Magipunk:Religion
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Religion in Arcanum Null is, in one sense, absolutely fundamental to everyone's daily lives, and, in another sense, nearly dead. Passion-enhanced worship forms the basis of the high-magic economy, but as the gods power has become a commodity, normal worship has quickly and steadily declined over the last few generations. The churches are powerful economic entities, but their role as the arbiters of morality, the guardians of the souls of the masses, has dropped almost entirely to the wayside. The "priests" of the Church-Mills spend their lives worrying about power-token quotas, not divine scripture, and the masses of Atathorn use the names of the Gods as conveniant curse-words, and little more. Sincere worship unaided by Passion is looked at as mildly worrying eccentricity.
Everyone believes in the Gods, of course – evidence of them is all around. But they believe in the same sense that they believe in a river or mill-wheel – Gods are the source of power, no more or less.
Contents
The Old Gods[edit]
There are six True Gods (or Goddesses – all divine entities are considered to have both male and female aspects). That they're real is self-evident, and has been for decades – prayers only produce power when they're directed to one of the six True Gods, not to anything else. Before the advent of Passion, there was good reason to believe only in the True Gods, but still room for other beliefs, and occaisional smaller cults worshipped other things, fictious or real-but-not-divine. Passion forced the issue, however, and those smaller cults all generally died off more than a generation ago, and for some time, the only churches of note were the Church-Mills. Now, however, there is an increasing incidence of non-True-God worshipping, primarily by the lower class (see the New Cults later in this section).
The gods are:
Ryll[edit]
Commonly portrayed as male, Ryll's symbol is a stylized eye with two pupils. He was generally thought of as a capricious god of fortune and chance. The expression "You're in Ryll's eye" is still in semi-common use, meaning someone whose fortune varies wildly from good to bad over a short period.
Kleri[edit]
Most often portrayed as female, Kleri's symbol is a simple circle. Kleri is the goddess of sickness, death, and childbirth. Her name is often used as a curse word, as is the phrase "Kleri's blood." Pregnant women and expectant fathers are supposed to avoid using her name in vain, to prevent miscarriages or deaths in childbirth.
Wadjic[edit]
Usually portrayed as female, Wadjic's symbol is a stylized snowflake. Wadjic's domain is weather, particularly rain and snow, and she's also the goddess most associated with the sea/sailors. Those who have to make sea voyages used to make big sacrifices in Wadjic's domain to assure a safe arrival, though that practice has diminished to throwing cheap tin "play money" into the ocean right before casting off.
Tunsan[edit]
Usually portrayed as male, Tunsan's church uses a symbol of a stylized leaf and one of a great cat. He was the god most often associated with wilderness, wild animals, and farming. More feared than worshipped, Tunsan was never a popular god, but rural people still bury food items or tokens as sacrifices to avert his attention.
Adsri[edit]
Almost invariably portrayed as male, Adsri was the sun god. His symbol is a stylized sunburst, and he's associated with spring and summer, daybreak, and good fortune. "Adsri smile on you" is a general blessing, of the sort one might say to someone who's ill, or about to undertake a dangerous venture.
Gola[edit]
Gola is the only god that doesn't have a terribly strong gender, though she's slightly more frequently shown to be female than male. Her symbol is a crescent moon, and she's associated with night, stars, the moon, darkness, and protection from evil. Full moons are known as Gola's Nights.
Worship[edit]
There are elaborate ritual surrounding the worship of each of the six gods, and holy texts supposedly directly inspired by these gods. In this modern age, though, the rituals are only followed by those taking Passion, and for most people, the gods are presences only in what symbols are embossed on power tokens, and in a few archaic figures of speech. Devout priests in the Church-Mills have long-since been crowded out by managers and businessmen, who are technically ordained, but in practice are no different from the Alliance merchants they work closely with.
The last refuge of true worship of the Old Gods is in certain insulated members of the Nobility – the ones not heavily associated with the Alliances, rich enough not to be affected by the massive, sweeping changes of the modern day. Most particularly, the Royal Family and closely tied nobility do still attend services and make sacrifices to the gods in a relatively sincere manner, though even these throwbacks are slowly cutting back their religious lives.
The New Cults[edit]
If the last remnants of worship of the Old Gods are to be found in the temples of the highest nobles, their mirror opposite is to be found in the lowest of the low classes, who are increasingly organising into semi-religious groups that do not worship the Old Gods.
Worship of anything but the Old Gods was essentially stomped out by the rise of Passion, for the Old Gods are the True Gods – the only entities who grant magical power through worship. But the New Cults aren't interested in mana generation, and usually don't even really engage in traditional worship.
The New Cults tend to be ecstatic affairs, tied to drug use (not Passion), physical deprivation, or other extreme activities. Dancing to the point of exhaustion, fasting for days, or even self-torture are not unheard of. At this point, all of the Cults are very much in the process of defining themselves, and they do so mostly experientially – the Cultists are united in that what they do makes them feel good, or fulfilled, or otherwise alive, not in some kind of doctrine. For the most part, the Cults don't have firm dogmas or even established divinities. Yet they're growing in popularity, and seem to fill the place in people's lives that religion might have in older generations.
There are probably a hundred Cults in Atathorn, most of them with less than a few dozen members. In many cases, the line between a Cult and a gang is heavily blurred – the extreme activities of the Cults often begin as initiation rites into a gang. Each Cult is different, though some have similarities to each other, and others seem wildly different. Cults range from being innocuous if weird to deeply sinister.
Behind the Scenes[edit]
What are the New Cults? Are they a new way of worshipping the Old Gods? Are they harmless "false" religion, with no deeper truths behind them than what human psychology might create? Are they connected with some other entity than the Old Gods, whether benign or harmful? This is a mystery for every GM to decide on his or her own. There is no "canonical" answer.
There are some possibilities, however:
There are prophecies which imply that the end of an Age is upon the world. What that means is very unclear – it could be just the social upheaval already being experienced, or it could be something different. One heretical interpretation is that the Old Gods are fading, perhaps even dying. They may be reborn into new personae, or replaced by something else. If so, then the New Cults may be worshipping that "something else," which, despite not yet even existing, nevertheless has some power. If this is true, the Cults will likely increase in power, and Cultists may even gain some kind of mystical ability (which will probably NOT be traditional sorcery or magical power – in this interpretation, that entire system is burning out).
What if the Old Gods were protecting the world from something? What we might term "demons" may now have an "in" to the world if the activities of the Church Mills are weakening the Old Gods. Perhaps the New Cults are people touched by those demons, performing half-understood rituals that make it easier for more demons to pour into the world. Cultists might be duped fools, power-hungry traitors to humanity, or a mixture of both. Of course, it's also possible that the "demons" are not so bad after all, in which case this possibility starts to blend with the first one.
The New Cults might be a new way of worshipping the same Old Gods – a less destructive or selfish way. That is, ultimately, it's possible that the relationship established by this form of worship is one with the same Old Gods, but the benefits of the relationship are different from traditional or Passion-enhanced prayer. If you choose to go with an option that suggests that the Old Gods are being damaged by the forced-worship of the Passionate, then the New Cultists might be healing them or offering some kind of way of mutually, rather than selfishly, beneficial worship to the Old Gods.
