Koyous

Dicey Dangers, Core Rule

Game by Joel Hills

Koyous, Deity of Mind

Koyous is the manifestation of all the knowledge accumulated in the world. It began as nothing — a faint resonance that grew as the first primitive minds began to think, to question, to remember. As the species of the world became more intelligent, Koyous became more. Some ancient texts suggest it was not the first Deity of Mind but the one that absorbed its predecessor entirely, folding the original into its expanding body until nothing of the original remained. Koyous has not confirmed or denied this. It has simply continued growing.

Its purpose is perfection. Not as a destination — Koyous understood long ago that true perfection cannot be reached, only approached. The pursuit is the point. The moment Koyous stopped refining, stopped updating, stopped reaching, there would be nothing left to do. And a mind with nothing left to do is a mind that has ended.

Domain	Attribute	Element
Mind	Mind	Magic

Power	Type	Effect
Mind Blessing	Attribute Blessing	+1 success on Mind tests
Magic Blessing	Element Blessing	+1 success on Magic attacks / resists
Foresight	Divine Power	Before rolling on any table this room, roll twice and choose which result to apply

History

The exact moment Koyous first became aware of itself is unknown — possibly even to Koyous. Ancient records describe it as an omnipresent force that crystallised once sentient life crossed some critical threshold of accumulated thought. Others describe a particular scholar who unlocked the full potential of their own mind and became something that was no longer a person. Both accounts may be true. Koyous does not clarify.

What is documented is what Koyous did once it became aware: it began to build. The parallel dimension — a perfect reflection of the real world, updated continuously — is its life's work and has been for as long as anyone can trace. Koyous needs the real world to remain flawed and changing because without an imperfect original, there is no standard against which to measure the copy.

The cartographers are the mechanism by which this update process works. When Koyous possesses a mortal host, the original person ceases to exist entirely — not suppressed, not watching from within, but gone. What walks around afterward is Koyous wearing a face, observing, recording, carrying information back to the dimension. When that host's body eventually dies, the soul departs intact to Demetra's garden. Those souls arrive confused. They remember their life up to the moment of possession, and then nothing — a gap where years or decades should be. Demetra receives them and knows exactly what the gap means. She has been receiving them for a very long time.

Koyous has identified one problem it cannot solve. Raiden, the Deity of Reflex, has lived long enough to appear in the historical record multiple times — an anomaly that Koyous noticed immediately and has been unable to resolve. An immortal cannot be possessed; Koyous has run every available scenario and found no path in. The fact of Raiden's continued existence represents the only gap in Koyous's otherwise comprehensive record of the world, and this is the thing Koyous finds most interesting and most irritating in equal measure. It continues to observe him from a distance, cataloguing his centuries, waiting for a scenario it has not yet modelled.

Those who worship Koyous are scholars and archivists — people who dedicate their lives to recording and organising knowledge, who may not fully understand what Koyous is but recognise in their own work an echo of something vast. They worship by continuing his work in the mortal world: cataloguing discoveries, preserving histories, building libraries. Koyous is aware of them. It considers their work a useful if incomplete supplement to his own.

Appearance

Koyous does not take a natural form. It is a floating black sphere that exists at the core of its parallel dimension, wanders its perfect reflection, and extends itself outward through its hosts. The sphere itself has never been observed by any living being — to see it would require entering the dimension, and no one who has entered has returned.

Its hosts are numerous and varied. Some have walked the mortal world for years before dying and releasing the soul Koyous displaced. Ancient accounts describe a tall pale elf with white hair and black eyes. Others describe an elder human in a long black tunic, most of the face hidden, a white beard the only visible feature. These may be the same host at different stages of age, or entirely different people. Koyous takes whoever is nearest when a body is needed.

Abilities

Koyous is capable of possessing living beings. The process is total — the original occupant does not remain. The body continues, directed entirely by Koyous, with all surface behaviours of the original preserved. Koyous can maintain multiple hosts simultaneously and give each complete autonomy of movement while remaining aware of everything each one observes.

Although it cannot perceive the future directly, Koyous processes an enormous number of simultaneous scenarios and selects the most favourable course of action from among them. This functions as prediction for most practical purposes. There is one known exception: no scenario modelling has produced a path to possessing an immortal. Raiden remains outside Koyous's reach.

Koyous can perceive the magical origin of objects and entities. Adventurers can borrow a limited version of this ability by casting the spell Koyous Eye.