MAJOR FAITHS OF VAARN

Autarch Cults

The Autarchs were gods in flesh, bearers of the polychromatic Peacock Crown whose dominion over other men was as natural as taking breath. Small wonder that they remain objects of veneration long after the Autarchy fell. Autarch cults can be found across the Urth and beyond it, the statues and relics of the God-kings worshipped by those who pray the ferocious sovereignty of the Autarchs may protect their subjects still.

The Binary Devotion

If synthetic life could be said to have a creed, it is this: all is divisible into two totalising parts. White contains all colours, being both a synthesis and negation of colour. Likewise black is a negation of chromality and antithesis of all colours, yet contains all hues within itself by virtue of denying them. Thesis and antithesis are present in all matter; the universe a syncopated dance between Is and Is Not. The great symbols of the Binary Devotion are the one and the zero, to be contemplated and chanted in unending duality. This religion is not confined to synthetic beings: the maddening proclamations of the twinned Binary Teachers, who always contradict one another, have enthralled and frustrated countless minds over the millennia. 

The Brotherhood of the Black Sun

Desire contains the seeds of its opposite, and thwarted love can easily curdle to hatred. Perhaps this is what drives some men to abandon the faith of the Promised Sun and walk a darker path. The Brotherhood of the Black Sun pray for the extinction of Urth’s red sun and the stillbirth of the promised successor, calling instead for the ascension of the Black Sun, whose name is Wormwood, a cosmic interloper whose light shall make all reality dreams and all dreams reality. The Brotherhood hides in plain sight, gathering in cellars at night to speak feverishly of the impossible worlds that shall be revealed when the Black Sun rises. 

Church of the Everbleeding Wound

A butcher’s religion with a blood-first attitude to worship. The ziggurat temples of the Everbleeding Wound are holy abattoirs, where the snarls of iridescent flies drown out the congregation and carcasses are tossed down the temple steps to be eaten raw by sharp-fanged Mordicants. Haruspexes plumb the future by inspecting entrails and the Brides of the Wound writhe beneath lashes woven from dog-hair and stinging vines.  

The Church’s crimson gospels advocate renewal through violence and life in service of death. Flesh tithes are a demand on all worshipers and the consumption of livestock cannot be overstated. It is widely believed that enemies of the faith are butchered alive and screaming but the Church’s curates are eager to remind you that the only human sacrifices are volunteers. Despite a vicious creed, the Everbleeding Wound enjoys widespread veneration in the Hegemony and beyond. 

Church of the Promised Sun

A syncretic heliocentric religion, whose scripture announces the imminent arrival of the Promised Sun, the golden successor star to Urth’s dying red giant. At the dawning of the Promised Sun seven trumpets shall sound, and all the Urth shall be baptised in ardent light, with new continents rising from the depths of the ocean replete with precious metals and trees that bear everlasting fruit. Disease and death shall be banished and all beings shall live as fellows. 

This inarguably attractive-sounding creed has risen to become the dominant religion in the New Hegemony, professed by Exultant and Servitor alike. State-sanctioned veneration of the Hegemon Himself has merged with creed of the Promised Sun, and the Hegemon is frequently depicted as the servant and deliverer of this new golden sun. There are likewise thousands of solar saints, dawn angels, dusk angels, and other regional semi-heathen spirits that are worshipped under the aegis of the Promised Sun. It is all quite confusing.

Ghoul Cults

Corpse-thieves, who lurk at the margins of Vaarn. Remnants of a once greater sect, hunted almost to extinction in the Late Autarchy. Central to their faith is Ghrism, a sacramental drink brewed from the brain-bile of the monstrous Alzabo mixed with wine and black honey. Imbibing Ghrism alongside the flesh of a dead creature allows the drinker to commune with the memories of the devoured dead, much as the fearful Alzabo retains the memories of those it consumes. 

Ghrism is addictive and metamorphic: it induces a physical dependency in its drinkers and warps their bodies. The cannibal cults that form around its consumption are learned and insane. Some ghoul cults venerate living Alzabo, while others subjugate the beasts and milk them of brain-bile. Some whisper that the carnivorous rites of the Church of the Everbleeding Wound have their roots in the worship of the Ghouls.

Grim-Grins

The Cacklemaw worship a sinister pantheon of trickster demons, collectively named Grim-Grins. A Grim-Grin is usually given form in the body of a defeated enemy, although some are also made from the corpses of well-liked Cacklemaw. They are a cross between a mummy and a puppet, sporting a rictus grin on their sun-shrunken face. Articulated joints and wires allow the Grim-Grin to move in halting jerky fashion when induced to do so by a Cacklemaw priestess, who cause them to act out immorality plays that teach Cacklemaw cubs how to live. 

The greatest of all Grim-Grins is Grand Mama Punch, a diabolic matriarch-puppet who gives birth to chaos, but each Cacklemaw clan worships a host of lesser spirits alongside her. These awful puppets are carried into battle at head of Cacklemaw hosts and the capture of a Grim-Grin is seen as a great blow to the fortunes of the clan.

Seekers of Eyeless Wisdom

Self-knowledge and spiritual purity are achieved not through enlightenment, but through a slow and patient process of endarkenment.  Aspirant Seekers cloak their eyes in yellow bandages, and forgo speech in the hopes of strengthening their telepathic puissance. Exalted masters of the Eyeless Path drive golden spindles into their eyes and amputate their hands in service to the higher mysteries, perceiving the world and working their will upon it only through psychic power.

The seat of the sect’s power is a chain of temple complexes buried beneath the Lazul Mountains, each temple but a cell in a great lightless honeycomb. Generations of Seekers live, work, and listen to the Hymns of their Gestalt Choirs without ever coming to the surface. 

Titan Cults

The great machine suzerains of Urth are long-dead, their ego-engines scrubbed clean by weaponised logicphages. The quiet and colossal ruin of their final thoughts is sealed beneath Vaarn in decaying lattices of memory-crystal; their personalities entombed within miles of neural network-shunts that lie, cold and shattered, in bunkers beneath the mountains.

True devotion, however, can never die, and the machine gods still have worshippers. Synths and humans alike wish that the Age of Titans might come again. They dream that the citizens of Urth might once more travel the stars, guided by HYPERION’s golden lantern; dream that justice might again be done by THEMIS; dream that GAEA would once again administer to the sick and that patient METIS would map the roiling paths of the future.

The Titans are dead, they say, but what mankind’s arts once birthed, mankind’s arts could restore again. Titan cults, devoted to untangling these sacred mysteries, are found throughout Vaarn. 

Vaa, Blue Goddess of Empty Spaces

Vaa is the mother-goddess of the Faa nomads and the namesake of the blue deserts of Vaarn. She is the blue queen of heaven, beautiful and pitiless as the desert itself. Her womb was barren yet she carved four blue daughters from her flank who are named Sky, Sand, Wind, and Water. 

Worship of Vaa is everywhere found in Vaarn, although she boasts no holy books or great temples. The Faa say that her church is everywhere beneath the sky and that the blue queen’s eye falls upon all who travel her blue wastes and all who die there are taken as offerings. Vaa’s clay shrines can be found at every oasis and at the foot of every mesa. 

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This is an extract from the upcoming Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition book. The project will come to crowdfunding in July. Please sign up at the preview page to get notifications about this project when it launches.