Vardanian Apostasy

It is hard to believe yet explains so much. A people as cold as the Vardanians...there has to be something missing. Any faithful speaking to them will notice. Part of their very souls seems...gone.

— Ar-Tyne Kenrik Lanter

Faith in things greater than oneself is one of the core features of Humanity. No matter the origin, class or age, people are united by their faith. Only to divide again over which interpretation of said faith is the correct one. There is one exception to this, however. A people that not so much reject the idea of a god, but the very idea of faith itself. This is the Vardanian Apostasy, the great anathema of the northern people.

A People without God

The following is an excerpt from the treatise "On Vardanians" by Ar-Tyne Kenrik Lanter
"At first glance, the idea of a godless world does not seem so strange. Many a cult around the Great Divide preaches that power lies with nature or spirits or some other entity. But Vardanians are not nature or spirit worshippers. They reject not only the idea of a god or gods but the very concept of a higher power."
"No afterlife or greater plan, no real goal to strive for beyond that which can be achieved on earth. It is a cold mentality, creating man of iron that stride ever forward in the ruthless pursuit of their ambitions. It is a mentality that breeds intolerance, forging men that view faith as just another annoyance to be squashed."
"It is this mentality that creates people like Seron the Red, Aelia Anaren and Lucius Lengallen. Such are the Vardanians. Monsters at the best of times, with no hesitation or remorse when it comes to the taking of a life. Such a people cannot produce true art or beauty for they lack the immortal soul needed to do so."

Between Denial and Fear

The accounts given on Vardanian Apostasy, especially those of Feran scholars, usually do tell the truth, although highly exaggerated. To summarize a rather complicated topic, there are two larger parts to this:

Apathy

A vast majority of Vardanians do not follow any religion or belief. Even concepts such as luck or karma are at best considered to be imagination. Their existence is simply denied. However, this does not mean that Vardanians work solely on logic or other such ideas. No, the Vardanian has exchanged faith for an ideology that holds every object, occurrence and existence to be explainable in some way and thereby controllable. It is this attitude that has created the image of the "Man of Iron" that is often evoked when speaking about Vardanians.

Fear

Not every Vardanian has taken that path, however. Some still believe. They are most definitely the minority, barely one-tenth of the total population. Following the old cults, they do not revere or really worship Gods. They fear them, hold them to be cruel monsters beyond measure that have to be distracted and sated lest they rain down disaster upon the people. As a result, their rituals either reach the highest of fever pitches, so as to entrance the gods, or seem more solemn than any funeral could ever be, clad in a permanent aura of fear.

Excerpt from "Shadow of Oblivion - How the ancient Apocalypse affects the present." by Lucius Nestoris.

by Elias Tsirides

"How such a drastic collapse of religiosity can occur is complex, but one definitive reason can be examined. The Oblivion Hour was nothing short of world ending, destroying everything that ancient humanity knew. Beyond the immediate destruction, it also caused nearly a millennium of suffering all around the world. The ancestors of what would become the Vardanians lived through all of this, their lands most affected aside from those of Rhomeia."
"Whenever such events strike, the survivors will search for a reason. Questions as to why the gods did not intervene will inevitably surface during this process. The Vardanians arrived at two conclusions: Either there was no higher power and such utter devastation was simply a natural part of how the world worked. Or the Gods not only did not intervene but actively supported the near annihilation of mankind, making them cruel monsters."
"Such an attitude has been at the core of various Vardanian strains of thought, surviving the past four millennia pretty much unchanged. Although one could argue that the fixation, near-obsession really, with the preservation of their history and a "Vardanian nation" has morphed into a faith of its own."

Why would a priest whisper their prayer if not to prevent the gods from waking? For a woken god is a terrible thing, origin of any doom that may befall mankind.

— Ascheolus, Guardian of the Sun Temple

by Jette Ossoba

Numbers don't Lie

When first made aware of the Apostasy, many will think it the idea of a small, isolated group. Great their shock will be then when confronted with the true extend. Vardanians, going by the most accurate of censi taken as of the year 3310 DA, number in the tens of millions. Even the lowest estimate puts their number at over 40 million. Of that only about a tenth still follow the old faiths. That such a large number of people have abandoned any notion of faith is just utterly inconceivable to many.

Temples and Cults

The weakness of Vardanian Cults was not always as severe as it is today. Throughout the early period of Vardanian history, the various temples and their priests held great political and spiritual influence over the people. However, as the idea of a Vardanian identity began to increasingly fuse with the idea of a Vardanian nation, this hold came under fire.
First, during the Dominion Wars, especially the phase known as the Wars of Apostasy and then later during the Second Tarquinnian Hegemony there were concentrated efforts to curtail both influence and infrastructure of these organisations. The final blow came during the early days of the Third Hegemony, when radical republicans subsumed all cults into the state.
Since then the various orders have barely recovered. Only a handful of major temples are still maintained, the rest either left to ruin or used for other purposes. Minor shrines fare a bit better, often kept alive by community efforts. Religious scripture on the other hand has survived in abundant numbers, largely thanks to the ever-present Vardanian obsession to preserve past knowledge.

by Enzo Minarro