Ascension and Godhead

But if there is a soul, what is death? And what happens after one dies? The answer is quite grisly for most. The gods and the lower daemons, all lie in wait for the death of conscious beings, to consume their souls and thus expand their own power. The more souls that a being has consumed, the more powerful they grow. When a soul leaves the body of a living being, it then enters into a brutal battleground. Only souls which were very magically attuned in life and whose personalities and philosophical alignment were profound representations of their element, have any chance of staying coherent after they leave their bodies. Any soul which has not reached full strength or who has defied the philosophy of their element, will be too weak to resist being devoured.

However...every great once in a while...a mage will be so powerful and their philosophy of their element will be so intensely devoted, so scrupulously understood, that they will become a threat to the daemons and gods. In fact, this is how all daemons and gods have been made. The most powerful and devoted mages of history have ascended, first into daemons, slowly expanding their power in a new arena...and sometimes, once every few millennia, to challenge the gods themselves. If the power of those ascended mages and their philosophical program is more intensely aligned with the world as it currently stands than the godhead who currently exists, this is the process by which the godhead is taken. It is exceedingly rare and even more rare for the elements on the Order side of the spectrum, but it does happen in the passing of long aeons.