Gods in the Greenlands are actual beings. They are not hypothetical metaphors for archetypes that characterise human interaction… They are literal spirits with abilities over certain specific areas. The gods are roughly divided into three types: there are the gods of nature, the gods of life affairs, and the gods of general cosmicness.
The gods of general cosmicness are the oldest gods. These gods are the gods of things like fate, chaos, time, the light and dark, etc. These gods are all a bit peculiar. They do not have any normal motivations, and can be technically omnipotent, but they only interfere in things seemingly for their own amusement. Not much is known about them. They do not seem to be bound by the normal rules of gods. They are called gods merely for convenience. Worshipping them will not do anything good for you, neither will not worshipping them. They do whatever they want: when they want. They also do not seem to be affected by the ley lines being locked away. The theory goes that the gods are actual bits of the ancient power that makes up the ley lines, themselves.
The second set of gods are the nature gods. These gods have power over specific aspects of nature. Some of them are limited geographically, like gods of rivers and mountains, and some have dominion over things like storms, wind. These gods are born as spirits of places, they become gods when worshipped by the living. These gods are not as old as the chaos gods, having only come into being when the Greenlands became a world. They are strictly hierarchical and are ruled over by a king. The sun and the moon are of this type of god.
The gods of nature have a more long term approach to existence. Just as there has been a mountain there and always will be: someone will always worship it. The nature gods have many names, faces and aspects, but are always still the spirit of that location.
If its location is destroyed, the god will have two main options, depending on how the worshippers handle the occasion. Either the god will become an angry vengeful god, enraged at whoever destroyed its location, wandering the destroyed area killing and maiming anyone who trespasses, or, if the worshippers build a new shrine, giving a new home to the spirit, then the god may forgive them and, if the worshippers continue to properly care for the new shrine, the god will continue doing his duty as before. The third and less well known option is if the worshippers forget the nature god, the god reverts back to its spirit form. Usually that results in it returning to the Greenlands to sleep hidden in its dominion.
The last set of gods are the youngest and most dramatic. These gods are the gods of living affairs. These gods are created by the various races. These gods have a huge range of types, from small tiny local gods, worshipped by one farmer in a far away valley and used to keep his wife faithful, all the way up to the international gods of war. These gods can be anything from kings and heros that were alive once, and have now been deified, to gods that represent concepts, like trade, love, and good boats.
These gods were made by the living to help and to advocate for the living. These gods often have to go and ask the gods of nature, or of chaos to help a specific set of living supplicants. For example, sailors would pray to the god of sailors for safe passage, and the god of sailors would have to go to the god of the storms, seas, winds, and the old dragon that lives under the waves to ask them to grant safe passage for the sailors…. This doesn’t always work, and often the god of sailors won’t bother. In the era of humans, gods have barely any power down in the Greenlands, and instead, they save it by staying up in the heavens. They can be convinced to listen to supplicants on the living side, but only if it is a matter of vital importance… or personal pride.
The gods of living affairs have the most perilous existence as they exist solely in the minds of the living and exist solely to aid them. As soon as one of these gods starts to lose followers, or people start to forget about him, the god loses his powers and even starts to disappear. So the gods of living affairs have to strike a balance of interfering sufficiently in the affairs of the living, to gain belief, but not so much as to weaken themselves. These gods are also masters of marketing and PR. In the war of the three suns, the gods chose sides, the livings affairs gods siding with the humans, hoping to get more power and believers from them. Many of the gods of nature and chaos chose the king god’s side, against the humans. The chaos gods just did whatever they pleased. Neither side could control them.
Due to the ley lines being locked at the end of the era of the three suns, gods cannot maintain their existence for very long on the Greenlands’ plane. If believers manage to channel sufficient belief to the god, the god can maybe manifest for a little while, but this usually requires an unpleasant amount of power, so is rarely done.
The gods now live in a plane of existence above the sky called Heofon. This plane was created as a fortress during the war of the three suns. Only gods can enter and exist in it. This plane stretches over the Greenlands and often reflections of it can be seen in the cloud shapes . This fortress contains much of the old magic and ley lines’ power stored up, there, which the gods use to maintain their existence and power. They can watch the world of the Greenlands from on high, but it takes a lot of power to affect any kind of changes on the world below them, so the gods refrain from doing it as much as possible now.
The sun and the moon gods are a little different. They live in both the Greenlands and in Heofon. This is because they get their power from the burning of the sun and the glowing of the moon crystals. Thus, they are able to travel between the two worlds as their respective celestial bodies travel the sky. But unlike the other gods who don’t HAVE to stay in a specific location, the sun and the moon must always stay near their celestial objects, or else they lose their power and start to fade away.