Demigods, called devas, are humans born with a divine spark attached to their soul. They are marked by their golden eyes, amber-like blood, and divine aura that they give off. Devas are human characteristics amplified, and are vastly more powerful than average mortals physically and mentally. At some point, during the time they are born and their 18th birthday, they will be summoned to realm of gods to complete their transformation into godhood. This is how new deities are created. Only a few hundred have been born in humanity's 40,000 year history, but this process is well known and documented by societies.

A deva's emotional characteristics are also amplified. They feel the full range of human emotions, but far stronger than the average person. Feelings like love, anger, desire, are heightened (imagine you feeling these emotions, multiplied by 10). My concern is that these devas will go around bullying mortals or dominating them while they are on earth, committing acts with impunity.

I want these kids to be marked as special by civilization as divine, but not disrupt it to the point of collapse, or try to take over. How can I incorporate these demigods into society peacefully?

  • 2
    $\begingroup$ (1) Why would they have a detrimenal effect on civilization? The Greek mythology alone features dozens upon dozens of demigods, including some (for example Hercules, son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene) who eventually became full gods. Their presence did not cause the Greek civilization to collapse. (2) Was the choice of the ambiguous word "deva" intentional? It means "positive divine being" in Sanskrit, and is related with "daeva" (which means "negative divine being" in Avestan), with the Latin "deus" (meaning "god"), and with the Germanic "Tiwaz" (giving English "Tuesday"). $\endgroup$ – AlexP Jan 12 at 12:39

One way would be a strict regimen of discipline when growing up. They would have been a child once,if a very emotional child and later teenager. But they'd have their parents ideally as well as any divine retainers or servants to help keep them in order. They need to be taught responsibility and the weight of actions. Something which would be further instilled into them leading up to deification. 40,000 years of having to get Deva to listen to their parental figures means methods definitely exist. Just like with real life child rearing.

If I had to offer additional insight,I'd say keeping them seperate from other people would be bad. As that breeds isolationism and resentment. Have them socialize and build meaningful relationships with normal people or even other Deva. Treat them normal,and they will act normal;but be superior. Coming into their own over time will let them adapt to this and hopefully master themselves.

I hope this was helpful.


Assign them a "God"parent

It would be hard for mortal parents to discipline a child who does everything better than them, who, even though they love, would be completely unrelatable. Society would put the demigods in a pedestal and they might therefore become isolated. They'll need someone to help them grow and guide them.

When a demigod is born, a god descends in mortal form to guide the child, prepare him/her for life in society and for godhood. This godparent will teach the child to control his abilities, shape his ambitions, and help guide him in ways his mortal parents cannot. This godparent will also likely maintain a close relationship with the mortal parents, and help them understand their child so there isn't a large gap of understanding, or build up of resentment.


Making them fit directly in the society would be insanely hard, but if devas childs were undestinguishable from humans at first, you could make them not even notice they are devas themselves until they start to grow up. At school, they will learn how to behave like an human being, what is good and what is bad, get bullied and learn what it feels like.

As they grow up, their physicical, emotionnal and mental abilities get stronger and stronger, evolving way faster than other human childs. They become the bests at classes, the most matures among their "pairs". Teachers praise them and their comrades idealize them... at first. During that process, they start to think that being smart, good and comprehensive are what poeple want them to be, are their ways to get included in the society, they work hard to become what they think poeple want them to be.

Their "natural" evolution pace combined with the evolution induced from their work make them quickly become really, really strong. Their comrades can't understand them anymore, and they don't understand why they can't get understood even though they can understand most of their comrades problems and feelings.

Poeple start to reject them from society while themselves -feeling differents- start to exclude themselves from society. Leads to solitude and incomprehension, that leads to non-directed anger but also self reflection. Either they figure out they are devas by themselves, either someone else (the teacher / adoptive parents?) figure it out, or their eyes start to become golden and everyone figures out what was wrong.

Then you place them in some genius-specialized school among very smart humans and other devas (if there are any other devas at the exact same period). Lot of geniuses went through the same kind of problems and devas will feel more comfortable around them.


Still, he will continue to grow stronger and stronger, and while humans will work hard to get close to his level, he won't need to. Some poeple will tell him he's lucky, some will attack him telling him he's worth less than them as he can only achieve to do anything because of his unfair devas perks. Because he's really smart and emotionnally comprehensive he will certainly understand that and will start to work hard to become someone that deserve those abilities.

It's, i think, one of the rare scenarios where a godlike being with human-like feelings can smoothly be part of human society without growing anger toward it or becoming insane. It requires lot of timing and luck tho (but with real gods helping it to happend this way, it could be "easy").

If he knows from the beginning he's not human, he will create a big wall between him and humans that will continuously grow over time, it could end up with the deva acting deliberately differently from humans.

If once poeple figure out he's not human, he gets totally excluded from human company, he will consider humans as worth less than him and could become racist and narcissistic, which will less likely happen if he's compared and can compare itself to the "best humans" around.

His parents need to be chosen really carefully, they need to be smart, comprehensive and wise ( At least, the parent of the same sex as him has to as he'll likely try to impress and look like him ).

Or, you could just make them conditionned since birth to be nice and wise (like Jesus).


Your Answer

