Six heavenly feathers, plucked from the Divines. These feathers fall to the Earth, landing amidst the soil. Forgotten about, their power drained into the Earth itself. As time passes, the feathers eventually fully decay, leaving crystalline "skeletons" where they once landed, where the Earth consumed them.

This myth has gone through time several times. Originally, it was one feather, granted to an explorer whose maps united humanity. The second feather was added when a warlord conquered the world, becoming an angelic abomination to rule over all. The third feather was added when a hero rose amongst the people, and challenged the warlord, saving humanity. The fourth feather was added by a curious prophet, proclaiming the future, and erasing the past. The final feather was added when a scientist jumpstarted the modern era, bringing unique philosophical points to bring us to where we are today.

And now, the myth will change from five feathers to six. During your journey outside, you have found a small, crystalline skeleton of a feather. Perhaps through accident, or through desire, or through fate, you have touched the crystalline feather, and it crumbled into you. Powers flow through you, but what kind of path will you take, and what kind of life will you live?

You may take take one FEATHER to determine how you gain "experience", and you may take one CRYSTAL to determine what the experience grants you.

FEATHER OF LIFE'S FEAST: Whenever you are responsible for something's death, you will gain experience. Direct killings, such as with a bullet, bomb, or sword, grants a great amount of experience. Indirect killings, such as ordering companions or executions, grant a fine amount of experience. Super indirect killings, such as crashing an economy and leading hundreds to starve to death, results in a poor amount of experience.

Overall, this is the fastest way to level up, gaining you absolute power the fastest. However, unless you begin farming humanity or life, you may eventually run out of things to kill. And that's ignoring that things tend to fight back...

Bonus note, this assumes that you're killing adult humans. Younger humans, super elderly humans, or animals, tend to give much less experience.

FEATHER OF DEATH'S DENIAL: Simply be being alive and existing, you will gain experience.

This is the slowest, but safest way to leve up. Nothing you can do will make you level slower, but nothing you can do can make you level faster, either. You will always level at the same, constant pace.

FEATHER OF CHALLENGE OVERCOME: You will only be able to gain power through difficult scenarios or challenges. Things that are truly difficult to you, and would need actual work to be done, can grant you experience. Quite similar to many RPG systems expectations on leveling up, in that you need to overcome obstacles of some kind in order to level up.

If you live life without attracting attention, such as muggers, and without challenging yourself, such as schooling, you will find yourself leveling slower than even Death's Denial. However, if you live even slightly risky, or challenge yourself in your pursuits, you will find yourself leveling at a decent pace.

That being said, when you gain truly powerful levels, is there a point where nothing can challenge you anymore?

FEATHER OF DIVINE WORSHIP: Instead of growing yourself or experiencing life to gain power, you may instead have others grant you their worship. By having others pray or make offerings to you, you will gain power. While it is faster for people to give you expensive or important offerings, or to burn their possession in your name, you can still level simply by having people pray to you occasionally.

If you only have your immediate family and maybe your small little friend group worship you, then you will find yourself leveling slower than even Death's Denial. But as you gain more and more followers, or convince people to give you gifts (which count as offerings), then you will begin leveling faster and faster, potentially putting you on par with an active murderer in Life's Feast if you have the entire world making offerings to you.

As the entire world begins to pray to you, and make sacrifices or offerings in your name, you will gain power from them. It does not matter if this power is gained through kindness, cruelty, whether it stems from fear or love, all that matters is that they worship you, and you gain their offerings.

You cannot worship yourself, and if you create creatures for the sole purpoes of worshipping you, it wont work. You also can't have people give you things that you gave them, such as giving them money and telling them to offer it to you.

FEATHER OF CURIOUS PASSION: By seeing new places, learning new subjects, and gaining new knowledge, you may gain power. Going to school, visiting other countries, studying the stars, and so on can level you up. Even just going to school for 7 hours a day is enough to make you level almost twice as fast as Death's Denial.

Imagine how much more quickly you'd level if you were discovering things that humanity doesn't even know about yet. Strange secrets, seeing whats at the bottom of the ocean, or even discovering the true source of power behind all of the Feathers... Some discoveries would level you much faster than even an active Life's Feast user could do. However, figuring out how to find such discoveries is the hard part...

FEATHER OF PRACTIED TRAINING: Unlike all of the other Feathers, this doesn't base your power gain off of experience or levels. You will gain the ability to train specific parts of your chosen Crystal. Training takes time, but the specialized focus and growth that comes with it can be stronger than many other things. Studying twelve hours a day in one very specific spell can put you ahead of even an active Life's Feast user in that one spell. There is a reason why those who min-max in games can become so powerful...

CRYSTAL OF THE HEAVENS: As you grow and level up, you will gain divine powers. The ability to heal, or to call upon cleansing light to clean your belongings or to clean your enemies of their flesh. You will be able to perform miracles, and at very high levels, you may even begin gaining angelic traits: Regeneration, eternal youth, wings, and to your enemies, an eldritch appearance that can cleanse their heads from their mind.

CRYSTAL OF POWER: As you grow and level up, you will become more powerful. You will stop aging, you will need less food or water, you will become stronger, smarter, more reflexive, and so on. Eventually, you won't even need to breath. The Crystal of Power forgoes magic or unique skills and talents, for a direct and easily accessed method of immortality, and a very, very powerful body and mind.

CRYSTAL OF SPELL CRAFTING: As you grow and level up, you will gain access to strange threads of power. You will be able to combine these threads in strange and powerful ways. Combine fire and bolts to create a blast of fire to harm your enemies. Combine life, love, and beauty to create therapeutic healing spells, to wash away both the bodily pains and the mental pains. These threads are difficult to work with, can be quite confusing, and are very hard to fully utilize even at high levels, but they will allow you to perform many versatile and well-practiced spells to help you and your ambitions.

CRYSTAL OF TRUE SELF: As you grow and level up, your body will change. You will become more like yourself, anything physical (or maybe mental) that you dislike about yourself fading away, being transformed into something more true to you. Eventually, you will gain the ability to manipulate this, changing your body how you desire. If you need wings, then perhaps you will just grow them. If you need strength, then perhaps you will just make yourself strong. This is more versatile than the crystal of power, but it will always lose out to the crystal of power even if you are currently specialized in strength.

CRYSTAL OF TALENTS: As you grow and level up, you will become only slightly stronger or faster. However, you will see new abilities appear before you. You will be able to unlock strange new skills, many of which not quite human. Seeing a second into the future, being able to mentally calculate instantly, being able to learn the proper stance to jump half a building, and so on. While you are limited on physical growth and magical potential, you will gain powerful skills and talents for you to utilize.

CRYSTAL OF EVERYTHING: The Crystal of Everything grants you access to every other Crystal. However, the Crystal of Everything makes you level or train at a sixth of the speed. In the long term, this may have the strongest potential as you will be able to do anything and everything, but in the short term... Will you even gain a method of immortality, a method to escape the threat of aging, before you succumb to the release of death?

The power within you has settled. You have gained the capacity of great power, now all you need to do is to gain back the power that was sent to the Earth. How you may grow depends on your Feather, and how you may develop depends on your Crystal. What stories will you find, and will you be proud of your decisions here today? Live on, and discover.

Note:

There are certain combinations that may be more beneficial with one another. The Crystal of Spell Crafting can give you a tiny amount of experience just due to you learning the different thread combinations, for example. Dependent on what you get, you may get threads or divine spells or talents that allow you to connect with your worshippers if you take the Feather of Divine Worship.

You get bonus points if you can think of some useful combo from the pair you pick, such as using Challenge Overcome and Talent to learn the "powers" of the obstacles you defeat, for example.