The Edassan Tomes

[Seonid he/him]

Day late on the Saturday worldbuilding post, but it's finally here! The weekly accountability post will be delayed a day as well, but it'll be up tomorrow.

Today we're going to talk about the core theology taught in the Court of the Gods. How do the philosophers and priests there see the universe, what do they teach their people, and what do they believe about the nature of the gods and mankind?

But first, a few notes on Edassan religion: 

Religion on Edassa bears only superficial similarities to religion in (Western) classical antiquity on Earth. Classical Terran religions were not universally concerned with the moral conduct of humans; while a number of traditions do have a moral code they expect their believers to act in accordance with, the primary concern of classical religion is with keeping the gods happy - either by placating their wrath or invoking their favor with sacrifice, offerings, and public piety. Any moral conduct required by those religions is generally expressed in the context of avoiding the wrath of the gods.

Now, throughout classical antiquity, you do see religious traditions springing up around individuals who are seen as great moral teachers; these tended to be much more inclined to concern themselves with moral conduct, and in fact many of them grew to become major world religions in the modern world. But the general view of the universe in classical antiquity was a perilous place, ruled by the whims of the gods.

In contrast, the original settlers of Edassa came from a future version of Earth, which was very heavily post-Enlightenment. Even the religious believers among the settlers held a modern-like scientific view of the world, and had installed religion firmly into the realm of moral conduct. Nothing about attempting to avert earthquakes by sacrificing to Poseidon; if you did sacrifices, it was because it was some sort of symbol of your individual relationship with God (or the gods), etc, etc. Religion in the post-Enlightenment world is almost entirely human-centric. It defines what God or the gods want out of humanity, what behaviors should be expressed and what should be condemned. In a sense, a Terran religion in their time has two purposes - it defines what a "good" person is, and then teaches its believers how to be one.

The memory and religions of Earth are gone now, lost to a comet impact nearly 1700 years ago. The survivors still told stories and many held to their faiths, but their children and children's children had nothing to hold on to, and their ancestors lacked the strong oral storytelling tradition that has kept many traditional beliefs alive today.

The religions that inhabit Edassa now are almost entirely homegrown, but their outlook is still very heavily dominated by the post-Enlightenment understanding of their original society. Therefore, they are much more concerned with moral conduct than most religions in the ancient world ever were. You won't see tyrant-kings slaughtering cities for disrespect, or gods who seem like forces of nature with no concern for right and wrong. Now, some religions are going to be at odds with modern sensibilities, but even those are going to be concerned with moral conduct - they will just have a different understanding of what moral conduct means. (Additional note - natural disasters can still often be ascribed to divine acts, but in almost all cases, they will be framed as a justified response to wickedness)

With that said, here we go:

The Worship of the Tribunal: Part 2 - Core Beliefs

The core beliefs of the Tribunal can be divided into three parts. First, the teachings of the Court of the Gods on the nature of the universe and the gods, the creation of the world, and its eventual fate. Second, the teachings on the nature of mortals and the purpose of life (including their beliefs on the afterlife). Third, the moral teachings about how to live a good life.

We will start by doing a brief overview of the religion's canonical texts.

Part 2.1 - Canonical Texts

The core texts of the worship of the Tribunal are a set of stories called The Grand Cosmology. This is a cycle of twelve stories that, taken together, chronicle the war between the Tribunal (sometimes called the Lords of Heaven) and the Demonking Sitta and his hordes.

In addition to the Grand Cosmology, however, the Court of the Gods also relies on a book called Reflections of Eternity. This is a codification of the teachings of the Court, first written about 800 years ago, and consists of many essays on various points of doctrine, elaborating on the stories in The Grand Cosmology and using them to support a doctrinal structure. It is much longer than the text it relies on, and includes everything from meditations on moral laws to the original charters for the first Paladin orders. For several centuries, it appears to have been tradition to add pieces to the book, but that practice petered out over time.

Together, The Grand Cosmology and Reflections of Eternity constitute the primary canonical texts used by the Court of the Gods. This, however, is supplemented by a dizzying array of secondary texts; the official proclamations of the Council of Hierophants, various works written by influential priests over the centuries, even works of philosophy and science that have been given official sanction.

While Reflections on Eternity is too complex to go into any great detail on its contents, The Grand Cosmology is summarized below.

The Grand Cosmology

The twelve stories that make up The Grand Cosmology are as follows:

• The Birth of Hope: This story begins with Miranda, the Queen of Heaven. She rules over a court of divine beings, all of them created by her out of the fabric of the universe to be her children. They create humanity. The evil Demonking Sitta enters the universe and slays all of Miranda's sons. She and her daughters are bound in chains and forced to endlessly bear children for Sitta - these children become the hordes of demons. The demons torment and torture mankind, and use humanity as their playthings. The cries of torment ring out throughout the universe.
  
  Taris and Argon, two brothers who were returning from a trip beyond the edge of existence, purpose to stay for a while in Miranda's court. Though they are strangers there, they were treated with hospitality and desire to share the stories of their adventures. They arrive to find everything overthrown and the Demonking running rampant. After a fight with the hordes of demons, Taris finds Miranda in chains and learns the story of what happened. Taris proposes a plan to Miranda, where they will conceive children in secret and he will raise them up to destroy the demonking and free everything. The births of their five children - Nalathea, Khurdan, Tilrakh, Jerad, and Hurisen - are listed. Taris, his brother, and the five children return, freeing their mother and destroying the powerful demon of chains who held her captive.
   
• The Book of the Wars of the Lords of Heaven: This story chronicles the war between the eight gods and the demonking. It is the shortest of the stories in The Grand Cosmology and describes a complete war between the Lords of Heaven and the demonking. Unlike the previous story, this book has no reference to Miranda's captivity, and her original court is never mentioned again. The gods and their relationships are already established at the beginning.
  
  The book follows the gods as they battle and defeat seven increasingly powerful demonlords and the hordes that serve them before finally confronting the king of the demons, in his own hall. Sitta is cast down, and the gods celebrate their victory. Khurdan the maker then creates the world on his Anvil of Creation, and the gods populate it with mortals.
   
• The Song of the Virgin: This poetic work is devoted to Nalathea the Virgin, and goddess of the Sun. It is a song of praise describing her great triumphs during the War in Heaven. Among the highlights are the great oath she swore at her birth, forswearing all romantic companionship so that she could focus all of her attention on protecting the innocent and hunting down those who prey on their own kind, her triumphant defeat of the demonlord of the abyss, during which she brought the cleansing light of the sun down into the bottomless pit and lit the endless expanse up with cleansing fire that scoured it clean forever, and her great promise to humanity, where she set the sun in the sky and ringed the world with her bow as a reminder that she would always be there to protect them.
   
• The Fall of the King: This book describes the treachery of Tilrakh, the third child of Taris and Miranda. He is obsessed with his sister Nalathea, but she rejects his advances because of her oath. He asks his father to arrange their marriage, but Taris accepts the oath as binding and refuses. In secret, he attempts to assault her, but she burns him deeply and he flees in shame. His anger and lust turns to hatred and contempt, and he goes and visits the king of the underworld, who offers to give him his sister to torment if he betrays his father.
  
  Tilrakh poisons his father at a feast, but Taris does not die to the poison. So Tilrakh confronts him in a battle of might. Taris, though weakened and wounded, defeats his son, and Tilrakh desperately calls on the king of the underworld to save him. The king of the underworld enters, having been given passage by Tilrakh. The gods attempt to fight him, but are on the verge of defeat. Taris gathers his last strength and sacrifices himself to bind the evil king back to the underworld. The gods mourn his death and cast out their kin who betrayed them.
   
• The Huntress of the Sun: This book is a single story about Nalathea the Virgin which is not repeated or referenced anywhere else in the cycle. In it, Nalathea is wandering in the mountains, which are her sacred place, when she comes across a city that is ruled by a despotic tyrant. She enters the city in disguise, and immediately is threatened by the city guards, who attempt to assault her. She destroys them, but sees that all women in the city are brutalized by the soldiers and the tyrant king, and many of the men too. She frees several families from imminent danger, and appears before the king's son, who is a just man and hates everything going on in the city. She wants to convince him to take up arms against his father, but his wife and children are being held hostage. She declares the men who hold them as her quarry, and she goes on a hunt through the city, striking down every guard that stands between her and the prince's wife and children. Even the tyrant king flees in terror before her glory.
  
  Once his family is delivered, the prince rallies the city and takes up arms against his father. Due to the Virgin's miraculous intervention, the city is delivered without a single innocent soul being harmed. The story closes with her admonishing the prince to rule justly and never to cause harm to a single innocent soul, for her eyes and protection are upon all of them.
   
• The Gates of Chaos: This story and the next form a duology, detailing the final battle against Sitta in which he is defeated and cast down to the seven hells. In this story, Jerad the wise and Khurdan the maker see that evil demons are running rampant over creation, and that the universe is sure to fall if they are not defeated. Jerad reads the stars to discern how they can be stopped, and says that the gates of the ancient chaos, which predates the foundations of the world, must be opened. This will dissolve everything and allow the world to be renewed. To open the gates, the gods must find the seven pieces of the Key, which were broken up and hidden long ago. Jerad finds the location of two of the pieces with his knowledge, but also finds that two were destroyed. Khurdan must slay two great monsters and forge replacement pieces from their bones and scales.
  
  The final pieces are still missing, so Hurisen, Jerad's wife, goes to the demonlord of flames, the demonlord of ice, and the demonlord of darkness to find their locations. In each place, she pretends to be a different being, and finds out that each of them have one of the pieces, but that they jealously guard them from each other. Hurisen travels between each of their courts, and ends up playing an extremely long con that results in a three-way war between the demonlords. Finally, each of the demons asks her to hold onto their piece of the key and keep them safe from their rivals, not knowing that the other two are doing the exact same thing.
  
  She leaves them in chaos and returns with the final pieces of the key. Khurdan reforges the key, and Jerad opens the Gates of Chaos and holds them while the chaos pours through to destroy all the demons.
   
• The Forging of the World: This story picks up exactly where the previous one left off. The evil demons were feeding on the wickedness of humanity, so Jerad intended for the chaos to wipe out all of humanity as well as the demons. However, Hurisen has compassion on them, knowing that there are a number of humans who reject the wickedness of their neighbors. She brings it up with the rest of the gods, who agree that they must be preserved, but Jerad opines that the humans are too fragile to survive the chaos. The gods determine to allow humanity to be destroyed, and to create them anew once the tides of chaos have retreated.
  
  Hurisen, out of her compassion for mortals, approaches Khurdan to tell him that she fears that the tides of chaos will destroy the gods too, if they cannot be protected against. Khurdan agrees that it is dangerous, but says that he can forge a world where they can survive, if she can find a place where it will be safe.
  
  She approaches Jerad and tricks him into revealing to her the only place that will be safe from the tides of chaos so that the gods can flee if they are about to be destroyed. Khurdan forges a world for the gods to live on, but warns Hurisen that he has set up a field around the world that accelerates time so that the life he has made on the world will have time to grow and fill every corner of it. Hurisen tricks the secret of passing through the field out of him, and leads several chosen human families, who are righteous and keep themself clean from the wickedness of the rest, to the new world. Once they have arrived, she gets them through the field just before the gods arrive. Once the gods arrive to their safe space, Khurdan ends the field and they all enter the new world only to find that humanity has grown and spread through many generations in there. However, no evil demons entered the world, and so the gods are persuaded to allow humanity to live.
  
  The story ends with the demons finally defeated forever.
   
• The Song of Triumphs: This is a poetic work dedicated to Taris, the king of the gods. It praises his honor and valor in the War in Heaven, and describes his defeat of several great demonlords and monsters. It also praises his sacrifice that protected the world from the king of demons, and gives him honor as "the one who died and lived again, and by his sacrifice brought peace to men." It describes how the great king preserved a remnant of humanity during the war in heaven, and returned them safely once the war was finished. Finally, it details his final confrontation with the demonking Sitta, in which he wields the sword Justice, forged by his son Khurdan out of the primordial chaos, and casts Sitta down to bind him forever in the seven hells.
   
• The Saga of Mortals: This book described the descent of Miranda, the Queen of Heaven, into the underworld. After her husband, Taris, was killed, she descended into the land of the dead to retrieve his soul. She must pass through many trials before she reaches the final place, and she overcomes them all.
  
  Finally, after a long journey, she confronts the lord of the underworld and challenges him for her husband's soul. He agrees, but sets her an impossible task - she must remain with him as his queen for a thousand years. To make sure she keeps her word, the king of the underworld binds her with a magical chain that cannot be broken. However, he does not know that she was once bound before, and that by defeating the demon of chains who bound her, she partook of some of that essence, and now can never be bound again. On their wedding night, when he places the chain around her neck, she whispers to it and it falls off of her. She catches the king unprepared, and they wage a mighty battle in the underworld. Eventually, she casts him out of his place and breaks their wedding contract. But instead of returning, she takes his place and rules as the Queen of the Underworld. She restores her husband's soul to his body so that he can bring justice and balance to the universe, and she transforms the underworld from a place of torment to a place of rest and peace.
   
• The Revelation of the King of Heaven: This book describes the Revelation of Taris given to an individual only known as the Wise Man. In it, Taris explains who he is, and teaches the Wise Man how to worship him and promises that he and all his children will be prospered and become adopted into Taris' family.
   
• The Laws of the Tribunal: This book describes the theft of the laws of heaven by Hurisen. Seeing that humanity is in chaos, she petitions Taris to teach them the laws that allow the divine society to live in peace forever. Taris refuses, because the humans cannot live by those laws. There is a multi-chapter monologue by Taris about the difficulty of living up to the divine laws, and the consequences of knowing them and failing.
  
  Hurisen is not convinced, and so she steals the tablets of the law from Taris' palace and brings them to the mortal world. When they are unleashed, all the calamities predicted by Taris begin to unfold, and he comes down in anger to see what has happened.
  
  He finds humanity dealing with calamities. But despite the destructive presence of the divine tablets, men are trying to live the laws. Every time they fail, another calamity happens, but they try harder the next time.
  
  He chastises Hurisen, but she responds that even these calamities are better than the chaos the mortals lived in before they had the divine laws, and reminds him that they aren't trying to go back. Taris recovers the divine tablets, but creates a new set of tablets with laws that humans can follow and promises to teach them so that they will be able to grow into living the divine laws.
   
• The Lay of Time: This book is a poetic work that describes a final battle at the end of all things, when Sitta will be unleashed and his ravenous hunger will threaten to devour the universe . It describes the plight of humanity in great detail, and details the defeat of all the gods save for Taris, Miranda, and Khurdan. Though they are not dead, they cannot be woken while the demonking rampages. In desperation, Khurdan unmakes the universe that Sitta is trying to devour. Miranda takes the souls of all the humans killed by the unmaking to the afterlife to be judged, and Taris confronts the now-starving demonking. Bereft of the power he gained by eating the universe, Taris destroys him once and for all. The gods do not remake the world, instead ushering in a new age where souls of the righteous dead ascend into a new Kingdom of Paradise, while the wicked dead are condemned to forever wait outside its gates until they purge themselves of their uncleanness.

[Seonid he/him]

Weekly writing accountability post for week ending 10/13/25

Total words written: ~29,000

So, remember when I said we were going to pass the 30,000 mark? This week was awful for me. Bad mental health week due to trying to adjust to being home full time, plus a scare about whether or not I was going to be laid off. It's not that I didn't write, but I ended up stuck in a couple different places, and progress was minimal.

Goal for next week: 33,000 words

[AltonicKeys he/him]

3 hours ago, Seonid said:

Weekly writing accountability post for week ending 10/13/25

Total words written: ~29,000

So, remember when I said we were going to pass the 30,000 mark? This week was awful for me. Bad mental health week due to trying to adjust to being home full time, plus a scare about whether or not I was going to be laid off. It's not that I didn't write, but I ended up stuck in a couple different places, and progress was minimal.

Goal for next week: 33,000 words

Oh damn, sorry to hear that. :/  All I can really say is to take it easy! As Tolkien probably didn't say, "A rushed book is forever bad, but a delayed book is good eventually"

[Seonid he/him]

Good news - I finally broke through a block and got a few paragraphs done. It's not much, but it's a little bit of momentum, and I bet I can keep things going tomorrow

[Seonid he/him]

Weekly writing accountability post for week ending 10/19/25:

Total words written: ~30,000

Alright! Forward momentum re-established. I'm postponing the worldbuilding post until next Saturday, in part because I don't have anything ready to post. But that's also because I've been pouring all my writing energy into revising the opening scene, and I think I finally cracked it open.

I'm planning on posting the revised version here in the next couple of days. Hopefully that's even better than more worldbuilding.

Goal for next week: 34,000 words

[Seonid he/him]

As promised, the revised version of the opening scene. I've rearranged some things to emphasize the contrast between Samhain's softer, more human side and his warrior/general nature (since that conflict is going to be the central conflict of the book). You might notice that the scene where he gets notified of a surprise visit by a certain lady is gone - it's been moved to a later chapter, since I think that his attempt to write a letter to his estranged sister highlights it a bit better.

Next chapter, there will be rising social awkwardness as the Lady Deschelle unexpectedly upon the warcamp with all of her poise, grace, and maddening superiority.

Spoiler

The morning light filtered through the heavy canvas of the tent, dimly illuminating the sparsely furnished interior. The thick fabric muffled the shouts and clang of metal on metal from outside to a dull roar. From a brazier in the center of the tent, wisps of smoke rose from ko-sticks, perfuming the space with the sharp scent of incense.

The tent was dyed a rich blue, with stripes that had once been a vibrant yellow, but years of use had dulled them to a shade just short of brown. That fabric was now threadbare and worn, and patched in more than a dozen places. Hardly suitable for a member of the nobility, no matter how new, let alone for the high seat of an entire noble house. But the man at the table had used this tent for nearly a decade now, and he saw no reason to change his comfortable routine for the sake of mere appearance.

The table’s weathered surface was nearly completely covered with stacks of parchment and a large, detailed map, beautifully inked in four colors and stamped in the corner with the seal of the now-defunct Imperial Cartographer’s Guild. But the corner where the man sat had a small clear space, with only a heavy silver inkwell and a single piece of parchment unrolled before him. Nearby, a small stack of finished letters awaited only his seal before they could be sent out.

He dipped his pen in the inkwell and hesitated. True to form, he had left the most daunting letter until last, and he took several deep breaths before he began to write.

To my dearest sister, Allia, I trust this missive finds you in good health, and that the constellations of the gods shine bright on all your endeavors.

He grimaced as he wrote. He had never been particularly well-spoken, and already the formal greeting felt stilted and wrong to his ears. But he pushed on.

The seven years since last we spoke lie heavy on my spirit, and I greatly regret the circumstances that drove us apart. If our uncle yet lived, he would surely be grieved that we who he raised as children should be as strangers to each other. Out of love for his memory and the affection we once bore for each other, I desire to repair the breach that has sundered us. My service to the new king has rewarded me greatly, and I am willing to use all of the means within my possession to effect such a mending.

He paused then, a drop of ink falling from the end of his pen to leave a splotch on the letter. Memory assaulted him, his sister’s eyes twinkling with laughter as they ran together along the city streets to the foodstalls. Those same eyes, filled with pride as she stood next to their uncle at his graduation ceremony. He closed his eyes for a moment, and saw her again, her face contorted with pain and rage, shouting words that pierced him like daggers. Behind her, a gibbet swung in the wind.

The memory passed, leaving only a slight tremor in his hands and the barest hint of a tear in his eye to mark its passage. He swiftly penned the last few lines, before it could seize him again.

If you can find it within your heart to speak of reconciliation, I implore you to visit me this summer at Dawnrest, near Chalys.

I remain your devoted brother, Samhain.

He relaxed then, reading over the short letter with a critical eye. He had written this letter nearly a dozen times over the last five years, and he knew the stilted mess of words by heart. Perhaps today he would work up the courage to send it, ink splotch and all.

On a sudden impulse, he scrawled another line at the bottom of the page.

I miss you, sister. Come home.

He had barely finished folding the parchment when the flap of the tent rustled. He looked up to see a black-haired orderly poking his head in, who cleared his throat, his face acutely embarrassed. “Beg pardon, milord, but you are wanted outside. The Viscount Hawthorne seeks you.”

He sighed and rose from his chair to follow the orderly out.

 

The moment Samhain left the tent, the shouting of men and clash of steel assaulted his ears in a relentless, crushing cacophony. He breathed in deeply, drinking in the odors of blood and sweat and iron like some hellish perfume, and smiled. His heart raced, pumping hot blood through his veins and for a moment, he almost felt alive again.

But that moment passed, as it always did. As he approached the observation post, a large and heavily armored man left off haranguing a poor junior officer and shouldered his way through the milling command staff towards him. “Samhain! There you are, damn you! What do you think you’re doing, hiding in your tent while there’s a battle to lead?” His face was red with apoplexy, and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted.

He responded with cool politeness, but gave only a bare nod of recognition. “I beg your pardon, Viscount Hawthorne. I was catching up on my correspondence. It does pile up so when one is on campaign.” The flowery courtesy so beloved by the ruling nobles had been difficult for Samhain long before he had been elevated to their ranks. For Hawthorne, who had been a mere mercenary captain less than five years ago, it was obviously far harder, especially under stress.

But then, to judge by the way his complexion darkened further, the man was dangerously close to having a heart attack as it was. Courtesy was probably the last thing on his mind. Samhain strode on, and the Viscount followed, spluttering. Reaching the overlook, he took in the sight of the battle below.

From this vantage point, he could see the battlefield in all of its bloody, glorious detail. Below him, nearly ten thousands of the enemy’s foot were engaged with his own defensive lines, formations of spears grinding against each other in agonizing tension. Despite having two-and-a-half times as many soldiers on the field, the enemy advance had come to a crashing halt against his spears and the unfriendly terrain. Beyond the rocky slope, perhaps a kilometer distant, the walls of the small city of Grestyn loomed, slate grey beneath the cloudy morning sky. The banners of some warlord or other flew from the towers of the gatehouse.

He stood there for a moment, hoping to feel that frantic rush again, but any chance of that was ruined as Hawthorne finally overcame his speechlessness. “Now look here, Lord Seonid…” Samhain sighed as he turned, cutting  the man off with a single motion of his hand. At least the man had recovered enough of his sense to use formal titles.

“Lord Hawthorne, this is an insignificant battle against an unimportant politician who levied a city militia and fancies he has an army. With such low stakes as this, if I entrust the execution of my battle plan to my subordinates, that is my concern, not yours.”

“Insignificant? The bastard has been raiding my lands for a full year! And my informants tell me that he has been laying stores here for a full-scale invasion for the entire winter…”

Samhain cut him off again. “Hawthorne, in the future, you would do well to assume that I am well aware of a situation before I comment on it. Now, you had an additional complaint that took you away from the front, or you wouldn’t have been bothering me in my tent in the first place. Out with it.”

This time, Hawthorne quailed before his icy stare. When he spoke again, it was carefully. “Lord Seonid. The enemy horsemen have been harassing our lines for more than an hour, and my men-at-arms are ordered to stand idle. Whatever officer you have left in command here is clearly incompetent!”

Samhain nodded curtly. “Your objection is noted.” Then, he turned to an older man, who had been standing nearby and watching the exchange with a scowl on his face. “Benecki, report!”

His steward sighed, but stepped forward, the grey-flecked beard and mustache a stark contrast to his bald pate. “The enemy heavy cavalry have made a number of feints towards the end of our lines, but the spears are anchored against a large rock formation, and the enemy cannot get around to flank them. They seem to be wary of committing to a frontal assault; they must be concerned about where the Viscount’s men-at-arms will hit them once they are stuck in.”

“Very good, Benecki. Thank you.” Turning back to the still-fuming Viscount, he gave a half-smile. “There you have it, Hawthorne. Just by sitting around, your men-at-arms are blunting a force that outnumbers you four-to-one. I would not want to sacrifice the threat you represent - not to mention sending you off to your deaths against those odds! And I certainly wouldn’t do it just to toss a sop to your injured pride.”

By his expression, Hawthorne clearly wanted to argue further, but he seemed to realize that he had overstayed his welcome at the command post. He gave a curt bow. “As you say, milord. We shall await your orders.” He marched off, his posture stiff as he made his way towards the path that led down to the battlefield.

Benecki gave a nod towards his lord. “I actually have orders for him; a charge on the left flank within the next half hour. I intend to rout their infantry support, which should force their cavalry to withdraw, gods willing. If not, he can engage them freely, which should please him.”

Samhain gave a sharp laugh. “You have the command here, Benecki. Shall I call him back to you? I should like to see the look on his face when he hears it.”

His steward shook his head. “No milord, I believe I shall send it with a messenger, hot on his heels. If I time it right, he should receive it about three minutes after he gets back to his soldiers.” He held his face perfectly poised, without a hint of humor. “He deserves it, after that display.”

Samhain felt another laugh threatening, and he forced it down. “Peace, Benecki! You’ll have me laughing so hard that the whole camp wonders if I’ve gone mad.” He paused to wipe a sheen of sweat from his brow, for the mid-spring weather was unseasonably warm. “How fares the rest of the battle?”

Benecki nodded to him, turning his attention back to the field. “Well enough. The battle plan we developed last night has been effective; and breaking up the county levies to spread out among our formations was a stroke of brilliance. We have been grinding their footmen against our lines for the better part of an hour, and it is nearly time to spring your trap.”

Samhain nodded in approval, and fell silent, watching the field with vision like a hawk. Below, a group of enemy spearmen nearly one hundred meters across disengaged along the line of contact, falling back nearly ten paces and leaving behind a scattering of the fallen. Such lulls were common, as if the battlefield itself was a living thing taking a breath and a moment’s rest. Even the most well-drilled soldiers could not sustain the desperate intensity of a melee forever, after all. But Benecki had been waiting for this one.

He nodded towards his staff, and a few moments later, a horn rang out in a precise pattern. From their vantage point on the hillside, nearly thirty feet above the plain, hundreds of lockbowmen stepped from their cover and began loosing their deadly bolts into the exposed enemy. Dozens of soldiers fell from the first volley alone, and Samhain could almost see the formation’s resolve begin to waver. It would not be long now.

A messenger ran up with a note for Benecki, and he read it with a soft curse. “The only flaw in the plan is that Areska is nowhere to be seen. Taris’ Eyes, the bloody man is two gods-be-damned hours late. If he had been here when he was supposed to be, we would have routed these lace-wearing bastards without even needing to make contact.” 

Samhain glanced over at him. “Hold your temper for a while yet. We are not in danger of losing the field simply because Areska is late. And I’m sure he will have some story to tell to excuse his tardiness when he comes, and we can mock him for whatever feeble justification he makes.” He smiled, with a hint of mischief in it. “Besides, won’t it be wonderful when he arrives, ready to deliver us from some dire strait, only to find we have claimed all the glory of our victory without him?” 

Benecki took a deep breath. “As you say, milord. Shall I yield command to you now, or will you return to your correspondence?”

“Neither. A meditation upon our victory is in order, I believe.”

 

An orderly brought Samhain a lit candle and a low stool, and he settled into a relaxed posture on the hilltop, still overlooking the battle. His mind wandered for a moment, as his eyes unfocused and he drifted in a sea of sensations. The meditation was far easier than it had once been; years of practice had worn a path in his mind that he followed nearly unconsciously.

Almost by reflex, he lifted the candle in front of his face, its flame flickering. A single drop of wax rolled down its side to pool on the brass candlestick, and he focused all his attention on it. His body stilled, his breaths coming slow and regular, and his mind began to follow. The clamor of the battlefield fell away, and the flame filled his vision until it was all he could see. Still slowly, according to his old roshi, but far quicker than he had once been. Not that speed mattered for the spiritual practice, of course. But then, he was not doing this as a spiritual practice.

As his mind finally fell silent, Samhain closed his eyes. The after-image of the flame endured, and in it he conjured up an image. An old oak door set into the flame, well-worn, with black iron hinges and a simple, wrought-iron handle. At a thought, it swung open, and Samhain stepped through into his mindcastle.

It was a small room, carpeted with a rug that might once have held a beautifully ornate design, but now faded and worn beyond recognition. The wooden walls were lined with bookshelves, but along one wall, next to the window, a single sword was hung. It was a simple, slightly curved blade, with only a single edge. It had no engraving on it, nor ornate metalwork decorating the hilt. But it shone with an otherworldly lustre that caught Samhain’s eye, as it had every time he had walked through that door. If the right people could have seen the room, they would have recognized it as an exact reproduction of his uncle’s study, above his shop in Lushbeck. A room that no longer existed anywhere outside Samhain’s mind, now that his uncle was long dead, the shop seized as the property of a traitor.

A dull clamor could barely be heard through the closed shutters of the window, the old familiar noises of a busy city street. Below the window sat a sturdy desk, its surface completely clear. That was the one point where this space deviated, for anyone who had ever visited that study knew that the desk should be piled with precarious stacks of books, disorganized letters, and keepsakes collected as part of his uncle’s wide-ranging interests. But not here. This was Samhain’s space, not his uncle’s, and he demanded that it be empty.

The young lord nodded in satisfaction, then made a curt gesture. The bare space of the desktop was suddenly a scale replica of the battlefield outside, a perfect memory, frozen in time. Enemy spearmen in the middle of falling back, only to be hit by archers as they disengaged. Horsemen frustrated yet again by the carefully dug ditches his soldiers had dug to protect their positions.

He snapped his fingers, and time began to run forward. Slowly at first, and then more and more quickly. Each moment, he asked and answered a dozen questions. What would this unit do? When would these soldiers break? Would the captain on the field order a charge?

And slowly, a prediction began to form. Not a vision of the future by any means, and most certainly not an infallible one - he had been wrong in his calculations far too many times. But in this space he could devote all of his intellect towards the one task of charting the course of the battle, using his knowledge and experience to estimate how the future might unfold. He watched his armored cavalry charge across the desk, breaking through enemy lines already faltering under the lockbows’ volleys. The neighboring formations were not disciplined enough to hold under that kind of pressure; the foot would begin to fall back, his own spearmen would surge forward, pressing them until they broke, and then it would all be over.

The enemy’s cavalry was still on the field, of course, but the fleeing infantry would create a wall of flesh barring their way, and his own horse would further disrupt them. By the time they could form up again, their infantry support would have fled, and they would be at a severe disadvantage against his prepared positions. It wouldn’t be a flawless victory - much of the enemy force would likely be able to retreat in good order, ready to fight another day, but it would be a victory.

And yet, something wasn’t right. A nagging feeling that he had missed something critical pressed firmly on the back of his mind. He checked and re-checked his assumptions, returning the desktop battle to the beginning and watching it over again, searching for flaws. That was the true power of this place; it gave his conscious mind time and space to process dangers that some deep intuition had recognized.

As he opened his mouth to give voice to his question, his eyes fell on the pennants of the city, rippling in a soft breeze. Grestyn had a small garrison, but it had failed to deploy alongside the warlord’s forces. This was well in line with his informants’ assessment of the mayor; a coward who was too afraid of being caught defenseless if the battle turned against him in the field. But once the army he had trusted to protect his city began to rout, would his fear still hold him in place? Or might a bolder hand prevail in a time of crisis, seizing authority for long enough to make a difference?

And make a difference it could. Another thousand soldiers appeared on the desktop, sortieing from the city’s gate - as many as the town could reasonably field, even if they conscripted every able bodied man within the walls to fight. And the moment a new force entered the field, everything changed. Many of the fleeing enemy rallied at the sight of reinforcements, reforming a ragged battle line about them. Suddenly, the enemy cavalry found themselves reforming with the greater part of their own support still on the field. In addition, his own men were disorganized after their charge, and had left their defensive fortifications behind.

Frowning at the sudden reversal, Samhain set about testing strategies to change the battle yet again.

 

Two hours later, Samhain sat on his low chair in the command tent, flanked by Hawthorne and Benecki, as the mayor of Grestyn prostrated himself before them. The town’s garrison had indeed attempted a sortie, more than six hundred soldiers marching out the gates to reinforce the warlord’s army as it began to break. But Samhain’s hobelars - lightly armored horsemen armed with short thrusting spears and with heavy javelins or horsebows - had been waiting. Several volleys had broken up the formation, and the charge that followed had broken the enemy’s morale before they had gone more than three hundred paces from the town gates.

The mayor, a short, fat man with greasy hair and ornate robes, was stammering out some prepared recitation lauding Samhain’s reputation and power. Probably calculated to inflate my ego and make me more receptive to whatever he is going to request. As if I would be swayed by such petty manipulation.

“…and therefore, in present recognizance of your great mercy, we offer your Eminent Radiance the sum of twenty-five thousand imperial eagles as ransom for the city of Grestyn and all who dwell therein.”

The sum set the staff in the tent to murmuring; twenty-five thousand eagles could have ransomed a duke twice over. For that matter, it could have bought a barony outright.

But Samhain stilled the room by raising his hand. To the mayor, he replied, “I cannot accept your ransom offer, because I do not intend to leave Grestyn standing. But as you have so eloquently reminded us, I am not a man without mercy. And indeed, I am minded to be merciful to you.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully, while the mayor’s face went bloodless. “Two days. Half the offered ransom for two days.”

The pale-faced man stammered in shock. “Two…Two days, milord?”

“Yes. For half the offered ransom, I will give you time to evacuate your people and to gather two weeks of provisions. Two days. At sunrise of the third day, Grestyn will burn.” Samhain’s smile was as cold as ice.

 

[Seonid he/him]

Time for a Totally-Not-Actually-Saturday Worldbuilding Post. These might begin to get less frequent. I've run through my backlog of stuff that's ready for posting. In normal circumstances, I would be writing at home and worldbuilding during downtime at work. It was a good system.

However, since I'm not working right now...things are kind of wonky. So if you end up seeing more book scenes than worldbuilding essays, I hope y'all don't mind too much  

The Worship of the Tribunal: Part 2.2 - Cosmology and Theology

Our next subject is the universe. An expansive one, to be sure, but we're just going to do a brief overview about how the Court views the universe, their place in it, and the gods that rule over it.

The Nature of the Universe and its Life

The Court asserts that the heavens and the earth were created by the Tribunal at the end of the War in Heaven. They concede that something existed prior to the War, but they base their beliefs on the scriptural account of the opening of the Gates of Chaos.

Although the accounts in various books of scripture are not specific, it is generally believed that the flood of chaos utterly destroyed whatever was existent beforehand.

The universe, according to the teachings of the Court, is divided into two portions or planes of existence. The first is the heavens, which are the home of the gods and demons alike - these are subdivided into Asteros, the palace of the gods and the seven hells where the demons were exiled after the war.

The second is the earth, which is the everyday mundane world. Scholars of the Court define this as the entire observable universe.

Court scholarship asserts that the world is at the center of the universe. Their astronomical texts recognize that their planet orbits a star, so many scholars take this as a metaphysical statement - it is the most important place in the universe; the center for humanity and the place the gods have chosen, not some sort of physical center around which everything else revolves.

On a related topic, the Court believes that their ancestors came from a different planet, but they are adamant that nothing from that distant past is relevant to the lives and worship of any person living today.

On the subject of non-human life, Court scholars have a few remnants of ancient texts that indicate that all such life has a common ancestor, and that some mechanism acts on creatures to differentiate them into various species. 

(Tangentially, in the future this is going to cause a rather spectacularly contentious rift between secular scientists as their empirical observations of the fossil record begin to show an abrupt appearance of life on the planet less than a million years ago due to alien terraforming. By the time their descendants are exploring the nearby reaches of the Starnet, there will be an uneasy recognition by secular scientists that some form of evolution by natural selection is likely to be true, based on observations of isolated populations, but the fact that every life-bearing world they find was terraformed by the Forerunners is a significant confounding factor.)

Court scholars believe that humans were created separately from other life by the gods and enjoy a privileged status as a result. (Future secular scientists will believe that whatever the origins of humanity are, they are lost on whatever homeworld we came from. Some pair a common evolutionary descent from life on that distant homeworld, but that position is seen as highly speculative.)

Gods and Worship

The Court asserts that there exist many beings in the heavenly plane, but only seven of them are deserving of worship. These are the Lords of Heaven, the gods of the Tribunal. All other beings in the heavens are either subordinate to them (and therefore not deserving of worship), or are evil and therefore in conflict with them (and thus, not deserving of worship).

On the exact nature of heavenly beings, the Court has no settled doctrine. Some believe the heavens to be a completely separate place, from which the gods must send messengers to visit the physical world. Others hold that the halls of Asteros overlay the world like a second skin, and that heavenly beings pass through mortal buildings and even people on their business every day. Philosophical concepts such as “omnipotence” and “omnipresence” are not generally assigned to the Tribunal, although some splinter groups make use of them. Instead, the gods have a physical presence which is distinct and defined around their bodies.

These bodies are believed to be composed of supernatural substances. Some scholars even assert that the exotic metals that can be found in Forerunner ruins or that fall from the sky are a sampling of the supernatural materials available in the heavenly plane, but this position is not a universally accepted doctrine. Others assert that the substances that build divine bodies are too pure and/or refined to be seen by mortal eyes unless the god chooses to unveil their true presence.

[Seonid he/him]

Weekly writing accountability post for week ending 10/27/25

Total words written: ~33,000

Progress. Revisions on the opening scene are done (for now! I'm not satisfied with it, but it's good enough to move on and actually keep writing), and I finished another scene as well. I got caught up in an "art duel" in a Discord server, so I kind of rushed a first draft of it. I'll drop the scene here for anyone who is interested

Goal for next week: 38,000 words

Spoiler

The mountain road, nestled along the canyon wall, was narrow enough that Niobe’s company was forced to ride single file down it. To their left, nearly a dozen paces down a steep slope choked with mountain thornberry bushes and brushwillow, a roaring stream rushed over jagged rocks, the sound nearly drowning out the rhythm of hooves on stone. To the right rose the mountainside, covered in the open pine forest she had loved as long as she could remember.

Unbidden, memories of her childhood flooded her - climbing trees like these in trousers, a fierce pride in her heart, faster and higher than any of the village boys could. Her first kiss, stolen from one of those same village boys years later, while they explored the forest far from the outskirts of the village. And then, one of the earliest moments she could remember, riding down this same stretch of road as a girl of six or seven next to her father, as he inspected the work of the laborers and stonecutters who were laying it down. A pang of grief swept her, and for a moment, her throat closed with emotion and she thought she might weep.

And what a sight that would be, the Duchesse returning home in tears, as if I had been broken by my imprisonment. The moment passed, and her thoughts turned bitter, remembering the long years confined to the apartment in Kanraed, a gilded cage to ensure her house’s loyalty to the empire. She spoke to herself then, in tones she hoped were too low to carry. “No. I shall not permit this. My homecoming is a time of joy, and I will not permit any festering bitterness to mar it.”

She could not tell if Colette had heard some fragment of her muttering, or if she simply knew her mistress well enough to sense her discontent, but her maid began speaking as they rounded the bend. “Oh, it will be good to see Astreleur again. My nieces and nephew are sure to have grown like weeds, and I have had too few letters from them these past years. Little Eduarde had scarcely reached his first name-day when we left. He must be nearly ten now!” On she prattled, a stream of one-sided conversation that filled the silence and diverted Niobe’s mind from her dark thoughts.

If she had been close enough, Niobe would have squeezed her maid’s hand in gratitude. During her long confinement, weeks or even months would pass during which Colette had been the only other person she saw or spoke to, other than the silent guards who sealed the door to the too-small apartment, and the maid had learned her lady’s moods perfectly. As the maid spoke about each of her nieces in turn, Niobe felt her body relaxing. Her hands unclenched - she hadn’t even noticed that her grip on the reins had tightened until her knuckles had gone white.

Ahead, the road climbed up the side of the mountain in a series of switchbacks before rounding the slope and disappearing from sight. But Niobe knew this road as well as she knew her own hand, and she knew that just around that slope was a rocky ridge that gave way to a broad, forested valley with a village overlooked by a sturdy stone keep. She looked down to realize that she was clutching the reins tight again.

Consciously, she made herself release them, breathing deeply to control her nerves. But even that could only take the edge off of her uncertainty.

For the first time in nine years, she was coming home.

 

Aujin stood at the top of the staircase leading to the great hall. The sentries had noted the party approaching up the road, and it had been all the servants could do to keep him from mounting up and riding out alone to meet them.

In fairness, his hobbling gait and need to stop periodically and clutch his intricately carved walking staff had likely been as persuasive as the servants. He was an old man, past sixty years, with a rapidly thinning shock of fine white hair and mild grey eyes. Once, it had been a glad face, even joyful at times, but the trials of the last decade had worn deep lines of worry into his aging face.

Today, he was watching, eyes fixed on the solid gatehouse through which the mountain road passed. Without taking his eyes from his target, he whispered to a servant standing next to him. “How far away were they last?”

To his credit, the servant did not register any annoyance, despite this being the third or fourth time he had answered the question in the past ten minutes.

“The sentries say that they are about half a kilometer off. They should be here within minutes.”

Just then, there was a clatter of hooves, and a rider burst through the open gates. Her face was flushed, and her light brown hair was pulled up in a practical riding style. She wore a blue gown, high-necked and divided for riding. She was older than he remembered, and taller too. Not surprising, since she had been gone nearly a decade, but it still struck his heart painfully.

The moment she saw him, she cried out in joy. “Aujin! Papé!” In an instant, she had swung down from her horse, though the moment her feet hit the ground, she swayed. Her maid, who had ridden in close on her heels, was at her side in an instant to support her.

Together, they approached the staircase. Aujin longed to dash to his ward and catch her up in his arms as he had when she was young, but he did not trust his balance on the stairs. And besides, now was appropriate for a little ceremony.

It didn’t matter, for the two women had climbed the staircase in moments, and she threw her arms around him, her face burying itself into his shoulder. After a moment, he pulled back and put both hands on her shoulders, examining her with a critical eye.

He gave a snort. “You were a little slip of a girl last time I saw you. Short, too. Now you’re nearly taller than I am.”

She laughed at him, a pure sound like silver bells. “I was only fourteen, you recall. Small wonder I have grown.” She made to hug him again, but he held her off.

“Hold just a moment, and let’s give the keep some ceremony. Half of them scarcely remember you, you know.”

He turned her around to face the courtyard and the servants and armsmen who had assembled there. Aujin raised his voice and cried out. “Folk of Astreleur, rejoice! I present to you Niobe, Duchesse of Terrignon and High Lady of House Verekai. Our lady has returned to us!” She waved dutifully, and Aujin relented with a smile.

 

The soft chair in the solar felt heavenly on her tired body, and Niobe had to restrain herself from burrowing into the velvet cushions. A servant brought two cups of steaming tea for herself and Aujin, and the familiar aroma brought a hint of tears to her eyes. Another liveried man laid a tray of water crackers onto the table, served with thinly sliced cucumbers, and a pot of soft herbed cheese.

“Aujin, this looks absolutely delightful!” She looked back over her shoulder, to where Colette sat on a straight-backed chair next to the door. “Colette, you must be famished. Come, sit with us and eat. Good sir, would you fetch another cup of tea for my maid?” 

The man jerked up, obviously unused to being addressed so directly, but he gave a curt half-bow and a mumbled “Yes’m,” and left the room.

Colette brought her chair over to the low table, and Niobe slipped one of her red velvet cushions onto the hard wooden seat before the maid could sit down. She protested, but Niobe ignored it with a cheerful smile. “I insist. Your seat must ache as much as mine from to weeks of riding. A little comfort will do it good.”

To his credit, Aujin managed to not look scandalized at the familiarity Niobe displayed with her maid. Niobe took a sip of her tea, a light and floral blend from Clior, lightly sweetened with honey. “So. I’m back.”

“Yes. I am…” Aujin’s voice broke for a moment. “I am glad to see you again. I worried that I might pass before you were ever sent home.”

They both paused, and Niobe felt her heart beating quickly. That she would be nervous or at a loss to speak before the man who had raised her, almost as if she had been his own daughter? Yesterday she would have laughed at the notion. But now, her tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of her mouth.

The awkward silence dragged on for more heartbeats, and Niobe forced her mouth to move. “I…have missed you Aujin. More than you know.”

It was as if the floodgates opened, and both were suddenly able to speak. “If I could have foreseen how it would be, enfantelet, I should never have sent you away. You know not how many times these nine years I have cursed myself for it.” Her seneschal’s eyes gleamed with genuine emotion, and Niobe took his hand.

“And if I could have foreseen it, mon papé, I should not have gone.” Try as she might, her voice cracked a little. She took his hand in both of hers and gave him a sad smile. “But who could have guessed at a revolution? Or that it should be successful?”

Aujin gave a little half-laugh at that. “They say that men make plans and the gods laugh at them. And what-ifs make for poor company, but they have been all I have had for too long. There is much to do, and much to tell you. But first, tell me of yourself, and of Kanraed.” He stumbled over his words for a moment. “I want…I want you to tell me everything you are ready to. Even if it is painful for an old man’s heart.”

She squeezed his hand at that. “What is there to say? The Imperial capital is as beautiful as they say, and just as decadent. If circumstances had been otherwise, I believe I would have come home thrilled about every moment I spent there. I might…” Her face heated at the memory of her fourteen-year-old self’s dreams and aspirations. “I might even have come home with an inconvenient heir to scandalize our neighbors with.”

The seneschal was scandalized at that, but Niobe went on quickly, before he had a chance to speak. “I did want to experience the whole spectrum of Imperial decadence. And my younger self was, ah, very…interested in exploring certain forms of ‘depravity.’” Aujin opened his mouth, but she cut him off again. “Do not worry, though! House arrest made it impossible for me to fall into any…indiscretions.”

He was relieved, and it showed on his face. But when he spoke, there was no reproach. “You would have been welcomed home, no matter how you had come, my child. With a foreign husband, or a bastard heir, or along and pregnant. No matter how you had come, I would have been grateful just to see you again. Let the neighbors gossip how they will.”

She flushed, and he went on. “Was it…very terrible? After you were arrested?”

She brushed the question off, the color in her face fading. “Oh, it wasn’t so bad for the first few years. The Empress granted my petition to continue attending classes at the University, and I - perhaps foolishly! - enrolled in a double course load since it was my only chance to leave the apartment. I was actually quite close to taking my third-rank examination when she was deposed. That was when everything went to the seven hells.”

“Truly? I am doubly proud of you then. Proud that you have survived to come home to us, and proud that you have accomplished so much.” He peered at her then, his eyes concerned. “I hope you received my letters. We heard from you, intermittently, but the war disrupted the service of couriers. Even now, I counted us lucky to receive your letter that you were wintering in Kenesthyn. That was the first we heard that you had been released.”

“Your letters were all I had to hold onto during those years. For a while, some of my friends from the university would visit, but they stopped coming. The last three years, I have only had the company of your letters and my dear Colette. But enough about me. I have been stuck with my own thoughts for years, with nearly no news of the rest of the world. Tell me how things passed here while I was away!”

She listened then, leaning forward with her head propped up on her hands as Aujin told her the events of those nine years. How the Duke of Wyst had returned, and Caedros rebelled against the empire to swear fealty to its ancient rulers. How Imperial soldiers had arrived to bring news of her arrest, and never left. How her captivity had been held over their heads every day to ensure that they remained loyal. Aujin talked of the war itself only sparingly, mentioning a few battles he had sent their armsmen to, and their disastrous defeat at the walls of Altienne.

Finally, he slowed, and Niobe felt a pang of disappointment.

“So that is how things have been. It has been an eventful decade, to be sure!” She gave him a winning smile, though he didn’t return it for some reason. “I suppose now is when I should ask how things stand today.”

Aujin was silent for a long time. But just as Niobe was growing concerned for him, he began to speak again. “I have failed in my stewardship, enfantelet. Your parents left me with the charge of your House until you were grown, and I have failed them utterly.”

Niobe tried to object, but he spoke over her. “I loved you too dearly to deny you anything, and sent you away to the University far too young. All of our House’s misfortunes stem from that failure.”

She was silent a moment. “How bad is it? Tell me truly, mon papé.”

He took a deep breath, then answered in somber tones. “When Najar of Wyst was acclaimed as king, he created a Royal Council. The head of every noble house was invited to attend. I was there, as the representative for House Verekai.”

She interrupted him. “Every noble house? What, you, the king, and the Dukes of Miloenne and Pais-Fierre? There aren’t enough noble houses in the province to make up a council.”

He laughed, and she smiled. “As impatient as ever, I see. No, the vassals of Wyst were released. He elevated five of them them to their own noble houses in exchange for their support for his kingship. Montagnesse, Ruitte, Cellidore, Glenfax, and Ester. Miloenne and Pais-Fierre declined to join his kingdom. They might have, if his father had lived, but…” He shrugged his shoulders, but her interruption had successfully shaken him out of his recriminations for a moment.

“That first meeting of the council, the king moved to disincorporate our House entirely, because we had fought on the side of the Empire. There was even talk of executing myself and every noble among our vassals who had survived the war as traitors.”

Niobe gasped. “They wouldn’t have dared!”

“They did dare. They hated us for fighting against them, and the opportunistic vultures saw they stood to gain by dividing our holdings up. And dead foes nurse no grudges. The only reason I am still here today is because Samhain Marchandson argued for mercy, and him not even a member of the council. The king heard how you had been held hostage in Kanraed, and allowed that he would have done the same for one of his children.”

Niobe had gripped the table, about to stand in righteous anger, though the weakness already had her head swimming. At that, though, she released her grip. “The vultures had a bare semblance of humanity, then.”

Aujin laughed at her again, but there was a bitter tone in it this time. “None of them were willing to speak against the Dawnblade, not so soon after he had won them their independence.” In an instant, his melancholy was back in full. “The king settled for stripping us of our vassals and most of the land we held on our own title. He left us the city of Terrignon and its near environs, and this keep. But everything else is gone, either taken by the king as his own lands, or gifted to his supporters in Montagnesse and Ester. The coffers are empty, confiscated to pay reparations for the war. The House of Verekai is in a pitiable state, mon cherie. And it is all my doing. Now that you have come home to us, I shall relinquish my position as seneschal. I do not deserve to be even a servant in your household.”

Niobe sat back in shock. But then his last words sank in, and she leaned forward earnestly. “No, Aujin. You have done the best you could under harsher trials than any could have foreseen. How could any have done any different than you have done? I do not accept your resignation.” Her emotions were roiling. Shock at the state she had returned to. Disbelief that the new king had been willing to drive her family into extinction. Anger at the other nobles for picking like vultures at her House’s bones. But none of that mattered compared to her love and trust for her seneschal.

“Mon cherie, I am old, and I will soon pass to Miranda’s rest. How shall I stand and face your father and your mother and tell them that failed like this?” His face was miserable, and he refused to meet her eyes.

Niobe seized his hands with both of hers to force him to look at her. “How shall you face them and tell them that you let me return home to a House in this state and then denied me your service when I needed it most? The state of our House is not your doing. You have not failed; in fact, you have led our House through storms greater than any that we could have believed. But if you abandon me now, when things are worst, you will have failed.”

He looked at her then, after a long silence. She spoke once more. “But I know you, Aujin Verduin. I trust you. You have not failed me, and I know you will not, ever.” She paused for a moment, then added, “I need you, mon papé. Now more than ever. Stand by me still, for a little longer?”

He waited for a moment that felt to her like it stretched on forever, but then he nodded, tears in his eyes. “If you ask me to, I will. I could never deny you anything, enfantelet. How can I begin now?”

She laughed with him then, tears dripping from her own eyes. Then, she met his eyes and spoke firmly. “Enough of heaviness. I am home, and it is a time for joy. There will be time tomorrow for accounting and planning and politics. Tonight is for celebration. So, tell me about this ‘Dawnblade.’ You mentioned him in a few of your letters, and even in Kanraed we had heard rumors of his name. What is he like? Did he truly win the war all on his own? Is it true that he is the best swordsman to ever graduate from the Academy at Lushbeck?”

He laughed with her, and began to speak again, but this time the years seemed to fall away and she was a young girl again, sitting at his feet while he told her stories from before the Empire had conquered their province. They stayed that way far into the night, sharing stories of their years apart.

 

[Seonid he/him]

So, uh, sorry for dropping off the face of the earth for 2 weeks. We got bad news about my dad's cancer, and I've been fighting my depression since then. 

I'm mostly back now, and I'll be trying to ease back into my schedule of posting.

[AltonicKeys he/him]

damn, I was wondering about the silence. Stay strong soldier! Don't feel pressured to do anything too much. Love the work so far though!

[Seonid he/him]

This is the third chapter of the second part of our four-part series about the worship of the Tribunal. Today, we will discuss the final two elements of theology as taught by the Court of the Gods - the purpose of life and the Court’s moral teachings. Since the two are highly interconnected, it turns out to be just as well that we are discussing them together. 

Part 2.3 - Life and the Afterlife

This section covers theology of mortality and the afterlife, as taught by the Court of the Gods.

Mortals and the Purpose of Life

Tribunal theology holds that mortals are the sole creation of Miranda, the Lady of Life and Death. They are a fundamentally separate kind of creature from the gods and other heavenly or demonic beings.

In addition, the Court asserts that a person cannot be distinguished from their body. Fundamentally, according to the court, the body is the person.

Unlike other traditions, mortals were not created for a purpose; they do not exist solely to be instruments upon which the gods’ will is worked. Miranda created them because she wanted to, solely out of the joy of creation. 

Therefore, mortals do not occupy a place in the divine machinery. There are no essential functions occupied by mortals, no service or worship that just be performed lest the universe fall out of balance. Instead, to the Court, the purpose of life is to find joy in whatever way best suits.

This is expressed in different ways across different cultures - in individualistic societies, the Court’s teachings are used to further self-actualization, while in more community-oriented cultures, they are leveraged to teach people to find joy and satisfaction in their current station in life. But in whatever situation, the Court teaches that suffering and misery is contrary to the nature of life.

Death and the Afterlife

The Court teaches that when a person dies, they leave behind an impression of their experiences and emotions. They call this remnant a “shade.” With appropriate burial rituals, this shade can be sent to the underworld to sleep in Miranda's rest. Without those rituals, the shade may become lost, left to wander the world, interfering with the living and vulnerable to being consumed by Sitta.

The underworld is a place of rest, where the shades of the living make their home. Various passages in Reflections of Eternity indicate that the shades of the dead drift in dreams of paradise.

Since the underworld is the exclusive realm of Miranda, any form of magic or ritual that purports to communicate with or disturb the dead is strictly forbidden among the followers of the Tribunal, with the exception of the Miranda priesthood.

The ultimate fate of the universe is to be destroyed in the final battle with the Demonking. The Court teaches that after that time, the gods will create a new Kingdom of Paradise into which the shades of the righteous dead will be raised.

Part 2.4 - Moral Concerns

This section is focused on the moral codes taught by the Court of the Gods.

These moral codes are seen as extremely important; Reflections of Eternity asserts that mortal wickedness once gave the demons a foothold on the world from which they could begin devouring the universe, so refraining from such wickedness is essential to preventing another such destruction.

Righteousness is defined by the Court as in compliance with the divine laws. In The Laws of the Tribunal, the narrative closes with a list of twenty-one divine laws given by Taris. For traditional devotional purposes, they are divided into seven groups of three (though some of the associations are considered to be tenuous by scholars).

Quote

You will not give allegiance to any kings before Taris, because he is the king of the whole earth.

You will rule with justice and equity, giving no preference to any person.

You will not punish the innocent for a crime they did not commit.

You will only punish the guilty according to the law that is broken, and only with punishments that are fit to the offense.

You will not oppress the widow or the orphan, the wanderer or the stranger, the servant or the child.

You will not take vengeance into your own hands, but will let the law take vengeance for you.

You will not swear falsely in a trial of the law.

You will not defraud another by the use of lies or deceit.

You will not bind another to a contract that does not give equal value to all parties.

You will not deprive another of the land they live on.

You will not have any slaves among you.

You will not sexually coerce any person.

You will not murder.

You will not commit harm against your father or your mother.

You will not seize by violence that which belongs to another.

You will not steal.

You will not violate your marriage by having sexual relations with another.

You will not enter the presence of others while you are struck with an illness.

You will not defile a river with your own filth.

You will not slaughter more animals than you need.

You will not commit deforestation.

These divine laws are elaborated upon extensively in Reflections of Eternity, and many additional official pronouncements are extrapolated from these principles, and from other parts of the scriptural text.

Edited November 17, 2025 by Seonid

[Seonid he/him]

Alright - it's a new year and time to come back to writing. 

Bad news: my dad's cancer continues to get worse, and he is losing his vision and can no longer read. Which means he isn't going to be able to read my finished book before he dies. And that sucks. 

The good news is that I've been able to spend a lot of time with him over the holidays, and I'm coming to terms with the new status quo. I'm hoping this means I can transition from the frantic sprint into something more sustainable. (And maybe less vulnerable to occasional crippling mental health days.)

[Seonid he/him]

Brand new Saturday worldbuilding post, everyone! We're taking a quick break from the religion of the Tribunal in order to talk about calendars - mostly because our next religion post is about the sacred calendars and holidays of the Court of the Gods.

It turns out that calendars are tricky if you want to do them...well, I hesitate to say right, because there's a lot of ways to worldbuild and I don't like to call any of them more correct than any other. But I'm aiming for a setting that holds up very well in the details. So if there's a year that is a certain length, that has implications for the mass of the planet, the star it orbits, and the distance between them.

Anyways, in between mental health breakdowns, I spent way too much time over the last two months working out details about the orbital mechanics of the planet Nadiya. (The planet is called Nadiya, the continent where our story takes place is called Edassa - yes, this is new lol). And because I'm such a delightfully generous person, I'm going to inflict share all of these details with all of you!

Next week, we'll briefly go over the two most important calendar systems in the Edassan Midlands - where the kingdom of Gaelet is located. These are the calendar used by the Court of the Gods, along with the dual calendars in use by the Kaloneri Empire. Enjoy!

Nadiyan Orbital System Characteristics

The settlers who initially colonized the planet Nadiya came from a cartographic tradition that used Earth’s planetary characteristics as a baseline for measuring other habitable worlds. Terran standard hours and days were also used to measure the rotational and orbital periods.

Under that system, Nadiya has a mass of 0.95 ME, gravity of .977g, and an axial tilt of .987ε. It has a rotational period of 25.6 Terran hours, making its day roughly 7% longer than Earth’s standard, and orbits its star at a distance of 1.01 AU, with a period of 374.8 local days (399.78 Terran days). This is towards the outer edge of the star’s habitable zone, but due to various Forerunner terraforming initiatives, it has an average temperature of 16.5 °C.

The planet has two satellites. The primary moon has a mass of roughly 77% of Luna, and orbits at a distance of roughly 406,000 km, with a sidereal month of 30.9 days. The second is a small satellite, only 9% the mass of Luna, and orbits much farther out, at roughly 1,050,000 km and has a sidereal month of about 186 days.

Calendars of Edassa

Like the calendars that have been used at various times on Earth, calendars on the Edassan continent are either lunar, solar, or a combined lunisolar calendar. The Edassan lunar calendars have months of 31 days, following the 30.9-day cycle of the primary satellite (generally with every tenth month being only 30 days; although some calendars do not insist on a consistent number of days per month, instead marking a point in the lunar cycle - generally the new moon - as the beginning of a new month). Since you can fit twelve 31-day months into the Nadiyan 375-day solar year with 3 days left over, lunar calendars lose 3-4 days each year compared to the solar year.

Solar calendars generally use a 375-day year, with every 5th year having only 374 days, although some calendars use a 374-day year as the baseline and give 4 out of every 5 years an extra intercalary day. Their divisions are also different, some using 31-day months as a kind of nod to the primary lunar cycle, while others are divided into periods that have no relation to the cycles of either moon.

Like lunar calendars, lunisolar calendars use a 31-day month that is actually based on the phases of the moon, and likewise insist on a whole number of months in the year. However, every 10 years or so, lunisolar calendars add an extra month in order to catch back up to the solar year, due to the couple of days difference between the solar sidereal year and a 12-month lunar cycle.

[AltonicKeys he/him]

On 1/9/2026 at 9:26 AM, Seonid said:

Alright - it's a new year and time to come back to writing. 

Bad news: my dad's cancer continues to get worse, and he is losing his vision and can no longer read. Which means he isn't going to be able to read my finished book before he dies. And that sucks. 

The good news is that I've been able to spend a lot of time with him over the holidays, and I'm coming to terms with the new status quo. I'm hoping this means I can transition from the frantic sprint into something more sustainable. (And maybe less vulnerable to occasional crippling mental health days.)

That's really unfortunate, sorry about that. It's great to see you back, I've been craving more, but you should take it easy, yk? (I already said that but that doesn't make it less true)

On 1/10/2026 at 10:28 PM, Seonid said:

Brand new Saturday worldbuilding post, everyone! We're taking a quick break from the religion of the Tribunal in order to talk about calendars - mostly because our next religion post is about the sacred calendars and holidays of the Court of the Gods.

It turns out that calendars are tricky if you want to do them...well, I hesitate to say right, because there's a lot of ways to worldbuild and I don't like to call any of them more correct than any other. But I'm aiming for a setting that holds up very well in the details. So if there's a year that is a certain length, that has implications for the mass of the planet, the star it orbits, and the distance between them.

Anyways, in between mental health breakdowns, I spent way too much time over the last two months working out details about the orbital mechanics of the planet Nadiya. (The planet is called Nadiya, the continent where our story takes place is called Edassa - yes, this is new lol). And because I'm such a delightfully generous person, I'm going to inflict share all of these details with all of you!

Next week, we'll briefly go over the two most important calendar systems in the Edassan Midlands - where the kingdom of Gaelet is located. These are the calendar used by the Court of the Gods, along with the dual calendars in use by the Kaloneri Empire. Enjoy!

Nadiyan Orbital System Characteristics

The settlers who initially colonized the planet Nadiya came from a cartographic tradition that used Earth’s planetary characteristics as a baseline for measuring other habitable worlds. Terran standard hours and days were also used to measure the rotational and orbital periods.

Under that system, Nadiya has a mass of 0.95 ME, gravity of .977g, and an axial tilt of .987ε. It has a rotational period of 25.6 Terran hours, making its day roughly 7% longer than Earth’s standard, and orbits its star at a distance of 1.01 AU, with a period of 374.8 local days (399.78 Terran days). This is towards the outer edge of the star’s habitable zone, but due to various Forerunner terraforming initiatives, it has an average temperature of 16.5 °C.

The planet has two satellites. The primary moon has a mass of roughly 77% of Luna, and orbits at a distance of roughly 406,000 km, with a sidereal month of 30.9 days. The second is a small satellite, only 9% the mass of Luna, and orbits much farther out, at roughly 1,050,000 km and has a sidereal month of about 186 days.

Calendars of Edassa

Like the calendars that have been used at various times on Earth, calendars on the Edassan continent are either lunar, solar, or a combined lunisolar calendar. The Edassan lunar calendars have months of 31 days, following the 30.9-day cycle of the primary satellite (generally with every tenth month being only 30 days; although some calendars do not insist on a consistent number of days per month, instead marking a point in the lunar cycle - generally the new moon - as the beginning of a new month). Since you can fit twelve 31-day months into the Nadiyan 375-day solar year with 3 days left over, lunar calendars lose 3-4 days each year compared to the solar year.

Solar calendars generally use a 375-day year, with every 5th year having only 374 days, although some calendars use a 374-day year as the baseline and give 4 out of every 5 years an extra intercalary day. Their divisions are also different, some using 31-day months as a kind of nod to the primary lunar cycle, while others are divided into periods that have no relation to the cycles of either moon.

Like lunar calendars, lunisolar calendars use a 31-day month that is actually based on the phases of the moon, and likewise insist on a whole number of months in the year. However, every 10 years or so, lunisolar calendars add an extra month in order to catch back up to the solar year, due to the couple of days difference between the solar sidereal year and a 12-month lunar cycle.

I know all my "feedback" consists of "wow this is really in-depth," but I just have to say that this is really detailed. Especially for a solar system and calendars. I don't really know how I'd start to check, but is all that math correct? Did you actually sit down and calculate planetary masses and chart out multiple calendars? ...Actually, looking at all the other posts, I think I already know the answer.

Thank you for continuing to develop Edassan (Nadiyan) Tomes and posting about it, it's actually really fun to read through!

[Seonid he/him]

6 hours ago, AltonicKeys said:

That's really unfortunate, sorry about that. It's great to see you back, I've been craving more, but you should take it easy, yk? (I already said that but that doesn't make it less true)

Oh, I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's good to know that people are reading and enjoying what I have to share.

6 hours ago, AltonicKeys said:

I know all my "feedback" consists of "wow this is really in-depth," but I just have to say that this is really detailed. Especially for a solar system and calendars. I don't really know how I'd start to check, but is all that math correct? Did you actually sit down and calculate planetary masses and chart out multiple calendars? ...Actually, looking at all the other posts, I think I already know the answer.

Thank you for continuing to develop Edassan (Nadiyan) Tomes and posting about it, it's actually really fun to read through!

Ummm...yeah, I totally did calculate planetary mass. And the stars mass and temperature...

Well, less calculate and more "decide." It's actually easier than you think (says the guy with a physics degree). Mostly, I'm following guides other people put out though. Artifexian and WorldbuildingPasta have been really good guides, and both of them have made (and shared) spreadsheets where you can put in numbers and see results.

Ironically, I've done less work than some of these creators - they go and simulate several billion years of tectonic plate movement just to get their continents designed. I...already had my continental map, and I really didn't want to backtrack that far lol. 

As for charting out multiple calendars, I'm still working on that lol. I've got the planet's year length plus how long it takes the moons to orbit, but figuring out how the cultures track time is more involved. Luckily, the Court of the Gods uses a 12-month calendar with 28 days in a month (four 7-day weeks), so that's not hard to chart out, and figuring out solstices and phases of the moon is just a matter of putting things in Excel. I probably could have written a formula for it if I wanted to, but since it was only for 2 years, I did it by hand. 

The Imperial calendar is going to be interesting, because they use 2 of them - a solar calendar for administrative stuff like taxes, and a lunar calendar for religious purposes. Kind of like the way the Jewish or Islamic calendars interact with the Gregorian calendar we use.

[Seonid he/him]

Welcome back for another Worldbuilding Saturday! (Let's pretend it's still Saturday and I didn't have family stuff come up yesterday lol.) Today, we're gonna look at 4 calendars - the official calendar of the Court of the Gods, the old version still in use by some traditionalist factions among the Court, the state calendar of the Kaloneri Empire, and the religious calendar of the Yestaeren, the Kaloneri religion.

Calendars of the Court of the Gods

The Avrans and the inhabitants of the Godlands mark the new day at sunset every evening, believing that each night brings forth a new day, rather than seeing the night as the end of the old day.

The ancient calendar used by the Court of the Gods was a purely lunar calendar consisting of eleven months that were considered to start at the sighting of the new moon. The months did not have a fixed length, but lasted instead until the sighting of the next new moon.

This cycle was interrupted by two abbreviated months around the winter solstice. Fourteen days before the winter solstice was the start of the short month of Umbrosum, the month of lengthening shadows, which lasted until the winter solstice itself. Following the solstice were two intercalary days called the Dies Daemonum, and then the short month of Lucensis, the month of light, which lasted for another fourteen days. The winter solstice also marked the changing of the year.

This lunar calendar slowly drifted by several days each year due to the discrepancy between the solar year and a total of twelve lunar cycles, and periodic corrections were applied by inserting a 7-day week of intercalary days between two months - often but not always between the second and third month of the year.

During the fourth and fifth centuries, as new gods were added to the pantheon of the Tribunal, new short months were inserted to honor their major festivals - for example, from the end of the fifth century onwards, the goddess Nalatia was worshipped during the month of Incendi, the month of burning, which lasted from five days before the summer solstice to five days after the summer solstice.

By the seventh century, the calendar was weighed down by many such feasts and festivals, and each year the priesthood had to determine how these intercalary observances would interact with the normal progression of the months. An attempt at calendar reform in the waning years of the seventh century succeeded only in making things worse.

In the early years of the eighth century, the council of Hierophants began a new set of calendar reforms which were successfully adopted across most of the area ruled by the Court. This calendar was further refined in the tenth century by Armandius XI, Hierophant of Taris, during the religious reforms of the Curia Magna, although many of these refinements were resisted by traditionalist factions in the Godlands. In the modern day, there are two calendars in use among the worshippers of the tribunal - the Calendarium Armandianum, or Armandian Calendar, and the Calendarium Antiquorum, or Calendar of the Ancients.

Calendarium Armandianum

The Calendarium Armandianum (Calendrier Armandien in Low Avran) is a purely solar calendar, consisting of twelve 28-day months. However, each new moon, as well as the fifteenth and sixteenth days after each new moon (a period that always includes the full moon) are holy days that interrupt the month. After each of these holy days, the month resumes as if it had not been interrupted. So, if the new moon would fall on the 16th of a month, the previous day would be the 15th. Then, the new moon would be celebrated, and the day after the new moon would be counted as the 16th of the month.

In addition, there are 2-3 intercalary days - called the Demon Days - inserted directly after the winter solstice (inserted as needed to keep the year on track with the true solar year). The new year is held fourteen days after the end of these intercalary days. The name and order of the months in the Armandian calendar are as follows (names are given in both Low Avran and Commonspeak):

• Coureur/Cursor
• Accetier/Accetry
• Caudan/Coden
• Astris/Asters
• Mirrier/Mirry
• Soles/Solace
• Incendier/Insendy
• Massier/Mazey
• Hurisier/Hursey
• Lunes/Lunace
• Ombrage/Ambra
• Terminal/Terminal

Calendarium Antiquorum

The religious reforms of the Curia Magna were not received favorably by everyone. With regard to the religious calendar, the reforms suppressed the recognition of the warrior god Argon and removed or relocated a number of festivals while adding several new ones. Most notably, the date of the new year was delayed by 14 days, and the two short months around the winter solstice were combined into the single month of Termini.

The factions most opposed to these changes still observe a calendar they refer to as the Calendarium Antiquorum, or the “calendar according to the ancients.” This calendar starts and ends with a short month of 14 days, and has eleven 28-day months. It includes the festivals removed by the Curia Magna reforms, and preserves the old names of several months. The names and order of the months are as follows:

• Lucensis (14 days)
• Cursorum
• Accipitris
• Curdanus
• Acierum
• Mirationis
• Incendi
• Argi
• Massarae
• Hurisae
• Regis
• Passionis
• Umbrosum (14 days)

Calendars of the Kaloneri Empire

The inhabitants of the Kaloneri Empire mark the new day at sunrise every morning. 

The original calendar of the people of the Kanraed valley was a lunisolar calendar that marked the start of a month at the first sighting of the new moon. The new year was held to happen at the start of the month that contains the spring equinox. Each month of the calendar was dedicated to a different god, but the months did not follow a predictable, repeating pattern. Instead, the priesthood of the Yestaeren would read the omens when the new moon was sighted, and determine which god the new cycle would be dedicated to, and therefore which month the calendar was entering. 

Each of these months had its own set of religious observance and public holidays, and the only fixed months, celebrations, or holidays were the four months containing an equinox or solstice. These were each dedicated to a bespoke god.

Imperial Standard Calendar

In the 8th century, the Emperor Arthaled III created a new calendar as part of his attempt to reduce the influence of the priesthood, and also to address widespread issues where the high priests in different cities would read the omens and declare different months. This resulted in the Imperial Standard Calendar.

The Imperial Calendar is a solar calendar, in which the year consists of a consistent number of 6-day long weeks.

The name of the weekdays in the Imperial Calendar are as follows:

• Kindday (Child's Day)
• Hiresday (Worker's Day)
• Holdingday (Town/City's Day)
• Wardingday (Lord/Protector's Day)
• Marktday (Market Day)
• Stillday (Rest Day)

The 5th day of each week is a market day, where people in the community gather together in the nearest market town and buy and sell what they need. The day following each market day is a rest day, where masters are required by imperial edict to give their household a day of rest from the labors of the house, except in times of great need.

The year starts in the late summer with the week-long festival of Neuwice (literally “New Week”), which marks the new year. Following Neuwice, the year is divided into 4 agricultural seasons of 14 weeks apiece and one two week administrative season called Assay, the season of taxing, accounting, and reconciliation. Assay is followed by 2-3 intercalary days to make up the difference between the number of whole weeks in the Imperial year and the number of days in the solar year. After each of the agricultural seasons are week-long festivals marking the turning of the seasons.

These seasons and festivals are as follows:

• Neuwice (“New Week,” week-long festival)
• Harvest (14 weeks - 84 days)
• Gatherwice (“Gathering Week,” week-long festival)
• Assay (two weeks)
• 2-3 intercalary days
• Winter (14 weeks - 84 days)
• Dyingwice (“Dying Week,” week-long festival)
• Budding (14 weeks - 84 days)
• Seedwice (“Seed Week,” week-long festival)
• Growing (14 weeks - 84 days)

Kaloneri Religious Calendar

The priesthood of the Yestaeren still uses a form of the old lunar calendar to determine the dates of religious festivals. The year starts at the last new moon before the spring equinox. The heavens are read four times a year instead of monthly, at the new moons whose month contains the solstices and equinoxes, and at these readings, the sequence of months for the next 3 months are determined. These are then disseminated to the major cities across the Empire over the course of that month, to ensure a unified worship schedule. However, many outlying regions or rural areas still have their own local priests who make these determinations on their own.

Because the order of months (and even which months might show up in a year!) is not fixed, any listing of months will only be valid for a certain year. However, each of the variable months follows a consistent naming pattern: [god’s name] + -mund (or + -amund if the god’s name ends in certain consonants). So, the month dedicated to the god Skar would be Skaramund, while the month dedicated to the goddess Hildya would be Hildyamund.

In addition, like the early calendar, the four months that contain the solstices and equinoxes are always consistent, and have their own names. These are as follows:

• Dawning
• Sunheight
• Darkening
• Staerenheight

Edited January 29 by Seonid
Formatting

[Seonid he/him]

With all of this out of the way, we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming - the religious festivals of the Court of the Gods.

Not today, of course, but I can give you a little preview of what we're going to see next Saturday.

Day of Revelation/La Revelacion: The great feast day of La Revelacion marks the start of the new year in the regions that worship the Tribunal. It celebrates the great revelation of the divine laws to mankind. The feast is in the deep winter, fourteen days after the winter solstice.

The holiday is a solemn one; during the day, the faithful are supposed to reflect on the danger of breaking the divine laws, and the chaos that would have consumed the world without them. In many areas, it is traditional to mark the left cheek and the back of the left hand with two lines of red pigment in the morning and wear it throughout the day as a reminder. In the evening, the community gathers at the shrine and participates in a ritual of cleansing, during which they wash off the red pigment and dribble a little wine on the ground in front of the shrine while reciting praises to Taris and Hurisen, the givers of the law.

After full sundown, the community eats a celebratory feast; traditionally, several mature pigs are slaughtered for it, and cured bacon is enjoyed in several traditional dishes served at the feast.

It is traditional to use the Day of Revelation to confess sins and wrongdoing, and many nobles pass judgement and hold executions on that day.

[Seonid he/him]

Been busy, but I'll be dropping a full post later today.

However, I've been working on languages and names (only a little! I am well aware that if I start wading into the mire of conlanging, it will consume everything and I'll never get anything written) recently, and I'm making some slight changes to the names of the Tribunal gods. @AltonicKeys, this is a follow up to one of your questions from several months ago asking about languages and names original and stuff. I'm finally working through and trying to make things consistent.

The gods and other immortal beings were originally given in High Avran (and I'm just using Latin-ish to represent it, as a compromise), though a few of them are loan words from the now-extinct languages of the eastern foothills near Lilyathan. In the descriptions, you can find the Low Avran (which I'm using French to represent) and Commonspeak (English, but missing a lot of the Latin loan words) names.

• Taris: King of the gods. His name has become Tares in Low Avran, but pronouncing that name in Commonspeak has brought it back to Taris.
• Miranda: The Queen of the gods. Her name has remained unchanged through the linguistic shifts to Low Avran and Commonspeak. 
• Argon: The god of war. Like Miranda, his name has remained remarkably unchanged. 
• Nalatia: The Virgin, and goddess of fire and the sun. Some Imperial scholars believe that was a goddess of the eastern hillfolk before the was adopted by the Tribunal, where she would have been named Naltha. Her name has become Nalathe in Low Avran and Nalathea in the Commonspeak. 
• Curdanus: The maker, and god of the earth. Imperial scholars identify him with the old god Khurdan, the father of the gods in the old religion of the eastern foothills. In Low Avran, his name became Caudan, and Coden in Commonspeak. 
• Ieradus: The god of the stars, often called "the Wise." His name became Giraud in Low Avran, and Jerad in Commonspeak.
• Hurisia: The goddess of the moon and trickery, and also - paradoxically - law. Her name became Hurise in Low Avran, and Hurisen in Commonspeak.

Other beings:

• Arrion Accipiter: The messenger of the gods. In Low Avran, the title became adopted as the given name Accetier. In Commonspeak, the name remained Arrion the Hawk.
• Tilraches: The fallen god. Imperial scholars believe that he was originally the god of the underworld from the eastern foothills, Tilrakh. His name became Tilrac in Low Avran, and Tylrack in Commonspeak.
• Sittus: The king of the demons. His name became Sitte in Low Avran, and Sitta in Commonspeak.

[Seonid he/him]

Alright, late again. I blame playing computer games with my kids. 

Anyways. Religious festivals of the Avran people, go! 

The Worship of the Tribunal: Part 3 - The Practice of Worship

This is the third part of what will probably end up being a 4-part series on the worship of the Tribunal, the most prevalent religion (by a long ways) among the Avran people.

This section will describe the ritual practice of worship among the followers of the religion. These practices will be divided into communal worship, such as the major religious festivals and the regular sermons of the priesthood, and individual worship - the way the religion intersects with the lives of individuals outside of these communal occasions.

Communal Worship

The worship of the Tribunal is primarily a communal affair, and is largely centered around the sacred calendar. This is the cycle of festivals and holidays that governs the rhythms of each year. The festivals are as follows (names are given in both Commonspeak and Low Avran). We will start at the winter solstice instead of the nominal start of the year, mostly because the new year's festival is the culmination of several weeks of festivals that started on the winter solstice.

Allgod's Wake/Jour du Martyr: The time between the winter solstice and the new year is the most sacred time in the Court of the Gods’ calendar. The holiday of Allgod's Wake is celebrated on the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year. 

This holiday commemorates the death of Taris, the king of the gods. This is a solemn holiday, and the focus of the day is an hour-long ritual play, where priests reenact the betrayal of Tylrack, the rebellion of Sitta, and the sacrifice of Taris in order to banish the demon king back to the underworld.

The priest who plays Taris in the ritual is banished to the basement of the shrine, representing the king's stay in the underworld.

In addition, one prominent layperson is chosen to be the community’s representative. They are chosen to perform an overnight vigil - the “wake” waiting through the darkest night of the year without food or drink.

Demon Days/Jours de Tenebres: The 2-3 days after the Winter Solstice are intercalary days, bringing to no particular month. Most years, there are 3 days, but every 5 years, a day must be dropped from the year to keep the year from gaining an extra day.

These intercalary days are called the Demon Days, which symbolize the time while Taris was dead and Miranda had left the heavens to search for him in the underworld. 

These days are considered to be very unlucky, when the forces of chaos and evil are believed to be at their height, and the only days in the year when the demons might slip out of their prison and spread mischief and evil throughout the world.

During these days, the faithful avoid doing all but the most necessary tasks. In general, outside of absolute emergencies, they remain indoors from sundown to sunrise, and as much as possible during the day as well. 
During the demon days, the priests perform sacrifices of protection at the shrine for the community, and people hang up talismans on their doors to ward away the influence of mischief and evil.

Day of Ascension/L’Ascension: The demon days end with the Day of Ascension, which commemorates the day when Miranda returned Taris to life from the underworld.

Where Allgod's Wake is a solemn affair, Ascension is a full-blown celebration. The festivities commence in the mid-morning with a ritual where the priests return the banished Taris from the basement of the shrine and crown him with a crown of reeds. A massive bonfire is lit in the center of the town and kept going through the entire day.

From a symbolic standpoint, this is the day where both the queen and the king of the gods are back and setting things in order again. There are games and singing and dancing around the bonfire, and lots of good food and freely flowing alcohol.

Dawningtide/Saison de L’aurore: The Day of Ascension marks the start of two full weeks of observances leading up to the new year, called Dawningtide. During this time, small rituals are performed twice a day at the local shrine, and it is tradition for the priests to host communal dinners in the town square for everyone who can make it. Even outside of these dinners, in all but the most impoverished areas, the priests make sure there is always food over the fire for the whole day. In many areas, each day is associated with a certain shape or kind of spiced pastry that families bake.

Dawn’s Advent/L’aurore Nouvelle: Dawningtide closes with a 3-day festival called Dawn’s Advent. This festival celebrates the return of light into the world after the dark days just after the winter solstice. The entire community stops their normal work for the celebration, and copious amounts of food, drink, and sweets are consumed and shared. During Dawn’s Advent, large fires are lit in many places in the city, and every home lights candles or lamps and places them in the windows. The traditional observance of the festival requires that lights not be permitted to die out, so many people stay up for all hours of the night tending the fires and eating, drinking, and dancing to ward away exhaustion. In many villages, tending the fires is considered to be a place of honor, and firetenders sleep during the day and are given a crown of evergreen sprigs at the evening meal.

Dawn’s Advent is also a time of exchanging gifts, though mostly of no great monetary value. Children will be given small toys, and adult friends are given little tokens of friendship and affection - many people use whatever crafts they are most proficient at to make small gifts to mark the holiday. The last day of the Dawn’s Advent is also the last day of the year.

Day of Revelation/La Revelacion: The great feast day of La Revelacion marks the start of the new year in the regions that worship the Tribunal. It celebrates the great revelation of the divine laws to mankind. The feast is in the deep winter, fourteen days after the winter solstice.

The holiday is a solemn one; during the day, the faithful are supposed to reflect on the danger of breaking the divine laws, and the chaos that would have consumed the world without them. In many areas, it is traditional to mark the left cheek and the back of the left hand with two lines of red pigment in the morning and wear it throughout the day as a reminder. In the evening, the community gathers at the shrine and participates in a ritual of cleansing, during which they wash off the red pigment and dribble a little wine on the ground in front of the shrine while reciting praises to Taris and Hurisen, the givers of the law.

After full sundown, the community eats a celebratory feast; traditionally, several mature pigs are slaughtered for it, and cured bacon is enjoyed in several traditional dishes served at the feast.

It is traditional to use the Day of Revelation to confess sins and wrongdoing, and many nobles pass judgement and hold executions on that day.

Edited January 26 by Seonid

[Seonid he/him]

We're still pretending this came out on Saturday, right? Right.

In that case, welcome to the second section of the third part of the four-part series on Avran religion. Last week, we discussed the holy season, starting with Allgod's Wake on the winter solstice and lasting through the Day of Revelation, which starts the new year. This week, we get to learn about the late winter and spring festivals, starting just after the New Year and going through the start of Mirrey, the fifth month. Names, as always, are given in both Commonspeak and Low Avran.

Evergreen Day/Epiceale: The Day of Revelation marks the end of the holiday season that started on the winter solstice, and things generally go back to normal after that. However, throughout the remainder of the winter months, there are several smaller holidays that liven up the dark months of the year.

The 14th of Cursor is Evergreen Day. This is a minor holiday dedicated to Nalathea, in her aspect as the Eternal Watcher. On the day after the Day of Revelation, people hang wreaths of woven spruce branches on their doors. On the holiday itself, families plant an evergreen seed outside of the village, and then return home to burn their wreaths and cook fried pastries and sweetbreads. In some areas, the entire village gathers to burn the wreaths and eat together, while in others, it is a private family affair.

Feast of Compassion/Fete du Pitie: On the third day of Accetry is the Feast of Compassion. This marks the coldest part of the year, and the start of a precarious time for subsistence farmers. The entire community gathers for a feast, everyone bringing what they can, and the local nobility open up their stockpiles to make sure there is more than enough for everyone. The poorest are sent home with as much food as can be spared, to help them manage through the remainder of the winter.

Feast of Hope/Fete du Espoire: On the first day of Coden is the Feast of Hope. This is the last day before the relative privation of the Hopefast season, and is marked by extravagant feasts, dancing, and consumption, and playful reenactments of the Great Siege. According to legend, on the day the enemy armies arrived, the rulers of the city held a massive feast and celebration to demonstrate that they were not worried about running out of supplies.

Hopefast/Le Jeune: The Feast of Hope marks the start of the period known as Hopefast. This period officially commemorates the Great Siege of the Court of the Gods more than eight centuries ago, when the expansionist Imperiate of Navar attempted to destroy the seat of the religion and bring the region into captivity.

According to the account related by the Court of the Gods, the siege lasted for months, but the city's provisions did not fail, even though the accounting records said that they should have run out mere weeks into the siege.

During this period, which runs until the festival of Wintersend, believers eat only the simplest foods - flatbread or porridge, generally, with the last preserved vegetables of the season. In addition, alcohol and other intoxicants are forbidden during this season. Traditionally, the first meal of the day is served with enough food to fill the family, while the midday and evening meals consist of a single piece of bread or a small serving of porridge.

Day of Turning/Remission: In the middle of the Hopefast season, the Day of Turning marks the spring equinox, the day in the year where the hours of light in a day start exceeding the hours of darkness. Metaphysically, the festival celebrates the invoices coming back into balance after things were turned upside down on Fool’s Day.

Since the festival occurs during Hopefast, the food is plain and no alcohol is served, and the festival is considered tame compared to other, larger festivals. But there is dancing, and games, and many people put up streamers as traditional decorations. At sunset, the whole community gets together and sings a couple of hymns while the priest performs an offering of oil and wine in front of the shrine, and prays for the blessings of Hurisen for the new year.

Day of Rebirth/Renaissance: All of the new moons are sacred to Miranda, but the ones that occur nearest to the solstices and equinoxes are marked by special celebrations in her honor. The first of these in the year is the new moon closest to the spring equinox. This is the Day of Rebirth, honoring her in her aspect as the Lady of Life and the Divine Mother, who brought her husband back from the dead.

This holy day is marked by quiet contemplation, with worshippers spending an hour meditating some place below the level of the ground - such as a root cellar or a basement - before performing a ritual washing of hands and then returning to their duties. A morning service is also held at the shrine. In many areas, the day has also become an occasion to pay honor to mortal mothers, who bear some portion of the power of the mother of the gods.

Wintersend/Curdanale: The most prominent springtime festival is the festival of Wintersend - a two-day affair celebrating the end of the snow and the arrival of the planting season. The exact day is determined by the local priesthood, and is defined as the first day when the ground has thawed enough to plant crops - normally within a few weeks of the spring equinox. In wealthy or prominent jurisdictions, high-ranking clergy come out once a week during the time leading up to Wintersend. In a major ceremony that draws many onlookers, they test the ground with a golden shovel to see if the ground is soft enough.

The festival celebrates Coden, in his aspect as the warden of plants and nature. It involves ritual offerings to bless the land and people with fertility. The first day of the festival is a dour day, where everyone traditionally dresses up in drab clothes and maintains a mournful look to symbolize the hardship and privation of the winter. In many areas, it is observed as an official day of mourning for all those who died during the winter. In the evening, there is a sermon and a ritual reenactment of Coden seeding the new world with plant and animal life, and then everyone goes home to wait until the morning.

It is considered good luck to plant a field on this day, and even in the cities, where people aren't as in tune with the rhythms of planting and growing, most will still buy a handful of seeds and scatter them in front of their doorstep, or plant flower seeds in window pots or other similar practices.

Sower’s Day/Jour du Semer: The second day of Wintersend is a celebration of spring. Originally, it was a restrained affair, so as to not use up too many of the winter stores before the first crops could be brought in. The day was marked by plowing and showing the first of the fields, with the whole village working together, and in the evening, there was a communal meal to break the long fast of the Hopefast season. These old ways are still observed among the Paladin orders, and in isolated rural areas.

However, over time, the second day has grown in importance until it has become a festival in its own right - the festival of Sower’s Day. Everyone dresses in their brightest colors and work is excused. The day marks the end of the Hopefast season, so it involves a massive celebration that uses a large portion of the remaining winter foodstores, along with copious amounts of alcohol. Larger towns have street fairs, but even smaller villages have games, singing and dancing, and all sorts of celebration for the arrival of spring. The celebration is always rowdy, and some areas have markedly risque traditions, though the Court frowns on that sort of thing.

Nameday/Jour de Debut: The 14th of Asters is Nameday, a minor festival that celebrates new beginnings. It is officially dedicated to Arrion, the captain of the Heavenly Host. The priests hold a small service in the evening, and every child who has reached the age of 1 has their official religious naming ceremony at the service.

Garland Day/Jour des Lys: The 4th day of Mirrey is Garland Day, a celebration about the warming, sunny weather and the end of the cold. While the festival is a minor one in the religious calendar, giving thanks to Coden for growing things, it holds a popularity far out of proportion to its significance. Trees in the villages and nearby woods are hung with streamers and garlands of flowers, and the unmarried young people of the community dance around the largest tree, twining it with ribbons.

Edited February 3 by Seonid

[Seonid he/him]

Welcome to the third section of the increasingly dubiously named Part 3 of our series on the Religion of the Tribunal. Today we are going to go over the major summer festivals, which occur in the two months of Solace and Insendy (roughly equivalent to June and July). This season is the second major festival season, a kind of counterpoint to the holy season of the winter solstice, and is marked by two 3-day festivals, one around the summer solstice and one midway between the solstice and the autumnal equinox. After this, there are no more festivals or holidays until the equinox - which can largely be attributed to the fact that the community is ramping up to the harvest season, which is going to take just about all of their time and attention.

Next time, we'll cover the last of the festivals - the autumn/harvest festivals and the Day of the Dead (a winter festival that isn't actually part of the holy season between Allgod's Wake and the Day of Revelation). We'll also go over the regular worship services to Taris and Miranda held on the full moon and new moons, respectively. And then we will finally be done with calendars, hallelujah!

But that day is not this day. So for today, have a gander at some summer solstice celebrations.

Day of Supplication/Jour de Demande: Around the summer solstice is the Lighting of the Heavens, a three-day holiday dedicated to all the Lords of Heaven. This is a new festival, created during the reforms of the Curia Magna to consolidate a number of existing festivals, and it displaced the original timing of Nalathea’s Sunfest. Canonically, this is the second-holiest time of the year, following Dawningtide, but the festival does not have the cultural prominence in keeping with that - it is a larger occasion than the monthly observances of the full moons, but still lags behind the popularity of festivals like Sunfest, Life Day, Wintersend, Fool’s Day, or the Festival of Offerings.

The festival starts two days before the solstice with the Day of Supplication, which commemorates the pleas of the mortals and others who were bound in slavery to the Demonking before the War in Heaven.

The day is observed as a day of fasting from sunrise to sunset, though those who have to work long hours will eat large breakfasts before sunrise, and children are generally given small meals throughout the day. The fasting is done as a rite of purification in preparation for the great offering in the evening.

The great offering happens an hour before sunset. Every member of the community brings something that is valuable to them to sacrifice - though the Tribunal refuses any sacrifice of living animals. In practice, most worshippers spend some time throughout the year making some item for the sacrifice, whether some piece of embroidery or woodcarving or metalwork - the true sacrifice being the time and skill that went into creating the piece. However, those who have a particularly desperate plea will often bring something to which they have strong emotional attachments - some family heirloom or memento of a loved one.

These are placed on the ritual fire to be burned, sending the smoke of the sacrifice up to the heavens where the gods dwell.

Day of Wrath/Jour de Colere: The day before the summer solstice is the Day of Wrath, the second day of the Lighting of the Heavens. This commemorates the great War in Heaven that drove the demons out of the mortal realm.

During the day, every adult in the community wears a weapon as a reminder that every living soul took part in the battle against the demonic forces. The priesthood holds rituals of purification to cast out evil influences from major public places, starting with the shrines. Most areas also have traditions of priests visiting individual homes to cast out evil influences there as well. However, the significance of these visits varies from place to place. In some towns, it is a form of pastoral care, where the priesthood is responding to the needs of a believer who feels that they need relief from some evil influence that is harming them. In others, it becomes a form of boundary maintenance, performed on homes of people who are not compliant with the community’s expectations.

Many regions have developed a tradition of holding a mock battle reenacting the last battle of the war in heaven, with one side dressed in dark colors to represent the demons and the other with sky-blue sashes to represent the forces of heaven. The traditionalist factions among the priesthood have strongly disapproved of these practices, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming widespread.

Day of Triumph/Jour de la Victoire: The final day of the Lighting of the Heavens is the Day of Triumph, which falls on the summer solstice. This commemorates the final victory of the gods over the forces of evil. While many areas will organize street festivals and entertainment, the priesthood takes a secondary role in these activities. Instead, they focus on the ritual observance, which takes the form of seven religious services spread out over the day, at sunrise, early morning, late morning, midday, mid-afternoon, evening, and sundown. Each of these services is devoted to a different one of the gods, and in theory, every person is supposed to attend all of them. In practice, the most widely attended are the services devoted to Miranda, Nalathea, and Taris - early morning, midday, and evening, respectively.

Many larger cities in the Godlands have begun to sponsor games and competitions on this day to honor the gods, and these have become a larger draw than the explicitly devotional services managed on their own. The entertainment pauses at the appropriate time for the observances, and the priesthood have capitalized on the opportunity to present the devotional services to the crowd in between matches or games. These traditions have not spread into the rural areas, however.

Life Day/Vivifiere: The new moon closest to the summer solstice is Life Day, the most prominent of Miranda’s holy days. This festival honors her as both the Divine Lover and the Queen of Heaven.

This festival involves day-long celebrations, including some of the most lavish communal meals thrown for the year (rivaling the consumption of the Feast of Hope, the Festival of Offerings, or Dawn's Advent).

Public music and dancing happen all day long, and the community spends the morning decorating the village or homestead with brightly colored ribbons, streamers, and garlands. In many places, painting your arms and hands with decorative calligraphy is a common practice, and couples will often get matching or complementary designs.

In the evening, the priests build a bonfire to hold off the night, and hold a service at midnight to honor the goddess. The traditional offering for Life Day is a cruse of oil and a sheaf of unripe grain.

Torchday/Nalatale: Late in Insendy is the Sunfest, a three-day festival sacred to Nalathea. This holiday was originally celebrated at the summer solstice, but the reforms of the Curia Magna left the month of Insendy - the month sacred to the Virgin - starting ten days after the solstice. The Council of Hierophants set the new date to be exactly halfway in between the summer solstice and the fall equinox, during the hottest time of the year, replacing a three-day festival that had once been devoted to Argon. The first day of the festival is called Torchday, and it celebrates the Virgin in her aspect as the divine Protector.

On Torchday, all of those who feel like they have a reason to give thanks to the goddess weave garlands of green wood and flowers during the day. At sunset, they meet in front of the shrine to dip bundles of reeds in a mix of heated pitch, sulfur and lime, creating a very bright light that is hard to extinguish. They then make a procession with these torches to the Virgin’s shrine.

At Nalathea’s shrine, the priestess uses her torch to light a bonfire, and the worshippers throw their own torches on the pile while singing hymns before returning home. The priestess tends the bonfire overnight, taking care not to let the sacred fire go out.

For those who are not making the short pilgrimage, Torchday is a day of preparation for Midsummer.

Midsummer/Jour de Flammes: The second day of the Sunfest is called Midsummer. The name derives from the original position of the festival, in which the second day fell on the summer solstice itself.

Canonically, this day is the third holiest time of the calendar, after Dawningtide and the Lighting of the Heavens, though in practice, it matches Dawningtide in its prominence. This day honors the Virgin as the embodiment of the life-giving Sun. At dawn, a priestess brings the sacred fire from the Virgin’s shrine to the shrines of the other gods, lighting their sacred fires one by one. This is the official start of the festival, which lasts from dawn until sundown. It is filled with food and drink, games, dancing, plays, archery competitions, and many other activities sponsored by the priesthoods of the different gods. In the larger cities, shrines to the various gods will each sponsor their own events, including major sports competitions, but even in the smaller towns, the celebration is extensive. In many areas, it is tradition for young adults to paint their faces or necks with glittering cosmetics in mimicry of the bright Virgin’s Bow.

The fires are tended to all day long, and kept burning throughout the night, as a symbol of the goddess’ constant vigilance.

Ashesday/Jour de Cendres: The third and final day of the Sunfest is Ashesday. On this day, the Virgin is celebrated in her role as deliverer of vengeance and liberation. It is tradition to read from The Huntress of the Sun on this day, and in larger cities, the priesthood of Nalathea sponsors reenactments of that text.

The tenor of the last day of the Sunfest is much more sombre than the other two days. In the morning, worshippers traditionally mark their forehead, chin, and wrists with ashes as a sign that they are pure before the goddess; according to tradition, the ashes will cause burns and irritation to any who are guilty of oppression against their fellow men. At midday, the priests of the shrine hold a communal meal, during which the edicts of Nalathea are read and the community are exhorted to avoid every sort of oppression and predatory behavior. From midday to sundown, the bonfires that were lit on Torchday are allowed to burn down to ashes, except the one at the shrine. At sundown, the community gathers to sing hymns at the last bonfire as it slowly burns out.

In many areas, people who have grievances against each other are heard by the priests or other community leaders on this day, while in others it is tradition to write your grievances on a small slip of parchment and throw it in the bonfire to send them to the goddess.

Edited February 9 by Seonid

[Seonid he/him]

Welcome back to our last installment of the Tribunal's sacred calendar. Today, we're going to finish off with the autumn festivals, and two festivals that happen in the early winter, before the holy season. 

We're also going to take a look at the regular community worship opportunities on the new moons and full moons.

And then, we'll be done with calendars for a long time, and not a moment too soon, since I'm ready to be finished now (and if I'm ready to be finished, it probably means we're a month past the tolerance of any reasonable person lol).

So, autumn festivals: 

Firstfruits/Premicies: The 24th of Mazey is the day of Firstfruits, a festival sacred to Coden. It is set towards the beginning of the first wheat harvest, and at the end of the summer produce season.

It is observed by a ritual offering of the first grain harvested during the season. Unlike many other festivals, the priesthood does not directly provide these offerings, rather, individual farmers bring the first fruits of their harvest to offer to the god.

A small portion of the offerings are chosen to be buried for the god, while the remainder are taken into the shrine’s storehouse.

Fool’s Day/Defection: The fall equinox is sacred to Hurisen, and is celebrated by the major feast day known as Fool’s Day. This festival celebrates her in her aspect as the Divine Trickster, and marks the day when the nights start becoming longer than the days. The festival is a wholesale inversion of the social order for the day.

Pranks and jokes are extremely common, and the streets are filled with raucous celebrations. Traditional stories of Hurisen’s trickery on various gods and demons are reenacted by the priesthood, and the evening closes with a ritual offering to all of the gods which is subverted at the last moment, when the jars of oil and wine are revealed to be empty.

Among the lay worshippers, however, the biggest draw are the street festivals that go along with the official activities. Women are invited to traditionally all-male gatherings, and nearly everyone is expected to get drunk. In many regions, it is traditional for the nobility to throw a feast for their servants, bringing out the food themselves as if the servants were the guests of honor. Nobles and servants alike mingle in the streets during the celebrations, and it is traditional for everyone to dress in the same style of clothing, so that you cannot tell who is noble and who is a commoner.

Individual villages or parties often elect a Prince of Fools, who gets to give orders like a king during the celebration, like “sing naked” or “dunk him in cold water.”  Behavior that is normally seen as licentious, such as gambling, animal fights, and lewd or obscene dancing is tolerated to a much higher degree on this day (often with much protest by the priesthood). The whole effect is to represent an absurd world.

The time between the fall equinox and the Day of Ascension (shortly after the winter solstice) is considered by the Court of the Gods to be under the influence of chaos and evil. The Court ceases to do all but routine ecclesiastical business, their priesthoods do not perform any marriages or other rituals other than the traditional offerings on holy days, and it has become a superstition for common folk and nobility alike to refrain from entering into any contracts during that time.

Day of Mourning/Jour de Deuil: The new moon closest to the fall equinox is the Day of Mourning, the third of Miranda’s major festivals. This festival is dedicated to her in her aspect as the Lady of Death.

The holiday is a solemn one, marked by an evening memorial service at the shrine. Households who have lost a member during the year will hang a white ribbon over their doorstep, and will burn incense at sundown while repeating the name or names of the dead. This is followed by a night of quiet vigil in remembrance of all of the friends and loved ones who have passed on.

Day of the Hunter/Jour de Chasseuse: The 18th day of Lunace is the Day of the Hunter, a minor holiday dedicated to Nalathea, which honors her in her aspect as the Divine Hunter.

It is marked by a bespoke worship service at the shrine, complete with offerings of burned oil and incense. However, the day is celebrated with many unofficial observances.

The women of the community weave crowns of autumn leaves, and many areas hold competitions for the most beautiful creation. Most villages also hold archery competitions in the Virgin’s honor.

Feast of Offerings/Fructuaille: The last two days of Lunace are the Feast of Offerings. These are the last festivals before the dark month of Ambra, during which it is unlucky to draw the attention of any spiritual beings.

The Feast of Offerings is a harvest festival, dedicated to Coden. It celebrates bringing in the final harvest, and is often used to give thanks to the god of earth and nature for a fruitful year. Even in times of famine or drought, it is often used to give thanks that the year wasn’t worse, since many of the devout believers are hesitant to express anger or complaints at the gods. 

In times of plenty, however, it is an extravagant celebration. The first day of the festival is the ritual of giving thanks. The tithes of the harvest are brought in and presented to the priesthood, and a small portion are ritually buried as an offering to Coden. After a small worship service, the congregation is dismissed to their homes.

The second day is a massive feast, ostensibly held with a portion of the tithes delivered to the priesthood the previous day (although in modern times, only a few loaves of bread are made with the current tithes, and the feast is held to use up some of the aged storage). The feast begins with a ritual reenactment of Coden pronouncing the created world a place fit for mortals and gods alike, and goes for the whole day. At sundown, a service of praise and thanks is performed.

After the Feast of Offerings is the dark month of Ambra, during which tradition forbids any holy day (except for the new moon and full moon worship service) from being observed.

Winter starts after the end of that month, and two winter holidays are observed before the start of the holy season:

Gateday/Jour de Fermeture: The 1st day of Terminal is Gateday, sometimes called the Day of Closing.

The day is sacred to Jerad, and it's the only holiday explicitly dedicated to the Seer. It marks the end of autumn and the start of winter, and is celebrated in remembrance of the closing of the Gates of Chaos.

The night before, devout believers hang incense and carved sigils of the gods in their doorways as a protection from chaos and evil. The day is observed by a ritual reenactment of the Gates opening at sunrise.

Throughout the day, at midmorning, noon, mid-afternoon, and early evening, the bell at the shrine calls the believers to prayer. Each of the rote prayers is a request for protection from a different form of evil. 

At sundown, the priest performs a ritual reenactment of the closing of the Gates, and closes the holiday with a service of praise and worship.

Day of The Dead/La Fete des Morts: The new moon nearest the winter solstice is the Day of the Dead. This is the last of Miranda’s holy days before the start of the holy season. Since, according to the rules of the Armandian calendar, the new moon itself cannot be celebrated between the solstice and the new year, the holy day is often observed the day before the solstice itself.

This day is dedicated to Miranda in her aspect as the Queen of the Underworld. It is believed that, during the weeks around the solstice, the doors of the Underworld are opened and the shades of the dead walk among the living. The new moon is supposed to be the height of such occurrences. So, throughout the entire time from the first of Terminal through to the Day of Ascension, each night at sundown, people will make loud noises - often banging pots or pans together and shouting ritual phrases of dismissal - in order to drive off the shades of the dead, and then sprinkle their doorsteps with consecrated salt to protect them overnight.

On the Day of the Dead itself, the holiday is observed with a noon-time service, where offerings to the goddess are performed. Then, at sundown, the matriarch of the family holds a vigil, reciting prayers and holding a candle to invoke Miranda’s protection over the house. Anciently, the vigil was kept for the whole night, but the modern priesthood has directed that a single hour of watch is sufficient, and all but the most superstitious have migrated to the new tradition.

Although not part of the official religious practice, many areas also hold large public gatherings, with food and drink, and one of the village elders dresses up in black with a harvest scythe. This elder is then chased out of the gathering three times by the village women. This is often seen as either a symbolic reenactment of Miranda’s victory over the king of the Underworld (mostly by the most devout, including priests who don't care to try putting a stop to it), or as the village symbolically chasing Death away for another year.

So, this has been the ritual calendar - a cycle of 22 holidays and festivals dedicated to the seven gods of the tribunal (some of which comprise multiple days), plus several holy seasons surrounding them. 

In addition to these holy days, believers have regular opportunities to worship each month, on both the full moon and the new moon. The specifics of these occasions are described below:

Worship Days

The worship of the Tribunal is primarily a communal affair. The primary occasions for worship are the days of the full moons, which are sacred to Taris.

Each of these days of worship follow the same pattern: the community gathers at the shrine in the morning, where the priest or priestess performs an offering of wine in front of the altar. Then, the officiant performs a prescribed reading from the Tribunal scriptures and offers a prepared sermon. The service closes with the officiant pouring oil into a depression on the altar and lighting the sacred fire while reciting ritual thanks to Taris for his blessings.

The readings and sermons at these services follow a predefined cycle, themed after the progression of the twelve divine attributes of the King of Heaven. This cycle starts with the first full moon after the new year. The order of the twelve attributes are as follows: Righteousness, Truth, Integrity, Loyalty, Valor, Benevolence, Compassion, Justice, Mercy, Temperance, Peace, Sacrifice.

The day after the full moons are consecrated and set aside as rest days, during which no unnecessary work should be performed.

If a full moon or rest day falls on a holiday, both the full moon and the rest day are observed on the next available days, with the exception of any full moons or rest days that occur between the winter solstice and the new year. These are instead observed on the two days before the winter solstice.

New Moons

In addition to the worship days of the full moon, the new moons are sacred to Miranda. These services are generally performed at sunset. Unlike the services on the full moon, these are not generally attended by the whole congregation. Instead, those who are seeking a special blessing from the Lady of Life and Death attend, along with those who feel the need to offer thanks for a blessing received.

The priest or priestess offers water infused with sacred herbs before the altar, then lights the sacred fire. While the fire burns, they then perform a short reading from the scriptures.

Then, the officiant lights incense from the sacred fire in a censer that hangs over the altar. One by one, each applicant approaches the altar, and the officiant touches their forehead with a stick of burning incense while saying a ritual invocation. The ritual closes by casting any remaining incense into the sacred fire.

If a new moon falls on a holiday, it is observed on the next available days, with the exception of any new moons that occur between the winter solstice and the new year. These are instead observed on the day before the winter solstice.

[Seonid he/him]

Alright, so that was kind of a marathon, and no mistake. I'm kinda done with exploring Edassan religion for a little while, though eventually I'm gonna need to do a deep dive into the Stearentroth - the once-state religion of the now-secular Kaloneri Empire. I think the idea behind it is pretty cool - they believe in an open pantheon of gods, each represented by a constellation. But they also believe that there are only twelve thrones in the heavens, and as constellations rise and set throughout the year, different gods take their places on the thrones.

But as I said, I'm a little burned out on Edassan religions for the moment. My own darn fault, but once I get into something it's hard to stop without going all the way through lol - and boy did we see that over the past few weeks.

Anyways, I'm interested in looking at some more Avran cultural stuff - but lighter fare than the minutiae of religious belief and practice (although I reserve the right to add a small coda talking about personal prayer to the Tribunal at the start of this week's post, if I feel up to it). So, that said, we have basically two options:

1. We can do a medium dive into family and relationships among the Avran peoples - including details about marriage and courtship.
2. We can do an overview of Avran material culture - art/entertainment, food, clothing, architecture, etc

If anyone's got a preference, I'll gladly dip into one before the other, but we will get to both of them eventually

[Seonid he/him]

So, um...I guess I took a mental health week.

Things have still been rough this week too, so I don't have a big update like previous weeks. I was going to start a series about Avran family relationships (probably two or three parts - one describing how families tend to be organized among the commonfolk, one describing how the family structures of the nobility differ from the norm, and one explicitly detailing the formal courtship rituals for the nobility). But that will have to wait until next week, I think.

Good news is that I do have a little something to share. It's a small section that wraps up our study of the worship of the Tribunal with a couple of miscellaneous sections: one on "how do offerings to the gods work?" and one on individual worship - which basically means personal prayer, for them. Outside of the practice of personal prayer, the religion doesn't really have a strong tradition of personal worship outside of participation in the official festivals and holy days; piety mostly means participating in those community rituals.

Anyways, here we go:

Offerings

Most worship services and holy days involve making offerings to one or more of the gods. There are two general kinds of offerings: the offering ad caelum, or “to the heavens,” and the offering ad terram, or “to the earth.”

The offering ad caelum is performed by burning the offering in the sacred fire, letting the smoke ascend into the heavens. Offerings in this manner are normally performed to the gods who are associated with the heavens - Taris, Nalathea, Hurisen, and Jerad. The most common components of this type of offering are libations of oil, wine, or a mixture of the two. Oil is used to drench the fuel of the sacred fire before it is lit, while wine is poured into a carved depression in the altar directly in front of the fire, where the heat can boil it off and send the steam into the heavens. Burned incense is also very common as a component of these offerings.

In contrast, offerings ad terram are performed by giving the offering to the earth. For libations, or liquid offerings, this is done by pouring the offering into the soil at the base of the shrine, which is kept freshly turned over to allow liquid to soak in rather than running off. For offerings of grain or other non-liquid items, they are buried in that freshly turned earth instead. This manner of offerings is performed to the gods who are associated with the earth - Miranda, Argon, and Coden. Again, oil and wine are common offerings, but they are also commonly accompanied by grain. For the worship of Miranda specifically, incense is often also burned, since she is the consort of the King of Heaven while also being the Queen of the Underworld.

Individual Worship

While the Tribunal is most often worshipped in communal settings, such as worship services or the holy days of the sacred calendar, there is also an individual component to religious worship. This manifests most prominently in the practice of individual prayer.

According to the theologians of the Court of the Gods, the Lords of Heaven respond most strongly to communal worship, such as the offerings performed on holy days. However, individual prayer is believed to be a powerful spiritual practice under the right circumstances. The most common recipients of personal prayer are Nalathea and Hurisen - the Virgin receives requests for relief from injustice, or punishment on those who have committed wrong against the petitioner, while Hurisen receives prayers that ask for relief from misfortune or protection against future misfortune.

As king of the gods, Taris receives prayers from rulers, but is considered to be too powerful and remote to approach with other personal requests. However, there is a strong folk belief that when a ruler is oppressing his people widely, Taris may intervene if enough of the oppressed folk offer prayers that make the oppression known.

Prayer to all three of these gods involves burning a small wooden token that has been engraved or carved with the god’s symbol, while reciting the ritual opening words to a prayer. The request is believed to ascend to the heavens with the smoke of the fire. When the token has fully caught fire, the individual prayer is offered. Some areas have developed customary words and phrases that are used in such prayers, while other areas see far more personalized petitions.

Of the remaining gods, Miranda is believed to be far more approachable than her husband. However, petitions to the Queen of Heaven are made at the worship services on the new moons, and personal prayer to her outside those services is discouraged (though many people ignore those pronouncements, especially in times of emergency). Coden receives ritual prayers of thanks before every meal (at least by the most devout), although prayers of petition or request addressed to him are rare outside of his priesthood. Jerad is believed to be the most removed from the concerns of the mortal world, and only members of his anointed priesthood make regular individual prayers to him.

Argon, on the other hand, has his own distinct prayer rituals. These have been strongly discouraged by the Court of the Gods (like much of the worship of Argon generally), but are not forbidden outright. And despite the official suppression, these rituals are widely practiced among soldiers across all the lands that worship the Tribunal.

As a god associated with the earth, rather than the heavens, prayers to Argon do not involve burning tokens. Instead, the token is buried in the ground - often with a small offering of coin, to indicate sincerity and sacrifice. In places where the worship of Argon is formalized, such as among the Paladin orders, the place for burial is in front of Argon’s altar - either a permanent shrine, or one of the mobile shrines that accompany armies on the march. In other places, it is often buried inside the worshippers tent, to avoid prying eyes

[Seonid he/him]

Alright - welcome back to today's installment of "Is Seonid writing a novel or an RPG Setting Sourcebook?" If I knew the answer, I'd tell you!!

Today, let's talk about family structure among the Avrans.

Among the Avrans, the fundamental family unit is the menage, or household. In most cases, this is more expansive than simply a nuclear family unit. In fact, Avran society only barely recognizes the nuclear family as its own special unit apart from the household; it primarily serves to establish an individual’s status within the household.

However, households from different strata of society have distinct structures; a noble household looks entirely different from the household of a peasant or even a middle-class artisan. Today, we'll focus on the way this structure plays out among the commonfolk.

An Avran household is centered on landowning; among the commonfolk, the core of each household is generally a married couple who have title to a parcel of land; these are the proprietaires, or holders. The holders are the rulers of the entire household, with the final legal jurisdiction over the people and property associated with it. The household includes the couple and their children, but it very often includes other related adults as well - these are called la fratrie, or hold-members, and consist of siblings or other relations to the holders who don’t own any land of their own. Many households also contain unrelated hired hands who help with the labor on the farm.

Because of the importance of landowning, the structure of an Avran household is intimately tied to inheritance - who gets the title to the land when the holders die or age out of being able to fulfil their responsibilities. Avran law asserts that both members of a married couple have equal right and title to their household’s possessions, so if one of the holders dies, their spouse keeps all of their joint property. However, this generally only applies to first marriages - a widowed holder who remarries does not normally transfer the title of their lands to their new spouse (although exceptions do exist; especially if the first marriage produced no children).

In addition to death, another way for inheritance to transfer is the custom of retraite. When one or both holders are too old to continue governing their household, they hold a ceremony that divides up the inheritance among their children. In many areas, it is customary to hold the retraite once both holders have reached the age of 60, even if they are capable of continuing in their positions. In the north and the eastern fiefs, the custom has become a legal proceeding, officially transferring the title of ownership to the holders’ heirs; in the south the custom does not have any legal force, and the title to the land transfers only once the holders have died.

Whether by death or retraite, the inheritance passes to the next generation. How that happens depends on the size of the land parcel owned by the holders. If the land is large enough that it can be divided out to all of the children without consequence, then each of the children generally becomes holders in their own right, on a smaller but still sufficient parcel.

However, in most cases, the land has been passed down through enough generations that, if it is split between children, neither of the new holders will be able to support themselves living on it. In these cases, the oldest child in the household and their spouse become the new holders, and any other children and their families become part of the household’s hold-members.

Hold-members are the second tier in the household hierarchy, and consist of all of the adult relations to the holders that reside in the household. They do not own any title to the land, but the holders are legally responsible to provide for their upkeep, and they enjoy considerable legal protections. Among these is the protection against exile - a hold-member cannot be severed from their household without having first been convicted of a serious crime by a judge.

The third and lowest tier in the household hierarchy are the hired hands. These are people who are unrelated to the holders, but who have joined the household, and provide their labor for the farm fields in exchange for food and shelter, and sometimes a salary. The hired hands have few legal rights compared to hold-members; although they cannot legally be dismissed during the winter (unless they are convicted of serious wrongdoing), they can be sent away at any other time without reason or warning required. Some hired hands are even indentured servants, who have been indentured due to debt or to some non-violent crime, and are working to pay off their debt or to fulfil their sentence.

Hired hands are a widely variable lot; some stay on a holder’s farm for their entire lives, marrying and having children and working as a third-class member of the household. Some marry one of the hold-members’ children, and become hold-members themselves. Some are transient, and work for a few seasons before leaving the household to work for a wealthier one, to marry, or to pursue some other trade.

This pattern generally persists across all levels of the Avran commonfolk - a tenant farmer household is structured along the same lines as a wealthy freeholder’s. Some households may be as small as a single couple and their children, or even a widowed holder with no living heirs. On the other end of the scale, a wealthy freeholder’s household might include a dozen adult hold-members and a rotating cast of hired hands, including some hired as domestic help in addition to the hired workers in the fields.
The pattern only begins to break down among the serfs. The prevalence of serfdom among the Avran fiefs varies widely, depending on the region as well as the time period. But anywhere it exists, a serf household has no land associated with it for inheritance. Serfs also tend to be grouped together in their own little villages, instead of intermingled with the households of the land-owning peasantry. As a result, their family patterns have developed their own unique traditions.

Avran serfs still refer to their family units as households, but those households generally consist of only a couple and their children. Many serfs are extremely poor, and their households are no larger than that - in fact, they will often send their children out as hired hands in other serf households in order to reduce the burden on their own. This practice brings in additional income for the household, reduces the upkeep required for the children, and can also serve as a form of social mobility.

The households of wealthier villeins tend to collect an array of hired hands from other serf households in nearby villages. Instead of food and shelter, since those are contractually provided by the lord to their serfs, villeins pay a salary to their hired hands. While the extra labor provided by the hired hands allows these villeins to earn even more, expanding their profits, the salaries they pay are often comparatively generous, and serve to boost the fortunes of the poorest in the serf villages they live in.