[Jade Stage] The House of Death has Four Walls

[Lmns Crn]

[ooc]Lesser than (but comparable to) the Cardan Faith in size and scope is Farras, an ancient goblin religion that revolves around water and the soul. The goblins never had an empire like the dwarves did, so their spreading of their religion lacked that crushing cultural momentum, but goblins have always tended toward wanderlust, and spread their strange faith over the course of their travels.

Unlike the dwarven faith, Farras has no gods, no sentient higher powers. Its authorities are the spirit-drinkers, sorcerors who call upon the spiritual power of water. Farras is founded upon the idea that souls are made of water (and water is made of souls), and that all living creatures are ruled by the phenomena that result from this relationship.[/ooc]

Farras

Draw water from the ocean and use it to fill a jar. Within the jar, the water takes on a certain shape, and a certain identity-- for the moment, it's separate from the ocean: an entity of its own.

Smash the jar, or pour out its contents, and the water will eventually flow back to the sea, rejoining the body from which it was taken. Draw more water and fill another jar, and the water you get will never be the same water as you got before, though it will share the kinship of a common source.

We are all water-jars; our souls are drawn from one great repository of spirit-material, to which we return when we die. There is comfort in such a belief. Although an individual personality is wiped away when it rejoins the source, the dead live on in all things that live, drops of their essences intermingled and re-drawn, poured into jars both new and strange.

Water and the Soul

There is a fundamental sameness between the two concepts. A living soul is merely water infused with life; a drop of water is simply a fragment of soul-stuff resting in the interval between death and eventual rebirth. There is a fundamental sameness between all living things, since all souls flow into the same ocean when they die, whether they belonged to oaks or wasps or people. The water that forms your own soul has been reused throughout the millenia, and once belonged to the souls of mighty dragons and strange deep-sea fish, to great goblin warlords and the soldiers their armies crushed. Each life is an unknowable culmination of countless sources, a river fed by myriad tributaries, which will spill one day into the sea.

The Goblin Creation Story

The Sea was a vast and endless expanse, churning and surging with energy beneath a placid surface. The Storm battered the Sea with wind and rain, whipping the water's surface into frenzy, driving the waves to part. When the water parted, the Rock arose from the depths, surfacing dark and rain-slicked, and the storm's winds howled around it. The Rock is fated one day to sink back beneath the surface, returning to the depths that birthed it.

When the rainwater broke itself upon the Rock, each drop cried out with life. The Thousand Tribes were born this way, and whipped into frenzy by the winds of the Storm, they met each other in battle, consuming each other as a larger drop of water devours a smaller one. So it was that only the Ten and Three tribes, strongest of all, remained.

The Sea, the Rock, and the Storm

Farras has no deities, but the Sea, the Rock, and the Storm function as important fixtures of that religion. They are not creature with personalities and identities in the manner of the dwarven gods, but are forces of nature with certain properties and momentum.

The Sea is the oldest of all things, the total of all water in existence. All water is a portion of the sea and subservient to it, just as a finger and hand are subservient to the body to which they belong. The Sea contains all dead souls, and therefore contains all knowledge and all power, which lie in a dormant state. The Sea is infinite potential, eternal and unchangeable.

The Storm represents action, unrest, motion, and strife. It is the only force potent enough to break the calm of the Sea, at the start of all things. Goblins believe themselves to be born of the Storm and still tossed by its winds, crediting the Storm for their inescapable wanderlust. Wars, journeys, discoveries, and other strivings are all manifestations of the Storm, to various degrees.

The Rock is vital to life, yet worldly and transient. It is fated to one day sink beneath the waters of the Sea to which it is subservient, yet we all build our lives upon the Rock and its trappings. The Rock and its ephemeral nature remind us that things which seem solid and important can deceive us, and that even our own bodies are merely temporary shells for the souls they house, fragile and breakable jugs filled with eternal water.

[LordVreeg]

Hmm.  From this I would assume ascetic, goblin monks...

I can see this being somewhat useful in creating a fatalistic horde ready to break their jars all over a city wall...one wonders, however, how the goblin priesthood keeps up with the other orders.  SInce it has been SO LONG since I have spoken about the Jade Stage, I need a crunch refresher, in the nature of deivine magic and what powers can be drawn from above or beyond...

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=LC][blockquote=Vreeg]'¦I also find it easy to work with the iconic 'skyfather and earthmother' imprints, as they are part of so many real world mythic systems, and I think players will also automatically relate to them well.[/blockquote]
Yeah, they're familiar enough to relate to easily, but broad enough to give you room to work easily. I'm a little worried that the Makers are a little too generic: they're the center of this pantheon, but I also think they're the least interesting part of it.[/blockquote]

In terms of conflict, I agree with you, in terms of how I see them affecting the day-to-day life of the world, I think they do well.  Especially Jatta's position as binder of pacts and the giver of insight.  I think that this would make him invoked very readily.  Not to mention as the bringer of Light.  Maybe less 'personal' than the other gods, but this is typical with father figure deities, and this is only enhanced by the 'Mending of the Broken'.    

[Superfluous Crow]

What i really like about this is that there is easily appreciable internal logic to it all. None of the elements seem to be silly or out of place; they just fit. Nicely done.

[Lmns Crn]

Holy crap, guys; I was looking through the archives for some old half-finished project or another, and saw that you had bumped this thread during my hiatus. I am flattered and frankly a little amazed that you apparently find this stuff interesting enough to bump the thread a year and a half after my last contribution to it.

I haven't forgotten this stuff, and more on the subject of religion here is coming up, probably for display on the Wiki. In the meantime, thanks for your continued interest.