How the hell does this end
We need to solve these problems. And we have some problems all stacked up. They run thusly:
1. Suzette is alive and wants to be dead.
2. Alex is a self-made monster and wants redemption.
3. World War One is about to begin.
4. Wolfgang's mind is compromised.
5. Wolfgang's army is unstoppable.
6. God is dead, and the Antigod ain't.
Some smaller problems that we also don't really have a solution for:
1. The Church is corrupt as all-get-out.
2. With Alex occupied, the natural undeads are becoming a problem.
3. Even if everything were going well, there's nowhere for souls to go when they die except to be food for the Antigod. Or something. In fact let's talk about that.
The Underworld. First off let's not ever, ever call it that.
I picture it a dark and misty version of Earth, with landscape and things, but blurry in all ways. It's cold, wet, probably smells like a salt mud flat. It doesn't have a lot of variance in the geography, some gentle hills and wide valleys, maybe a bit of scrubby brush but not many trees. Throughout this nasty continent which is I guess pretty much Scotland (facepalm), there are the souls of the recently-dead, who appear as slightly more solid fog, fading into barely wisps and finally nothing the longer they stay. Some of them are more solid than others, and these represent the ones who have had direct contact with the undead, whether that means touching, or killed by, or just shared their air for too long.
(the thinking behind this is that the undead leaves something behind on each life it touches, and if nobody puts it down, will eventually leave behind so much that it falls apart into so much rotten flesh, the soul totally spent. The souls it touches solidify more on the other side because there is just more of the available matter there, meaning the stuff the whole underworld is made of.)
So that's where everyone goes when they die. It used to be one of two options, where the undead from the other realm could be called angels, or whatever shiny thing you can think of, and they served exactly the same purpose as the undeads: mark the living souls so they are easier to see in the next realm, and easier to hunt.
AND JUST WHO IS DOING THIS HUNTING?
Well, God and the Antigod. Except they don't give a good goddamn about us or good or evil. They view us as food, the end. This has been true since forever, but when Earth came around, life became a lot more plentiful. Both "gods" suddenly had a much more plentiful food source, and they began to increase in power and began using the angels/undeads technique. I guess the Antigod figured out what you might call agriculture, in that it began to farm the souls by learning their patterns and corralling them. The Shiny god...well, didn't.
Ecologically speaking this would mean that the competition for resources became too difficult for the god, and it starved. Nah, that's way too simplistic; maybe it tried to copy the Antigod's idea of reaching highly populated areas, and came up with the idea of general, widespread influence on a less quality but far more quantity level. This is kind of like comparing raising your young personally versus laying a thousand eggs; either way you're guarenteed to get what you wanted, but the second option is primitive as hell. No, I don't like that either.
What if the God noticed that the Antigod had the upper hand, and instead of stepping up its own game, it decided to try sabotage, or turning predator. I guess the idea was that if we don't have all this competition, there will be more food. True, but not easy.
SO not easy in fact, that it ended with the God turning itself into pure energy when it tried to take on the Antigod directly, manifesting as light and becoming the undead weakness to sunlight.
Wait, God is dead by accident due to its own incompetence? UGHHHH NO AGAIN.
1. Suzette is alive and wants to be dead.
2. Alex is a self-made monster and wants redemption.
3. World War One is about to begin.
4. Wolfgang's mind is compromised.
5. Wolfgang's army is unstoppable.
6. God is dead, and the Antigod ain't.
Some smaller problems that we also don't really have a solution for:
1. The Church is corrupt as all-get-out.
2. With Alex occupied, the natural undeads are becoming a problem.
3. Even if everything were going well, there's nowhere for souls to go when they die except to be food for the Antigod. Or something. In fact let's talk about that.
The Underworld. First off let's not ever, ever call it that.
I picture it a dark and misty version of Earth, with landscape and things, but blurry in all ways. It's cold, wet, probably smells like a salt mud flat. It doesn't have a lot of variance in the geography, some gentle hills and wide valleys, maybe a bit of scrubby brush but not many trees. Throughout this nasty continent which is I guess pretty much Scotland (facepalm), there are the souls of the recently-dead, who appear as slightly more solid fog, fading into barely wisps and finally nothing the longer they stay. Some of them are more solid than others, and these represent the ones who have had direct contact with the undead, whether that means touching, or killed by, or just shared their air for too long.
(the thinking behind this is that the undead leaves something behind on each life it touches, and if nobody puts it down, will eventually leave behind so much that it falls apart into so much rotten flesh, the soul totally spent. The souls it touches solidify more on the other side because there is just more of the available matter there, meaning the stuff the whole underworld is made of.)
So that's where everyone goes when they die. It used to be one of two options, where the undead from the other realm could be called angels, or whatever shiny thing you can think of, and they served exactly the same purpose as the undeads: mark the living souls so they are easier to see in the next realm, and easier to hunt.
AND JUST WHO IS DOING THIS HUNTING?
Well, God and the Antigod. Except they don't give a good goddamn about us or good or evil. They view us as food, the end. This has been true since forever, but when Earth came around, life became a lot more plentiful. Both "gods" suddenly had a much more plentiful food source, and they began to increase in power and began using the angels/undeads technique. I guess the Antigod figured out what you might call agriculture, in that it began to farm the souls by learning their patterns and corralling them. The Shiny god...well, didn't.
Ecologically speaking this would mean that the competition for resources became too difficult for the god, and it starved. Nah, that's way too simplistic; maybe it tried to copy the Antigod's idea of reaching highly populated areas, and came up with the idea of general, widespread influence on a less quality but far more quantity level. This is kind of like comparing raising your young personally versus laying a thousand eggs; either way you're guarenteed to get what you wanted, but the second option is primitive as hell. No, I don't like that either.
What if the God noticed that the Antigod had the upper hand, and instead of stepping up its own game, it decided to try sabotage, or turning predator. I guess the idea was that if we don't have all this competition, there will be more food. True, but not easy.
SO not easy in fact, that it ended with the God turning itself into pure energy when it tried to take on the Antigod directly, manifesting as light and becoming the undead weakness to sunlight.
Wait, God is dead by accident due to its own incompetence? UGHHHH NO AGAIN.