Creation Myth In the beginning there was Life and there was Death, and they were locked in an eternal struggle. Death grew stronger and, seeing that it was doomed to succumb to Death, Life sundered itself. It split into all the animals and the plants and the trees and the fish, growing and reproducing in defiance of Death. In response Death split itself as well, quartering into Plague, Famine, War, and Entropy, the Aspects.
Religion There is a struggle between Life and Death, Good and Evil, and it is the duty of every man, woman, and child to fight for the Light. They subscribe to the idea that Good must be stronger than Evil because even though Evil is clearly ubiquitous and powerful it can not overcome and smother Good.
Reverence of the four Aspects is combined with an Animism based on the Sundering of Life. All living things are holy since they are all shards of the Duality of God.
The Aspects The four faces of Death. Their portfolios overlap a bit, and their cults and ecclesiarchies compete for peasants’ offerings and payment for religious services.
Rovag - Aspect of War. Venerated as a patron of strength and conquest, reviled as a source of invasions and the patron of the Goblin races
Teura - Aspect of Plague. Venerated as a patron of renewal and fertility, reviled as the source of disease and plague.
Azare - Aspect of Entropy. Venerated as the keeper of time and liver of life, reviled as the source of aging, decay, and rot.
Ulori - Aspect of Famine. Venerated as patron of the harvest, reviled as a source of paucity.
The Netherworld Also referred to as Outside, the Dark Realm, the Shadow. The Netherworld is a reflection of the physical world, superimposed over it. It is home to ghosts and demons, and is shaped by violence, sin, and hatred. Modern alienists agree that a person goes mad when their depravity reaches levels such that their rational mind becomes trapped in the Netherworld, giving birth to a demon and leaving their physical body a gibbering mess on the physical plane.
Contact with beings from the Netherworld is known, and procedures for contacting these entities are not difficult to come by. Such contact is considered a sin by the ecclesiarchy and the peasants believe that they risk their souls, but that doesn’t stop some people from trying.
The Afterlife When a person dies their soul enters the Netherworld. The soul must find its way through the Netherworld and back to the Unity of God, so that it may merge with Creation and be born anew and so continue to fight against Death. To do this the soul must follow the lamps lit by Intercessory Exhortations (see below). If all the lamps are not lit, the soul wanders the Netherworld for eternity. The Unity of God is diminished, and the soul loses more and more of its humanity through the aeons, eventually becoming a daemon.
The Intercessory Exhortations In life, everyone must recite the Intercessory Exhortation 2,006,000 times. Any prayers uttered while distracted or with any insincerity do not count. The wealthy often pay a retinue of 206 monks to pray on their behalf, a service for which the Ecclesiarchy charges an exorbitant sum. Each prayer lights one lamp that will guide the deceased through the Netherworld.
The Ecclesiarchy The Ecclesiarchy is a rigid, hierarchical organization chiefly concerned with the purification of its adherents mortal souls. They strive to help people cleanse their souls of impurity, that they might escape from the punishment of the World.
The first Ecclesiarch was a farmer from Carda named Geschwind. In 103 he experienced an ecstatic vision, in which the Aspects, united as one, revealed to him the true nature of the existence. The experience was so profound that Geschwind lost his famed sense of humor and began writing furiously about his revelations. As a farmer he found few who would listen to him, until Mahador, a Lindmoorian alchemist from the Collegium happened to read one of the hundreds of journals that Geschwind penned. He visited the farmer and become his first true disciple. It was Mahador that formalized Geschwind's revelations into the rituals and prescriptions of the Ecclesiarchy.
When Geschwind died in 146, Mahador posthumously declared him Ecclesiarch and began searching for a way to restore his light to the world. Using formulae recovered from a Ditani ruin, he was able to concoct a draught that could awaken the father's holy spirit in the son, so long as the bloodline was pure. Geschwind's son Fyodor succeeded his father as Ecclesiarch in 149 by drinking Mahador's potion. Like his father he received divine visions, lost his sense of humor, and became compelled to write furiously about all things philosophical and religious. Fyodor took the name Geschwind II. Geschwind's line continues unbroken to the present, each generation drinking Mahador's draught to return Geschwind to life.
Members of the Ecclesiarchy spend roughly half their time performing purification rituals, and the rest of their time seeing to their adherents. Mahador laid out the 412 Prescriptions based on Geschwind's writings, 206 things you should and should not do each day, and clergy are required to follow all of these rules. Most are concerned with food preparation, cleanliness, entering or leaving holy/tainted places, and numerology.
Ecclesiastic Hierarchy While there are whole arrays of other titles, from novices to templars, the main clerical ranks are:
- Ecclesiarch - The leader, from the line of Geschwind
- Administrator - The right hand man, who oversees the day to day operations of the faith based on direction from the Ecclesiarch. Mahador created this role when his health began to fail.
- Exarch - The member of the Ecclesiarchy in charge of a province or kingdom
- Prelate - The member of the Ecclesiarchy responsible for a city
- Vicar - Responsible for either a town, or for a number of villages
- Chaplain - Local clergy for towns too small for a vicar. Chaplains cannot perform many of the rituals required by the faith, and are overseen by vicars.