A God Am I! . . . well, for a certain value of "god"

[Zeropoint]

You have become A GOD! Not, I should make clear, THE God in a monotheistic sense, but a god of limited domain. Limited jurisdiction, too. You have become the God of Ants of <insert your home county here>. Your powers include and are limited to the following:

* Your physical body is improved. Any medical conditions you had go away, you become slightly stronger and faster, you gain a strong but not complete resistance to disease, and you stop aging. Your connection to ants also gives you remarkable endurance for carrying things.

*If you are killed in your county, you will re-form (in an ant nest, naturally) within 1d4 days.

*You can turn into your own weight in ants (and back).

*You know where every ant in your county is, and with a little concentration, you can perceive through any ant's senses and get a sense of what's on it's tiny little mind.

*You can command ants remotely. Over the distance of a few yards, you can puppet them almost like extensions of your own body. Up to a mile or two, you can order them around like a general with a radio. Beyond that, the ants will continue to obey the orders you've given them, to the best of their antlike ability (standing orders like "don't enter this area" or "keep this area clean" will work; things like "at noon on the 31st, climb onto this wall and form the words 'Fred sucks!'" are too complicated--the best you could hope for is that sometime near mid-day they'd crawl onto the wall and mill around in confusion.).

Now what?

[Purple]

Morning comes. As the first light of dawn shines down on the unsuspecting world my foes lie sleeping unaware of the pitter patter of tiny feet ascending upon them. The whole night long my loyal ants have worked tirelessly marching and chewing their way toward their targets like a well oiled wave of tiny machines. Now, finally, as the first rays of the sun emerge the time has come to strike. All around my home town and beyond people awake to a symphony of screaming. They rush through open doors or neighbors homes to find their loved ones, their relatives or neighbors covered in an angry red tide.

It is over now. The sun has fully risen. The ants have finished their meals. And as the garbage men collect the chewed open husks that once were bodies and weeping mothers prepare to bury their dead I look on and upon those that have scorned me. Today the city, tomorrow the world.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ah, the sociopath option.

My ants declare war on your ants and wipe them out.

Anyway, immortality is nice. Particularly since I can die if I so choose or by accident if I'm outside my country (I don't think I'd want to truly live forever with no choice in the matter). Still, with the number of people who might want to bump off a god, I'll probably be very reluctant to leave my home country if my powers become commonly known (question- as I am a duel citizen, does this mean that I will be resurrected if I die in both the US and Canada, or only in Canada, where I was born and currently reside?).

Also, I have the potential to be a massive intelligence gathering asset by spying with ants.

Beyond that, I might play superhero, since I can't be permanently killed.

On the other hand, I might like to keep a low profile. Don't want to end up in a government lab or Guantanamo or something like that.

Another question: Is their any way to relinquish this power if we decide we don't want it?

[Purple]

Ah, the sociopath option.

I'd only kill a few people.

My ants declare war on your ants and wipe them out.

Aren't you like american? Can ants even swim?

Anyway, once I am done murderizing everyone who ever scorned me, looked at me funny or stood in line for stuff in front of me when I was in a hurry I'd get on with the program of making my ants breed. Now that I am to live forever and be their king I must ensure that my subjects thrive and multiply. And I'd probably move to some place remote where I won't be bothered much by people. I am sure I can find at least one place. Maybe next to a nature reserve or something.

[The Romulan Republic]

As I said when enquiring as to how the rules apply to me in this scenario, I'm a duel US/Canadian citizen.

And my ants can stow away on ships and planes... okay, I don't know if ants would actually survive that trip.

Edit: Also, can I command foreign ants if I am in their country?

[Tribble]

Well Halloween is coming up, the 2nd power would make a hell of a party trick.

Could you have more than one god per country? As I am also Canadian Romulan Republic could be a threat to my rule and have to be dealt with, or we could cooperate with each other. Of course, being a stereo typical Torontoian it's not like I'm going to care all that much about what happens at the edge of the universe aka Victoria.

[The Romulan Republic]

We could work out a deal wherein you are Ant Lord of Toronto and I am Ant Lord of Vancouver Island.

Edit: Kind of worried that if we go public with our powers, Disney/Marvel might sue us for copyright infringement.

[Zeropoint]

Heh, I was thinking smaller scale than "nation"--I said, "county", not "country". I should have been more clear on that, since it's easy to misread. I wanted to specifically avoid granting the awesome power that would come from being the god of ants for such a large area covering so many people.

As far as losing the powers go, let's say that if you senselessly murder a large number of ants, you lose your "Ant God of Clackamas County" status.

I was thinking that I could set myself up as the ultimate environmentally friendly pest control service.

[Purple]

How do the powers apply are they territorial or related to the ant population? Like say you are the ant king of county X. Do your powers grant you dominion of any ants existing within the borders of X for as long as said ants remain in X? Or do you get dominion over the ants currently in X, their offspring etc like if you were being given a feudal fiefdom?

[The Romulan Republic]

Heh, I was thinking smaller scale than "nation"--I said, "county", not "country". I should have been more clear on that, since it's easy to misread. I wanted to specifically avoid granting the awesome power that would come from being the god of ants for such a large area covering so many people.

As far as losing the powers go, let's say that if you senselessly murder a large number of ants, you lose your "Ant God of Clackamas County" status.

I was thinking that I could set myself up as the ultimate environmentally friendly pest control service.

Pest control was something I considered as well.

County limits you a lot more, but clears up the nationality issue for me.

Though I don't think where I live uses counties. I'm going to treat "municipality" as equivalent if that's alright. Or maybe a Parliamentary riding would be equivalent.

[Joun_Lord]

I'd probably become a superhero. Then I'd promptly get sued by Marvel/Disney. Because even the god of a realm has to fear the power of The Mouse.

Probably the best things about being Antguy would be helping find people during natural disasters. Ants can crawl through rubble and collapsed buildings with ease and I can assist in the rescue efforts thanks to my enhanced strength and endurance. My immortality and ant body ability means I don't have to worry about dying or even being trapped if a building collapses around me so I can save the lives of victims AND rescuers.

And it sounds like it might suck if I leave the county but it also gives me an out if I ever wanted to die.

It would be cool if I had other ant attributes like ant strength and the ability to work on walls too. I could really do some good if I could lift like 2000 pounds. Or I could become a really kickass construction worker.

[Purple]

Not a bad idea actually. Once I get my ants to breed to idiotic numbers I'd probably take the show on the road and help people too. Like, it's not like I'd have anything better to do with my time anyway. There is only so much ant sex you can watch before you get bored after all.

[FaxModem1]

"Behold, my children, for they powerful and numerous. Oh, no, what's that? It's the dreaded demon, the anti-christ. It is THE ORKIN MAN!"

Seriously though, immortality is nice, and having an army of ants to move around and fetch me beer if I want one is good as well. And I'll make sure to get them some sugar as well, but there's really nothing you can do with these powers besides party tricks, and maybe some local construction. If you get too uppity or psychotic about this, I'm sure the county will hire the exterminators to take care of the problem.

I'm sure the new resource of ant construction could be useful, though.

[Zeropoint]

How do the powers apply are they territorial or related to the ant population? Like say you are the ant king of county X. Do your powers grant you dominion of any ants existing within the borders of X for as long as said ants remain in X?

That's how I pictured it working--when an ant walks into your county (or equivalent civil zone), you get dominion over it. When it walks out, you lose it.

It's probably obvious, but I posted this because I was wondering what people might think about having powers that, while amazing, were a bit short on practical applications. There must be creative things to do!

[Jub]

I'd probably go to school for a degree in biology and become the foremost expert in my region's ant population.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. Finally get around to reading Worm, for one, there might be some interesting ideas.

Could be an interesting challenge working out how to parlay ant control into a good life for me and the missus.

There are a lot of ways to use this kind of power for crime, but I'd rather not do that, among other things because there's really nothing stopping people from chucking their new Ant God into a jail. Sure, you can turn into a pile of ants, but they can arrest you again if you reform. Keep provoking people and they can eventually either start killing some of your body's-weight-of-ants (cop with a can of Raid) which would at best be unpleasant, or just ambush you and get you into a sealed container before you can react.

Practice doing fine control of ants at longer distances. The fine control is a lot more useful than vague control. If that can be improved with practice, it is very good.

Hm... surveillance of a large area, in that the ants can be subtly 'planted' in places that it wouldn't be worthwhile to mount cameras for. Monitoring criminals for the police? Maintaining lawns and gardens? I bet you could get the ants to nibble weeds to death. It'd be pretty time-consuming, though, unless you can do it over a huge area all at once and get the ants to do exactly what you want in detail without having to spend more than a few minutes thinking about it.

[madd0ct0r]

Worm mostly used wasps, cockroaches, other flyers and weaving spiders.

Still, ants dosed with capsican, flying drones, and a better understanding of the hundreds of species capabilities around you would be a start.
There's the old trick of using ants as stitches for wounds, the serious building capability you'd have, termite killer, mosquito killer, mass recycling becomes hugely feasible with ants dedicated to separating materials

[Simon_Jester]

I'd been planning to read Worm anyway, and I was more just thinking in terms of "who knows, maybe there are two or three cool ideas I could actually do with ants in there."

[Purple]

So basically as long as I stay in my region I am untouchable? Neat. Seems like none of you can prevent me from building my giant ant hive.

[Zeropoint]

To kill you against your will, they'd have to ambush you or trick you into an ant-proof container, then take the container outside your area, and THEN kill you. Hmm, or they could knock you out and then keep you sedated.

[Zixinus]

It is going to be a bit tricky because I live in an apartment. I will need to make space for lots of aquariums to begin to understand the full extent of my power.

My first action would be to begin study ants. I now have an ultimate perspective that the best ant-researchers in the world can't hope to get. Ants seem amazing when you look at them at their levels but from a human perspective they are rather weak in what they can do. It's not like they can do things like carry cameras or people. So it's actually a rather limited scope of what I can do with them. It might be possible to get a few useful ant colonies I'd have to import them from Australia.

One thing I'd wonder about, is whether there are any ant species that need help with. Being a minor god is still a god and one should act fitting to the title.

[Purple]

To kill you against your will, they'd have to ambush you or trick you into an ant-proof container, then take the container outside your area, and THEN kill you. Hmm, or they could knock you out and then keep you sedated.

Thing is, none of you know who I am. And as the ant king I'd actually keep my murders to a minimum and generally focus on telepathically making my ants multiply in some safe spot in my domain. You know, take care of them like a good king should. So I seriously doubt you'd be able to figure out who I am or that I have the powers. So what's the motivation?

[Solauren]

There will be a rash of thefts caused by ants.....

[Purple]

There will be a rash of thefts caused by ants.....

Not a bad idea but I'll probably not take you up on it. Too obvious. Like all you'd need to do to catch me would be to follow the ants. More likely I'd use them to make the occasional person vanish. But nothing that can be traced to me. Like, there is no point in being a supervillain if you can be easily beaten. Leave that to people with actually good superpowers like flight or the rest of the Superman package.

[bilateralrope]

To kill you against your will, they'd have to ambush you or trick you into an ant-proof container, then take the container outside your area, and THEN kill you. Hmm, or they could knock you out and then keep you sedated.

Are there any prisons inside your area ?

Or are the police likely to take you outside your area without knowing the importance of your location ?