Part 23 of the Palaververse: World Faiths · 1:10am Jul 6th, 2016
Let's resume gurgling on about assorted abstract matters after a month's delay, shall we? The Ungulan faiths got showcased in the last of these posts, and it's only fair to give the rest of the world a look-in as well.
Apologies for the delay on this. Most of the last month was taken up with real-world business as well as with finishing off Treasures, which is now fully posted and completed just in case anyone was holding off on it due to all deserved wariness regarding my prior competency in actually finishing stories. With that done, this series might be able to get back onto something resembling regular posting when regarded with a generous squint. It might not last much longer as the list of interesting topics dries up. If there's an as-yet-uncovered topic you'd find interesting, though, then do drop a nomination for it in the comments, and if there's anything in here you'd like me to elaborate on, feel free to ask.
Also, though it goes without saying at this stage, this post's proofreader could totally beat your proofreader in a fight.
Stay tuned in the next wee while for a more general post as well. I'll announce my next story there, which should please some folk, and pass various judgements on as-yet-incomplete stories there as well, which might displease others, as well as do sundry bits of spring-cleaning around the place.
All that said, read on past the break and pretty picture for the faiths of the world beyond Ungula's shores.
South of Ungula’s shores, the world only grows larger yet. After varyingly-interminable expanses of ocean, undoubtedly haunted by all the unquiet dead a donkey or antelope could never wish for, the continents of Dactylia and Ceratos present themselves. Over millennia, their inhabitants have developed their own faiths and creeds in isolation, and while the modern world may allow for all manner of intermingling and joining and trading and wholesale bastardisation of customs, some practises remain deeply rooted in the cultures of the world.
Running counter-clockwise from Equestria, the Saddle Arabians hold to those general Ungulan traditions passed down by the first Equestrian settlers. Belief in immortal souls and in a Hereafter is common, as is veneration of the alicorns and great ponies from days gone by. Their mad and beloved founding father, Monsoon, has a place of honour in most hearts and minds, as well as other Equestrian figures and the ruling alicorns.
Where Saddle Arabia differs from the Ungulan mainland is in its general take on the Creator. While the point of view that the Creator is a malevolent force in the world has always had some following in Ungula and been part of discussions, the Saddle Arabians long ago looked at the hostile hellscape they lived in, and couldn’t help but wonder how any thinking being could come to any other conclusion than that there is a Creator, and it hates its Creation with a savage and tyrannical hatred. Nothing of a benevolent disposition could have created or permitted wind scorpions or flecks or the like to exist, after all, and well-meaning idiocy can only be stretched so far as an explanation before it becomes indistinguishable from actual malignance. What had largely been and remains a minority viewpoint on the home continent is the mainstream viewpoint of Saddle Arabia, with its more philosophical inhabitants inclined to regard the very act of living happy lives as an act of defiance against the Creator.
A few Saddle Arabians who have travelled out from their native shores and observed the relative survivability of the rest of the world offer up a more elaborate account: that the Creator just hates Saddle Arabia in particular, possibly by dint of being a capricious pervert who selects random realms to serve as its ongoing amusement for a time. Courteous hoof-fights are waged over the matter in the theological circles of Tabuck to this day, which mainland Ungulans typically try to avoid being drawn into in favour of fleeing Saddle Arabia’s climate as quickly as possible. Life’s just happiest for everyone that way.
South of the island viceroyalty, a new continent begins on the northern shore of Zebrica. And there, religious traditions entirely different to the Ungulan norm have developed.
According to the age-old myths of the zebras, passed down in oral form and inscribed on stone tablets and written on papyrus scrolls for as long as their recorded history, all the world and the void beyond was once howling, empty chaos, ruled since some eternal and timeless point by demons and spirits whose forms and natures had no root in anything natural. The least of the wandering spirits were helpless prey for greater forces, and grey storms blew without end in the dark.
One day, however, one great spirit took mercy on the world and the little spirits there. Mother Neighle rose in wroth against her kin, clawing out with her power from what would become the Stormshield Mountains. The demons and spirits caught up in her battle were either torn asunder or fled from Mother Neighle, running into the black corners of creation beyond the world’s sight or burrowing down into the dark core of the earth to escape her wrath. After these battles, which carved oceans and continents and mountains into the skin of the world, Mother Neighle subsided. She settled down where she’d started her fight, and in her kindness, a great and clear river was sent forth to flow down from the mountains and branch across the landscape, bringing forth green and flowering things wherever its waters touched.
The little spirits of the world flocked to Mother Neighle’s waters to nourish and freshen themselves, and were able to take solid form now that the chaos which had ruled the world for so long was lifted. They became the first living creatures, and all the tribes of sapient creatures and base animals alike lived by Mother Neighle in peace for a long age of the earth. They learned to cultivate the plants which grew by her shores, worked with the alchemical reagents fed by her waters, and built the first houses from her clay.
Mother Neighle watched them all grow and flourish in the bounty she provided, and in time, produced three children of her own to help her. The spirits of Sun, Sand, and Sweet Water went forth into the world with their own duties. Her first son, Sun (Mother Neighle not being especially imaginative with names in those days), was to circle the sky each day, giving living things light to work by for a time, and allowing them the solace of darkness after their work was done. Her second son, Sand, was to watch over the remaining wastelands of the world, keeping the dormant demons and spirits buried and at bay under the world and reflecting Sun’s light to blind those who might creep back through the outer void. And Sweet Water, Mother Neighle’s favoured child and only daughter, was to flow forth and see that all living things beyond Mother Neighle’s sight were kept nourished by her mother’s blessings. As her children went forth, Mother Neighle allowed herself to sleep at last, and settled down into a long dormancy.
As time went by and Neighle’s waters nourished more and more of the world, spreading green plants and fresh water to every land, some of the tribes of creatures spread with them. One by one, they left the sleeping Mother Neighle behind and forgot that she was the source of their blessings as they developed their own beliefs in whatever lands they found themselves. But alone amongst them all, zebrakind stayed by Mother Neighle’s shores and remembered what they owed to her. They kept faith, and stayed rewarded with the most immediate of her blessings.
Such is only the origin story for the faith of zebrakind, and Neighle’s deeds and her pantheon of children account for countless more stories about the world and how it was shaped. Some of these stories have not always stood the test of time — Sun’s prominence, and how his desperation for a wife led him to mistake his shadow in the moon for a prospective partner and take off in endless pursuit, was somewhat dented by formal relations opening up with Equestria and the celestial-object wielding princesses there. Other stories have taken shape over Zebrica’s history, and the brief reign of terror by the Night Serpent has been conceived of as an ancient buried demon briefly overpowering all three of Neighle’s children before zebrakind, armed with blessings right from the source of the Neighle herself, were able to destroy it. Other imagine that the Night Serpent was deliberately unleashed as a punishment by Mother Neighle upon a warring and divided people. Others conceive of the whole affair as ‘just one of those things that happen, you know’, and tend to get left out of the theological discussions as a result.
Despite these changes, debates, and other additions over the years, the Neighle myths and faith in them still retain a powerful if unobtrusive influence in Zebrican society, and small offerings and prayers being extended towards Mother Neighle and her children are commonplace in all professions and walks of life.
South of Zebrica, where the deserts and mountains unfold into the tumult of Gazellen and the Fractious Lands, the variety of faiths on tap could defy every best chronicling effort, each arising from the different climates, experiences, and histories of the species that live in these lands. Different faiths and sects often crop up within the very same nation, arising and developing in geographical separation. The various clan groupings of the savannah-dwelling gazelle, for one, believe in the power of otherworldly spirits to shape the affairs of this world from the dreaming realm. Each clan has at least one shaman to endeavour to communicate with and influence these spirits in outdoor rituals, through practises that would be called dreamwalking by Equestrian and tapir scholars. A short way down the road, these practises have a mirror in the agrarian and settled gazelle communities, whose own magi practise these rituals in open-roofed stone temples and chart out star patterns to augur what they believe to be the best times to commune with dreaming spirits. Some enterprising and well-connected gazelle magi have even sent letters to Princess Luna in the wake of her return to try and arrange beneficial patterns on a regular basis.
Other species and nations have developed a reverent fixation on parts of the world or the world itself, with the fleets of hippopotami regarding the river networks on which they sail and live as the veins of a vast and all-encompassing living Earth, eternally birthing the world’s beings and drawing them back into itself in an eternal and perfect cycle. The Diamond Fennecs and Jackals mirror their Ungulan kin with a foundational belief in a species-wide odyssey up from the heart of the earth. The coastal-dwelling antelope petty kingdoms and city-states regard the world as being caught up in eternal strife between three great gods of Sea, Sky, and Earth, and that the best thing for living beings to do is to just keep their heads down when the godly storms inevitably erupt and to give prayers and offerings to whichever god best suits each being’s current needs — a small tribute of grain may be thrown into the sea whenever a successful sea voyage is needed, while the same grain may be burnt to become rising smoke whenever rain is needed for crops, and may in turn be buried in order to prevent earthquakes when new structures are built. Mixed antelope communities with different trades and needs may haggle within themselves as to which god to appease, or go through them on a rota.
All these and countless more faiths have been born across the Gazellen landmass, and many of them comfortably mingle in the capitals and free cities hosting creatures from every nation and species. Foreign influences can also be found in such places, such as the Zebrican pantheon or Asinial sea-superstitions, and various syncretic faiths have emerged as a result. The gods of Sea, Sky, and Earth have often been added to the ranks of the Neighle’s children, the Ungulan Creator has often been accepted as an inoffensive background detail in the world of spirits or as the birther of a living Earth, and many antelope sailors have adopted donkey superstitions wholesale in an attempt to appease the Sea god. In Gazellen, the only religious unity to be found is the consistent disunity. Although the multitude of faiths have sparked more theological debates and arguments over the centuries than there are stars in the sky, in a land with so many other divisions, religion rarely emerges as a reason for real acrimony. Most simply live and let live, and make sense of the world in their own terms and as best they may.
Southwards still, where the lands of Pachydermia sweep from savannah to steppe to haunted ice plains, a different sort of faith emerges. For the settled brush and forest elephant tribes and the nomadic mammoths alike, the world is intrinsically divine, as everything has a god attached to it. Whatever the concept, and whether it’s a tangible object or an abstract ideal, whether it’s as broad as War or Mountains or Creation, or as specific as the Orange Hue of Sunsets, Things Getting Stuck in Drawers, or the Silence Before Thunder, everything has a divine representative. And when engaged in a particular endeavour, the appropriate gods must be offered homage and prayer in order to best ensure success through their pleasure and blessings.
These gods are nameless past the concepts they embody — and of course, not even the longest-lived elephant could ever hope to know all their names even if they had them. The forms of homage or prayer afforded to the gods varies across the vast land, depending on the tribe or community. Many mammoth tribes consider silent thought and prayer to be sufficient, while at the other end of the spectrum, the cosmopolitan courts and caste-divided cities and other long-standing communities have birthed various specific and elaborate rituals for the broadest gods or those most invoked in prayer. The god of Successful Harvests, for example, may be best pleased through growing no grain in the same field in succession.The god of War may be pleased by a duel between two willing members of the warrior caste, duels which frequently result in the death of the loser as a sacrifice on behalf of their brethren. Although this and similar practises have been gradually going out of style in recent centuries, such duels are still seen in the noble courts, whether as a means of demonstrating proper piety, or ensuring that any wars that befall the court have that recent blessing to draw upon … or simply for the grisly entertainment they offer to the nobles and shahs.
Past the waters surrounding Pachydermia, the faith of Ceratos is perhaps the most pronounced and active of all those in the world, acting as it does as the foundation for the Ceratos Empire and the rule of the Emperors. After all, without the will of Heaven, how could the Empire have ever existed?
There is a Heaven that runs the world, according to the Ceratosans, an immaterial realm beyond the sight of living things and whose guiding spirits govern a celestial bureaucracy that dictates and enforces the order that underpins all creation. The material world is a weak shadow of Heaven, and all but hopelessly out of alignment with Heaven’s ordered perfection thanks to the hubris and shortsightedness of living things.
Heaven, which had set the machinery of the world in motion in the first place, looked down upon its inharmonious shadow with grim displeasure, and required that living beings clean up their own mess to bring the world back into proper order. A worthy living being to begin this process presented themselves in the form of Sun’s Reflection, the legendary first Emperor. He and his descendants were given Heaven’s guidance and mandate to rule all things upon the world, which they were to use to restore the harmony of the world once more. Once the world was orderly, it and Heaven could be brought back into proper alignment, and all things could live in eternal and perfect peace and order, free from all pain and suffering once again.
Heaven’s mandate is not necessarily extended to every Emperor or Empress, and widespread and persistent disharmony throughout the empire is often construed by other nobles or ambitious members of the imperial family that Heaven’s mandate has been withdrawn from whoever reigns in favour of a more worthy successor. Many of the ruling classes undoubtedly take the faith with a pinch of salt, though even the most skeptical recognise its value in granting a divine right to rule, and those who stand to potentially benefit from that right rarely give voice to such skepticism. Over the recent reign of Emperor Spring’s Promise, the faith has re-acquired a militant edge it has lacked since the early expansions, with the Emperor and many in his court using it as justification to begin to exert the Empire’s authority and order over the rest of the world. Time alone will tell what the world will make of this — and what the faith will make of the world.
Finally, of all the known sapient species of the world, the dragons are perhaps the most reticent and skeptical on matters of faith. Many scoff at the idea of some wordly Creator or Hereafter, dismissing the questions as irrelevant distractions for beings with too much mortality to consider. The world is what it is, they say, and where it passes beyond the ability of beings to pass concrete judgement upon, it becomes useless for all practical purposes.
But for all their skepticism, there are still signs of something like belief amongst some of dragonkind, though they may never call it as such amongst themselves. The urge to accumulate great hoards is occasionally given some justification beyond “It’s all edible, it’ll impress that other handsome dragon I’ve had my eye on, and because I want it.” Some older dragons and those with the largest hoards speak of hoards determining the worth of their holder’s soul, with those who accumulate the most making the brightest sparks in the Hereafter. The necessarily old and powerful dragons who indulge in these sorts of mortal notions tend not to get laughed at — at least, not openly — by their younger kin.
And amongst the very oldest of the dragons, those few who have lived long enough to tap into the eldritch arts of draconic magic and spend most of their dreamless hibernation in detached meditation, the hoard acquires even more value. They speak of something called the Last Dark, to be met with as bright and enriched a soul as possible, and what it entails, not even their younger kin are made aware.
In any case, whatever a being’s faith or lack thereof, they’ll find some variation of it in Theia. Countless mysteries abound in all directions, and a thousand answers have been conjured for each, to give meaning to chaos and to make sense of the world, and if nothing else, to give beings comfort and hope for whatever better world awaits them for their labours.
Fascinating stuff all around. Interesting how the apparent maliciousness of the Creator seems focused around Ungula. Maybe there's something to the Saddle Arabians' perspective; they're just not thinking big enough. Also, I have to wonder what belief systems, if any, those mathematically inclined apes west of the Fractious Lands have developed.
As for what to do next, I believe forms of magical expression were mentioned earlier?
I really like the dragons and their horde-souls.
4071213 Probably they worship the god-of-not-getting-hit-with-a-stick-when-other-species-come-near.
Ooo. I like the combination of real-world inspired theology without going too far for parallels.
Once again, I vote for the study of magic and all things magical.
operatorchan.org/pasta/src/139483627938.png
Tell us about magic. Why does it make the sparkly lights?
Great work as always. I found the draconic beliefs in the Last Dark particularly intriguing. It must be one thing for a dragon to scoff at those foolish brief mortals and their amusing superstitions, but when it's an ancient dragon older than civilizations saying in all seriousness that you have better have your affairs in order when the Last Dark comes, and pointedly refusing to elaborate, that's gotta carry a lot more weight. Maybe enough for a crisis of non-faith, even.
Out of curiosity, is the elephant deity of Things Getting Stuck in Drawers a reference to Discworld's Anoia?
I believe I already voted for the next topic a while ago, yes?
"more elaborate account; that the Creator just"
"account: that"?
Another enjoyable post, of course. :)
A facinating read, more so than I thought it would be. God of things stuck in draws, eh? Your Discworld is showing again
For the next post, I again nominate Breezies and homeless races.
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Yeah, I think the Last Dark is the heat death of the universe or something...
Voting for Magic~!
Enjoyed this latest sojourn into things metaphysical.
My vote is for necromancy - who does it, does it really work, and how do you kill the things when you forget the safeword?
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Nomination for forms of magical expression noted!
If the apes believed in anything, it'd probably be that with enough hard work and diligent intellectual thought and if they make their proofs clear enough in their lifetimes, then maybe, just maybe, one of those four-legged bastards would finally begin taking them and their work seriously. This may be one of those fundamentally hopeless belief systems, but the apes have never lacked for optimism.
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Glad you approve! So far as their oldest are concerned, you really can take it with you. In a metaphysical sense, at least.
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Nomination for all things magical noted! Glad to have struck a balance in terms of real-world inspiration without just ripping things off wholesale. If there'd just been something like Roman Catholicism or Zoroastrianism with the serial numbers wiped off and the names fiddled with, then that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. Best to play around with different elements and make up as much stuff as possible.
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Nomination for magic and its capacity to produce points of luminescence noted!
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Nomination for wildernesses of the world? That's the last nomination from yourself I see in the comments for the Immortals post.
Things Getting Stuck in Drawers may owe a thing or two or Pratchett, I shan't lie. It's a constant for deific invocation, no matter the world. Glad the draconic Last Dark stuff intrigues as well. The tendency of your kin to get religious in their old age is one thing, but them getting into it with all seriousness and refusing to elaborate is a definite note of concern for most other dragons.
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Thank you, and fixed!
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Nomination for breezies and other homeless races noted!
Anoia's reach is a long and fierce one. May drawers rattle each day in her honour, and complaints unto her be as great as the exasperation of her loyal followers.
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Nomination for magic noted!
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Nomination for necromancy noted! It'd probably fall under a general magic post, so if that comes out on top, expect to see it covered there.
I nominate "The Ancient Antlertean Shopping List" and sundry archeological efforts of Theian sophonts.
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Their history:
Mountainous origin.
Wyld storms.
Capric invasion.
Capric invasion.
Capric invasion.
Pegasi stormlords.
Windigo apocalypse.
Discord.
Nightmare Moon.
Nightmare Wars.
Saddle Arabia.
The zebra's creation story was my personal favorite, but the dragons' belief in The Last Dark intrigued me the most.
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Nomination for assorted archaeological efforts noted!
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Glad to be able to intrigue! I've a soft spot for the zebra pantheon myself.
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You're welcome. :)
Index needs updating again...
Next time, perhaps I should do this by PM...
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Updated.
Derp.
Frankly, your surest bet here is to just hunt me down and staple the word INDEX directly onto my face as a constant reminder.
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I say PM, 'cause then I'm not calling you out publicly. Calling out people on their faults is something that I should have done privately.
Paraphrase of section from The Will of the Empress.
l also call for the breezies/homeless races
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Nomination for Breezies and other homeless races noted!
I vote for plant life. I want to know where poison joke fits in with all this world building.
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Nomination for sundry flora noted!
OH MY CREATOR, I love you Carabas, sincerely. You have no idea how much I love it when world-building includes faiths and religions; these last updates have been like catnip to me.
So firstly, these spirits that the zebras go on about, could they be related to the Thing In The South Pole? All faiths seem to have a grain of truth, after all... Secondly, are there any Antlertian temples or places of worship remaining in the world? I'd love to find out what they believed in (other than their own magical majesty...).
I would like to cast my vote for magic in general; as in the different peoples' view of it, what types of magic exists... It's a bit of a broad subject, I know, so I apologize for a rather unclear vote
Thanks again for the update, and I really mean it when I say this is my catnip; I may have an addiction to world-building
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It's maybe not the most ethical of things to take joy in, but I shan't be too fussy with myself.
Nomination for all vague things pertaining to magic noted! Glad I can act as a dealer for worldbuilding addiction.
Not much left to go on for modern scholars with regards to the Antlerteans and their faith. What's left of their remaining ruins are mostly secular and devoid of anything undeniably religious in character. That said, there are some leftover writings (mostly sourcing from the court of their last king, King Loceros) that allude to higher powers beyond the stars. Couched largely in terms of 'Let's find these powers and put them in shackles', mind.
I put my vote in for the miscellanies denizens of Theia; the Breezies, Star-Bears, Sirens, ect.
aaand the apes of the interior too, you've expanded on their collective 'personality' enough that I'm not sure weather or not to take them seriously.
Sneaks back into voting both with fake moustache
for the Dactylian Interior.
A ballot is placed by me and my moustache
What kind of place/life finds purchase on the wrong side of the sanctuary provided by the Stormshield Mountains?
Practically begging to be found out, sneaks back in a 2nd time wearing a pair of aviators
Yez, I would like to read, through my rose lenzes, on zee magicks of zee world.
Paricularily zee, as you say, Wyld Storms. Are zey just reely strong hurricanes, or do zey warp that which zey touch?
Looking forward to next post in any case.
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Nomination for the miscellaneous denizens noted!
And a nomination for the Dactylian Interior past the Stormshield Mountains noted, from that mustachioed gent.
And another nomination noted, this time for magic and with regard paid to wyld storms ...
Waaait a second.
that living beings clean up their own mess in order to bring the world back
OR
clean up their own mess to bring the world back
4111847
Fixed!
It is known that Tapirs and Luna have the power of dreamwalking, but is it possible for a unicorn or some other creature with magic to dreamwalk? And are dreamwalkers able to use other kinds of magic in a dream? And how difficult is it for a creature to dreamwalk? I except for Luna it is as easy as breathing because she is an alicorn, but how skilled does someone have to be to dreamwalk?
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In theory, yes, any being with suitable magical skill and exceptional self-control and willpower could learn how to dreamwalk. It is crazy-difficult, though, and using magic in a dream's trickier yet when the whole rules of the landscape are prone to getting mucked around with by the dreamer. It's definitely not common outwith Ceratos, and beings able to use it are rarer than hen's teeth.
I have decided to come back and finally complete my quest to comment on all your blogs. The reason I didn't finish this before is because school got in the way and I just haven't got around to comment on this blog. So here it is, time to get off my lazy bum.
Blog 23: World Faiths
- Do some ponies believe that the alicorns were blessed by the Creator and given their forms as a reward for spreading harmony and defeating Chaos? Naturally, these ponies would be from the camp that believes the Creator is benevolent.
- So was Equestria your amusement park for a few centuries till you decided to switch it up and make Saddle Arabia your new source of endless amusement? Equestria did have it rough for the first few centuries of its existence.
- The good old hoof fight. Celestia would have so much fun with those if she wasn't the princess and wasn't required to maintain an air of nobility. Does Celestia's habit of getting into hoof fights have to do with the fact that she was an earth pony? It seems that earth ponies would be much more likely to fight with bare hooves where one must rely on their own strength to win.
- Do the zebras believe that the more powerful your spirit, the more powerful you will be in life? If so, how do they explain why the alicorns hold such great power? Do the zebras believe they're servants of Mother Neighle or just blessed by her? Or is there another explanation?
- How do the zebras explain the fact that Celestia controls the sun? Do some believe that Celesita is actually Sun, the son of Mother Neighle as believed in the old legends and the zebras just changed the legends to have Sun be female, instead of male? Or do the zebras just don't believe in Sun anymore as they use to? Perhaps I'm thinking too deep into this.
- You should totally write a story about the dream world and dreamwalking one day. I believe you started that with Noctivagant if I recall.
- If Celestia is in fact considered one of the children of Mother Neighle by at least a small number of zebras, then would Luna be Sky? I mean, she does control the stars and what not.
- I believe Twilight would love to categorize and collect information on all the religions in Gazellen. It sounds like a task she would have fun with.
- The elephants must have more gods then all the ancient pantheons combined.
There, I'm done. Still voting for the world's military.
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- Some have come to that viewpoint... though the majority opinion among those subscribing to benevolent-Creator theory, even the more charitable ones, is all the good intentions in the world can't stop the Creator being unable to find their own arse with both hands and a map. Calculated divine intervention is probably a bit beyond it.
- Now even the bloody Saddle Arabians are making headway on their environment, the obstreperous gits.
- Hoof fighting's instinctive for her due to her roots, yep, though a good number of lifetimes spent using magic and storms have managed to grind those down to nearly the same instinctive par as well.
- Most zebras take a fairly pragmatic view towards the alicorns - they largely reckon they got their hooves on some old magic and exploited it to rise to their current positions, without Mother Neighle or any of her children necessarily getting involved. If they'd gotten involved, they'd have gotten involved on the side of the zebras, it stands to reason. Guarded suspicion tends to be the order of the day there... and some aren't convinced she's not just using great illusions and fire spells to make it look like she's using the sun.
- That's also an interpretation cleaved to by some, though it's more of a minortiy opinion than the previous one.
- Started that one, indeed, and I'd like to finish it one day.
- Among those who consider Celestia to be Sun, Luna tends to get folded into her purview as the Sun's nightly reflection. It's a take on traditional Zebrican theology that requires a fair amount of effort.
- So much to categorise, so few millenia in which to do it.
- If it exists, there's a god for it. It's an approach that's spawned quite a few deities, certainly.
(For the purposes of this vignette, just imagine Twilight's a zebra noble.)
"Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Up. Up! Dowwwn."
"You've made your point Princess, please stop."
"Very well. Would you happen to know what time it was before we started moving the sun?"
"Certainly, there's a sundial just..."
"...over..."
"...there..."
"..."
It's wonderful seeing the details and differences in the various species' beliefs. But don't think I don't see you there, Anoia. Is she named after the sound a mammoth makes when they finally discover the stone stuck under their toenail?
I love these amazingly detailed accounts from within the Palaverse. So much detail on so many different aspects from history to faith and from gods to guppies. If and when you decide to write more, you can count on me to read it.
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Glad you like them! No immediate plans to write more, alas, but there's always a chance.