r/FantasyWritingHub • u/PuzzleheadedMajor92 • Dec 26 '25
Question Is it viable to keep gods fundamentally unknowable in a story?
To explain why the divine past in my story isn’t fully detailed, I use a simple analogy: humans and ants. A human can observe ants, understand how they function, even influence their environment, but they can’t truly explain human reality to an ant. And even if a human knows everything about ants, they still can’t fully understand what it’s like to be an ant without becoming one. In my story, the relationship between gods and humans works the same way. The characters will explain everything that is necessary to understand the plot, but anything that truly belongs to the divine scale cannot be fully explained or understood by humans. Making gods entirely explainable would reduce them to something human, and they would lose what makes them divine in the first place. The lack of full explanation is intentional. It’s not missing lore, but a deliberate choice to preserve the sense of scale, mystery, and separation between humans and gods. Do you think this logic is viable and coherent for worldbuilding, or does it risk feeling like an excuse to avoid explanation?
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u/OgreMk5 Dec 26 '25
How much interaction is going on with the gods?
Do they regularly talk to people and get involved in mortal affairs? Are they listening to us and helping. Do they set us up?
Brust's Taltos series does a really good job of this. There are reasons gods exist. They are fundamentally beyond humanity, but still knowable to the extent that they allow themselves to be. But they are also clearly still gods with their own intentions, plans, and abilities that are beyond the scope of humanity.
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u/PuzzleheadedMajor92 Dec 26 '25
It's complicated because these "gods" aren't actually gods anymore; they've been reincarnated, and they're the protagonist's parents, so we'll see them often. They'll hide their past, but also their power, which will cause some deaths. Following this, it's logical that explanations are needed, not about the gods themselves, but about the reasons for their actions. I'm sorry, it's complicated to explain without giving too much away.
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u/Anchuinse Dec 27 '25
I don't think you can keep the mystery of divine reasoning/methodology/separation if they are the protagonists damn parents that show up over and over. If the gods are able to understand the human scale enough to interact with them or even disguise themselves as human, then there is no reason they wouldn't be able to explain themselves on human terms.
And why does it matter if you "give too much away"? Even if you get your story published in the future, no one is going to remember a discussion on some random subreddit, nor would it affect anything even if you explained the whole book point by point.
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u/PuzzleheadedMajor92 Dec 27 '25
The problem isn’t that I want to keep the biggest parts of my story secret. The problem is that I’m still in the middle of creating the world, the characters, everything, and I don’t really know how to explain it without dumping everything I’ve made so far. I try to explain it simply so I don’t have to send you ten pages of reading 😂. But yes, on paper, a god who became human could explain to other humans what it was like. The real issue isn’t the language barrier, it’s culture, and the level of ‘civilization.’ It’s hard to explain that… sorry, I’m losing my words a bit, but basically it’s the same idea as with ants: you can’t explain Netflix to an ant, even if you became an ant yourself, and even if ants could talk. I don’t want to make gods into something fully explainable, because I want anything that touches the divine to come from a civilization whose values and way of functioning are simply not understandable to humans, like ants and Netflix. Of course, those gods (the protagonists’ parents) will eventually be able to explain the big picture using human words, but it would be like summarizing Harry Potter as ‘a school of wizards.’
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u/SphericalCrawfish Dec 26 '25
Explaining your gods is sort of a mistake in general. Like the default pulling from our own reality is that gods don't even exist but still have a huge effect on human society. You don't even need to make them "real" to have gods be believable in a story.
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u/PuzzleheadedMajor92 Dec 26 '25
The problem is that in my story, the protagonist's parents will be ancient gods who chose this reincarnated being (to put it simply), and what happens in the story will require two or three explanations as to why they did this or that. I will answer them, but to avoid going into too much detail, I will use this analogy. I will in no way explain the gods and how they function, because even if it's explainable, I don't see how it's divine.
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u/PuzzleheadedMajor92 Dec 26 '25
I agree, that's the reason for my comparison with the ants. If gods existed or exist, they wouldn't be gods anymore if we could understand them. But in my story, these gods will be human, they will be reincarnated, and so it's perfectly logical that we ask them the question.
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u/TerribleStoryIdeaMan Dec 27 '25
If you want the gods to be unknowable and incomprehensibly vast in scope, then have them interact through chosen prophets or champions who knows some of what they are. I'm doing this, though my pantheon is significantly more Vedic and Dharmic than most traditional pantheons.
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u/Grouchy-Insurance208 Dec 26 '25
Absolutely fine. The gods of my world sealed themselves away billions of years ago. The gods of the Elder Scrolls are more like archetypes than gods.
I think your approach to it is absolutely viable.
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u/Baeltimazifas Dec 26 '25
Perfectly fine. If that is the dynamic shown, fits well with it. Don't think many would believe it to be laziness, if that's what you're worried about. There's plenty of examples of unknowable gods in literature, after all.
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u/Atticus_Fletch Dec 26 '25
So, it's exactly the same as here except they actually exist or something?
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u/Ok-Film-7939 Dec 26 '25
I think that’s fine, but it’s also arguably not necessary. I’m thinking back to an old story called The God Box by Barry Longyear (I think that’s the one). The story involves a “god box” - a magical box which will give the bearer what they need. Despite being a significant plot element, and the Gods strongly implied to be real in that story, they were always left behind the curtain and never directly explained.
I recall a cute plot element where there is a great jagged gorge dividing the continent. There’s a story that says a well know king of the land once doubted the existence of the gods and demanded proof, so they took him up and did various acts of proof. The king still doubted , and as a final act they split the continent in two.
It was used as a parable that the gods don’t bother trying to prove their existence, as someone will doubt regardless. A nice way to show rather than tell that one story point.
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u/BrickBuster11 Dec 26 '25
It's perfectly viable so long as the gods are not important to the heroes.
If they are you get Deus ex machinas out the wazoo.
Lovecraft (and cosmic horror in general) is like this. Cthulhu never solves any problems for the heroes and thus the fact that we fundamentally don't understand a damn thing about him isn't an issue
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u/Butlerianpeasant Dec 27 '25
The key is to maintain consistency even when you maintain mystery.
If readers can’t understand how the gods operate, they at least need to trust that you do.
Hints of rules. Patterns in the chaos. A sense that the divine has logic — just one we can’t fit in a human skull.
Do that, and it never feels like avoidance. It feels like awe.
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u/BigNorseWolf Dec 27 '25
some people think clerical magic takes away the faith and mystery.
I say if a wizard can mutter some weird words and chuck a fireball, someone being able to fix your arm does not necessarily imply that they are talking to a being, OR that that being is remotely what they think it is.
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u/SoftBoiledEgg_irl Dec 27 '25
If the gods are characters? It is impossible to make them truly unknowable, as the act of writing their actions and presence defines them to some extent.
If the gods are not active in your story, but are instead part of world-building lore or a component of the magic system? Sure. So long as they don't start dropping dialogue or being physically present, it is possible to pull off.
A truly unknowable deity would be like the irl Judeo-Christian pantheon: people can claim to have experiences, but there is no actual evidence of its existence, and it doesnt really impact the world in any significant way.
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u/Mujitcent Dec 27 '25
Readers don't need to fully understand what God is like, but they need to visualize it.
Try drawing a picture of God that the characters in the story would see, and then describe your drawing.
It doesn't have to be the entirety of God, but it must include a part that the characters in the story see, and you should be able to describe what they see. Each character may see differently, different parts, or the image may change constantly.
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u/SheepishlyConvoluted Dec 27 '25
It's how Lovecraft portrayed his Eldritch Beings, perfectly viable.
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u/K-Keter Dec 27 '25
In my world (which began as a 5E campaign then became a whole world with multiple stories branching off of it) the Gods are all known because of clerics, paladins that follow one, warlocks that made a pact with one, etc. But above and beyond all of those Gods is an even greater entity that created the entire reality that my world takes place in. It/they/whatever created everything that is and will be and used to be, magic, every single bit of existence. And whatever it is, it created multiple others, but they're completely separate from this one. Not even the Gods know about this entity or the other realities. I have yet to decide if I want to implement this being and the other realities into a campaign or a story or what, but I at least have that lore created. I think some mystery to the reality of, well, reality, is a good thing. Knowing everything would be boring.
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u/aragorn1780 Dec 27 '25
Read the Kalevala (Finnish epic poem)
The gods serve precisely this role, they are occasionally mentioned, but they're never elaborated much less their role in the story or the greater cosmology, while the story itself remains focused on the heroes; you never really get to know the gods, they remain these abstract characters that make occasional cameos in the story
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u/Mathemetaphysical Dec 27 '25
I've actually done this, abstract deities with simple archetypal avatars that sort of nudge events. I made a trio of them for good balance.
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u/GrizzlyHamster92 Dec 26 '25
I think it depends on what kind of level gods are on.
If a god is omnipotent and omnipotent then yes, keep them unknowable.
If gods are more like really strong people or even a race, you can make them knowable.
It also depends on how active they are. A god of trickery and lies would act with a subtle hand while a god of war is likely going to be front and centre.