The Aurethian faith is one of the oldest and most widespread organized religions in Veyrath. Once the state religion of the Arvessan Empire, it survived the Empire's collapse and remains deeply rooted throughout the Arvessan Basin, much of Mediath, and parts of Occara. Its organized religious institution is known as the Aurethian Celestiate.
Aurethians worship Aureth, the supreme God and Creator, together with the Nine Ladies, divine women entrusted with the care of Veyrath. Aureth stands above the Ladies in mainstream doctrine. He is not simply the greatest member of a pantheon, nor does he govern a particular aspect of life. Aureth is God. The Ladies are lesser divinities with distinct spheres of authority and are approached directly for matters within those spheres.
In ordinary speech, Aurethians often speak simply of "God and the Ladies."
Aurethian teaching holds that before creation there was only Aureth.
He created the universe, but it was empty and dark, and Aureth was alone. He therefore created the Ladies, whose celestial bodies became the stars. With them came the first light in the universe.
The Ladies are believed to be innumerable. Every star in the night sky is the celestial embodiment of one of them.
Together, Aureth and the Ladies brought forth worlds and life across creation. Eons passed, and among the countless Ladies, nine rose above all others in Aureth's favor.
Aureth created Veyrath as a home for these favored Nine and sent them down from the heavens to shape it.
The Nine descended bodily in the forms of women. They made the living world according to their natures, established the great aspects of mortal existence, created or shaped the peoples of Veyrath, and taught them the arts necessary for civilization.
Aurethians believe the Nine never truly left.
The Ladies are said to continue walking Veyrath in the forms of ordinary women. Stories of strangers who prove unexpectedly wise, beautiful, dangerous, fortunate, or impossible are common throughout Aurethian lands. The Celestiate accepts that encounters with the Ladies are possible, though it is considerably less eager to believe every traveller, drunkard, soldier, or prophet who claims to have met one.
The sun is Aureth, the brightest and nearest light in the heavens, watching over Veyrath and his Ladies.
The stars are the Ladies.
Lady | Sphere |
|---|---|
Law, justice, courts, oaths, contracts, government and civic order | |
War, soldiers, weapons, courage, hunting and pursuit | |
The sea, sailors, ships, navigation, storms, fishing and coastal life | |
Love, marriage, family, children, kinship and the household | |
Lust, sexual desire, seduction, erotic beauty, passion and bodily pleasure | |
Trade, merchants, markets, money, bargaining and commerce | |
Farming, crops, livestock, husbandry, harvest and cultivated land | |
Cunning, scholarship, academia, rhetoric, strategy, deception, theft, fraud and confidence tricks | |
Death, funerals, burial, mourning, remembrance and the treatment of the dead |
The portfolios of the Ladies are not simply a catalogue of virtues.
Lyris, for example, governs intelligence used to gain advantage. A scholar may pray to her before an examination, a diplomat before a difficult negotiation, and a thief before a burglary. Cassara may then govern the court that sentences the thief if he is caught.
Likewise, Selyra and Alessia are distinct. Alessia governs the bonds that hold lovers and families together. Selyra governs desire itself. The two frequently complement one another and just as frequently come into conflict.
Morenna is solemn rather than evil. Death is regarded as part of the proper order of life, allowing one generation to follow another.
Aurethian morality is traditionally expressed through the Precepts of the Nine.
Each of the Nine Ladies embodies both a virtue, representing the proper expression of her sphere, and a corresponding sin, representing its corruption, neglect, or misuse.
Aurethians are not expected to devote themselves exclusively to one virtue. The ideal is balance. A theoretically perfect adherent possesses all Nine Virtues, avoids all Nine Sins, and understands when one virtue must restrain another.
Aureth has no tenth virtue or sin. He represents the proper ordering of the Nine into a complete life.
Lady | Virtue | Sin |
|---|---|---|
Cassara | Duty | Caprice |
Vaedra | Courage | Cravenness |
Neressa | Readiness | Presumption |
Alessia | Fidelity | Betrayal |
Selyra | Mutuality | Violation |
Tessara | Enterprise | Hoarding |
Cerena | Stewardship | Waste |
Lyris | Ingenuity | Credulity |
Morenna | Reverence | Desecration |
Cassara teaches Duty: honoring lawful obligations, exercising authority according to its proper limits, keeping solemn oaths, and fulfilling the responsibilities of one's station.
Her sin is Caprice: placing personal whim above obligation. Arbitrary judgment, selective enforcement, abuse of office, and treating laws as binding everyone except oneself are characteristically Cassaran failings.
Vaedra teaches Courage: confronting necessary danger despite fear.
Fear itself is not sinful, nor is retreat when retreat is sensible. Cravenness lies in abandoning a necessary struggle merely to preserve oneself when duty, survival, or responsibility requires facing it.
Neressa teaches Readiness: prepare for uncertainty rather than assuming circumstances will favor you.
Maintain the ship. Carry provisions. Watch the weather. Know the road. Listen to experience. Have a plan when things go wrong.
Her sin is Presumption: knowingly entering danger unprepared because one assumes skill, luck, rank, or divine favor will somehow make preparation unnecessary.
Alessia teaches Fidelity: honoring the bonds one has genuinely undertaken with spouse, family, children, kin, household, and those accepted as one's own.
Her sin is Betrayal: knowingly turning those bonds against people who trusted them, abandoning dependents, exploiting family confidence, or discarding obligations merely because they have become inconvenient.
Fidelity does not require eternal affection. It requires honoring obligations while they remain.
Selyra teaches Mutuality.
Desire should be met by desire, pleasure given as well as taken, and bodily appetite expressed without false shame between willing participants.
Her sin is Violation: obtaining sexual access through force, coercion, threats, abuse of dependence, or exploitation of someone incapable of meaningful choice.
Aurethian teaching therefore does not consider lust itself morally suspect. The moral distinction lies in how desire is expressed.
Tessara teaches Enterprise: put resources into motion.
Trade, invest, bargain, build, take calculated risks, create useful wealth, and find exchanges from which people can profit.
Her sin is Hoarding. This does not mean saving money or maintaining reserves. Hoarding means accumulating wealth merely to possess it, withdrawing resources from useful circulation, and allowing productive wealth to become sterile.
A rich merchant may exemplify Tessaran virtue. A miser sitting upon a fortune while everything around him decays may exemplify her sin.
Cerena teaches Stewardship: care for the things upon which continued life depends.
Maintain land, animals, tools, food stores, waterworks, seed, buildings, and other useful resources so that they remain productive.
Her sin is Waste: unnecessary destruction, neglect, spoilage, or careless exhaustion of something useful.
Cerenan teaching is intensely practical. What sustains life should be tended rather than squandered.
Lyris teaches Ingenuity: observe, question, study, improvise, recognize patterns, solve problems, and use intelligence to gain advantage.
Her sin is Credulity: surrendering one's judgment willingly.
Being deceived is not itself sinful. Anyone can be fooled. Refusing to question obvious claims, repeatedly learning nothing from deception, or accepting something merely because thinking about it would be inconvenient is another matter.
Lyran morality does not automatically equate cleverness with goodness. A brilliant fraud may display Ingenuity while simultaneously violating Cassaran law.
Morenna teaches Reverence toward death.
The dead should be identified where possible, treated properly, remembered, mourned, and granted the rites owed to them. Mortality is accepted as part of the order of life rather than regarded as inherently corrupt.
Her sin is Desecration: deliberately stripping death of its dignity through malicious mutilation, abuse of corpses, destruction of graves, denial of proper treatment to the dead, or deliberate erasure of their memory.
Morenna does not condemn grief or the desire to live. Her teaching is that death has a rightful place and should not be degraded.
The Nine Virtues are intended to restrain and complete one another.
Courage without Readiness becomes recklessness. Fidelity without Ingenuity can become blind loyalty. Ingenuity without Duty can become manipulation without restraint. Enterprise without Stewardship consumes the resources that sustain it. Mutuality without Fidelity can satisfy immediate desire while destroying obligations already undertaken.
Aurethian moral teaching therefore asks more than whether an action reflects a particular virtue. It asks whether the Nine are properly balanced.
The ideal Aurethian is not simply courageous, dutiful, clever, prosperous, loyal, prepared, sensual, careful, or reverent.
The ideal is to know which virtue the moment requires, and which of the others must keep it within its proper bounds.
Aurel, the first day of the five-day week, is the principal Aurethian day of worship.
It is not a day of rest. Farms operate, ships sail, soldiers remain on duty, businesses open, and ordinary work continues. People are nevertheless expected to arrange their affairs so they can attend Mass at sunset.
A typical Aurel follows a familiar rhythm: finish the day's work, eat a good meal, attend sunset Mass, then return home for the night.
The timing is religiously significant. Worshippers gather as Aureth's sun descends. During the service, darkness falls and the stars of the Ladies emerge overhead.
Aurethian prayer is usually quiet and physical.
Worshippers commonly kneel, clasp their hands, bow their heads, and pray. Children learn established prayers whose wording has been repeated for generations, but spontaneous prayer is equally ordinary.
A sailor caught in a storm does not need to remember a formal liturgy before begging Neressa for help.
A soldier may whisper to Vaedra before battle.
A parent may pray privately to Alessia.
A merchant about to risk his savings on a venture may kneel before Tessara.
Formal worship of a Lady normally preserves Aureth's precedence. Mainstream doctrine regards every Lady's authority as existing beneath God.
Every town has a temple. The first and principal temple established in any population center is its Prime Temple.
A Prime Temple embodies Aurethian theology in its architecture. Aureth occupies the central sanctuary, while nine alcoves surround him, one dedicated to each of the Nine Ladies.
Larger settlements also contain temples dedicated principally to individual Ladies.
Ports commonly possess important temples of Neressa. Military citadels may maintain temples of Vaedra. Agricultural communities support temples of Cerena. Great markets and commercial districts favor Tessara. Universities and scholarly quarters often develop strong traditions surrounding Lyris.
These are not separate religions. A temple of Neressa remains part of the Aurethian religious world.
The Celestiate maintains the temples, clergy, religious education, doctrine, ceremonial standards and much of the institutional continuity inherited from the Arvessan Empire.
Religion in Aurethian society involves more than prayer.
Important moments in life are marked by rites belonging to the appropriate Lady.
Marriage belongs to Alessia. Weddings, betrothals, adoptions and formal joining of households fall within her sphere.
Funerals belong to Morenna. The preparation of the dead, burial or cremation, mourning and cemetery rites are Morennan concerns.
Vaedran clergy bless weapons, soldiers, military standards and hunts.
Neressan rites accompany ship launchings, voyages, fishing expeditions and safe returns from sea.
Cerena is invoked during planting, harvest, livestock breeding and the blessing of fields and herds.
Tessara receives offerings connected to markets, businesses and profitable trade.
Lyris is invoked before examinations, debates, schemes, negotiations and less respectable exercises of cunning.
Selyran worship is unusually physical. Her temples may feature wine, music, dancing, erotic performance, ritual nudity and consensual sexual activity. Formal sexual rites, including sex performed at or before sacred altars, are recognized parts of her worship. Mainstream Aurethianism accepts these practices as legitimate, although regular participation can carry a degree of social stigma among followers more strongly devoted to the other Ladies.
The Aurethian Celestiate is the organized institution of the faith.
It grew out of the formal state religion of the Arvessan Empire and endured after imperial political unity disappeared. The Celestiate maintains a professional clergy, temples, religious law, education, public rites and a substantial ceremonial role in many Aurethian states.
Its clergy officiate marriages and funerals, bless soldiers and ships, conduct Aurel Mass, participate in public mourning, witness solemn oaths and remain involved in questions of political legitimacy. In Valessar, for example, the office of High Prelate remains one of considerable religious and public importance.
The Celestiate is ancient, wealthy, bureaucratic and far from culturally uniform. Hundreds of Cycles (each equal to 1.4608 Veyrathian years) of political division have produced regional customs and theological disputes while preserving a recognizable common religion.
Aurethianism is not merely a matter of private belief. Across most of the Arvessan successor states, religion is woven deeply into ordinary social life. Nearly everyone attends Aurel Mass with some regularity, prays when circumstance gives them reason to, observes the major rites of life, and makes at least a passing effort to live according to the Precepts of the Nine. The average Aurethian is not necessarily deeply learned, rigorously devout, or morally exemplary. People miss Mass, quarrel with priests, commit sins they fully intend to commit again, misunderstand doctrine, and favor some Ladies more strongly than others. What is unusual is not imperfect observance, but complete indifference to the faith.
Religion consequently shapes much of society beyond the temple itself. Marriages are Alessian, funerals Morennan, soldiers invoke Vaedra, sailors and fishermen turn to Neressa, farmers observe Cerenan rites, merchants seek Tessara's favor, and oaths and public offices carry Cassaran significance. Schools, hospitals, cemeteries, charities, archives, military ceremonies, coronations, and civic observances are often tied to the Celestiate. The language of virtue and sin provides a common framework for judging conduct even among people who disagree sharply about politics, morality, or the clergy themselves. A person may dislike a particular priest, distrust the Celestiate as an institution, or fail badly at living virtuously without ceasing to regard Aureth, the Ladies, Mass, and the Precepts as ordinary parts of how the world works.
Open irreligion exists, but throughout most Aurethian successor states it is socially conspicuous rather than culturally normal.
Two major religious traditions share roots with Aurethianism but are no longer regarded as ordinary expressions of mainstream Celestiate belief.
Asharanic is the principal faith of Ashara. It centers religious life upon Ashara, the native Asharan name of Selyra, and gives her a position that the mainstream Celestiate considers dangerously elevated. Asharans do not normally call themselves Aurethian.
Aurethic religion worships Aureth alone and rejects worship of the Ladies. It is most strongly associated with the Ekbir Caliphate.
Both traditions are closely entangled with Aurethian religious history, but each has developed sufficiently distinct theology and practice to warrant treatment as a faith in its own right.