Editing Ito (section)

==Ito and Sarku==

The Ito claim that they were the very first people to worship the deity Sarku, back in the days of the Dragon Warriors, before even the incredibly ancient Bednjallan empire was founded, and certainly before he was worshipped in the Kraa Hills around the modern city of Ssa-Sarku. Needless to say the Kraa hill tribes dispute this, but among the scholar priests of Sarku it is known that the Tongue of the Lord of Worms is related to now extinct Chakan tribal dialects. 

In the Chakas the Ito make large cash donations to the Temple of Sarku, but rarely actually attend themselves. They have their own house priests and worship at their own private shrines and the tombs dedicated to their ancestors. Outside the Chakas the Ito are more conventional in their relationship to their religion, holdng senior temple posts in Sarku tempes in many major cites. None however is part of the High Council of Sarku priests that sits in Ssa-Sarku, and none has risen to beyond Tsemel (Patriarch, or 16th circle+) in rank. Interested political observers suggest that this is a deliberate policy by the mainstream Sarku heirarchy to avoid having the Ito take over the whole temple.

The Ito support the Brotherhood of the Victory of the Worm, the less political wing of the religion, and allegedly give money to the dubious Brethren of the Amber Coiling. During the recent civil war their position was hard to fathom - they certainly were not wholeheartedly behind Dhich'une and his Copper Tomb faction, certainly dallied with the Royalist faction in return for promises of greater local autonomy and were quite definitely against Mirusiya, who evetually won and became Emperor, due to their hostility to Vimuhla and the Red Clans of western Tsolyanu.

Almost no Ito ever leaves the temple of Sarku. A few in Ssa-Sarku are members of Durritlamish as they have been memebrs of legions dedicated to that deity, one or two in Meku have tried to join Hru'u and Ksarul, but they were disowned by their clan and distrusted by their new temples.