Thanks for replying. Marvin,
I've read the lore. I just don't feel sure that a creature descended from gods doesn't have any of their traits. A Demigod has the description, paraphrased "A creature with godlike ancestry.". So what is the relationship between the god and its bloodline? None? Are all demigods descended from non-godlike extraplanar entities that you can't worship? Demigod worshipping sounds interesting, but I understood that gods expend power to keep their worshippers satisfied in reality. What does the Demigod do for its following?
Clearly during the period of the construction of the Orb gauntlet these gods had a strong enough following that people built altars to them and there has been enough time for world-warping gods like Lugonu/Lucy to create portals to the Abyss or spend time corrupting altars, et cetera. When a challenger is not in the gauntlet, time has to slow or stop, otherwise processes like the corruption of altars by Lugonu would have corrupted ALL altars in the dungeon (see documents on Lugonu's effects in the radius of corrupt altars); although the concept of the challenger affecting the dungeon or the dungeon being different for every challenger makes sense, certain other time-dependent effects that occur whilst progressing to the Zot realm make this the most obvious idea. Without publicity, the only way that a Demigod could affect established followers is by contact in the dungeon or by being a celebrated deity before he/she enters- therefore Demigods must be prime material avatars of unknown gods or extraplanar entities to make the leap between a god potent enough to attract believers from established beings and the pitiful Level 1 that enters the dungeon.
Although it is possible that the gauntlet warps the memories and powers of those who enter, this leaves us with the obvious consideration of the back stories already given for classes such as Wanderer. If the dungeon equalizes all that enter to an extent, then assuming that the back stories for each class are true, the Demigod back story must be false, or the Demigod must have been powerful before they entered, powerful enough that the dungeon could not reduce their ability so far.
Therefore we establish the Demigod as an endowed avatar of a force stronger than itself that recovers from the effect of the gauntlet's entry, without memory yet still powerful. The dungeon must dampen the effects of gods and other external entities (hence the unpredictability of gifts and blessings; I imagine the gods are blind as to what they send partly, with the exception of Xom or Lugonu, whose powers are almost invariably accurate for some reason- their relation to the Abyss may be a part!)...
...so this leaves it beautifully clear for whatever we like. I didn't really care for the idea of accelerated Piety, I just thought it would be very easy to put in. My idea was more that a Demigod would have the properties of a god they came from. Demigods derived from themselves are a stretch for the above reason, but a Demigod based on a more powerful version of themselves is certainly a very wonderful thing.