The @Mortal Plane is the whole of mortal existence: the world of flesh, breath, blood, hunger, ambition, wonder, and death. Mortal peoples are born, live, build civilizations, wage wars, practice magic, and eventually die within it. Its lands, seas, skies, and living creatures form the physical world in which mortal history unfolds. Magic is an inherent part of the Mortal Plane rather than an intrusion from elsewhere. It flows through the natural world and mortal souls, allowing sorcery, enchanted objects, supernatural creatures, and other magical phenomena to exist alongside ordinary physical life.
The Mortal Plane exists according to two absolute laws written into the foundation of reality. These laws are not commandments, agreements, or restrictions enforced by a greater authority. They are fundamental conditions of existence and therefore cannot be broken, circumvented, suspended, or overturned by mortal power, divine power, artifacts, rituals, wishes, or any other force.
A true prophecy, once fixed into fate, must occur. Its fulfillment may take forms that those who hear the prophecy misunderstand, and knowledge of a prophecy may influence the actions that ultimately bring it about, but the destined event itself cannot be prevented, erased, rewritten, or replaced. Neither mortals nor gods can unravel what has been fixed into fate. Predictions, visions, divinations, guesses, and possible futures are not necessarily prophecies; only a prophecy that has become fixed within fate possesses this absolute certainty.
No deity can physically manifest, incarnate, or take true bodily form upon the Mortal Plane. A god cannot descend from its divine realm and walk among mortals, regardless of its strength, nature, intention, or worship. This is not a prohibition that a sufficiently powerful deity might defy. Divine incarnation upon the Mortal Plane is metaphysically impossible.
Mortals can ascend into true godhood, but ascension carries an immediate and irreversible consequence. The instant a mortal becomes a deity, that individual ceases to be a mortal being and can no longer physically exist upon the Mortal Plane.
If ascension occurs while the individual is on the Mortal Plane, their mortal presence ends at the moment godhood is attained. They are removed from the Mortal Plane as a necessary consequence of their new divine nature and thereafter exist beyond it. Their former mortal body cannot remain behind as the continuing physical form of the new deity, nor can the ascended god later return to the Mortal Plane in that body or create another incarnation through which to circumvent the law.
Ascension therefore means permanently surrendering direct participation in mortal existence. An ascended ruler can no longer sit upon their throne, an ascended warrior can no longer personally fight beside former companions, and an ascended parent can no longer physically return to their household. They may retain memories, loyalties, ambitions, affection, hatred, and concern for those they left behind, but all future interaction with the Mortal Plane must occur indirectly.
A mortal seeking godhood is therefore not merely gaining greater power. They are abandoning their ability to live within the mortal world forever.
Although gods cannot enter the Mortal Plane themselves, they can influence it from their own realms. Divine power may reach mortals through chosen champions, priests, dreams, visions, omens, miracles, blessings, curses, sacred relics, summoned servants, supernatural agents, and other indirect means. A deity may communicate with mortals, empower them, manipulate circumstances, or send beings capable of entering the Mortal Plane, but the deity itself always remains beyond it.
For this reason, divine conflict within the Mortal Plane is usually carried out through mortal institutions, champions, servants, cults, churches, monsters, and other intermediaries. Gods may shape mortal history extensively, but they cannot personally assume control of the world through physical presence.
Mortals are not prevented from leaving the Mortal Plane, reaching other realms, encountering divine beings, or even attaining divinity under extraordinary circumstances. The restriction concerns gods entering the Mortal Plane, not mortals traveling beyond it. Should a mortal become a true deity, however, their relationship with the Mortal Plane changes immediately: they become bound by the same absolute conditions governing every other god.
The Mortal Plane therefore remains fundamentally the domain of mortal existence. Gods may guide it, tempt it, bless it, curse it, and struggle over its peoples from beyond its boundaries, but they can never walk its soil in their true forms. Mortal choices, mortal actions, and mortal consequences remain the means through which its history is made.