Divinity Framework

The Divinity Framework is a section of the System only available to System-enabled entities past level 100, which - in 99% of cases - means demigods, gods and demon lords. It allows them to oversee their divine domains and assist System in the governance of the multiverse.   Simultaneously, it's hard to find a part of the System that's more misunderstood by the masses (and that's if they even know that it exists.). As a result, it has to be described in detail here.

One's experience with the Divinity Framework starts when they are recognized as a demigod material. This typically happens when their character level hits 100, but it might also happen a bit earlier. Becoming a demigod makes you gain a completely unique character class, and expands the list of class skills.   If one manages to improve one of the non-class skills high enough, it'll be counted into the new class skills. When that happens, it's entirely possible to receive a level correction from the System, after being offered a demigod status at, say, level 90. In general, 'level 100' here is more of a guideline here.   Becoming a demigod is optional. It greatly helps further growth in power, but is also a rather complicated affair that is not without its negatives. Some people refuse the status and continue growing as fully mortal individuals. Most of them, however, never make it past level 120, if only due to old age.

Demigods are not yet gods, but no longer mortals that serve as a a sort of tutorial to the godhood proper for the aspiring ascendants. Allowing one to get more or less proficient in the ways of the gods while dealing with something of a significantly lesser scale - although most of the mechanics are functionally the same.   Demigods can gain Divine Power by being worshipped or generally reverred - even areligiously. A famous and respected adventurer that achieved great deeds and become known through the land, will also recharge and expand their divine power. Growing stronger as a character also grants them further divine power.   Divine power can be exchanged for a number of boons. Demigods are capable of granting their blessings to their chosen followers. This means rise of certain attributes, improvement of skills, healing of injuries, etc. This type of boons last for as long as the demigod wishes them to, which typically means 'for as long as their followers act as it wants them to'.   Most demigods will establish certain rituals dedicated to themselves, allowing their followers to become more 'visible' to it. Such rituals - whatever they are - will further the growth of their divine powers. It's not uncommon for the demigods to respond by granting a boon or two to the ritual performers, as that strengthens their faith and makes future rituals most likely.   Demigods are also capable of picking champions. Champion is someone who can receive larger boons from their demigods, in exchange for the demigod in question always being able to know what they were doing at the time. This means that the demigod will know if you betray them, and will be angered by it in most cases.   Demigods that amassed more divine power can exchange a significant number of points of it into establishment of exalted champions, someone that receives even stronger boons from their deity. In exchange, this is a permanent arrangement (unlike champions). There is also a certain degree of permanent link that makes the exalted champion often 'evolve' to resemble (mentally) their patron to at least some degree.   Another application is creation of Foldspaces. Those are pocket dimensions that can be altered by the will of its overlord, in this case a demigod. It's typically their secretive abode, at least the deepest level of it. The rest of it is typically filled with traps, obedient spirits and often their mortal followers.   The divine power is used to expand those, sometimes to the point of forming multiple-layed death trap labyrinth that defends the demigod from attacks (or at least delays them) and gives them a place to fill with their treasures. It's not easy to find them, and it's even harder to attack them.   The final application of the divine power is to improve yourself. Demigods can improve their character skill levels and attributes by paying for it with their divine power. This, however, is very costly.

Not all demigods are independent entities. Many of them swear fealty (to a larger or smaller degree) to various established religious hierarchies. When that happens, their activities and behaviour are somewhat limited, however they receive at least some recognition from the religion in question.   This allows them to gather divine power more easily. While, as stated, forcing them to become subsidiaries of another religion. If they act against its wishes, it's entirely possible to earn a lot of ire of much stronger religious organizations.   An example of this mechanism are the Living Saints of the Church of the Highmost, Dream-Saints of the Oneiric Choir and Demi-Archons of the Temple of the Seven.   Those are only the examples from larger and more established religions. Many Cults of the Ascended will have similar mechanisms.

Demigods can harvest a significant number of divine power by proving their superiority to their kin (while weakening the divine power of the defeated entity). This includes both outplanning them in some scheme and, especially, killing them. As a result of that, demigods tend to hide themselves.   It's not uncommon for the newly-born demigods to falsify their mortal self's death right after, as if they were known to have a high character level and they kept growing in strenght, eventually people will become suspicious. Those that stay open about their nature are typically the strongest ones, with legions of followers or incredible combat skills.   The exceptions are typically the demigods that swore fealty to larger religions, as you can expect them to more or less get along at least with each other. Other demigods will typically act through proxies, their champions, while the demigods themselves will hide somewhere in their personal foldspace domain.

At level 150 you can finally cease being mortal entirely, and ascend further. The result of this are one of two outcomes. Most entities become gods proper. When that happens, their abilities are appropriately upscaled from their demigod-selves, which is the reason why the demigods are generally considered by many scholars to be a tutorial for this very moment (all while weeding out the weaker ones).   Gods are fully conceptual entities that find it very hard to spend extended periods of time in the low-magical Vassal Worlds. Throne Worlds are better, but even that's rather unpleasant for them. As a result, most of them reside in their own personal realm in the Astral Network.   This is, de facto, an upscaled version of the foldspaces. Gods can use the divine power gained from being worshipped to create a heaven (or hell) for their mortal followers. Unless god is attacked and killed by another deity (this almost never happens), those are permanent. Worshippers spirited away into the afterlife will continue to provide their gods with their faith.   While it won't allow a lot of expansion, it will at least preserve the operations of what was already there. This means that even if the god stops being worshipped in mortal realms, he can simply sealed their Astral Network realm and continue existing there, in peace, with its past followers.   Most nascent gods team-up with others of their kind, forming a Pantheon and merging their divine realms. When that happens, every god picks an archetype for themselves - for example a War God/dess, a Fertility God/dess etc., which acts as a form of a character class for them, while granting them certain powers and allowing them to bestow particular boons to their worshippers, all while helping System with maintenance of Mankind.   For example, Fertility Gods can bestow their blessings to interracial pairs that asked for it through an appropriate ritual, allowing them to have children together, thus forming an exception to the System-established rules.   The archetypes are customally divided between Major and Minor ones, the former basically required for a pantheon to exist due to providing crucial services, while the Minor ones merely improve things and aren't directly required. It's not uncommon for Minor ones to get nommed by gods of the Major Archetypes - for example a Hunting God archetype might be covered by the local War God, Agriculture God archetype by the Fertility God etc.   Sometimes it goes the other way. For example a burial god that's heavily militant about undead and forms a militant order to deal with them will do that by taking up a fragment of the War God archetype. There are also cases of archetypes being split, for example several Hedonist Gods, overseeing particular branch of entertainment. It heavily depends on the local culture in question.   There are also cases of such gods deciding to strive for a more monotheistic position. This, in a way, is also a Divine Archetype, just more widespread than usually. It's harder to pull off, but allows a single god to cover all the Archetypes. One Gods will typically oversee all Major Archetypes at once, with a selection of Minor Archetypes thrown into the mix.

MAJOR ARCHETYPES
Chief Gods - Heads of a Pantheon, typically associated with rulership and rulers. Contrary to expectations, their archetypes don't allow an awful lot of things to happen - but they are overseeing the activities of other deities of the pantheon. Their main ability is spending a significant part of their pantheon' divine power to bless a particular mortal and create a proper Chosen One.
War Gods - Grant powers to paladins and other holy warriors of their faith. Might resurrect long-dead martial arts of their faith, by manifesting the knowledge of their founders (if they are in their religion's afterlife) in a form of an appropriate manual. They can also 'resurrect' lost powerful weapons and armors by whispering where they are to the minds of their followers.
Magic Gods - Oversees the activities of mages belonging to the local religion. Can grant their devout worshippers new spells, can resurrect forgotten magic (as War Gods does to martial arts).
Crafting Gods - Oversees the activities of crafters belonging to the local religion. Can grant their devour worshippers new crafting recipes, can resurrect forgotten ones (starting to see a pattern there?).
Fertility Gods - Deities of families, procreation and children. Can allow interspecies procreation to occur, can help correct endangered pregnancies, can allow procreation to occur despite advanced age, can help correct infertility.
  MINOR ARCHETYPES
Burial Gods - Deities of burials. Pretty common as they can safeguard the appropriately handled corpses from necromancy. However, they are entirely optional.
Trickster Gods - Gods that act partially as a divine comic relief, and partially as divine court jesters - they do what the more 'serious' gods aren't allowed to do to maintain their image. Expect them to be able to do whatever they want, including intruding on the domains of other deities, for as long as the results will be sufficiently hilarious.
Agriculture Gods - Deities of agriculture and animal husbandry. Their blessings tend to improve the fertility of the soil, to help heal the farm animals and pets. In times of famine might downright send food down, for as long as they are appropriately asked for it.
Hunting Gods - Deities of hunting and wildlife. Their blessings help the hunters and allow the wildlife to recover quicker from hunting.
Hedonist Gods - Not necessarily evil deities, as it's always a matter of moderation. Those gods might oversee sex, drugs, good food, alcohol and carousing in general.
Healing Gods - Gods of the healers, doctors and the likes. Often encompass hygiene as well, sometimes are taken over by the Fertility Gods due to them overseeing health of the pregnant people.
Commerce Gods - Gods of the trade and merchants. Their blessings tend to be rather scarce, but sometimes they do whisper good business ideas if the offering was valuble enough.
Beauty Gods - Gods of beauty, overseeing arts, and often natural beauty and handsomeness of people. Can heal scars and disfiguration, might bless artists to make something much more beautiful in a form of a trance.
Knowledge Gods - Gods of understanding and scholars. Their blessings tend to be rather scarce, but sometimes they do whisper correct solutions to problems into the ears of their worshippers.
Criminal Gods - Often merged with the Trickster Gods (in which case they tend to be significantly less nasty), the Criminal Gods oversee crime. They patron thieves and/or murderers, granting them certain divine boons. They are lite versions of the Evil Gods presented beneath.
Evil Gods - Sometimes you need a state-mandated troublemaker to be blamed for disasters and diseases. Evil Gods are such troublemakers. They cannot exactly win, but they channel the local nasty people from more destructive religions of evil such as the Ashen Covenant.

Not all level 150 become gods and retire to the Astral Network. The alternative to that are the demon lords of the Ashen Covenant. It is believed that their existence is a result of reaching such a high level while following a doctrine of antitheism.   It is, similarly, speculated that demigods sufficiently hostile to gods as a concept would become demon lords after ascension. The difference between the demon lords and gods is that the former are still mostly material entities rather than conceptual ones, allowing them to spend more time in the material reality.   This changes them into an overpowered variant of demigods, that tend to spend most of the time in the Throne World of Gehenna. Their attempt to invade any other world will inevitably become a horrible disaster to everyone involved.   Many speculate that if a mortal refused demigodhood and continued to grow their level up to 150, they would become something different than a god and a demon lord. However, no confirmed cases are known.

Gods, demon lords and demigods have access to the reformed version of the ancient Extranet, this in turn being a multiversal equivalent of the even more ancient internet. This is best described as a functional merger of Facebook, Discord and Wikipedia, accessible from the status window, and allowing them to present their achievements to others of their kind, to chat with others of their kind and to access the joint summary of human knowledge.   This is provided to them by the System in order to make them better as administrators. Naturally, there are also varied levels of access clearance, with demigods having their access to the database significantly limited. This is the main source of the apparent 'omniscience' of many gods and demigods, who know things that they shouldn't have.   It's also where many schemes are being played out, where allied demigods establish their long-term plans and so on. It was also used by many pantheons to guide their mortal followers into cultural and religious forms based on many ancient civilizations on Earth. It also allows the gods to contact demigods (and vice versa) directly, despite residing in the Astral Network.   There are said to be cases of Powers (the gods above gods) to sometimes message their godly followers that way, although whether that's true is unknown.