Religion

Since the Dim Ages, people across Trid have looked to the heavens for clues to understanding the meaning of existence and their role within it. The earliest mythologies, even those of disparate cultures, recognised the core conflict between Order and Disorder. The remote planet Hieron, detached but ever watchful, became the heavenly icon of Law, while Chaos was assigned to the swift red planet Aerchus. People believed reclusive Vincula represented balance between them, and that Trid was the nexus of all three.  

Local Gods

Early civilisations venerated a host of immortals, each culturally relevant to the values and challenges of a particular people in a particular place. These cultural deities are countless and collectively known as Local Gods.   Also referred to as the Old or Dim Gods, these entitles were often mortal heroes, heroines, antagonists, and monsters elevated to immortal status. As such, they were less deities than deified personifications, intended to reinforce the ideologies of the defining culture as well as to establish their social reputation with neighbours and rivals. In a time when life was dangerous and survival difficult, most Local Gods therefore embodied moral rectitude, strength, and stability, but nearly all pantheons included a dark side that acknowledged trickery, suffering, luck, and the unnatural.   Wildermen across the Continent still venerate the Old Gods, as do the Nordmen of Nordland, the Jarlefolk of the Frost Reach, and the Nomads of the Scour. In these communities, people rely on the faith magic of ritualists (e.g., seers, oracles, shamans, animists, et al.), for guidance, protection, and healing.  

Ardic Gods

As the elves lifted humans to civilisation, they taught man to honour the Ardic Gods a pantheon representing the nine mortal values they recognised. With magic more powerful than that of ritualists, the Ardic Gods rapidly toppled the Old Gods' supremacy. This conversion reached its zenith during the Ardic Republic, through which the elves united two-thirds of the Continent under their pantheon.  

The Nine Altars

As the elves spread worship of The Ardic Gods across the Continent, the vast majority of adherents venerated the pantheon evenly, assembling in sprawling temple complexes established in populated areas. In less habited places, shrines to individual Ardic Gods became popular (indeed, some cultures, like the henetheistic druids of Albion, dedicated themselves wholly to one power). The proliferation of these shrines and temples, collectively known as the Nine Altars, was essential to the Republic's cohesion, forming a network wherein different cultures found common ground. Not surprisingly, the Nine Altars were focal points during The Fall, when they were either abandoned, razed, or repurposed for one of the ascendant Lawful Gods. Those that survived would form the literal foundation for the cacophony of religious orders established in the Age of History.  

The Lawful Faith

During the Fall, humans adopted a simpler theology focused on Law and Chaos. But while this vision was shared, its lens was not. Scores of Stricture Cults devoted to Law and many more Terror Covens celebrating Chaos sprang up across the Continent's new wilderness, each with its own perspective on social order and its value.   Man's efforts to reëstablish civilisation after the Fall prompted the Stricture Cults to consolidate, finding common ground within a broad portfolio of fundamental social building blocks: duty, justice, charity, and honour. These values formed an ecunemical Lawful Faith, composed of Lawfully-aligned deities from any number of cultures. Any belief or entity—Ardic God, Local God, or Elder Power—that threatened a well-ordered community was, perforce, Chaotic.   The resulting Lawful Faith represented a shift in religion's role in society: Whereas the Local and Ardic Gods explained the natural world, the Lawful Faith illustrated how to behave within it. As a result, deities of the Lawful Faith are varied and culturally specific, but they share common values across borders. All other gods are spokes on the Wheel of Chaos.  

Religious Orders

The early mission of the Lawful Faith was to convert disparate human settlements to embrace order for the very survival of civilisation. As they spread Law throughout the Continent, clerics focused on cooperative and community values to find accord with the religious beliefs of the people they encountered.   Inevitably, the Lawful Faith's growing portfolio created considerable overlap—all Lawful societies prohibit murder, for example, but how to punish the murderer tends to be a cultural tradition. To distinguish specific Lawful values from the broad Lawful Faith they occupied, different cultures began to elevate ethnic saints, prophets, and martyrs whose acts or teachings supported a particular facet of Law.   In rapid fashion, orders sprang up to honour these paragons and lead others by example. Orders have flourished in the Age of History, marking the influence of each culture's Lawful Faith across the Continent, often occupying the sites where the Nine Altars served the previous Age. And it is the orders that have sustained the Lawful Faith, for they allow the faithful to manifest their belief through real works with tangible outcomes.    

The Wheel of Chaos

The Lawful Faith's worldview regards anything that defies order as a spoke on a great Wheel of Chaos, a circle so wide that it encompasses everything that Law is not. The Wheel contains the legion of deities, immortals, excommunicants, monsters, and Elder Powers that aren't aligned with the Lawful Faith; its membership is beyond count.   Like the gods of the Lawful Faith, those in the Wheel vary from culture to culture, but they all uniformly refuse at accept Law's imposition of order. Chaotic entities are interested only in themselves, though their motivations range from mischief to murder. Neutral powers generally support order, though not to the extent that community norms suppress personal conviction.   Veneration of those on the Wheel is relegated to cults, rather the Chaotic counterpart to the religious orders of the Lawful Faith. The number of cults matches the number of spokes on the Wheel, though, of course, nearly all cults practice in secret.  

Cults

Active worship of Chaotic powers is discouraged, if not punishable, in ordered society, especially those devoted to the Lawful Faith. Yet there are Chaotic powers, and they are worshipped, and their religions are known as cults.   --Cults are formed by individuals inspired by the vision of an Elder Power. That individual—the cult leader—may have received a vision or a dream, communed in some way with the Elder Power, or convinced themself to promote an Elder Power's values through acts. Regardless, they act as "messengers" of the Elder Power and keep their followers together by creating a quasi-religious doctrine.   The line between religion and cult is often blurred, but the difference is simple: A religion worships a deity; a cult worships its leader. Many—particularly those of the Lawful Faith—see cult leaders as fringe lunatics who crave adulation, but many of the Elder Powers' self-appointed messengers sincerely believe in the vision they're trying to create. For their part, Elder Powers treat their cults casually, but with enough interest to invest their mortal servants with some magical ability to promote their cause.