So here’s a thing I never see fantasy do enough of: treat belief like it’s actually made of something.
Most secondary-world religions work like this — a god exists, people worship it, the worship happens because the god is powerful, the end. Fine. Boring. In Dyjian, I wanted belief to be a raw material. Something you generate. Something you can run out of.
The Three Currencies of Dyjian.
There are, near as I can tell (I’m a discovery writer, so “near as I can tell” is doing real work in that sentence), three ways to fuel power in this world, and none of them are metaphors:
Blood. The Kyusoa — synthetic, doll-like things — carry Aelythian power in their blood. You kill one, you get a finite resource. Ugly, straightforward, and it’s why Mokallai’s entire war is basically a body count with a plot attached.
Artifacts. The Ra’Ol stones anchor reality to the planet itself. Rare, individually marked, and useless to you unless you’re someone they’ll actually answer to — an Alyi’s voice, minimum. This one’s about access, not supply.
And then there’s Mankind, who don’t have a shred of Aelythian ability. No blood magic, no claim on the stones. And yet Eyuwre — the Purger of Worlds, an entity who is deeply unbothered by almost everything — says, flat out, that belief is the blood pumping in the heart of their Deus Ex.
Their devotion is the one renewable resource in the whole system. It scales with headcount in a way blood and rocks just don’t.
Once I Had That, the Plot Basically Wrote Itself.
Mokallai doesn’t want an army. Well, he wants an army too, don’t get me wrong. But what he actually wants is a religion, because a religion is a power plant that doesn’t require you to keep killing things, and it doesn’t run dry as long as people keep showing up to believe in it.
That’s why he lets Mankind call him “god” even though the word visibly makes him flinch every single time. It’s not vanity, or at least it’s not only vanity. It’s fuel management. Y’all, he’s basically running a utility company.
Once belief is a real resource and not just texture, it has to start behaving like one, or the whole thing falls apart:
It gets manufactured on purpose. Laylen’s hymn isn’t just there to be creepy and atmospheric (though, hoo boy, is it creepy and atmospheric). Thousands of voices chanting in the Tenchmok is production. That’s the factory floor.
It becomes somebody’s fault. Einarriel — one of Mokallai’s own — built the original following, back before Maowd-Ib showed up and got all the credit for it. His slow, mortifying realization (“I give him that power,” he mutters to himself, a beat too late to matter) only lands because we’ve already watched belief get treated as something you can build and hand off like inventory.
It creates actual scarcity. If devotion is fuel, a crisis of faith is a fuel shortage. Dyiij falling apart with guilt isn’t just an emotional beat for its own sake — it’s an Alyi realizing she let the plant run unsupervised for way too long.
The Craft Bit, If You Want One.
Here’s what I’d tell myself a draft ago, if past-me were the type to listen (she was not): a magic system built on an abstract theme — faith, control, submission, whatever — earns its keep the second the theme gets hard rules instead of just mood. “Belief is powerful” is a vibe. “Belief is harvested, has a body count, and can be redirected by whoever controls the narrative” is a system. Systems make plot for you. Vibes just sit there looking thematic.
I won’t tell you what happens when someone tries to corner the entire market on belief itself. But I will say: that’s the shape of where this is headed, and it’s the reason Mokallai’s ambitions stop fitting on one planet fairly quick.
Until next time.