them as allies or patrons to adventurers.

In terms of game details, though I have been using some monster books, I do not plan to use any modules. This is approximately the inverse of my last few campaigns, where I often used adapted modules but made up most of my own monsters. I want to focus on building more original dungeons from the ground up. Also, I want to play test the Hexagram rules, and parts of the setting have been tuned for that purpose. For example, I would be lying if I said that the setting backstory of embodied divinities was not largely influenced by my desire to have many gods available for the covenanting rules.

Copernican Elect (Aldnoah.Zero)

This brings me to the gods of the setting. If you have been reading my sporadic notes, you may have noticed that I am using many historical deities. For example, both Hades and Osiris are likely wandering around the setting somewhere (and likely at odds, given that they both claim to be lord of the underworld). Part of this is me wanting to use Deities & Demigods as a monster manual. This approach is also influenced by the unapologetic abandon with which many anime and manga drop different cultural elements into a blender. In terms of setting metaphysics, the Great Conjunction merged many or all deific conceptions with material reality, including potentially those from other possible realities. Which is to say, Hades does not imply an identifiable Greece analog within the fictional world. In general, I prefer syncretic fictional cultures over direct references. Though I realize the practical benefit of being able to say Fantasy Japan (or whatever), with a few exceptions (like Hyboria or the Warhammer Old World) I tend to find that kind of setting less interesting.

Adventurers (Final Fantasy 3)

This is a lot of telling rather than showing, and I hope the various principles come out more naturally within setting materials as I develop them, but I find it useful to state these things directly both to use as personal guidelines and to give players a sense of what key to play in.

Following the Great Conjunction, deities can be confronted and defeated in material combat as any other creature. Though embodied gods are extraordinarily powerful, they are also conceptually myopic, limited in their thought to ideas and plans consistent with their aspect, and often arrogant. They have the ability to, through covenants, grant boons to devotees and so are often served by fanatics. Bound gods retain their ability to grant power via covenants. Most clerics of bound gods seek primarily to free their patron.

When a god is defeated (reduced to zero hit points), the victor may either destroy the god and diminish the associated reality principle, collect the remnants as a deindividuated talisman that can be incorporated by another deity, or bind the god to service (though this requires magics known primarily by the Copernican Magisters). Bound gods can then be used to power Copernican devices or spells. However, bound gods remain sentient and wrathful, and until destroyed continue to be connected to any covenanted clerics (considered power thieves by Copernican law).

Given that no god is now safe from direct assault, many deities also scheme against each other, seeking to become sole claimants to ideal offices. In this way, for example, Zeus may seek to defeat and incorporate reality principles currently presided over by Thor, since they both claim the endless principle of Thunder. Gods of opposed concepts, such as darkness and light, also are often at odds.

In the old books of magic, learning was esoteric. Magicians immersed themselves in study and long practice. Through gradual enlightenment, a magician was able to work their will upon reality, sometimes unearthing lost secrets, sometimes creating new formulas. Those who wanted an easier way, the oath-breakers, bargained away their humanity or the souls of others and welcomed other powers into the world. Wiser (or perhaps more cautious) thaumaturges petitioned divinity for a sliver of power in return for furthering an aspect’s ideal. The many principles of creation thus ebbed and flowed with the strength of mortal devotion.

Then, during the Grand Conjunction, the First Copernican Magister called forth in service all the spirits of hell and heaven at the top of a great great tower constructed as key to the divine mystery. On that day, many suns rose. The night following lasted for a week and skies hosted strange bodies. The Magister opened a spiritual door through which to welcome a divine legion. However, the Magister’s calculations were incomplete or the beings invoked were beyond mortal comprehension. Whatever entered the world that night consumed the Magister. Shadowy giants stepped from this door at the top of Conjunction Tower and were seen walking across the mountainous skyline. The great door remains open.

Magicians and their coteries were not the only ones affected by the Grand Conjunction. In one place, a wolf shaman may have called upon the strength of her patron spirit and rather than the expected rush of hunger and rage, found herself staring eye to eye with the god itself. The aspects of divinity, once abstract and distant, now are clothed in newly wrought flesh, still wracked with birthing pain and half blind in the weak light of constrained ontology. Their new home is strange and confusing, but they remain comparatively the greatest beings across the folds of time and space. The gods are like children walking in a garden of insects, crushing mortals mistakenly or maliciously, cultivating them like prismatic butterflies, surprised at the pain when sometimes stung or bitten.

After the loss of the First Magister, his students scattered from the tower across the land. Some are now mad. Others drive before them chained gods and angels. Many found their way to the old kingdoms of the listless lowlands. With their god powers they defeated the old authorities, and founded the new Copernican Sovereignty.

The Copernican Sovereignty is governed by a class, the Elect, that attempts to subdue and exploit this newly conjoined reality. Elect Citizenship requires demonstration of chained divinity. The ruling families and guilds of the Copernican Sovereignty hand down the god-binding and divinity extraction secrets. The Sovereignty is a loose confederation, led by the Copernicus Prime, a general with ultimate authority but limited to a single five year term. The Prime has no power over law. This power is reserved to representative gatherings of the Elect. While the Sovereignty is not explicitly expansionistic, in practice its influence has slowly spread beyond the lowlands despite the dangers of rogue gods escaping captivity and laying waste to mortal towns before fleeing into reality warped refuges based on their ideal, but now embodied, aspects.