The Authority
This is the thing that is omnipotent. Since it is the king of all divinity, only kings are permitted to pray directly to the Authority.
The Authority is known as such because his actual name is secret. It is said that anyone who utters it disrespectfully is struck dead. (DM's note: the secret name of God is widely believed to be Dumadiyei, but it is actually Akatom. Pronounced dew-MAW-dee-YAY and ACK-aw-TOM.)
The Sun is his chariot, and it glows warmer is response to the virtue that he sees below him. Too much sin and doubt will cause a second age of ice.
There are those who have approached the Sun. (It is further than the moon, but not by much.) They have described it as a vast mechanism, with wheels inside wheels, golden tubes, and enormous trumpets projecting into the firmament.
There are those who have landed on the Sun, attempting to establish a diplomatic relationship, indulge their curiosity, or to assassinate the Authority. They have never been heard from again.
Heretics say that God has left his heaven, and that the great chariot sits abandoned in the sky. Why else have the great miracles stopped? Where is the hand of the Authority felt on the body of his Creation?
Zulin, God of Air
This is the god of air, and the prime deity on Centerra. He is the Demiurge, and he organized everything.
He lives in a mansion on a mountain top. You can see it from a nearby peak. Whenever you look at it, you can hear the bell of St. Dorbaine ringing in your ears. It stops as soon as you leave. You can approach the mountain, but unworthy souls are struck with weakness as they approach. The blessed become stronger as they approach the Holy Mountain.
Very noble people sometimes trek to the shrine in the valley below the peak.
You can see the mansion, and you can see the guests on the balconies. They are strange and beautiful and some are colossal. If you attract their attention, they'll send you an invitation. (Basically, name-level PCs are expected to go and dine with idle, squabbling godlings, titans, and interdimensional weirdos.)
Zulin is not at home. Zulin is at a tea party in Hell with Angralaa. Zulin is trapped at the tea party by the conditions of politeness. If Zulin leaves the tea party or is rude, Angralaa is also free to leave. If Angralaa leaves or is rude, Zulin is free to leave. Neither one of them want the other to leave, and so they've been having tea for a very long time.
Angralaa is the prime spirit of anger and violence. If she left the tea party, the world would see massive increases in both.
Only Priests of the Upper Air are allowed to pray to Zulin, and to receive his miracles. Priests of the Lower Air must pray to a saint, a prophet, or a slave-god.
Essa, May She Live Again
She is the First Prophet, and as such, is an equal to Zulin. She is the intermediary between the Authority and. . . everything else, really.
Not only did Essa (May She Live Again) first re-teach the world the teachings of Hesaya after the Time of Fire and Madness erased all history, but she also decided to reincarnate.
Essa (May She Live Again) is currently on her 57th reincarnation. Her current form is 10 years old, and enjoys spicy noodles, horseback riding, and small dogs. She is the leader of the entire religion. She is protected by a Brynthic Hound called St. Smaudius. ("Smaudy")
Tar Lath Lien
It is widely believed that the dragon-sorcerer Tar Lath Lien is the "serpent of the apocalypse" described in scripture, who will one day destroy the world. Actually, it's quite clear that he is.
Tar Lath Lien is horribly smug about all this, as you'd expect.
The Patriarch (the Pope)
While Essa (May She Live Again) is in charge of the spiritual needs of the Church, the Patriarch is in charge of the material needs of the Church. The exact boundary between these two authorities is a little fuzzy, and has been the subject of a great deal of debate (and violence) throughout the entire lifespan of the Church.
The Patriarch rules over Kaladon, on the opposite side of Centerra from Essa (May She Live Again), who resides in the Holy City of Coramont. Kaladon trains and maintains a whopping 40% of all the paladins in the world.
Spirits of the Upper Air
It is accepted that there is a whole secret ecosystem in the upper atmosphere. It is a realm of lightness and invisibility. Invisible wars are fought there, and titanic angel-fauna devour each other with magics that could rend mountains. The greatest of these sky-leviathans weighs less than a feather.
Wind Paladins
Wind Paladins of Hesaya wear no armor except a pale blue tunic, each thread of which is banded with scripture (in tiny alternating blue and white bands, analogous to Morse code). They wield long, narrow swords, and when they cut, the wind cuts for them. (50' melee range with their swords.)
Clerics/Priests
Clerics of Hesaya command air. They cannot control the weather, but they control small amounts of air nearby. They can order the air to avoid your lungs, and you will suffocate in X rounds, where X = half of your Constitution (unless you run more than 200' distant).
Symbols of the Temple
The Symbols of the Authority are gold, the sun, and the scepter.
The Symbols of Zulin are blue, the hand, the whip, and the teacup.
The Doctrine of the Four Elements . . .
. . . is a heresy. There are many atomic elements, and air is a gas, merely one of the three states of matter. (Fire is really more of a chemical reaction.) It's just that air happens to be the most enlightened state of matter.
Only Priests of the Upper Air are allowed to pray to Zulin, and to receive his miracles. Priests of the Lower Air must pray to a saint, a prophet, or a slave-god.
Essa, May She Live Again
She is the First Prophet, and as such, is an equal to Zulin. She is the intermediary between the Authority and. . . everything else, really.
Not only did Essa (May She Live Again) first re-teach the world the teachings of Hesaya after the Time of Fire and Madness erased all history, but she also decided to reincarnate.
Essa (May She Live Again) is currently on her 57th reincarnation. Her current form is 10 years old, and enjoys spicy noodles, horseback riding, and small dogs. She is the leader of the entire religion. She is protected by a Brynthic Hound called St. Smaudius. ("Smaudy")
Tar Lath Lien
It is widely believed that the dragon-sorcerer Tar Lath Lien is the "serpent of the apocalypse" described in scripture, who will one day destroy the world. Actually, it's quite clear that he is.
Tar Lath Lien is horribly smug about all this, as you'd expect.
The Patriarch (the Pope)
While Essa (May She Live Again) is in charge of the spiritual needs of the Church, the Patriarch is in charge of the material needs of the Church. The exact boundary between these two authorities is a little fuzzy, and has been the subject of a great deal of debate (and violence) throughout the entire lifespan of the Church.
The Patriarch rules over Kaladon, on the opposite side of Centerra from Essa (May She Live Again), who resides in the Holy City of Coramont. Kaladon trains and maintains a whopping 40% of all the paladins in the world.
Spirits of the Upper Air
It is accepted that there is a whole secret ecosystem in the upper atmosphere. It is a realm of lightness and invisibility. Invisible wars are fought there, and titanic angel-fauna devour each other with magics that could rend mountains. The greatest of these sky-leviathans weighs less than a feather.
Wind Paladins
Wind Paladins of Hesaya wear no armor except a pale blue tunic, each thread of which is banded with scripture (in tiny alternating blue and white bands, analogous to Morse code). They wield long, narrow swords, and when they cut, the wind cuts for them. (50' melee range with their swords.)
Clerics/Priests
Clerics of Hesaya command air. They cannot control the weather, but they control small amounts of air nearby. They can order the air to avoid your lungs, and you will suffocate in X rounds, where X = half of your Constitution (unless you run more than 200' distant).
Symbols of the Temple
The Symbols of the Authority are gold, the sun, and the scepter.
The Symbols of Zulin are blue, the hand, the whip, and the teacup.
The Doctrine of the Four Elements . . .
. . . is a heresy. There are many atomic elements, and air is a gas, merely one of the three states of matter. (Fire is really more of a chemical reaction.) It's just that air happens to be the most enlightened state of matter.
I quite liked the old Church of Hesaya to be honest. Felt it was one of the stronger Fantasy Catholic Monotheisms out there, in a kind of Warhammer Fantasy way. By which I mean that it was accessible enough to quickly grasp, but interesting and textured enough to feel like its own distinct thing. Out of curiosity, what did you think sucked about it?
ReplyDeleteZulin and Ashta Lon feel quainter and more Lord Dunsany to me, more like local gods than continent or world-spanning ones. It's harder to imagine the Temple of a god stuck in an infinite tea party conquering the earth and consuming all other faiths they encounter. Giant space snakes, saints that grow lighter and more translucent, and giant invisible quasi-gaseous angels are fantastic ideas though.
It wasn't bad, it just felt too close to Sigmar and Pelor. The familiarity and accessibility was nice, but I just get claustrophobic when I feel like I'm cutting too close to established tropes. I'd rather be original than good.
DeleteAnyway, it's fun to extrapolate on. What would the Navajo religion look like if it was expanded, codified, centralized, and crystallized into something like the Catholic church? Surely we can get weirder with our alternative-reality religions.
I know what you mean, though. Maybe I'll go back to calling it the Church, for that element of familiarity, and mix in some more Catholicisms.
DeleteCenterra has so many great unusual elements that the more familiar church-like structure became novel in the way that it interacts with them, which I think is one of the most interesting aspects of a very interesting setting (and on aesthetic terms "Hesaya" just has a pleasant ring to it). Its the comfortable old pagans vs. catholics thing, but presented through a warped lens. Centerran pagans feel different from celtic pagans, Centerran hell is amazing, and the identifiable references lend a certain resonance to the new ideas. I'd love to read about or play in a world with imperialist Navajo religion though, so I suppose its just a matter of preference for where one lands on the Tolkien to Tekumel scale.
DeleteZulin as Jesus or Mary could be interesting, perhaps as the first local religion to get swept up into the Temple/Church's control, and now all these non-native old folksy air-snake rituals have been adopted into a monotheistic worldview, in the manner of those Old Testament references to polytheism that have been reinterpreted so many times. Everybody pretty much agrees that Zulin-Who-Is-Truth is very important, but there is much debate over exactly how important.
OR if you have an ineffable Authority and a Quoatl Demiurge, go full on imperial Gnosticism. All these emanations and minor deities have strayed from the Divine Plan and misused their divine essence in acts of unsanctioned sub-creation, they must be brought to concordance and returned to the path of wisdom and righteousness. As priests are initiated further into the secret knowledge they slowly shed their base physical forms. Learned temple elders shake their heads and try to explain that Zulin isn't a separate god per se, he's a physically embodied, self-willed emanation of the most high and unknowable Authority. Bizarre metaphorical entities from the various layers of atmospheric heaven communicate by signs that even the wisest sages can only dimly grasp.
What he said. Characters like Evica and Cascarion have more punch in the context of good old familiar Christianity, in my opinion. Tension between pagan and Christian elements, and all that. I guess i feel like it's the not the institution of the Church itself that was interesting, but all the different moving parts that were connected to it in various ways, like the Heralds of Morning, who seemed to be based on the same concept as the Church, but with radically different methods and philosophy.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... questions:
How does Zulin relate to the Authority? Is he considered the First among many deities who are treated as aspects of the Authority?
And how does the Authority relate to the "God" spoken of by the Radiant Maiden?
How do I want to balance familiar Catholic traditions with new, weird stuff? I don't know. It's a non-trivial question.
DeleteI'm mostly trying to invert as much as I can without it ceasing to feel like good ol Catholic monotheism. Pope is a woman. Resurrection is a thing. Snakes are good guys now. The four element thing is a heresy. Those are all interesting ideas, but you change too many and it stops feeling like home -- you lose all the emotional associations (like pagan tension). And that threshold is different for everyone.
My goal is to keep those associations while injecting as much new stuff as possible.
Zulin is one of many of the Authority's creations. He's just the one that has a church built around him, and who claims dominion.
DeleteThe Radiant Maiden denies the existence of Zulin.
Space snakes please!
ReplyDelete