Return of the Spencerposting, because I’m no longer doing homework period and finally have the energy to think and post this stuff again.
Where we last left off, Spencer Acachalla is a weakened god living in the basement of Acachalla’s house, attempting to siphon what power he can through a leyline the foundations were built on top of. He has been there for a long, long time— longer than Gertrude, even— and only creeps out of the basement to investigate what’s happening when he realizes the increasing members of the household aren’t leaving anytime soon. He’s trying to vet the new members (Gertrude, Billy, Sally) to varying levels of success, and trying to see if any of them can be used to his advantage in his weakened state. Moving on, I want to talk about the nature of Spencer as a being, because it’s about to be irrevocably warped and that change is important.
When I say Spencer is a weakened God, I do mean that he could not currently survive without a host body, and said body essentially a puppeted corpse being maintained and given an illusion of life through having something inhabit it and magically freeze it in time… but he’s not taking care of it, really. Since the body was killed to give him life, it really doesn’t have anything else left for Spencer to take from it unless he like. Inhabited it for real, but then he’d be severely limited in what he can do since he’d have to be keeping a body alive all the time, too, and wouldn’t have as much of a metaphysical presence.
Also, Spencer’s host body seems to be about 12 or so, and admittedly Papa and Gertrude should’ve been more concerned about that. Both being from long-living species themselves meant that neither actually really took note at how Spencer didn’t seem to age. They both registered that he was alive and didn’t seem to be dying anytime soon, so he’s fine to just do his own thing actually. Maybe he was some non-human thing that just looked like a kid but was actually perfectly fine managing itself.
What’s worth noting is that it takes energy to gain energy. In order to covet power from the world or life from magic, you need to have the ability to take it for yourself. In the same way that a parasite needs to suck the nutrients out of their host or a plant needs to drink water through its roots, and people need to eat, drink, chew, digest, etc. in order to gain energy from food. For Spencer, that energy is power, and that power is everything. Just existing near an area with a lot of magical energy isn’t enough for him to benefit, he needs to be able to knock it off its original course and take it for himself. A lot of what he was doing in his early years at the Acachalla house was just sitting in the basement, slowly pulling power from the leylines for as long as possible. Because again, taking this magic takes effort. It took time for him to even be able to siphon away even a negligible amount of power for himself consistently.
Normally, he wouldn’t have to worry about this. Gods predominately gain their power from worship and offerings from their followers, and they usually have the ability to pull energy from anywhere in the cosmos they can reach, or from deaths during wars done in the gods name, or even become a part of a galaxy themselves as to not obstruct an ecosystem. That being said, the Mighty Spence was revived in a weakened state, and while he had many followers who gave their life for his being, he really didn’t have any left afterwards. By the time he returned, the Mighty Spence was merely considered some old forgotten deity with traditions that died out a bit later than expected for a belief of its caliber. In order to reach a point where he isn’t reliant on the Acachalla family house, he either needs to find a more powerful leyline that is accessible to him, or he needs to gain a collection of worshippers.
The first one would be difficult considering how much of the world has become private property— not to mention how many people would jump at the chance to dissect a weakened god— and the second one would be challenging given Spencer’s social skills (or lack thereof). So he chooses to stay in the basement, and while he tries to chase away the family on occasion, they are a consequence of this choice that he is willing to accept. A consequence that may come with a boon of its own, seeing how much magical power seems to be contained by at least three of the family members (Gertrude is just a standard gingarian as far as Spencer is concerned), and he’s willing to explore that to its natural conclusion. He’s really hoping that conclusion is either him gaining followers or taking their power for himself, but y’know, anything works, totally, yeah…
So obviously, things go HORRIBLY wrong for him very fast.
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