End Times and The Great Game

Every religion is preparing itself for the End Times. They have a multitude of names in various religions - End Times (pretty straightforward...) in Imperial Religion, Apocalypse of inrithians and hezrians, Ostatnia Wojna of visenians, and so on - but all of they talk about the same, hypothetical (for mortals at least) conflict they spend eternity preparing to.
Gods ultimately cannot coexist, and each and while they aren't really interested in waging war that would murder Reality (and Universe as a whole) in first milisecond, they still prepare necessary assets to be ready for it. Including souls of the faithful, gathered in their respective afterlifes, various holy soldiers, faithful as a whole, servile daemons and so on. To avoid the End Times happening, gods came up with a divine savoir vivre of sort, called The Great Game.
This is an eternal war waged between gods indirectly, through various proxies - mortals and daemons - to decide their own standing. Victories mean countries changing religion (never immediately, this is a process that take hundreds years to happen), daemons banished, influence in certain parts of reality weakened, various smaller benefits like new temples in the area, and so on.
It can be described as gods and greater gods playing billion of multidimensional chess games against each other, while Grand Gods play uncountable numbers of such games against uncountable number of lesser gods inhabiting uncountable alternative realities. As an effect, The Great Game is always completely imcomprehensible for mortals, with gods betting things like trends that will take hundreds of year to complete, making moves that will come to fruition even thousand years from now and so on.
Smaller and bigger instances of The Great Game occur all the time, in most cases simply too small to even be noticed with omniscience. With chessboard being a single person's action on the far end of civilisation, that have unimagined consequences on completely opposite end of the civilization, being a great example of chaos theory in action, exploited by entities fully capable of understanding all the connections and effects. But there are also much bigger actions, a pivotal points that will have a massive effects on reality as a whole.
There are also certain patterns in the The Great Game that mortals can comprehend, most of them long ago defined and written in hundreds of books... written according to gods' will, with - probably - uncountable ulterior motives that mortals won't even be able to comprehend.

Influences

Majority of people act according to their own will, without any direct 'touch' of the gods - they are simply not needed and do not participate in The Great Game in any meaningful way other than being worshippers of gods. They are not even pawns (unless participate in some holy war or something like that), they are simply a chessboard on which the game is played.
Above them are Favoured. Favoured are those, whose lives gods touched without them never knowing. Effect of gods favour vary, from being a blessing... to a curse. Favour of the god of crafts gives Favoured a talent fort certain crafts (sometimes bordering of being a genius capable of doing nearly everything with right resources). Favour of goddess of lust and perversion gives Favoured new, and... original fetishes. To receive Favour one's requires either unwavering devotion for his/her god, or simply being a person that somehow become a target of certain gods attention. Sometimes they aren't even playing any certain role in The Great Game, at least not in a noticable way.
Level higher are Chosen One and Champions. Each god or deity has at least a single Blessing and Gift dedicated for their Chosen One/Champion (earlier being servants of gods and greater gods, while the latter of deities and demigods). A sufficiently devoted servant (or just a person with hidden talent that together with their character somehow drawn interest of god) that is to achieve such status firstly meets their god. Which is the first difference from being Favoured, as to become a Chosen/Champion one has to willingly accept the gods' offer.
After doing that, he receives a Blessing and Gift. Every god gas at least a single typical Blessing, which are an empowerment of a soul, granted to their Champions according to either gods' will or his own decision (this vary between divinities). Example of Blessing could be Shadow's, imperial goddess of revolution and anarchy, Perpetual Revolution, a Blessing that grants immensely strenghtened abilities to learn and gather power, while also giving a preternatural intuition that allows to instinctively avoid decisions that will have negative consequences (at least, in majority of cases). Gifts is some less... elusive strenghtening, for example a dedicated artifact, a powerful servile daemon to serve as a contracted being, or some exceptional theurgy.
Becoming a Chosen One or Champion automatically aligns one's soul for certain afterlife, which can be avoided only by very limited and generally hard to achieved methods, like finding another, stronger patron (even then, betrayals of Chosen One are practically never hapenning).
There is only one higher level of power to be achieved in service of the gods while still being alive. It is ascending to the status of Lord, achievable by both group of gods/greater gods or by Grand Gods and their divine executives. Each and every religion have Lords names and skills predefined to a level, with never more than one appearing simultaneously. To become a Lord via polytheistic religion one have to receive a Blessings (and, occasionally, Gifts) of more than one god. Examples are Light Lord of the Imperial Religion's White Pantheon, Dark Lord of the Dark Pantheon, and Elemental Lord of the Elemental Pantheon. With a single complete Light Lord and Dark Lord in the history (with 'complete' meaning that he or she gained a Blessings of all gods of their respective Pantheon (which is hard to achieve, considering that Imperial Religion has 60 gods as a whole), both during the Dawn War.
Monotheistic religions grant such status very rarely, since they tend to lack Chosen One's status, rather having only Lords. Examples could be Lord-Paladins of inrithian and hezrian faiths. In turn, they are always at least as strong as a polytheistic Lord that has at least a half of his gods' blessing.
Third, and rare, option are Nameless and Nameless Lords, chosen by Aberrants and Enigmas. They are always immensely powerful, and - also always - completely, homicidally (if not omnicidally) insane from normal person's point of view. With sole exception being those chosen by khardic Tyrant, which are similar in characters with those 'normal' Chosen and Lords.