Ti'varnan Religion

Introduction
For such a spiritual people, Ti’varnans are somewhat divided on this subject. There are three key religions and some minor ones. The fervent argument over the truth of the matter was the spark that triggered the civil war.

Most tribes will believe in one god or another, and there are some (though uncommon) that swear by all three major ones. A priest will serve two roles in a tribe – administering of spiritual guidance and keeping of logistics. A Ti’varnan priest is often both bookkeeper and shepherd of the flock.

The Shattered One
The Shattered One is believed to be a god that gave their life for the Ti’varnans a long time ago, and that a spark of their divinity now rests in the hearts of the devout - always watching and lending strength. The followers of the Shattered One began the great civil war, aiming to crush the cult of the Stranger.

The Lady Ashkya
The Lady Ashkya is said to have walked among the Ti’varnans at times, watching and living among them for her own inscrutable purpose. It is said that those who walk the path of the Lady will never be alone in their ventures, as she walks by their side unseen. The followers of the Lady Ashkya remained out of wars as best they could, though were often dragged into conflicts and did not emerge unscathed.

The Stranger
The Stranger, who is called by some other names, such as The Old Man, Xyndus, or The Fallen, is purportedly a god who cares little for Ti’varnans. The doctrine of his cult claims that one who excels in every aspect of their life and catches his attention can receive great boons, often described as related to martial strength in nature. An odd feature of his cult is that direct worship is neglected in favor of living by a code of tenets.

Conflict Between Worshippers
The nature of Ti’varnan religion in that there is no true single ‘central’ belief is the source of some large measure of conflict amongst believers. Without a definitive idea of which god or gods to worship, conflicts can and will erupt between groups and tribes over which of their gods is the genuine article.

It was one such disagreement which caused the civil war, in that members of the Cult of the Stranger vehemently denied the belief of the Followers of the Shattered One that every single Ti’varnan carries a divine spark, directly contesting the very existence of the Shattered One by proxy. Their reasoning for these inflammatory statements being that no true god would care so much for the humans below them - as inconsequential as ants - as to sacrifice themselves for them and even imbue those ants with power. A true god only gives power to the worthy, as a notorious Paragon of the Cult was known to have said. Such comments are typically ignored by the Followers of the Shattered one, secure as they are in the knowledge that their god grants them strength to do so from within, so some question has been raised over why they allowed themselves to be goaded into war in such a way. Some blame hot heads and high emotions, others point fingers at political maneuvering behind the scenes, and there are those that called out those of the Path as having instigated the conflict for the purpose of their immaterial Lady. There are also whispers that unseen forces prodded and pushed the two factions to conflict, though there is no proof of such a thing. Regardless of the cause, the civil war between these religions quickly got out of hand, with various lords of Ti’var choosing to exploit the chaos caused by the conflict and razing their rivals’ territory. This unfortunate escalation was the root of the final collapse of Ti’var as a united nation, destroying all but a scant handful of its airships and peoples. In the face of these conflicts, there are some few who claim that all religions carry some grain of truth, and should be venerated equally. While perhaps not applying this statement to all the minor gods, this certainly becomes true for some who opt to worship all three major gods.

Death
Spiritually speaking, death is very important. The question of what happens to the spark of being that makes a person exist after expiry of the body is a commonly debated topic, particularly among Ti’varnans. One thing that the three major religions can thankfully agree on is that there is a journey of sorts after death, for the soul to reach its final resting place. Some minor religions come up with their own explanations, but more often than not death is referred to as ‘embarking on the journey’. There is no real description of the actual details of the journey itself, as there are none alive who have experienced it. Someone who dies and is later returned to life (Whether by miracle, magic, or luck) does not begin the journey, as the god/s are aware that it is not their time and do not send their soul on.

The Followers of the Shattered One ordain that the spark of divinity bestowed upon them by their dead god wishes dearly to reunite with its driving consciousness, and that on death, a soul must travel to the side of the Shattered One, to be accepted with open arms. They believe that a travelling soul returns to their personal peak of physical fitness, and travels equipped with spectral versions of whatever items they had on their person at their time of death. Items can be retrieved from a dead person once they have passed, as they will have already set out with them in hand.

 The Path of the Lady  describes the journey after death as one that one need not walk alone. As the Lady Ashkya walks beside a person in life, she also walks with them in death. Since the nature of death is that one’s soul is bare, it allows a person to perceive the Lady and converse with her during the journey, allowing her to answer questions that they may have had in life. The Lady supposedly leads a person’s soul to where she believes they will most belong, making no two journeys and destinations the same.

 The Cult of the Stranger  looks at the journey as an opportunity to prove themselves to the Stranger. The consensus is that after death, one is alone to make it to the end by their own ability and wits. A soul will begin the journey with an advantage granted by the Old Man, as he supposedly appears to dead souls before abandoning them. The nature of this advantage depends on how worthy the Old Man decides a person is. One who is most unworthy may possibly obtain a broken dagger and be shown the door, while one who has lived an exemplary life will be granted some great boon - such as a compass that points to the journey’s end, a sword that allows one to see the truth of things, a carriage pulled by tireless and deathless horses, and more. On completion of their journey, the Stranger will bestow a final boon based on how they faced the journey, then leave the soul forever.

An aspect of all of the above is that they are not mutually exclusive. Combinations of the above, with some aspects of the beliefs of minor religions are surprisingly common. For example, when a follower of the three major gods dies, their belief may be that the Stranger will grant them an object to help them on their way, that the Lady will guide them, and that their final destination will be at the side of the Shattered One.

A Ti’varnan funeral is a sombre occasion, as it marks the loss of a pair of hands for a tribe as a whole, and the loss of a loved one to the journey. Typically bodies are buried within the settlements of a tribe with some few significant personal items, making prevention of predation simpler, as many settlements are built directly on top of the swamps - deterring the burrowing of Spittlejacks that seem to avoid the tepid waters. The rest of the possessions of a deceased person are distributed to wherever they are most needed, as a gift from the dead to their living tribe members.

A common superstitious belief is that if a person’s body is destroyed too soon after death, then their soul becomes lost on the journey, and will struggle to find its way to rest. The Path of the Lady believes that this burning of a body prevents the Lady from finding a person to guide them to their rest. For the Followers of the Shattered One, the removal of important items such as weapons, armour, personal items, and sometimes even clothing from dying combatants is frequent post-battle, to further muddy the journey to come. Items gathered this way are often left with dying allies, which can then be recovered for use after they have expired or been saved. The Cult of the Stranger often leaves the bodies of their enemies where they have fallen - some of their number do not believe that the destruction of mortal remains has such an effect, and many of their number believe that the Stranger will scorn those that undertake such an activity. A common practice during war with many is the burning of the bodies of enemies, as a way of inflicting vengeance on the deceased and insulting their relatives.

The souls of those that have fallen victim to the above practices are supposedly doomed to wander the paths of the journey - guideless, without resource, and alone. Reaching one’s own personal end to the journey is nigh impossible in this state. It is a firm belief that these wandering souls can sometimes escape to the world of the living as spirits, to malign or bless a location depending on the nature of the victim. These spirits are variable in demeanour, and can just as easily help as harm. Priests of some tribes fashion and bless specialised trinkets from excess materials to place onto the dying and deceased to ward these spirits away from their journey. The composition and shape of these trinkets vary depending on the creator.

The Followers of the Shattered One
Long ago, during the first steps of the peoples that would one day come to found Ti’var, a god gave their life for these fledgeling people. This god, in their final moments, split the full sum of their power and bestowed it upon the future inhabitants of Ti’var, infusing the land itself to grant a sliver of its power to those born of it. This, the Followers of the Shattered One claim, is the very root of their faith - the deity that they worship is long dead, but a measure of their power is to be found in the heart of any Ti’varnan, providing courage and inner strength to those that need it. In respect for the departed god, the Followers venerate them as the Shattered One.

It is a common belief of the Followers that those few Ti’varnans born with clammy grey skin are particularly gifted with the divine spark of the Shattered One. While this does not necessarily make those with grey skin better than others, as all are human at the end of the day, this often qualified them for higher roles in society by proxy in the murky past of Ti’var. While this belief holds true to this day, any belief that a stronger divine spark in a person makes them more able, or less susceptible to corruption, is rarely - almost never - found amongst the tribes now. An old, practically archaic name used for these grey-skinned peoples by the Followers is the Eneit’endri - a name that sees very little use these days, though it hasn’t entirely died out - sometimes used as an insult to reckless people, synonymous with the lords of yore who tore Ti’var apart.

A core tenet of the Followers is that one mustn’t waste the spark granted to them by the Shattered One. As such, they hold some measure of disdain for those that live their lives flippantly, or spend their days on unbecoming or pointless activities. However, the Followers are often among the first to offer a helping hand to those that need it, so as to help them back on track to spend their time in a manner befitting the gift granted to them.

The Cathedral of the Shattered One stood in Taranir, and was one of the first casualties of the Ti’varnan civil war. On either side of its grand doors were intricately carved pillars, with channels of inlaid gold running through its body. Pilgrims once came from afar to touch the pillars in reverence to the Shattered One. These great pillars were thrown down and broken, and now small fragments of the doors of the cathedral have been scattered all the way across Ti’var, used now as objects of worship or ground into dust.

The Path of the Lady
The Lady Ashkya is a goddess who has a great curiosity of mankind. As man has explored the world and learned of all it has to offer, she has been present, observing but never judging. It is said that at times in the past she has disguised herself as a mortal for her own unknown purposes, though she has never communicated directly with her followers during these periods. The Lady is said to appear as a woman cloaked in a spotless grey shroud, though the precise description varies some. People that have suffered near-death experiences sometimes claim to have spoken to the Lady. The most notable of these occurrences is the First Prophet, the individual that brought the Lady to the attention of many among the peoples that would found Ti’var, and purportedly began the worship of Ashkya. Since then, various followers of the Lady have appeared at random across Ti’var, sometimes from within other religions, and often among those who have had near-death experiences. These individuals tend to gravitate toward being priests, sharing their faith with those who will listen, and most high priests of the Path in the past were from their number. The last high priestess of the Path was known as Oura’ma the Just, living in the days of the fall of Ti’var. Her preachings were focused on denouncing the conflict between the Followers and the Cult, and the importance of survival of the Path. There has not been another high priest or priestess since her death during the fall of Askatan, when the Cathedral of the Path was torn down. The Lady Ashkya is a favourite of the more mobile tribes and travellers, the assurance of being watched over is a great comfort to those that must traverse the swamps of Ti’var and its abundance of dangers. From the predation of bandits and mist-creatures, the explosive magics of rogue mages, and even the omni-present danger of falling into a Spittlejack den, those that follow the Lady rest easy in the knowledge that their struggles to survive are witnessed and appreciated by the divine. The occasional highly devout worshipper of the Lady takes the curiosity for man that the Lady is said to have very much to heart, recounting verbally their inner thoughts for her to hear as she walks with them. Additionally, if one encounters a Ti’varnan well-versed in medicines, there is a good chance that they follow the Path. The Path of the Lady was so deeply interlinked with Ti’varnan medicine before the civil war that some of these learnings are still passed down through word of mouth between priests and their followers.

Where the abhorrence of waste and throwing things away is common amongst Ti’varnans, this mindset can be traced back to a famously preached line amongst priests of the Path - waste is sin. Toward the end of the Ti’Varnan civil war, when resources were running low, those of the Path recognised the need to retain or reuse items of importance. Since throwing away usable items could have impacted others in greater need, a greater emphasis was placed on using items until they broke irreparably. While the initial intention was to go to the Journey and meet the Lady with goodwill, the distinct usefulness of the practice was not lost on non-worshippers of the Path, and many adopted the custom which has stuck to this day.

The Cult of the Stranger
In the deep past before the formation of Ti’var, lone travellers would often encounter an aged, white-bearded man in the most isolated parts of their journeys, who bid them call him Xyndus. The Old Man, as he would come to be known, came to be the subject of some worship, providing those who found themselves lost with some measure of direction, and sometimes offering strange advice that would only come to be useful years after the fact. In all his time being worshipped as a diety, the Old Man never encouraged his worship, and when asked what his commandments were, always said to ‘live well’. The Old Man was said to have been frequently encountered until a time nearing when Ti’var came to be, at which point he vanished almost completely. This, members of the Cult of the Stranger claim, is the legend at the root of their god. In the time since the total disappearance of the Old Man, he came to be renamed to the Stranger. To this day, the Stranger is a god that ignores his cult with very few exceptions.

The Cult of the Stranger is a curious religion, founding its faith on ancient legend of a person that appeared in isolated circumstances, offered some friendly advice over a shared pot of food, and then one day vanished completely. Despite the absent nature of their god, the faith of the Cult is stoked some by supposed events scattered across the history of Ti’var, all being attributed to the appearance of a white-bearded old man, granting power to those he deemed worthy. Those granted power in such a way were named the Champions of Xyndus, as these gifts of power were always martial in nature, and offered in times of great war or need. Detractors of the Cult in the form of the Followers of the Shattered One claim that the Champions were merely exceptionally skilled individuals, and that the blessing of a god has nothing to do with their ability.

Conversely, there are those who are ill-fortuned individuals, or those who have attained great heights in life and fallen from their lofty positions. There are some who believe that this is punishment from the Stranger, for great arrogance or annoyance done. These punishments are viewed in much the same way as a lesson taught, to knock such individuals down a few pegs, teaching them the error of their ways.

The major building of worship for the Cult of the Stranger was not outwardly a place of worship. A grand mausoleum of previous Champions stood proud in Askatan, lined with alcoves, either empty or containing a statue of the Champion buried within the vault behind. The mausoleum was lit with candles, placed on almost all surfaces, and a priest of the Stranger stood ready at all times to offer advice on how best to live so as to please their deity and obtain his blessings. The mausoleum was however, sacked by the Followers as retribution for their own desecrated cathedral, and is now a sad reminder of glory gone - a nest for scavengers picking over the bare bones of long-dead Askatan.

The meaning of the command to ‘live well’ has been debated over multitudes of times by the Cult of the Stranger, whether it means to live honorably, luxuriously, kindly, or in some other way. The most widely-accepted interpretation is that one must simply live in a way they can be proud of, though this explanation is unsatisfactory for some, who drive themselves to extremes of behaviour, depending on their interpretation of the command from their god. These individuals have been called Paragons in the past, those who exhibit the very best of the Cult without being a Champion. Many times in the past, the word of a Paragon has been mistaken by those outside the cult as being the word of the Cult itself, which caused many a conflict through rash words.

Atheism
Atheism is highly frowned upon amongst Ti’varnans. To not believe in at least one god is practically unheard of, and there is a superstition amongst Ti’varnans that non-believers are creatures of the mists, disguising themselves as human. Given that mist creatures found outside the mists are often determined to be the familiars of Ti’varnan mages, there can be a somewhat violent response to non-believers that refuse to change their ways. Despite mages being enslaved to do good for a tribe, their familiars are treated with much less leniency. As with creatures of the mist that are found in Ti’varnan lands, staunch atheists can be killed, or driven ‘back’ into the mists. The families of those driven away in such a manner mourn the loss of their loved one, assuming that they were killed and replaced by the creature in question.

Minor Gods and Religions
There are an untold multitude of minor gods in Ti'var, and while the three shown here are somewhat prolific, they are far from the sum of the whole.

The River Dweller / The Turtle God
The River-Dweller is purported to be a benevolent living embodiment of the river that splits Ti’var down the middle, who swims up and down in the shape of a giant turtle, and sometimes carries drowning men and animals to the shores. The Turtle God is said to govern luck, and guide water-dwelling prey to hunters in great need, from fish, to waterfowl, and even turtles, which does not seem to bother this kind god. Due to the above traits, the River-Dweller is heavily worshipped by tribes that live near water, receives some worship from hunters, and is often quoted as a symbol of good luck by gamblers. If a person wishes to garner the attentions of this kind god, then they set aside an offering for the Turtle God at meals, often in the form of some spare meat, rice, or grasses, which will later be placed into the nearest body of water, so as to feed the creatures of the river as a show of thanks.

The Mistwalker
The name of the Mistwalker is often one that is cursed openly in the clear air of Ti’var, but one that is (normally less than willingly) venerated under the blanket of mist that surrounds the broken nation. The Mistwalker is said to be an ancient god, one that controls the ebb and flow of the mists, and depending on who you ask, may have brought the mists in the first place, and taught the curse of magic to the first Ti’varnan mages. Outside the mist however, the Mistwalker is blind to the acts of men, and cannot wreak destruction upon them.

The Mistwalker is said to be brutally unforgiving of those that invade its domain, controlling the mist to hinder trespassers, creating misleading images in the swirling shapes and directing the creatures of the mist to attack those that displease it. In its greatest fits of pique, it is even able to force mist onto Ti’var, allowing the creatures to roam and the Mistwalker to observe all that transpires in the lands. During such times, Ti’varnans are apt to lock themselves inside where the Mistwalker cannot see them, lest they have to appease it. Where some might call this phenomenon fog, Ti’varnans know it for what it is - the furious Mistwalker aiming to blight those that scorn it. The halls of the Mistwalker are said to be lined with the corpses of those that have displeased it.

To avoid such fates as written above, many mist explorers openly worship the wrathful god within the mists. This open worship takes the form of physical appeasement. Wandering mist creatures discovered in Ti’var are often herded back to the mists, the land and creatures within the mist are treated with great respect to lessen the insult of their passing, material gifts are brought into the Mistwalker’s domain, or in more extreme circumstances, an explorer of the mists will openly scar themselves, to preempt the bloodthirst of the angry god.

Some few stories told only in the safety of the lands of Ti’var claim that the Mistwalker makes use of man-shaped devils to do its bidding, sending them forth from the mists to wreak misfortune on those that evade its sight. This misfortune often comes in the form of important items and foodstuffs going missing, vandalism of homes, and occasionally even attacking of people, most often in tribes that dwell nearest the mists.

While rare, there are some who gladly worship the Mistwalker, even in the safety of Ti’var itself. These individuals are often unsavory, being users of magic or those who aim to study the deadly craft and of how to summon mist creatures, learning from the supposed ‘source’ of Ti’varnan magic.

Iyala, Goddess of the Breeze
In the lost past of Ti’var, Iyala was a commonly worshipped goddess amongst the crews of airships and boats, since the winds are said to be her formless breath, blowing through the sky. Iyala is said to take the image of a great serpent, winding through the skies far above Ti’var - so high as to be out of sight from the ground.

Worship of this enigmatic goddess has dwindled in recent times, since all airships but one were destroyed or went missing generations ago, along with the means to create them. The one remaining airship in Ti’var is broken, spiralling lazily above the ground, between the mist and Ti’var itself at a regular pace. On this airship lives a tribe, who subsist from trades made with the ground-dwellers far below when the airship moves over Ti’var, using ropes weighted with hooks to send down and collect items. This unnamed tribe forms the bulk of the worshippers of Iyala, if the traders that interact with them are to be believed. Beyond them, her worshippers tend to be amongst those that sail between the shores of the river far below, who rely on the breeze being right.

Veneration of the Goddess of the Breeze is often immaterial in nature. What precisely can one do to please a goddess so detached from those that worship her? For the most part, there is little to be done, there are but two main methods of worship of Iyala. First, the addition of embroidery representing the winds is added to the flags used by tribes, which supposedly will encourage the breath of Iyala to be favorable around it. Secondly, Iyala appears to be somewhat fond of a particular flower - the poppy - and will often provide a pleasant breeze to those that scatter its petals to the wind. There are some who claim that Iyala once lived a mortal life before becoming the Goddess of the Breeze, and that in her mortal life, the poppy was her flower of choice. Regardless of the truth of the matter, it is a strange phenomenon in Ti’var that if one scatters the petals of a poppy during a storm or on a still day, the breeze will lessen or lift accordingly.