My thinking is that each deity is an entity unto itself, unless there is good reason to believe otherwise. These deities may have the ability to do anything within their continuum, but are not outside of it.

I'm put in mind of the Chronicles of Amber in which there is one 'real world' of which the others are all shadows that have been distorted to varying degrees. So perhaps the gods are shadows of the Ultimate God, as filtered through the lens of the Author of each universe.

A while back, before deciding that I'm not cut out to write PPC missions, I thought about creating an agent with Deity given Healing Powers and that he would have access to them only in continuums where there was a deity willing to grant them to him.

I actually apply the backstory of the Kingdom Hearts cosmology to the fictional multiverse. It essentially says that there was originally only one World, which was only light, no darkness. People started to get greedy, and wanted to hoard as much light to themselves as possible. This cast a shadow in those people's hearts, and the light started to break apart. After the light seemed completely torn up, some of it still survived in the hearts of children. From that light, Kingdom Hearts, or God, or whatever, recreated fragments of the original World, but separate from each other. The assumption in KH is that someday, all the disparate worlds will come together again recreate the greater World, but only after darkness has disappeared from every heart, and all the people of the multiverse can live together peacefully in the light.

I take Kingdom Hearts to be a metaphor for God. So here, we have God splitting existence into many worlds, each one slightly different due to each being a different part of the original World. Hence, they all "see" God, or Kingdom Hearts, as being a little different. Narnia is filled with talking animals, so for them, He is a great speaking lion. The Stephen King universe is full of strange creatures and occurrences, and there, He is a giant intergalactic turtle spirit. The Pokémon world is filled with Pokémon, and its residents see Him as—well, a Pokémon.

So this was a long way of saying, "I believe they are all the same being." (Still not sure I actually swallow Arceus being God, though. It should not be possible for God to be captured in a Pokéball and forced to fight for a ten-year-old.)

"Omnipotent" would mean omnipotent throughout the entire multiverse; and unless all omnipotent people were in exact agreement at all times (which would make them functionally one being), there would be disagreements with one person trying to do one thing, and another doing another; and how do you pit one omnipotent deity against another? They both, by definition, can do anything.

So, yeah, they would have to be all the same, because the multiverse is connected; or else they could not be omnipotent. They could be able to influence everything within their own continuum, but that wouldn't be "omnipotent", only very powerful.

Thankfully, there are very few of them, and they are all alternate-universe representations of the God of the Bible, from either the Christian, Jewish, or occasionally Muslim viewpoint; so their authors likely thought they were the same thing too.

So, yeah, they're all the same thing. Otherwise you run into logical contradictions. As for different writers giving their versions of God different personalities, different opinions, etc.: Two possibilities. Either the Authors are seeing the same person from many perspectives, so there aren't any contradictions; or else the logical contradictions exist, God is different in different continua, and it's better not to think too hard about it, much the way one shouldn't think too hard about the mechanism by which Bleeprin erases badfic headaches. The PPC runs on plot holes--this would be just one more to add to the collection.

I'm personally a fan of (though not an adherent to) the theology in Young Wizards, so there's the One, who made everything, and then there are the Powers That Be, who helped (or didn't, in the case of the Lone Power) and actually run around doing things and interacting with people when necessary. The Powers That Be are finite in number, but they exist outside of time and have infinite capacity to create avatars of themselves in the world(s). Thus, from just one of the PTBs we have the One's Champion, Michael the Archangel, Prometheus, Athena, Lugh, etc. And a pet parrot, which just goes to show that an avatar can be whatever the PTB needs it to be, not necessarily a god-like being. Each avatar is separate and autonomous, even though they're all technically the same being.

I figure, this easily extends to other continua. The One is the One, but any potent personalities that actually get involved in-universe (Aslan, the Valar, etc.) could be avatars of the various PTBs. So, yes, some of them are the same being—but then again, some aren't, and either way it doesn't matter, because they aren't just puppets, they are unique fully-functional incarnations imbued with some of the Power in question's essence.

That being the case, you bet they know about the PPC, but it's pretty much Multiversal that the local deities/PTBs usually don't get involved with the affairs of mortals unless it's absolutely vital. So there you go. {= )

~Neshomeh

I've always assumed that any deities/supernatural entities are 'contained' as it were to one continua unless canon suggests otherwise.

At any rate that would make more sense from a writing point of view, otherwise we could get into a big mess very quickly. :P

I like to think that every 'verse is separate from the others: there is no link between them aside from the portal network used by HQ. Therefore, the three Goddesses from Zelda aren't related to the Discworld Gods, who aren't related to Aslan, and so on so forth. A universe apiece, as you put it.

It's pretty explicitly stated in Narnia that Aslan is our God too, so in at least one case, yes. Beyond Him, though, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't bet against Eru knowing about the PPC, but I would bet against him intervening in PPC affairs on anything short of the most dire of circumstances - and even then, he seems to be a fan of the indirect (and often Wizardly) approach.

(To be precise, Aslan and the Emperor over the Sea mirror the God the Son / God the Father parts of the Trinity, and it's far too late for me to dive into trinitarian doctrine at the moment. Suffice to say, they're both God, omnipotent, omniscient, distinct, etc. And God is singular in that last sentence.)