Faiths, Factions and Learning

The official faiths, in brief

The minority faiths

These live inside the realms, sometimes suffered, sometimes hunted, sometimes simply not noticed. About one soul in six on Aethorra does not keep the faith of the place where he lives.

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THE DROWNED COURT

Found in: Caelvenne (delta fishermen, glassworkers), the Drift, Aldmere's lakeshore. Perhaps 120,000 followers.

Belief: The Builders of the Age of Ruins did not vanish. They sleep beneath Lake Surmave in a drowned city, and the lake is their dream. When they wake, the water will rise and take back what was theirs. The faithful leave offerings at the Drowned Gate at the new moon, tie a knotted cord to every boat, and will not swim at night. Their priests, called Gatekeepers, are divers who say they have touched the sunken roads.

Standing: Caelvenne's cardinals call it a fishwives' superstition and leave it alone, because the Drowned Court's divers are the only ones who will go down to the sunken roads, and the Nine Houses want to know what lies there. In Aldmere it is lawful, as everything is. Bansine Farisel's late husband was a Gatekeeper. She has never said what she thinks of that.

THE FURROW

Found in: Tharax, among the Bound only. Numbers unknown; the Tyrthas guesses 40,000, the Bound would say all of them.

Belief: The earth is a sleeping mother, and the Bound are her children, set to till her back. Kharnoth is a thief who stole the mountains. One day the Mother will roll over and the Phymun will slide off. The faithful scratch a single curved line, a furrow, on the underside of tools, on doorposts, and on their own forearms. Their holy ones are called Sowers and are always old women, because the Tyrthas looks least at old women.

Standing: Death in Tharax. The Furrow has no temples, no books, and no leaders anyone can see, which is why nine centuries of Tyrthas have never rooted it out. Tandox the Bound is not a Sower. His grandmother was.

THE LEDGER

Found in: Caelvenne, among merchants and clerks; Aldmere's towns; the Qaflan. Perhaps 200,000.

Belief: Every soul is an account. Every deed is an entry, credit or debit. At death the book is closed and the balance read aloud in a hall of glass. There is no god, not quite; there is an Auditor, faceless, who does not forgive but does not cheat. The faithful keep a private ledger of their deeds and read it every seventh night. They are known for honest trade and known for dull feasts.

Standing: The Radiant Iévaine calls the Ledger a heresy that has put a clerk where the Sun should be, and preaches against it once a year. The Nine Houses quietly hire Ledger-keepers as bookkeepers because they do not steal. Lord Chancellor Ownirel of Aldmere keeps a ledger. She would not call herself one of them. Her clerks are not so sure.

THE UNSEEN KIN

Found in: Kaishon, everywhere outside the cities. Perhaps 6 million, quietly.

Belief: The old household faith of Kaishon, the one the Reasoned Purge tried to burn. Every home has its Kin: ancestors, and small gods of the stove, the door, the well, the field-edge. They are fed, thanked, and told the news. Nothing is asked of them but to stay. Its keepers are grandmothers and roadside shrine-tenders like Old Tsau. It has no scripture. It has recipes.

Standing: Forbidden under the Doctrine of Ordered Reason, and kept in every house. Magistrates do not see the shrines because their mothers keep them. The Reasoned Rebellion of 1019 taught the ministers not to push, and taught the Kin never to band together. Princess Seitotai lights a stick of incense for her mother every morning and would deny it under oath.

THE WAY OF THE EMPTY BOWL

Found in: Kaishon's mountains around Lake Tsenkin; a few in the Southern Reach. Perhaps 30,000.

Belief: Reason is right that there are no gods. Reason is wrong that it matters. The Empty Bowl teaches that the self is a trick of the eye as well, that wanting is the root of every pain, and that a bowl held out empty is the only honest prayer. Its monks own one bowl and one robe, beg for rice, and refuse to sit examinations. They are the only people in Kaishon who will not bow to a magistrate.

Standing: Suffered as harmless, because the Empty Bowl teaches obedience to whatever is, the Chancellor included. Makok finds them useful. General Dezau spent a year in an Empty Bowl monastery as a young man and left because, he says, "they were right and it was unbearable."

THE SHADOWED

Found in: Zarvand's western meemakhoot, Kebidaan especially; the Deep Sands. Perhaps 400,000.

Belief: A heresy of the Flame. The Rahaasheem teach that Light must destroy Shadow. The Shadowed teach that Light and Shadow are two faces of one fire, and that the true worshipper honors both: candor by day, mercy by night. Their temples hold two fires, one bright, one banked to embers. Their priests, Twinkeepers, go always in pairs, one who speaks and one who never does.

Standing: The Rahaasheem have condemned it four times. Khaasar Avisteer III has refused to hunt it, saying "a man who honors two fires is not a man who lights none." Prince Faasheer has promised the Rahaasheem he will burn the two-fire temples if crowned. Kebidaan's Jaarzeb, one of the Shadowed himself, has taken note.

THE CELESTIAL TABLE

Found in: Zarvand's House of Learning, Castavari navigators, Caelvennois engineers. Perhaps 15,000, all literate.

Belief: Not quite a faith and not quite not one. The Table holds that the stars move by law, that the law can be read, and that reading it is the only worship the sky asks. Its members keep the great star tables and correct them, and they count the return of the Lake Comet in 960, foretold to the month, as their one miracle. They have no priests. They have observatories.

Standing: The Berrode of Castavar burned the Table's star tables in 960, and its navigators use them anyway. The Flame counts it a harmless branch of the Flame. The Doctrine of Ordered Reason counts it the Doctrine, done properly. Prince Durkaad is a member. Queen Rorelle reads its tables in bed.

THE GROVE OF LASDARA

Found in: Southern Castavar, the old Lasdara country, in secret. Perhaps 80,000.

Belief: The gods Castavar outlawed after 312 never left. They are the olive, the bull, the river, the spring rain: many, local, and old. Their rites are held at night in cork-oak groves, with masks, and the bull has a part in them. Its keepers, Maskers, are plain farmers who inherit the mask. The Berrode calls the Grove devil-worship. The Grove calls the Berrode a bishop with one god who wants everyone else's.

Standing: The Office of Truth has burned Maskers for eight centuries, and there are still masks. Brother Talvo has a file on the Grove that is his life's work. The bull-runs on the saints' days in the Llovo March are, as everyone knows and no one says, Grove rites with a church calendar painted over them.

THE SALT-SWORN

Found in: The Shattered Isles, Castavar's fishing coast, the Barerk coast of Hrodvald. Perhaps 60,000.

Belief: There is no god but the sea, and the sea does not care. The Salt-Sworn ask nothing of it and promise it nothing. They swear their oaths on salt water, bury their dead in it, and hold that a promise sworn on the sea and broken will be collected, in a storm, by the sea itself. It is less a faith than a code of the sea that has learned to sing. Its keepers are ships' quartermasters.

Standing: The faith of the Salt Brotherhood, so far as it has one. Castavar's navy is full of it, and the Berrode pretends otherwise. Captain Modarsa Tandosno was sworn at twelve. So was Captain-Queen Sormerva Vex. It is the one thing they share, across water, and both know it.

THE DEEP COLD

Found in: Hrodvald's northern clans, the Uusung border. Perhaps 50,000.

Belief: A sect of the Old Ones that honors the Ice Mother alone. Selthar the storm-father is loud and passing; the Ice Mother is silent and forever, and she alone decides who wakes in spring. The faithful go out on the ice naked for a night at midwinter, and those who come back are hers. They do not raid, which the other clans find suspicious, and they do not lie, which the other clans find worse.

Standing: Statha the Far-Seer was raised in the Deep Cold and left it. Thuba Nugag's clan is half Deep Cold. Stelest Kruman calls them "frozen women" and has never fought them, because they do not fight and there is no glory in it.

THE SUN-TURNERS

Found in: Hrodvald's Barerk and Fevur coasts, Aldmere's Northmere. Perhaps 20,000.

Belief: Converts to the Radiant Iévaine, carried north by Caelvennois traders over the last hundred years. In the Frostmarch, where the sun is gone for weeks, a faith of the sun pulls harder than the cardinals ever meant it to. The northern Sun-Turners have added things Solvaine would not know: they keep Iévaine's fire burning through the long dark in a lamp that must never go out, and the keeping of the lamp passes from woman to woman.

Standing: The storm priests hate them. Selra Stormbrand puts up with them because their Caelvennois friends bring grain. Stelest Kruman burned a Sun-Turner lamp-house in 1140, and in Sun-Turner prayer he is named as the Long Dark itself.

THE GRAY CHOIR

Found in: Aldmere's northern shires, Chomtholk especially. Perhaps 25,000 and growing.

Belief: A sect of the Hearthfaith that waits for the end. The Choir teaches that the Quiet Hearth is going out, that the Great Winter of 1089 was the first sign, and that the Lake Comet will come back early to end the world. Its people wear gray, sing in the streets at dawn, give away what they own, and will not sow winter wheat. The last is what worries the Moot.

Standing: Lawful under the Charter of Hearths. King Hethlarn has asked Sister Tunith to reason with them. She has, and says they are very kind and entirely certain. The Chancellor has quietly reckoned what becomes of the grain if the Choir triples.

THE ROAD SPIRIT

Found in: The Qaflan, the Drift, and, increasingly, every market town. Perhaps 300,000.

Belief: The Road is a god that moves. It is honored by honest travel, by kindness to strangers, and by the Neutrality Oath: the Road takes no side, and neither may its children. Its holy places are crossroads and fords. Its priests are the eldest of each caravan. It has gone with the Qaflan into every realm's markets, where merchants of every faith leave a coin at the crossroads shrine for luck.

Standing: A superstition by every realm's law; in truth the nearest thing Aethorra has to a faith all share. Mother Hamen is its most respected voice and refuses to be called a priestess. The Ember Pilgrims shelter under it.

THE ONE LIGHT (THE EMBER PILGRIMS)

Found in: The roads. A few thousand.

Belief: All fires are one fire; all gods are one light seen through different smoke. The Flame, Iévaine, the Seven Hearths, the Ice Mother's silence, even the Doctrine's cold reason, are one thing badly described. The Pilgrims own nothing, preach everywhere, and are hated by every settled faith for the same reason: if they are right, the priests are out of work.

Standing: Burned in Castavar, exiled from Zarvand, arrested in Kaishon, ignored in Tharax, suffered in Aldmere, protected by the Qaflan. Brother Ash is their best-known voice and has no authority over any of them, which is the point.

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Faith by realm: who actually believes what

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Every realm has its lawful way of being ruled. Every realm also has people who think it should be ruled otherwise, and they have names for themselves.

ALDMERE

• The Crownmen — The king should rule and the Moot should advise. Old lords, the army, the Southdowns. Prince Hethbael's natural following, though he has not claimed them. Their cry: "One hearth, one hand."
• The Mootmen — The Moot makes law; the king keeps it. Burgher-reeves, the towns, most of the Chancery. Lord Chancellor Ownirel is their patron saint and would never say so. They have won every real fight since 352.
• The Clearance — Pay the debt. All of it. Whatever it costs. A rising band of younger reeves and shire-knights who hold that Caelvenne's loans are a chain, and that Aldmere should sell the royal forests, raise the tolls, and starve the court for a generation to be free. Prince Hethbael agrees with them loudly. The Chancellor agrees with them quietly and thinks they will beggar the kingdom doing it.
• The Marchers — The Westmarch should be its own realm in all but name. Duke Durift's people. Sworn to their lords, proud, armed. Not treason, quite.
• The Open Hearths — The Charter of Hearths should reach further: freedom of worship, and freedom too for the Bound who flee Tharax, and for the Gray Choir, and for the Cherüsh if they ask. Dreamers, priests, the poor. Sister Tunith is their voice without meaning to be. The Crownmen call them fools; the Marchers call them worse.

THARAX

• The Old Anvil — Tharax as it has always been: sixty thousand Phymun, the Bound in the fields, no trade, no gold, no change. The Thirty, mostly. Skekir Sirtys Gonamik is its iron. Kenithor is its heart and is tired of it.
• The Wide Anvil — Open the citizen's rolls to the Outdwellers' sons; let Tharax grow or die. Lekakor Sastorid and the younger Phymun. Krirtys is its loudest voice in the mess halls.
• The Iron-Breakers — End the Iron Contract. Tharax guards no one for gold. Both kings, for different reasons, and most of the army. The gold's defenders are few and quiet, and among them are the women who keep the realm's accounts and stores.
• The Furrow — The Bound are people. Its faith is set down among the faiths above. Not a party, because parties have members and the Tyrthas hangs members.

CAELVENNE

• The Concord — The Nine Houses rule, the prince presides, and that is the way of things. Every house, every cardinal, every bank. Prince Lourien is its perfect servant.
• The Lilyists — The prince should be a real prince: hereditary, absolute, above the houses. A small band of the Valcroix's clients and some of the Lilies. Lourien has never encouraged them. He has never discouraged them either.
• The Bench — The guilds (glassmakers, dyers, engineers, boatmen) should sit in the Conclave as a tenth voice. Sierelle Tésvol is its unlikely darling. The Concord finds this charming and will never allow it.
• The Bells — The poor of Solvaine, named for the cathedral bells they ring when bread runs short. Not a belief so much as a fact. Cardinal Lalos feeds them; Aijal watches them; Farisel prices them in.
• The Ledgerites — Money should take no side. Caelvenne should lend to all, ally with none, and let the world's wars pay its interest. Bansine Farisel's creed, in deed if not in name. The Gilded Pact and the Iron Contract are its great embarrassments.

CASTAVAR

• The Ecclesiasts — The Rislo's will is God's will; the king is its sword. The church, the Office of Truth, the orders, the poor who love a fiery sermon. Litoto. The Fourth Crusade is their work.
• The Crownmen of Grarañe — The king rules and the Rislo prays. A dwindling party of old royal servants and the Queen's household. Dobarmo IV is its head in name and has never once led it.
• The Old Jevarrie — The Grandees should govern their own lands and vote the king his money, as their fathers did. Rich, proud, and quietly furious at what the crusades cost. They would join the Crownmen if the Crownmen had a spine.
• The Vinvelon — Castavar is a power of the sea, not of the desert. Ships, trade, the Isles, the western coast, and never the Sunmaw again. The navy, the ports, Captain Tandosno. Small, and larger every time a crusade comes home.
• The Ashen — Named by their enemies for the ash of burned heretics. A hidden thread of nobles and scholars who want the Office of Truth reined in and the Grove left alone. Queen Rorelle pays for them. Brother Talvo has a file.

ZARVAND

• The Citadel — The Khaasar should be a soldier and the Jaarzebeem his officers; the Unfading should be the realm. Prince Faasheer's party. The army, the southern meemakhoot, the Rahaasheem who want the Shadowed burned.
• The Garden — The Khaasar should be a scholar and the realm a garden he tends: water, roads, tolerance, the House of Learning. Prince Durkaad's party, and his father's. Feshfaan, Kebidaan, the Celestial Table, most of the cities.
• The Twelve Tents — The Jaarzebeem should choose the Khaasar, as the tribes once chose their chiefs. A league of provinces in Zarvani clothing. Several provincial governors who would like to be kingmakers, and Tartal-i Kebidaan's nightmare.
• The Table — The House of Learning should govern: rule by the examined, as in Kaishon, but with poetry. Scholars, physicians, engineers. Tiny, heeded, and about to go very quiet whoever wins.
• The Fire-Sworn — The Rahaasheem should choose. Rule by priests. Rahaash Kelongaad does not want it and stands at its center anyway, because whoever he crowns is Khaasar.

KAISHON

• The Measured — The Doctrine as written: examination, rank, the Seiro chancellors, no women on the throne. Grand Chancellor Makok, the ministries, the archive-city. The immovable center of the Dominion.
• The Meritists — The Doctrine as meant: whoever passes the examination serves, and whoever is best rules, whatever their birth or sex. Princess Seitotai's party, though she has never named it. Younger officials, the southern provinces, most women who can read.
• The Rampart — The wall is the Dominion, and the general who holds it should sit above the ministers. General Dezau's men, against his wishes. Two hundred thousand soldiers make a creed whether anyone writes it down or not.
• The Loosened Reins — The provinces should govern themselves and send tribute, not obedience. Magistrates like Tsehei Kaukai, who would like to steal in peace. Growing in the Reach, where Kokrin is very far away.
• The Open Gate — Trade with the Cherüsh instead of paying them; open the Rampart's gates to caravans; let the steppe become a market. Merchants of Chaiyo, a few bold officials, and, privately, Sarsak Tolmar, who has said as much to General Dezau.
• The Restoration — Bring back the gods. The Unseen Kin, if they ever banded together. They have not since 1019 and remember why.

HRODVALD

• The Hearth-Makers — One law, one Hearthking, one people; trade instead of raid. Selra Stormbrand and the clans that starved in 1089. Sauld Half-Sung is writing its sagas before it exists.
• The Old Way — The clans are free, the Vuvud is a council not a crown, and a Hrodvald who does not raid is a farmer with an axe. Stelest Kruman and the western clans. Half the north, in its heart.
• The Silver Road — Neither. Trade with the Dunmorrow, marry into Aldmere, sell furs to Solvaine, and let Selra and Kruman shout. Thuba Nugag's clan and the merchant-stelestuk of the coast. Quiet, rich, and waiting.
• The Ice-Callers — The Deep Cold's counsel, so far as it has any: no raids, no Hearthking, no war. Small. Statha the Far-Seer is not one of them and speaks for them anyway when the Reldith turns ugly.

THE FREE PEOPLES

• The Cherüsh are split between the Tolmar's Way (a kingdom, walls, libraries, Sarsak) and the Blue Sky (the Horde stays a Horde; Bagoq the shaman and every rider over forty).
• The Qaflan have one creed, the Neutrality Oath, and one heresy, Zesose the Wheel's Wheel-Breakers, who take sides for pay.
• The Waheli argue between the Circle (guard the edge, kill trespassers, nothing more) and Viwal Stainhand's Reaping (make the edge a hundred miles of corpses).
• The Tzalan are Ixatl's Sun's Arrow (drive out every outsider) against Chelpan's River Council (trade, but fairly, and keep the garrisons small).
• The Dunmorrow are the Thanes (each hold its own, sell to all) against Tesk Deepsong's Restorers (one Underking again).
• The Salt Brotherhood is Vex's Free Isles (a treaty, a crown, a kingdom) against Chobecho's Brethren (pirates stay pirates).
• The Hizkari are the Iron Matron's Two Buyers (sell to Zarvand, threaten Castavar, take the profit) against her son's Reckoning (sell to Castavar and watch Zarvand burn).

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Who knows what

The free peoples

• The Cherüsh cannot read and do not need to; they know horses, weather, and land better than anyone on the continent, and Sarsak Tolmar is teaching himself Kaishoni script from a captured primer.
• The Qaflan are the most lettered of the free peoples, in a dozen scripts, because letters are their cargo.
• The Dunmorrow are deeply learned in one craft, metallurgy, and keep it in a guild-script no outsider reads.
• The Waheli have no writing, and a spoken knowledge of plants, poisons, and the forest that the House of Learning would pay any price for.
• The Tzalan are learning the glyphs on the pyramids again. Ixatl claims to read them. Chelpan is not sure he can.
• The Salt Brotherhood reads charts and little else, and its pilots are as good as Castavar's.
• The Uusung have no writing, and the Hrodvald suspect they know things about the far north that no book anywhere holds.

What this means in practice

Kaishon and Zarvand are the two realms that could make something new. Neither has lately: Kaishon because its examinations punish the new, Zarvand because its scholars are about to be caught in a war for the throne. Caelvenne turns other men's knowledge into money and weapons faster than anyone. Aldmere and Castavar get by. Hrodvald and Tharax have chosen to be very good at surviving and killing and nothing else, and both would say that when the libraries burn, the men with axes and spears will still be standing.

The Ember Pilgrims teach anyone to read who asks. It is one of the reasons three realms want them dead.

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