Dō Shinji

Independent gods are the deities who refused to join the Nine Great Clans and submit to the Core’s “proper management.” They are not simply a religious category but a political one: their independence is expressed through control of their own worlds, resistance to Clan authority, and the possibility of leaving the System altogether. As Cato’s war expands, the independent gods become the disputed boundary between centralized divine rule and a post-System order built around voluntary departure, mutual protection, and dispersed enclaves.

Definition and Position in the System

Independent gods occupy a precarious position within the System’s hierarchy. The Core treats them as autonomous powers that have failed to accept the authority of the Nine Great Clans, while the independent gods regard Clan membership as submission rather than protection. Their worlds lie mainly in the Inner Worlds and the nearest frontier, where their refusal to be absorbed has obstructed the Clans’ expansion and political consolidation.

The category includes deities with very different temperaments and histories. Initik presents himself as the guardian of his people, claiming to have safeguarded them for more than a thousand years and to have guided them since the arrival of the System. Neyar is powerful and openly defiant of the Clans, making him especially vulnerable to coercion. Urshal rejects the authority of deities he believes were born into power and care chiefly for their own wealth. These figures differ in strength and conduct, but they share the insistence that responsibility for a world does not automatically entail obedience to the Core.

The religious meaning of independence is equally contested. Muar experiences time outside the System as a blank, lifeless void without status, progress, or purpose; returning to a temple on Uriva feels to him like awakening from a nightmare. His meditation before the System crystal and receipt of the Divine Insight Skill reinforce his conviction that the System supplies truth and meaning. By contrast, Cato treats the System as the source of domination, and his allies see departure from it as a possible form of liberation. Independent gods therefore stand between two incompatible interpretations of divine order: the System as salvation and the System as captivity.

Pressure from the Core

The rise of Cato turns the independent gods from a persistent political inconvenience into an alleged security crisis. Misse Eln argues that worlds outside the Great Clans cannot be trusted to act in accordance with what the Core considers necessary. Under the language of emergency, she proposes approaching them individually and in stages, beginning preparatory work immediately while avoiding a unified response. The policy converts political nonalignment into presumed complicity.

The Core’s coercive approach is reinforced by concrete administrative powers. Marus Eln and Initik can suspend traffic to and from Sydea, gray out its portals, and impose a blockade through their divine authority. At the True Core, combat Skills are prohibited by both custom and the System’s own declaration, demonstrating that the System can preserve order by suspending ordinary forms of conflict in its most sacred spaces while permitting extraordinary measures elsewhere. Misse’s later position as True Deity magnifies this contradiction: she alone can access the True Core’s functions unless she chooses to share them, and she presents her authority as a grave duty on behalf of the System.

The independent gods are thus threatened with more than persuasion. They face ultimatums, forced eviction, annexation, condemnation, and the destruction of worlds that refuse incorporation. The Core’s campaign is also weakened by its own record. Meshan and Neyar have killed fellow deities when pressed too hard, while Cato’s incursions have already allowed Clan worlds to be lost. The resulting fear makes direct action difficult: instead of sweeping through the independent territories in one decisive operation, Core representatives must negotiate carefully with each target.

Coalition and Counter-Politics

Mii-Es organizes the independent gods around the danger posed by the Core. Her objective is not merely to oppose a single invasion but to prevent the Nine Great Clans from using Cato as a pretext to absorb every unaffiliated deity. She tells Cato that some independent gods are too close to Clan territory and will be forcibly evicted regardless of what they do. Her request is that he reach them first and ensure their safety rather than allowing the Core to burn out everything they have built.

The proposed resistance is deliberately distributed. Mii-Es wants a small cabal spread widely enough that, regardless of which Clans move and which gods are removed, surviving contacts can still persuade other independents to accept Cato’s offer and leave. This structure treats dispersal as protection. It also acknowledges the political importance of rumor and persuasion: local gods may resist assimilation if they believe Cato welcomes those who wish to depart and does not seek to seize their planets.

Neyar becomes the first major target of this strategy because he is both highly exposed and openly hostile to Clan authority, even though he is also described as one of the most powerful independent gods. When Mii-Es and Initik visit him, Neyar explains that the Great Clans are demanding that he join them or be declared an ally of Cato. Their proposal offers only one alternative: departure. Initik’s presence matters because Neyar sees him as a fellow guardian who cares for his people and as a near-equal in battle, giving the coalition credibility beyond Cato’s personal promises.

The coalition’s negotiations are shaped by secrecy and mutual compromise. Cato considers allowing himself to be visibly driven from the fringes of independent pockets so that the Core will underestimate his reach and regard him as a manageable threat. Mii-Es recognizes that such a performance could obstruct an otherwise inevitable takeover by provoking local resistance and infighting. Initik already knows that Cato is working with someone because Mii-Es has distributed contingency plans whose distinctive design reveals Cato’s involvement. Neither Mii-Es nor Initik fully discloses the private bargain Cato has offered, but both admit that he has made one of their people’s restoration or survival part of his leverage.

Conflict Over Exit and Allegiance

Urshal’s confrontation with the Core delegation exposes the political force of Cato’s message. He anticipates the standard accusations: that refusal to join the Clans proves collaboration with Cato, and that submission is the price of saving his world from condemnation. He has heard that Cato welcomes gods who wish to leave the System and does not even want their planets. That rumor reverses the Core’s assumptions. If Cato seeks not annexation but voluntary departure, then the Core’s insistence on incorporation begins to resemble the greater threat.

Urshal also points to the material consequences of Clan pressure. Clan Hokar lost a dozen worlds after Neyar was pushed too hard, including Inner Worlds, while another Clan lost eight earlier. These worlds are not temporarily exchanged in inter-Clan political games; they are permanently gone. The losses make the Core’s promise of protection doubtful and give independent gods a reason to suspect that “consolidation” primarily protects the Clans’ authority.

The Core’s response reveals how quickly emergency logic becomes a mechanism for centralization. Misse declares that even worlds with no obvious activity may need to be brought into line, while Marus recognizes that removing Cato-controlled territory would also reduce the number of worlds available to administer. The policy therefore combines genuine fear of Cato with institutional self-interest. Independent gods are treated as dangerous not only because they might assist the enemy, but because their continued autonomy demonstrates that the Core’s political order is not inevitable.

Narrative Significance

Independent gods embody the novel’s central argument about the difference between divine power and legitimate rule. The System can generate Skills, ranks, portals, temples, offices, and permissions, but those structures do not settle whether a deity’s authority comes from service to a people, obedience to an institution, inherited privilege, or the ability to impose force. Initik’s thousand-year guardianship, Neyar’s refusal to bow, Urshal’s contempt for Clan wealth, and Muar’s devotion to System order present competing answers to that question.

Their importance grows because Cato’s rebellion is not limited to destroying the System. He offers a political alternative to its monopoly: protected worlds, contacts among deities, and the possibility of permanent exfiltration. The independent gods are the first group capable of turning that offer into a system-wide movement. Their dispersed enclaves could make Cato the most remote human ever to establish roots across the System’s worlds, not because he wants an empire, but because separation requires a network of places that can survive without the Core.

The category also exposes the limits of both sides. Cato’s technology is easier for him than negotiation, yet the independent gods cannot be secured by machinery alone; they require trust, persuasion, and carefully staged commitments. The Core possesses formal authority, but its threats create fear, defections, and resistance. When Misse announces that the System has chosen her for a transcendent duty and proposes severing the frontier, the independent gods stand at the center of the impending decision: whether crisis will justify a final consolidation of divine power or produce the conditions for worlds and their guardians to leave the System entirely.