Gods of the Empire and the North
It is the view of certain philosophers that the gods, being infinite in power, are beyond the concern of practical politics. However, I must here make my argument: a ruler who dismisses belief as irrelevant to her calculations has merely declined to include among her considerations a category of concern that is older than her state, less predictable than her enemies, and under no obligation to announce itself before intervening in her affairs.
What follows concerns those whose influence touches the territories and populations Your Grace must govern or deal with.
Great Raavan is the foundational figure of the Singhapura religious order, upon whom the Haugris Church bases its entire claim to authority, and whose relics the Church holds as the Divine Corpus. The Church’s position is that Raavan is dead, that his death distributed his magic across the world, and that the Church is the legitimate custodian of his legacy. There is not much to say other than to urge Your Grace, in the strongest possible terms, not to publicly speak heresy of the Church; whatever your private opinions and affairs; they are one of the great powers of Singhapura, and has, by turns, been a force for both peace and great violence. Its good graces will serve you, its indifference will do no harm, but its wrath is slow, terrible, and long-lasting.
The Temple is the second power in these lands. Though its worship is much diminished - by many counts only a tenth of Singhapura formally espouses the belief - its institutions still remain, scattered across the provinces, present especially in the further reaches of the Empire. Adherents of the Temple spend long years training themselves to act according to the nature of one of Eighteen Litanies, until such time that their nature becomes sufficiently like the diety for the Litany to posess them.
The Temple is secretive. Its writings and sutras form much of the basis of modern magical canon, indicating a profound awareness of the mechanisms of the world; and yet it has steadily withdrawn from political participation over the last three centuries. The names of certain Litanies are well-known, but the most powerful Litanies are kept secret. Nominally, their High Priest is appointed to the Emperor’s court by consensus of all the individual Temples, but Your Grace should understand that this is a political fiction, nothing more; no branch of the Temple exerts formal power over another; there are no grand hierarchies, only the bonds of society and obligation and practice.
Unofficially, there are other powers. It is the custom of many to make baara (bargains, or vows); these are made with dieties that are quieter and more dispersed, some predating formal churches. Unlike the Church or the Temple, these dieties have no priests nor great institutions; they may have shrines. The one making to vow promises to do certain deeds, or maintain a certain behavior, in exchange for the pleads for the diety’s intervention on some matter. When Your Grace finds some behaviour that cannot be readily explained by politics, religion, the character of a man or by his existing allegiances, it is often wise to inquire if he has made some baara or the other.
Ginisundara Devi is often worshipped as a minor goddess of the hearth and home, but the she is a diety of fire in all its aspects, and is possibly the most widely worshipped next to Raavan; household shrines with a clay lamp and a small offering are found throughout the empire, particularly in the province, often maintained primarily by women. The goddess is said to appear in person to women in cold and difficult circumstances.
Mahasona - the name translates as mass grave - was, in the older accounts, a general under Great Raavan, and has since become the god of graveyards, carnage, slaughter, revenge, and punishment. Graveyard-keepers and soldiers smear ash on their hands in his name. Mothers use stories of him to terrify unruly children. His worship is unofficial but widespread in the military in particular.
Great Yama is worshipped in Nagenapura as a protector, and in wider Singhapura as a god of survival and wisdom. He is described variously as both a guard and as a former advisor to Raavan - possibly, in certain accounts, a predecessor or a mentor. Soldiers and travelers make offerings to him before undertaking dangerous journeys.
Metera Samsina, called Goyamma in the south, and sometimes Miyara Devi, is the Mother Who Reaps: goddess of harvests and floods, of gentle births and deaths, of the turning of seasons, and of the lives of ordinary people, whom she is said to cherish above all others. She takes the form of a young maiden or an old crone, and to preside over births and deaths. It is customary to leave aside an offering of milk-rice, honey and salt to her on birthdays, and when a family member is ill; your Grace will find few who do not observe this custom, even when they do not speak her name.
Yakadha Hadhawatha, also know as Ironheart, is said to be a forgotten Adiraj, ambitious and obsessed with the pursuit of Raavan’s power to who spent aeons in pursuit of Raavan’s heights, to the neglect of all else. He is often worshipped by those of similar disposition - the ambitious who may want desperately to seek power.
Galwadu is the Stone-Maker, Stone-Hand. His veneration is originally from Ealdorfold, I believe, where a similar diety is called Lapidon, god of the deep places under the earth. In Sinhapure he is revered as a diety of building, endurance, and grit; thus, miners, masons, builders, engineers, many soldiers. His sigil is often carved on bridges and in the roots of buildings, which are said to be shrines of a sort; and because of the Stonemasons, he has an institutional presence in the empire’s construction apparatus that is more organized than the presence of most gods others.
Ratnamaris is the god of oceans, tides, and fortunes, worshipped primarily by merchants and sailors in Basnapura. He takes two forms: on land, a greedy merchant festooned with gold and jewels; at sea, a monster or a thundercloud .Fortunes are made and lost by forces that exceed individual control, the greedy survive longer than the generous, andthe god of both is appropriately ambivalent. Charms bearing his image are common among Merchants’ Guild members throughout the empire; I have even seen them in Daub.
The Light is, given recent events, perhaps the most visible of all here, though perhaps the least understood. We do not know of the origins of the Light. The Paladins draw what power they currently possess from the Light; by which mechanism, we do not fully understand, but part of it seems to be contractual in nature. The Paladins themselves have notoriously poor records, but we do know that a Paladin who does not act like one loses their connection; conversely, some who do act like Paladins find themselves blessed by the Light, but whether this happens at an early age, or late, is not yet conclusive. Your Grace is well aware of recent events, so I will not repeat them, but one fact to note is that the Paladin so blessed is compelled to take upon quests and tasks for some ideal of good, and this acceptance is enforced by the Light; conversely, a Paladin who lacks cunning may find themselves trapped by impossible quests and sent to their doom.
Further Reading
The Thirty-Seven Stations of Raavan by the Paragon Priyadharshana is the most serious scholarly attempt to reconcile the Church’s official account of Raavan’s death with the considerable body of evidence for other paths. Weerasinghe, as a Paragon of the University, had considerable political protection, and was thus able to examine the Church’s changing ideals and revisions of their own doctrine.
The Old Gods: Being a Survey the Baara Tradition by Kumara Dharmawardena is the most comprehensive single account available of the deities that predate and persist Singhapura’s formal religious institutions. Dharmawardena spent thirty years in the field documenting the cults and piecing together the informal social and legal architecture that operates through shrine maintenance, military brotherhood, merchants networks, and the private vow system.
The Light and Its Obligations by Renaud de Chastelain is a Rosantic theological work that examines the mechanics of the Paladin compact. De Chastelain’s argument is that the relationship between the Light and the Paladins is contractual rather than devotional, binding on both parties; a very Rosantic frame, since they have a long history of treating theological relationships as legal ones.
The Litanies Exposed by Aldhelm Truthseeker (an obvious alias) attempts to identify and describe the Temple of Eighteen’s secret Litanies from external observation alone. There are many pages here on the behavior of practitioners, linguistic analysis of surviving sutras, and accounts from those who have witnessed Temple workings at close range; whether Aldhelm succeeded in his identifications is disputed. A curious note is that an Aldhelm is recorded as having been executed in Wattle for heresy; then again in multiple Rosantic cities; and again in Singhapura.