RELIGION INFORMATION

**Opal Hutchinson** Wed Feb 29, 2012 9:40 am

For starters, it should be understood that the religions in Thibudis are vastly different, and in many cases - mainly in Aenias City - the two live as harmoniously as they can alongside each other.

The Empire functions on a strict religion-based hierarchy, with the Prophets equating to religious leaders who have ascended to a state where they can supposedly converse with the Ancestor spirits, and, with them, the isolated soul of Aenias, trapped and preserved in a vacuum glass coffin at the highest peak of Prophets' Dominion. As his body is bound and frozen in a perpetual state of post-death, arrow still protruding from his chest, his spirit cannot leave the tower. And, thus, the Ancestor spirit of Aenias is bound to the palace he once inhabited and called his own.

The Prophets then pass their word down, three times a week, to the various arch-bishops and religious heads that crest the Church of Aenias, a religious movement that blankets the entirety of Aenias City, with almost three million followers in the city alone. Due to technological advancements, and Aenias' now-obsolete mind, it's believed that either the Prophets are lying about what they say of Aenias' spirit, or that it's not worth listening to an old king's indistinct death rattles. Atheism is awry.

The Church of Aenias functions similarly to Christianity, showing a supreme being known only as God. However, his official 'title' is the 'Original Ancestor', it being believed that he indeed fashioned the globe, and, in turn, Thibudis, at the beginning of all time, and it is just believed that Aenias, and, indeed, the other Ancestors, have ascended to a higher state of being where they can converse with him - although most Ancestors divulge nothing of a supreme being.

There is also belief of Hell alongside Paradise. Disbelievers' souls remain on Thibudis after death; sinners are not only denied passage, but forced beyond Purgatory to have a fragment of their soul remain on Earth about their body as they slowly go crazy from a supposed afterlife and eternity of torture and seething flame in the very depths of Hell.

Generally, Aenias and his following is regarded as the reasoning and drive for most of the Empire's troops, as they believe they are on a religiously-fuelled conquest, despite the Prophets' personal agendas and lust for power.

There's a far more thorough blanketing religion, however. This is a belief in the Ancestor spirits.

They have actually been proven to exist, but it's unclear as of yet how far they actually connect and control the world's events. They could be part of a far larger stream of life and still carry residual energy from a supreme being, and at the same time, they could simply be singular magical entities. A lot about the Ancestors is unclear; whether every soul that departs the body becomes one, whether they can be harmed, spoken to, communed with by simple non-Sorcerer beings... but everyone believes different things about them.

Those that have become truly fanatical have formed a religious movement which is simply known as 'Ancestry'. If you're a 'Truth-Seeker', you're a part of this movement; people across Thibudis who have devoted their lives to searching for answers through a combination of science and magic, communing with spirits, benevolent or otherwise. As crazy as it sounds, a lot treat it as a hobby, and most Truth-Seekers use 'the Ancestors' in place of 'God' in typical exclamations, e.g. 'By the Ancestors!' as opposed to 'Oh my god!'.

There are many various theories about the Ancestors' existence, most made as hypotheses for the Truth-Seekers' experiments, but as of yet, it's simply a radical political movement. Most Truth-Seeker cells in Aenias City or Imperial territory generally keep their presence on the down-low due to the stigma Ancestry is regarded with, and the fact that certain rather loud Truth-Seekers have been known to mysteriously disappear from their beds in the middle of the night...