Believers of the Source

To these cutters, all things are godly. All things can ascend to greater glory - if not in this life, then in the next. Patience, that's all it takes. See, here's the chant: Everything - primes, planars, petitioners, proxies, the whole lot - is being tested. Survive, succeed and ascend - that's the goal of all beings. Fail and get reincarnated to try again. It's pretty simple and straightforward.

'Course, it ain't that easy either. First off, nobody really knows what the tests are. Is a body supposed to be good, evil, or what? Godsmen are trying to figure that out. Second, a fellow just might go in reverse - mess up and come back as a prime or something worse in the next life. It could even be that those who do really bad return as fiends. Finally, there's one last step nobody even understands: getting to be a power ain't the end of the cycle. There's something beyond that, something that powers, themselves, eventually ascend to. Cross that threshold to the ultimate form and get released from the multiverse forever.

Now, there's a fixed number of beings out there, and sooner or later we're going to run out, when everybody's ascended. A lot of prime worlds on the so-called "infinite" Prime Material Planes are already pretty thinly populated. When a prime ascends to the next level, then there's one less prime in all the multiverse - unless, of course, a planar somewhere fails and falls back a rank. But sooner or later, everybody's going to attain the ultimate goal, the final ascension, and when that happens the multiverse ends - closes up shop, fades right out of existence.

So you see, the Godsmen calculate that's the whole purpose of the multiverse. The Prime Material, the Inner, and Outer Planes - they exist to test and purge. It's just a matter of figuring what's being tested and how. When that happens, the Godsmen can hasten the end of the universe and get on with some new existence.

Allies and Enemies

Since a central belief of both the Godsmen and the Athar philosophies is that there's some greater thing than the powers, the two factions often find themselves allied. Likewise, the belief in the ultimate end of the multiverse sits well with the Doomguard, although any alliance between the two groups is always temporary. Both the Bleak Cabal and the Dustmen take exception to the Godsman phisolophy, and they're considered the foes of the Godsmen's cause.

Powers

The Godsmen, more open-minded than the Athar, allow both speciality priests of particular gods and clerics who worship the nebulous Ethereal force known as the "Source" in their faction. They hold that anything can ascend to greater glory, that a body's got the potential within his spirit. It's this idea of cosmic testing that draws the devout, and makes the faction's powers gods of the test: Brihaspati, Jazirian, Shekinester the Three-Faced, and Chung Kuel of the Celestial Bureaucracy.

If a Godsman's looking for strong performers, for proof that people can become more than what they are, he can also look to the demipowers and gods of excellence, Sif of the Aesir and Lugh of the Celts, for inspiration.