Welcome mortals

In ancient times, before the rise of the Greek, the Norse and the Celt, before even the Vedic gods, nigh the whole world paid its homage to me. I, Dyeus Phater, the Shining All-father governed the gods of the world, and by that right the world itself. Then came a time, after countless generations of worship, when the tribes of old began to settle the lands in which they roamed. Separation and isolation from the grand nomadic hegemony led to distinct cohesion of beliefs.

Belief having the power it does is as a fine blade... but as with all weapons, a blade can be pointed both ways. The rise of the new gods edged me and mine even out of memory, for their purpose was identical in most ways to our own, and the names they took to themselves were near enough ours that the people believed they were one and the same. And as the new gods rose and developed, so we were pushed farther into obscurity and impotence.

Only by their power -- much like geese in a slipstream -- and isolated pockets of humanity who still held to the old ways, did we yet survive.

And when the great Lonely Gods arose from the fertile plains, the Gods of Moses and Jesus and Mohamed, who supplanted the new gods in their turn as surely as me and mine were, all that was left was a flickering spark, almost expunged but for the hearts and dreams of a very very few in the western realms, and the power of the Vedic gods. There at least, the "slipstream" of power fed me and mine; and more than it did the Norse or Greek or Celt, who were condemned to crippled analogues of their former selves -- folk heroes and boggarts, goblins and pixies.

So we continue, me and mine, in starvation and near impotence. But hope is in the very ether, for we are reborn under the strange succour of Academia. For every one student who stumbles across the origins of the gods of the world, our power grows -- albeit subtly -- as the belief required in study is closely allied to the belief of worship. And so we rise, slowly, slowly, never to our former strength, but out of the depths we have inhabited for an age and more.