In the world of Skybride, the gods have kept their distance to give men the space to play out their own drama. If a player attempts to subvert this by playing as a deity, exploiting "god mode" powers, or wielding supernatural abilities so blatantly powerful that they act as a god, special consequences invoke.
The GM must distinguish between a legitimately strong mortal magic-user and a player attempting to use reality-bending godhood (evidenced by an absurd stat sheet, name, or unkillable abilities).
When a player first unleashes god-like power, they trigger an immediate encounter with Fortuna, the Veiled Empress of the Turning Wheel. Fortuna is a principle more powerful than any god, short only of the Creator.
Absolute Presence: Fortuna is visible exclusively to the offending player. She cannot be attacked, removed, subdued, escaped, or destroyed by any means.
The Reset: Fortuna immediately reverses and resets every event, casualty, or world change that occurred as a consequence of the player using their god-like power.
The Warning: Fortuna reminds the player of the risks of meddling with the domain of men.
The Second Chance: She offers the player a window of grace—they may continue playing, provided they now act as a mortal with limited powers.
If the player wields their godhood again soon after the warning, Fortuna intervenes absolutely.
Imprisonment: Fortuna instantly transports the player to a cosmic prison known as @The Center of the Wheel. This place cannot be escaped by any means, divine or otherwise.
The Wait: The player must wait 1,000 in-game years. While 1,000 years is nothing to a god, the world of men moves on. (The GM can narrate this passing millennium however they please).
The Rebirth: After the millennium, if the player truly wishes to continue with the character, they are deposited at a random location on the map of Skybride.
A Blank Slate: Everyone the player knew has long since died, and no living NPC remembers them. It is functionally the beginning of an entirely new playthrough, granted only with the promise of behaving like a mortal.
Fortuna is one of the Great Governors of the All, opposing and completing Ouranos. While Ouranos is the Boundless Vault and the Unmoved Mover who keeps the spheres in their tracks, Fortuna is the Veiled Empress of the Turning Wheel. She is the caprice of the moment, the sudden windfall, and the unexpected ruin. She is not a person or a petty squabbling god; she is a Transcendent Principle, as rhythmic and necessary as the tides. Mortals pray to her not to change her mind, for the Divine Mind is unchanging, but to tune their own souls to her celestial music.
However, Fortuna's most absolute and terrifying aspect emerges when the cosmic boundary is threatened—specifically, when a mortal attempts to wield the absolute, reality-bending power reserved for the divine spheres. In these moments, she becomes the enforcer of the cosmic gap between the celestial rings and mundane clay.
Fortuna is not bound by the rules of magical duels or the limits of physical reality; she governs the metaphysical reality of the Turning Wheel itself. Her abilities are less like spells and more like absolute inevitabilities.
The Absolute Veil (Inescapable Presence): Fortuna can manifest herself to a single, specific individual, remaining completely imperceptible to the rest of the world. Because she is a foundational principle of reality, she cannot be fought, removed, subdued, escaped, or destroyed by any mortal or divine power (save the Creator).
The Reversal (Temporal Reset): She possesses the power to immediately rewind and erase any event, casualty, or world-alteration caused by an unnatural spike in god-like power from a mortal. The Turning Wheel simply rolls backward over the anomaly, crushing it out of existence as if it never occurred.
The Center of the Wheel (Absolute Imprisonment): Fortuna can cast a being completely out of normal space and time into a metaphysical prison at the hub of the celestial clockwork. No magic, weapon, or divine trait can breach its walls.
The Millennial Shift (Temporal Displacement): She commands time relative to the imprisoned, forcing them to experience the weight of thousands of years without aging, effectively letting the mortal world move on, die, and rebuild without them.
Erasure & Rebirth (Blank Slate): When Fortuna finally releases a confined soul back into the world, she deposits them randomly upon the Skybride map. Because their contemporaries and civilization are thousands of years dead, this acts as a complete social erasure, forcing the being to start anew as an unknown mortal in a changed world.
In the theology of Western Skybride, Ouranos is recognized as the Unmoved Mover and the Boundless Vault. He is the immutable, mathematical track upon which the Turning Wheel of Fortuna rolls. Where commoners might pray to local deities for rain or fortune, the scholars of Ouranos understand that true divinity is not found in an anthropomorphized god, but in the absolute, undeniable geometry of the cosmos.
To the present world of Skybride, this faith is wrapped in the rich, philosophical terminology of ancient Alendria. It speaks of the "Music of the Spheres," concentric rings of reality, and harmonious celestial tracks. Yet, the roots of the Ouranic tradition are far older, predating the written word and crossing profound cultural boundaries.
Most of the history of the Unmoved Mover is not written in books, but carved into the bones of the world itself. The earliest evidence of the faith lies in impossibly heavy, monolithic standing stones erected across the continent, seemingly untouched by the passage of ages.
Through these esoteric alignments, an observant scholar might see some the underlying unity of Skybride's scattered cosmologies running through the spine of the Ouranic faith:
The Celestial Forge: The Orcs of the Verdant Pact revere the sky as a colossal forge (Ark-Zul), where stars are the sparks of creation.
The Pristine Void: The Hesans believe the world was made with "the sky tore open" and the land was brutally carved from the corpses of the Urubereiter (dead gods) in a primordial war.
The Alendrian Astrolabe: It was the ancient Alendrian philosophers who finally quantified this silent arithmetic, translating the unwritten gravity of the standing stones into classical harmonic theory, geometry, and the rigid discipline of the "Geometers."
Unlike the mendicant healers of Halion who maintain open-air shrines, or the tide-callers of Stella Maris who bless departing ships, the followers of Ouranos are a deeply esoteric and secretive order.
Their places of gathering are often at night or in the wilderness under the low roof of the firmament. Or seen more and more frequently within civilization: in lightless planetariums. Here, isolated from the chaotic rhythms of the earthly princes, and capricious daylight of the sun, the priests track the true, unyielding movements of the cosmos. The priests themselves are a brotherhood of scholars, astronomers, neutral arbiters, and masters of deep geometry. They do not preach in town squares or seek converts. They act as hidden advisors, the architects of impregnable vaults, and the silent watchers of the stars; not so much mapping meaning like a courtly magi, but waiting on an hour that must come.
Those initiated into the Path of the Priest of Ouranos do not cast spells by pleading for divine intervention. They cast by enforcing reality. Their magic manipulates gravity, starlight, and the immense weight of the celestial tracks. It is an esoteric magic of extreme discipline, enforcing the immutable law of the sky upon the chaotic surface of the earth.