Patreon Insights: Religion

Hello! Today we will be looking at the topic of religion in Ardent Tears. It's a little late because I ended up rewriting the entire thing. With the divine being a known entity, most people on Illyria are religious to some but there are some that are iconoclasts or alatrists. These people are very much a minority and as we go further into this Insight, I'm sure you will come to understand why. I will also be focusing on the human faiths as I want to save the Al'duur for when they become more relevant to the story.

With that said, let's start with the basics. First off, when I say religion in the context of this Insight, I am referring to the shared practices of a community in relation to the gods they worship as a whole and how they go about worshipping them. A sect is the step below a religion and is typically more local. A cult refers to the shared practices and worship of a specific god. Cult practices are often distinct from those of the local religion as they are tied more to the god as opposed to the people and the community. Individuals and families may also worship in a more personalised sense that is separate from their religion. Different social groups may also worship other deities in addition to/instead of the ones worshipped by their main religion.

When a person worships a god, they gain a better understanding of the god's sphere of influence as well as their true name. A god's true name is special in that it is an idea or concept that is then translated by the individual's primary (typically their first) language. The slight exception to this rule of an individual learning a god's true name through worship is the three prime deities as all life on Illyria is born with an innate awareness of their existence and their true names, and their true names are subconsciously translated into every language they know instead of just their primary language.

Calling out or evoking a god's true name (as you understand) will all but guarantee a measure of their attention and grant them the ability to more directly Resonate with you or the purpose for which you evoked them. In some cases, this can be extremely dangerous or unpredictable, especially with the more powerful deities, as shown with the one time it happens in Book 1. For this reason, the gods are typically given various derivational names (e.g. Illyria) or titles (e.g. the Heart of the Sun, the Goddess, etc).

Another thing that happens when a god is worshipped or something is done to expand on their sphere of influence, they get stronger and more able to influence the world through said sphere. The worshipper also gets some small benefit in return, though the exact nature of this depends on the god and their relationship with the individual. In addition to this, worship creates dividends for everything under the god's sphere of influence, even if that includes someone that isn't worshipping them.

As for the nature of various religions of Ardent Tears, most are a mix of polytheism and animism with the three prime deities being at the heart of them all. The exception here lies in the few religions that take a more monotheistic approach, focusing mostly on the Goddess. These exceptions believe that the other prime deities are just aspects of the Goddess and that all other divines are her celestial servants.

Still, as such exceptions are unlikely to have much of an impact on the story I'll leave them here for now and we can get into the approach that the other religions follow. The standard baseline of belief in regards to the divine is that there are four tiers that matter. The first of these tiers should make sense as it's the three prime deities. 

Next we have the major deities. This tier is comprised of divine beings with broad spheres of influence. By this I mean the greater tutelary deities (e.g. patron deities of races, cultures, occupations, etc), gods of fundamental concepts (e.g. time, gravity, cosmology, etc), gods of human experience (e.g. disease, medicine, sex, agriculture, etc), greater nature deities (e.g weather, mountains, oceans, forests, etc), and the gods of the seven classical elements of Illyria. The astute of you may notice the potential for overlap in some of these character, such as with agriculture and farmings. This is intentional and each one is a different god. In this case there is a god of agriculture and a god of farmers. You can assume this to be true in similar cases.

Moving on, we have the lesser deities. These deities are known for having a more focused sphere of influence that is either derived from the broader spheres of greater deities or is operating at significantly smaller scale. When looking at the first type of lesser deity, they are typically recognised gods of specific things or places. For example, the god of a specific mountain or forest would be a lesser deity. The second type of lesser deity are almost always tutelary in nature. Examples include the guardian deity of a city or the patron deity of a specific institute (such as the Azure University).

The last tier is an odd one as it's somewhat to the side of the other three instead of in line with them. This is because it is comprised of the ancestral dead that have passed on to the divine realm. I'm not going to dwell too much on this tier as I could do an entire Insight on them. What I will say is that ancestral spirits can only interact with their living descendents and only when the family has continuously cultivated ancestor worship across the generations. When a family neglects their ancestors, only the most recent ones are able to include them in their sphere of influence. Fortunately, ancestor worship is fairly widespread.

Anyway, now that we've covered the different tiers of divine entities, we're almost done. To summarise, most religions practice a mix polytheism and animism and the gods they worship are all part of the same overall pantheon. Each of these religions have what I call a primary sphere of worship. This is essentially a list of the gods that the religion actively worships and/or acknowledged as being relevant to the culture the religion is tied to, In addition to the three prime deities, this list typically includes the majority of relevant major deities and some select lesser deities. The same logic can be applied to sects as they are derived from larger religions. 

In addition to religions, certain gods have dedicated cults which engage in various practices that are more specific to the god in question. Finally, individuals and families may worship gods that aren't typically worshipped by their religion or sect and they may also have more personal ways in which they practice said worship. These practices are typically in addition to the more traditional practices of their religion. Lastly, most families practice some measure of ancestor worship.