Seonid

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.

If all y'all need help not feeling quite as old, I don't recognize any of those names because they were after my time

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

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

That's an awful feeling, and I am way too familiar with it. I have two bits of advice - first, give yourself grace. It is not a moral failing to not accomplish everything you wanted to. *pause for emphasis* I repeat - it is not a moral failing to not get everything done on your to do list. It's not even a moral failing to get none of it done. Your moral status, your success in life, any of the things that really matter? None of them are connected to your productivity. *This is the part where I go on one of my patented Seonid Long Rambling Tangents* (Go ahead and skip past the spoiler, which is where I get back to directly applicable commentary lol) I don't have much to say about the feeling of being a spectator in your own life. I can speculate on the word interplay between free will and brain chemistry with the best of 'em, but I don't have any answers. I mean, just today, I wanted to write for a good 5-6 hours, and instead I sat down, played a computer game, took a nap, and now I'm making dinner. All while thinking to myself "I want to write." Like, the part of me that wants that wasn't in the driver's seat. My coping mechanism is to try and learn how my body reacts to things so that I can predict its triggers and plan accordingly. You probably only need one guess to tell how well it's going lol. But for a second piece of advice? Make sure you're getting some validation. All the lovely folks here do an excellent job of it. Keep reaching out for it when you need it, and keep giving it out when others do. That's what we humans do at our best - we lift each other up and hold each other's heads out of the water. And remember, you're awesome, no matter what. Even on your most down and depressed day, after you've done the most disappointing stuff - it doesn't change your status if "awesome and deserving of all the hugs".

@Kansas Stormcursed@Hawks@VieB13@CoderDrag0n8@Ink and Embers Thank you all. I appreciate the support.

Venting time for a moment. This last week has been awful, honestly. I had a scare where I thought I was going to get laid off at work, being cooped up at home on furlough triggered my depression really bad, and I want even able to write at all. And time is running out of I want my dad to be able to read one of my books before he passes. That used to be motivating but this week it's been anxiety-inducing. I don't have much to say to mitigate it, either.

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

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.

Pretty sure those are deleted accounts. I don't remember any guest posting from back then. I do remember one or two joke accounts - there was one where someone created an account explicitly to see what all of the downvote titles were. I think they ended up with -10k rep or so before the mods shut it down. I wonder if they got deleted for violating the rule against duplicate accounts at some point?

I am from 2014. Guilty as charged. I think I signed up either right before or right after the Words of Radiance release party. Back in those days, I actually followed all of the Words of Brandon from various signings very closely. My biggest claim to fame (and the only time I ever actually "Won the Day" - gosh, I remember when that was new) was at the Shadows of Self (or Bands of Mourning?) release tour, when I asked a question at a signing and finally got the name of Bavadin's Shard - Autonomy. There were people older than me though - Wilson is one of the oldest; I met her in person once or twice at signings. She's pretty cool lol (and I'm not just saying that because I used to be an SE moderator with her). I remember all of those old names, and some others. Kobold King and TwilightSansSparkles were the big names when I was last on - they started the Reckoners RP with "What Happened in Oregon." That kind of took off like a rocketship. Inspired a lot of other RPs later on, but none of them ever quite had the same success. Until maybe the Alleyverse? For a long time, "And then Nighthound died" used to be a mantra on the Shard for a while. See this link for a brief explanation. A quick google search says that it actually made it into a TVTropes page. That was after my time, though. I do remember the Dark Alley, but they were a group in Social Clans and Guilds back then. They hung around in the Introduce Yourself forum and offered spiked cookies to new members. I wondered where that had gone. I assume that group turned into the Alleyverse RP? I retired from SE and took a vacation from the Shard in roughly 2019, but I can provide some perspective on those 5 years - mostly from the Sanderson Elimination and Creator's Corner angles, but the different areas of the Shard were a lot smaller back then, and there was a lot more interaction between regions.

Beautiful. I'm no expert on poetry, so I can't give specific "What if you did X" feedback, but I liked them.

Nice demonstration of the friendly atmosphere - it doesn't feel as cutthroat as other settings I've read with that kind of premise. The fight felt plausible, no "wait, I don't think weapons do that" moments. For that matter, nothing really pulled me out of the writing. I like it.

(Context: I'm a US Federal employee affected by the govt shutdown) So my agency ran out of the 5 days of alternate funding we had, so I'm officially on furlough now. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to sit down and write.

Thanks - I made it through without slipping back into depression spirals, so that's a blessing! It helped that the kids really wanted to spend some time watching/playing on screens, so that gave me enough time to recharge before I really needed to be present.

So today was a bit on the rough side - mostly work. I'm not going to get into politics (which is no longer allowed on the forum apparently - 6 years changes a lot of things), but I work for the US federal government, and for those who don't know, we are currently in a shutdown status. My agency had a source of funding that could keep us open for 5 days after things shut down, but it's now been 5 days. Most of today was spent waiting for the official notice that we were going into a lapse of appropriations status. SPOILER ALERT - it never came. Now I have to wake up early tomorrow just to check my email to make sure that my leadership did their job right and told us we were doing an orderly shutdown. And my division had an all-hands meeting to talk about it where they had clearly planned on having the information to give us, but since their higher ups hadn't officially said anything, our division spent the whole meeting saying "I guess we just don't know yet. Wait until we get official communication." I mean, I'd really like to know if I get to stay home tomorrow, or if I have to start coming into work without getting paid? That seems kind of important? Just a little bit? So I'm all low-energy now, and that's dangerous grounds for my depression. And on top of it, my wife is working tonight, so I have to be "on" with the kids until she gets home. And I love my kids, but there's 4 of them and only 1 of me, and I'm already drained. It's gonna be a long evening. I'm hoping I can avoid a depression spiral (luckily I'm too completely drained for my brain to do my hyperactive anxiety thing - that's worse for me in a lot of ways). I'll check back in at the end of the night, but I could use prayers or good vibes or well-wishes, or whatever you all want to send.

That's amazing!

I'm in a very weird situation where I've been updating a setting from my junior high days - I first started worldbuilding this place when I was 14. And back then it was very derivative, and I totally ripped off Tolkienien Elvish words for at least one country name, and was making up outlandish names for the heck of it. I returned to it in college, about 10 years ago (you can actually see some of that in my worldbuilding posts from back then lol - I ran a short-lived RP set in Edassa where I got to flesh out a lot of setting stuff). As part of that process, I went and reworked a lot of the nation names and stuff, trying to make them more internally consistent. I finally came back to it again about a year or two ago, and actually started putting in a lot more effort. This time around, I've been taking almost everything that isn't so explicitly trained in my memory that changing it is hopeless and beating it into submission to where things sound "right" to my ears. Not just "fantasy-esque collection of syllables" but "I want southern Avran city names to evoke the French countryside, while the North should feel a little bit English, and the northwest wants some Germanic influence" and "the Empire of Kalon should have feel like they are using Anglo-Saxon naming conventions, even if I'm not actually copying them." For most of my cultures, I have a real-world culture paired with them that I want to evoke with things like language and stuff. Actual cultural practices are going to diverge strongly - the Avrans are not fantasy-French; their culture and stuff is their own. But their buildings and language and stuff are French-ish. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there is a layer on top of that that consists of names that I started with and really can't give up... Lushbeck, for example. That's been the capital city as long as I can remember. Too stuck in my mind to be worth changing (or maybe I'm too attached to it). Many character names are like this. The characters have been around in my head too long for me to successfully rename them, so if they stick out a bit, oh well. I can always retcon them as being of foreign origin - the rivers are major trade arteries and the Empire traded widely abroad. I hope that was a decent answer. If you're curious about the origin of any particular name, let me know and I'll go into more detail there

Weekly writing accountability post for week ending 10/05/25 Total words written: ~29,000 Didn't finish any new scenes, but I got started on increasing the word count again! And I completely finished the scene revisions that were still on the plate from last week's update, so despite the meager word count progress, this has still been a productive week. And next week we are *finally* going to pass the 30,000 word mark! Goal for next week: 33,000 words

I haven't seen Fern Gully in a day and an age. I just went and reread Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which was made into another one if those traumatizing animated movies that haunted Millennials childhood... It was a delightful trip down memory lane, for sure.

@Hawks guilty as charged. As for @Tam Tucker, as far as I'm concerned, the validity of your marriage is between you, your wife, and God. As far as not getting civilly married for financial reasons? Honestly, if the situation is that people who would otherwise want to marry cannot because it would financially break them? My opinion is that the fact that those situations exist and are allowed to persist is an indictment on the society - in a just society, financial devastation like that would not be a potential consequence of a marriage. As far as people telling you you're going to hell? Turns out that the only being whose opinion on that subject matters is God. But if you really want my opinion? From a religious perspective, a marriage is a public commitment between the couple, witnessed by the religious community and God (obligatory disclaimer that this certainly doesn't apply to all marriage ceremonies in all traditions, but I think it works well enough as a generalization for most monotheistic religious traditions in the Western world). Legal contracts are important for tax purposes, inheritance of property, and other places where the secular authority intersects with the couples life. But having a marriage recognized by the state (I will note here that the state is almost always a secular authority) has no bearing on whether it not that marriage is valid on religious terms. For that? I think it's simple. If the person who performed the marriage was authorized to do so by the religious tradition, the the marriage is valid. Full stop.

So, today is technically not a Saturday, but tomorrow is going to be really busy for me, so I'm going to do my worldbuilding post a day early. Having gone into the geography and political structure of the kingdom of Gaelet, it's time to do some deep dives on the culture of the people who live there. And we'll start with my specialty: Religions. Gaelet lies in a region influenced by two widely different cultures, each with their own religion. Today we are going to do part 1 of a series on the religious beliefs of the Avran peoples. Of course, the Avran culture occupies most of the midlands of the continent, so trying to paint it all with a single brush obscures a great deal of regional variation (as we saw when looking at something as comparatively simple as noble titles earlier!), but the region is historically dominated by the worship of the Tribunal. (Many fiefdoms in the far north have converted to the Church of the Martyr, but they are distant enough from the Kingdom of Gaelet that that religion's direct cultural influence is negligible, other than the effect the schism had on the Court of the Gods itself). Much like many religions in Earth's antiquity, the religion built up around the worship of the Tribunal doesn't really have a name it calls itself. Names, for a religion, are things that distinguish themselves from the "other," and the worship of the Tribunal claims to encompass every "other" there is. The religion of Earth's Romans is not a particularly useful parallel to the Tribunal in a lot of ways, but it tracks here - the Romans didn't consider themselves as members of any particular religion. But they were highly religious - worshiping the gods of their city and their culture. And making offerings to the new gods they encountered as they went off conquering places - sometimes identifying them as aspects of one of their own gods, sometimes as something completely different. Even today, we don't have a "name" for the Roman religion, like we do with "Christianity" or "Islam" or "Buddhism." If we need to refer to it with a pithy shorthand, sometimes we might call it "Roman paganism" but even that is a name that outsiders (particularly Christians) gave it. For the worship of the Tribunal, outsiders have a wide variety of names for it, but they are all informed by the individual culture, and basically comprise a variety of ways to say "not like us." However, scholars do use its center of political power - The Court of the Gods - as a reference to the religion as a whole, though that isn't a perfectly satisfactory method. Anyways. The worship of the Tribunal is one of most influential religions of the Edassan continent, and the single most influential organized religion thereon. It is centered at the Court of the Gods, an independent complex - large enough to be called a city in its own right - within the city of Cherisse, in the Godlands. Unlike many other Edassan religions, it is structured and organized. In fact, the power, influence, and organization of the Court is one reason there are few, if any, kingdoms among the Avran fiefdoms. Technically, the High God Taris is the only king the faithful should need, and ruling nobles in general swear allegiance to Him instead of any earthly king. In fact, historically, the Court of the Gods has viewed independent kingdoms under their influence as a threat of heresy at best and downright antithetical to true religion at worst, so they have been energetically discouraged. But Gaelet of the house of Wyst needed something that could weld a rebellion of multiple cultures together without falling apart at the seams, and so he latched on the idea of a kingdom of their own, separate from any other influence - including the Court of the Gods. Despite being a pious man himself, the political usefulness of that idea was more than enough to override any qualms his religious advisors might have had. And since the schism between the Court and the Church of the Martyr, much of the Court's thinking had moderated - there is nothing like an actual schism caused by high-handed exercise of power to make the powers that be wary of doing something like that again. So instead of being roundly condemned by the Court, Gaelet got private warnings about how dangerous it could be, and incentives to make sure that the Court maintained its position and influence in his kingdom rather than being shut out. Anyways, that was a very long preamble to our real topic. Today we're going to talk about the gods of the Tribunal, and the other beings that populate their heavenly cosmology. The Worship of the Tribunal: Part 1 - Gods and Heavenly Beings The Court of the Gods in the modern day holds that there are only seven gods in the heavens that are deserving of worship. For centuries, the question of who was deserving of worship was a major doctrinal question that threatened major schisms on three separate occasions. Finally, however, the question was settled by the Proclamation of Unification - now some four centuries old. It declared the seven gods of the cosmos, but allowed that these divine beings may have revealed themselves under other names, and permitted the worship of local gods as aspects of the seven Lords of Heaven (as long as it was acknowledged as such). This was not an uncontroversial position, and despite attempting to placate all sides by leaving folk traditions and regional variation unchanged while acknowledging the supremacy of the doctrinal purists, it garnered widespread opposition in the first century following its implementation. However, it is now old enough to be unchallenged doctrine. We'll talk about regional variation in a couple of weeks, I think (especially in the regions that became the kingdom of Gaelet). For now, the important bits are that there are seven gods and a lot of very detailed theological argumentation about it. The seven gods are as follows: Taris - God of Justice and the Heavens Miranda - Goddess of Life, Love, and Death Argon the Warrior - God of War and Protection Nalathea the Virgin - Goddess of Light and Fire Khurdan the Maker - God of Creation and the Earth Jerad the Wise - God of Knowledge and the Stars Hurisen, the Lady of Gifts - Goddess of Gifts and Law Beyond the Seven Gods, the heavens are supposed to be filled with many other divine servants and angelic beings, as well as their demonic opponents. Among those, three are distinguished by name: Arrion the Hawk Tilrakh the Fallen Sitta the Demonking

I completely agree with @DrPhysics here (side note - that's awesome that you're a physics professor! I wanted to do that as a career path once upon a time, but I burned out trying to juggle a full-time job and full-time college, and didn't end up going to grad school). DrPhysics uses the term magic to describe "phenomenon that don't follow the laws of physics as we understand them" - I used the word handwave, but the idea is the same. Any story that isn't explicitly set in the world we live in (and many that are!) have magic or handwaves of some kind, and it's not a crime to use them! You have an awesome system here - I think that spending your time developing what the rules are rather than trying to make it work within physics-as-we-understand-it will give you a better return on your investment. If you really want to ground it in physical principles, I wouldn't look into the causes of the "magic/handwave", but rather into firming up it's effects. Like, if the effect of zap metal is to let someone fire off otherwise-normal arcs of electricity, you get better results from making sure you understand how electricity behaves as it arcs and interacts with a human body or the armor the target is wearing instead of trying to figure out how zap metal could create that effect. As an example - my hard-(ish) sci-fi setting incorporates a widely distributed set of stations around the galaxy that create stable wormholes through which you can pilot a spaceship and travel to far-off star systems. How does it do that? An ancient alien civilization did it. Can the people who live there reproduce it? Nope! It's literally beyond their understanding of physics (and mine!). But instead of spending a lot of energy figuring out exactly how whatever advanced alien materials work and produce their wormhole effect, I figured out what they did and then built the universe from there.