--- Ibrahim Dughlas wrote:
> What background is there to give?
Exactly my thought.
> Many of the societies have a basic description of their religion,
> some have excerpts or quotes from relevant religious texts, but
> otherwise it would function much as religion does generally.
>
> It can have a major role in a society (such as the new Millat Shanar
> religion that developed in the Calanar desert after the Sinari Wars),
> or a minimalist role, depending on the direction of the society and
> the whim of the player.
Really, there are two kinds or flavors of religion in Celandra. There's
what you might call 'Confucian' type, where it's not so much a religion
with a god or pantheon as it is a collection of ethical precepts. Then
there's the 'Classic Fantasy' type, where the religion's members are
actively worshipping and in some way interacting with a Being or Beings
in the Dreaming. Some Beings are more activist than others, witness
Alatta(arguably an exceptional case), Sin-Alb, and Arean(in Elyria).
And of course, there's the Creator, but no society, as far as I know,
worships him directly; indeed, I doubt that there's any way for a
creature with any part in the material to contact him. It's probably
better that way, given the way Authority magic works; by my reading of
the Celandra backstory, the only Authority that is *exclusively* held
and undelegated by the Creator is Authority over Time, and a good
thing, too. For that reason, most forms of Divination magic don't work
terribly well in Celandra. If you want to know what happened in the
past in some place, you need to summon the ghost or spirit of someone
who was there, and ask them. As for prophecy, Beings may hand down
prophecies to their worshippers, but they have to stack the deck in the
present in order to fulfill the prophesized future, and even then, the
Beings well-laid plans may be disrupted by the Free Will of their human
agents.
Or, in other words, if a Being wants to give Its high priest a prophecy
for events happening over the next five years, It needs to have spent
the previous 500 years setting things up, at least, and even then,
things still may go awry. The only Being who might conceivably be
capable of giving a completely accurate prophecy is the Creator, and as
I said above, that Being doesn't talk to *anyone*(certainly not to
anyone in Celandra, and probably not in the Dreaming.)
Andrew
> RulingNations@aol.com wrote:
> The web site is effectively silent on religion. Can anyone give any
> background on this topic?
>
> Jefferson
> http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
> The New Yahoo! Search
> - Now with image
>
search!----------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
