Likewise mortal but longer-lived things, a hair closer to ideal agency though still far from it, now battle.

Their objective, to bring enough pressure to bear on 'Zon-Kuthon outside the vault' that He must choose between being inside that vault and significantly ceasing to be.  Maybe not ceasing entirely, but becoming perhaps a fallen being, a mere demigod.  He must choose between going into the vault, and that.

The assembled gods cannot reasonably endeavor to kill all of Zon-Kuthon, if He chooses the latter path.  Gods encrypt their energies, arrange their potentials in lattices and arrays to which only they have the keys.  Like a box full of bouncing classical gas atoms that can be made to all end up on the box's left side, in apparent defiance of thermodynamics and ready to yield up their energy as a pressure, if you know the secret for how those atoms were originally set in motion to be able to end up like that with the right tweak.  Anybody who doesn't know the secret just sees a box full of a useless uniform gas.

In likewise way, a being under such assault as Zon-Kuthon may scatter little shards of Himself here and there, too small and subtle for now to be noticed, but destined to collide and gather up at some future time - a time when His adversaries are paying less attention, no longer spending all Their own power and watchfulness to launch a coordinated assault on Him blanketing Golarion and the other planes where He extends.

Gods almost never gather themselves up into a single focused being, a single focused intelligence, in all the fullness of Their power, except in the place that is very safest to them.

Among the greatest of adventurers who yet do not quite understand, it is whispered that only by killing a great Power within Their own home plane is it possible to destroy that Power permanently; and also that a Power within its home plane is nearly invincible.

These whispers are not quite accurate.  The key concept rather - and from mortals it is hidden - is that gods face a tradeoff between weakness and vulnerability.  They can gather themselves up and become stronger, but only at the risk of their own true destruction.  Any problem which requires you to become unified and powerful and localized, and therefore vulnerable to any still greater force, is a challenge you should face on your own home ground if you possibly can.  On the very rare occasions when Powers are truly slain, therefore, they tend to fall within their home planes, after ascending to terrifying heights within it.

The assembled gods, then, know that they can only force so much of Zon-Kuthon into the vault prepared for Him.  As He could survive as a demigod outside it, He can also go mostly into the vault but leave a demigod's worth of Himself outside.  That demigod's worth of power will not be able to free Rovagug, though; and that is all the assembled gods are aiming for.

Most of them, that is.

Likewise mortal but longer-lived things, a hair closer to ideal agency though still far from it, now battle.

Their objective, to bring enough pressure to bear on 'Zon-Kuthon outside the vault' that He must choose between being inside that vault and significantly ceasing to be.  Maybe not ceasing entirely, but becoming perhaps a fallen being, a mere demigod.  He must choose between going into the vault, and that.

The assembled gods cannot reasonably endeavor to kill all of Zon-Kuthon, if He chooses the latter path.  Gods encrypt their energies, arrange their potentials in lattices and arrays to which only they have the keys.  Like a box full of bouncing classical gas atoms that can be made to all end up on the box's left side, in apparent defiance of thermodynamics and ready to yield up their energy as a pressure, if you know the secret for how those atoms were originally set in motion to be able to end up like that with the right tweak.  Anybody who doesn't know the secret just sees a box full of a useless uniform gas.

In likewise way, a being under such assault as Zon-Kuthon may scatter little shards of Himself here and there, too small and subtle for now to be noticed, but destined to collide and gather up at some future time - a time when His adversaries are paying less attention, no longer spending all Their own power and watchfulness to launch a coordinated assault on Him blanketing Golarion and the other planes where He extends.

Among the greatest of adventurers who yet do not quite understand, it is whispered that only by killing a great Power within Their own home plane is it possible to destroy that Power permanently; and also that a Power within its home plane is nearly invincible.

These whispers are not quite accurate.  The key concept rather - and from mortals it is hidden - is that gods face a tradeoff between weakness and vulnerability.  They can gather themselves up and become stronger, but only at the risk of their own true destruction.  Any problem which requires you to become unified and powerful and localized, and therefore vulnerable to any still greater force, is a challenge you should face on your own home ground if you possibly can.  On the very rare occasions when Powers are truly slain, therefore, they tend to fall within their home planes, after ascending to terrifying heights within it.

The assembled gods, then, know that they can only force so much of Zon-Kuthon into the vault prepared for Him.  As He could survive as a demigod outside it, He can also go mostly into the vault but leave a demigod's worth of Himself outside.  That demigod's worth of power will not be able to free Rovagug, though; and that is all the assembled gods are aiming for.

Most of them, that is.

Likewise mortal but longer-lived things, a hair closer to ideal agency though still far from it, now battle.

Their objective: to bring enough pressure to bear on 'Zon-Kuthon outside the vault' that He must choose between being inside that vault and significantly ceasing to be.  Maybe not ceasing entirely, but becoming perhaps a fallen being, a mere demigod.  He must choose between going into the vault, and that.

The assembled gods cannot reasonably endeavor to kill all of Zon-Kuthon, if He chooses the latter path.  Gods encrypt their energies, arrange their potentials in lattices and arrays to which only they have keys.  Like a box full of bouncing classical gas atoms that can be made to all end up on the box's left side, in apparent defiance of thermodynamics and ready to yield up their heat as a pressure, if you know the secret for how those atoms were originally set in motion to be able to end up like that with the right tweak.  Anybody who doesn't know the secret just sees a box full of a useless uniform gas.

In likewise way, a being under such assault as Zon-Kuthon may scatter little shards of Himself here and there, too small and subtle for now to be noticed, but destined to collide and gather up at some future time - a time when His adversaries are paying less attention, no longer spending all Their own power and watchfulness to launch a coordinated assault on Him blanketing Golarion and the other planes where He extends.

Among the greatest of adventurers who yet do not quite understand, it is whispered that only by killing a great Power within Their own home plane is it possible to destroy that Power permanently; and also that a Power within its home plane is nearly invincible.

These whispers are not quite accurate.  The key concept rather - and from mortals it is hidden - is that gods face a tradeoff between weakness and vulnerability.  They can gather themselves up and become stronger, but only at the risk of their own true destruction.  Any problem which requires you to become unified and powerful and localized, and therefore vulnerable to any still greater force, is a challenge you should face on your own home ground if you possibly can.  On the very rare occasions when Powers are truly slain, therefore, they tend to fall within their home planes, after ascending to terrifying heights within it.

The assembled gods, then, know that they can only force so much of Zon-Kuthon into the vault prepared for Him.  As He could survive as a demigod outside it, He can also go mostly into the vault but leave a demigod's worth of Himself outside.  That demigod's worth of power will not be able to free Rovagug, though; and that is all the assembled gods are aiming for.

Most of them, that is.