Uvara

Uvara is the religion of the middle path- of moderation, of balance, of acceptance, of giving what you can and surviving. It preaches the doctrine of accepting the world as it is, yet hoping for more. It imagines the world as a cycle of life, un-life, and rebirth trapped between the cruel extremes of the universe waiting to be saved by a destined prophet. This is Ustav, the Chief God who dies every winter to be reborn every spring, and who will one day free the world from suffering as the Irunek.
It is a syncretic faith, loosely organized around this worldview and philosophy. There are hundreds of regional variants, all adhering to the same 'Hundred Tales' - a series of myths and legends passed through oral history and copied down into the Sovikov- the Book of Hope. The Sovikov was standardized only 800 years ago (shockingly recent compared to many other faiths), but its roots go back thousands of years. It has proudly absorbed aspects from its surrounding faiths, which is sees as striking a balance between the divine wisdom given to all peoples.

Structure

Uvara has no formal hierarchy that is consistent across all Uvaran communities, but it does have several overlapping structures that work to provide priests and organizational interconnection.
One structure that claims to be the true and legitimate hierarchy of Uvara is the priesthood of the Kingdom of Hain, led by the Uvaran Archdruid. The Uvaran archdruid commands the Autumn Court, a large scholarly and bureaucratic body dedicated to managing both the academic needs of the Kingdom and the organizational needs of the faith. The archdruid is elected by a high council within the Autumn Court, and rules for life. This structure dominates Northern Stildane.
The Archdruid and Autumn Court work to select Rosgen, or elite priests, to rule over regional priestly groups or urban congregations. While Rosgen began as a Hainish courtly position with clear connotations within the Hainish hierarchy, the title has spread to other Uvaran structures to denote a priest who leads all the local priests.
The other major structure that claims to lead Uvara is the Imperial Priesthood of the Empire of Eketen. This is led by the Imperial High Priest, a position once selected by the emperor that now runs itself. The Imperial Priesthood operates through Lord-Priests, powerful people who typically hold secular power as well as religious power. This power structure dominates Southern Stildane.
Beyond the clear spheres of power of the Imperial High Priest and Uvaran Archdruid, Uvaran communities rely on holy orders and autonomous monastic communities to organize - basically, locally-unique religious communities that typically work to train extra priests, record holy truth, and coordinate with other religious nodes. These religious centers link together in a loose network that eventually does link to the big spheres of organized religious power - Hainish or Eketeni religious ideas and resources flow through them. However, beyond their direct rule, big state ideas of religious authority don't go unchallenged. Local popularity, charisma, respect and age among local priests, and magical ability all allow priests and monks to assert status above Hainish or Eketeni actors or concepts. 
Also, to be clear, Uvaran groups of differing authority do not consider each other "heretics" - it would be close to different schools of thought or different religious styles that compete but rarely break into direct conflict. Eketeni priests are still welcome in the Autumn Court as brothers in faith, even if their political authority is basically gone.

Culture

Mirroring Power

Uvara's local diversity and malleability makes it extremely adaptable not only to local community needs, but to dominant power structures. Any Uvaran state capable of projecting power into a place will most certainly project power into the priesthood and religious scene, and that religious structure will begin to reflect that state's culture and values. The aristocrat-obsessed Kingdom of Hain unsurprisingly divides its priests between noble leaders and common followers; the urban legalism of Eketen translates into their priesthood as well. This isn't to say that the priests are only ever clay in the hands of the state; community actors and needs play a large part in shaping local priesthoods even in those big states. 
If a state or community has a species-preference, it will likely translate into the local religious culture. If there are few to no prisms somewhere, prisms will likely not feature in local religious art or the priesthood. Stildane tends to lack species-conflict as a whole, thankfully, as the mutations of the land tend to puncture any artificial categories and create hyper-diverse material needs anyways. 

Cycles and Goals

Some religious scholars posit that there are two fundamental worldviews that all religions are divided between: those that see time as an endless cycle and those that see time as a line between a clear beginning and a clear end. Uvara flirts with both worldviews; it frames time as a cycle, but still imagines a concrete ending to that cycle. There is an implied potential in that ending for a new beginning, but it is an ending for our world. The cycle dictates mundane life and is most obviously felt in Uvaran daily culture - seasons change, the wheel of fortune turns, souls rise to heaven and fall back to Earth, the poor become rich become poor again, loneliness turns to love turns to loss again. But this cycle is suffering. The wheel of time promises that better times will come again, but that worse times will as well. Only when Ustav is reborn as the Irunek and saves the world one last time will the cycle be broken.
Salvation in Uvara is not an endstate, but a process. It is a set of moral skills and strengths that must be maintained and honed to maintain spiritual survival. And that spiritual survival is literal: morality is seen as feeding your soul goodness and sheltering it from evil, keeping it strong and healthy.  Like physical survival, salvation in Uvara is likely guaranteed to one day fail - but when your spiritual death occurs is deeply important. If it occurs after your physical death, while you are in the realms of death, there is a promise and a certainty that you will be resurrected. Only those who master the spirit of Uvara, the wellspring of eternal hope and perfect balance that allows a soul to transcend spiritual decay entirely, will expect to survive as a spiritual entity from birth till Irunek. The goal of all Uvarans is to master that spirit; a spiritual death in the afterlife is still unpleasant and bad. But there is an acceptance that perfection is not required to live well. 
A person who suffers spiritual death while living still has a soul of course, but it is kept alive only by their body and by the dark power of either Chaos or Order - it is essential spiritual undeath sustained only by a shared imperfection with a broken world. When the Promised Time comes, those who did not spiritually survive their mortal lives will be left to turn to dust, as the spiritual imperfection of the world sustaining them dries up. Uvarans typically have a very high bar for what constitutes unsalvageable spiritual death - you have to do a truly wicked thing to mangle your soul so terribly. Continued effort and stubborn attempts at redemption and improvement can sustain most souls. The endless pursuit of the spirit of Uvara will uplift the wretched and the lost. 

Emotional Cores

So, in short, Uvara balances two contradictory emotions: boundless and extreme hope, and solemn acceptance. While Uvaran cultures are extremely diverse by nature and design, this contradiction is present in all variants. There is the hard-nosed pragmatism of acceptance, and the open-minded idealism of salvation. There is no easy answer to the tension in Uvara, and that is made clear in its theology: the answer is personal, and finding it is the first step to finding the spirit of Uvara. 
To go through some common manifestations:

• The Hainish Uvarans are triumphant in their narratives and emphasize the absolute glory of Ustav the Ascendant, but they also contrast our earthly limitations with that hyper-emphasized glory. The pragmatism is accepted as necessary, but the hope and promise of an end to suffering is lifted over it as the moral ideal. Confidence, optimism, and relentless cheer are seen as natural purifying agents because they bring us closer to thinking in divine hope. Acceptance is for material things, like social position or crop yields. Hope is for the things inside, and for the ways we emotionally relate to the world and each other. 
• The Eketeni Uvarans relate to acceptance and hope more quietly. In Eketeni tradition, acceptance is the path to hope: one must think long and hard about what can be changed and what cannot be changed, before one can find the eternal hope of Uvara. This acceptance is envisioned as emptiness - one must empty oneself of obstruction and suffering before being filled with true joy. Without eyes cleared by acceptance, false hopes will endlessly excite and depress the spirit. One must consider winter before one can appreciate spring. Eketeni Uvara is about listening to others, listening to your environment, and listening to yourself (who you truly are, stripped of self-illusion). This is a personal approach that embraces localism. 
• The Northern Uvarans, particularly in the Kingdom of Gennorholn, believe that hope and acceptance are bound together in community and in grief - it is in one's acceptance and understanding of the worst parts of life that one transcends pain itself. To find Ustav's spirit of eternal hope, one must suffer, die, and be reborn like Ustav. Unlike Eketeni Uvara, where acceptance is self-mastery and the pursuit of emptiness and clarity, Northern Uvarans embrace the truth and connection in grief, pain, loss, and sorrow. The idea is that, by communally taking in those negative things and accepting them with all that emotion, one can process them and become free from the fear of them. They refuse to make the bad parts of the world exterior to grace; if this world is the winter of existence, they must find the seeds of spring already present in that winter. 

But there are many more local versions. These are also normative generalizations, that are obviously processed very differently by communities and people in those places.

History

Uvara draws on ancient Prism religious traditions from the region that were transformed by the Scouring of Stildane. Uvara then grew to incorporate aspects of Ederstone cult and Kivishta as those traditions developed alongside it. As it absorbed these parallel traditions, it spread to human and dryad communities. In the early 300's, it absorbed and fused with the growing religious movement of the Cult of Ustav- a powerful sorcerer whose ghost had been mutated by Ederstone and fused with the land itself. That evangelical energy was enough to make Uvara the dominant non-Kivish religious tradition in Stildane. As the Kivish formalized their religion and waged religious war across North Stildane, Uvara became the counter-movement for besieged communities. Early Uvara rarely needed forceful evangelism when it could simply offer connections and guidance in the face of Kivish raids and invasions.
As the Kivish de-radicalized and lost their inertia, Uvara went from being a common community of resistance to a community of mutual aid in the face of the Mageplague. After almost a thousand years of crisis response, the end of the Mageplague and its variants in 1190 forced Uvara to define itself by something more than opposition. The arrival of twin meteors in 1200 served as a great excuse for a grand conference, and the Hainish city of Vruhafen hosted priests from across Stildane in 1201. At this Starlight Assembly, priests hammered out a shared version of the Sovikov together, and began compiling collections of shared regional lore and philosophy. The assembly did not create a centralized structure for the faith, but it created loose definitions and shared resources to stop the communities from drifting apart. It also introduced aspects of Hainish tradition to the greater whole- notably, Samvaran concepts of divine covenant. Since 1201, Uvara has continued to slowly spread in reaction to crises- the rise of radical Kivish sects, plagues, bloody civil wars. While the assembly gave Hainish priests a claim to leadership of the religion, the truth is that Uvara remains fluid and syncretic as ever. In the face of such extreme and dogmatic neighbors as Kivishta, Suneka, and Nedira, that is its great strength.

Mythology & Lore

Myth of Creation

In the beginning there was no land. There was only day and night clashing forever on neutral sky. Day was fire, light, change, and everything that could be, and it manifested as Deversain, Goddess of Chaos. Night was cold, death, order, and everything that could not be, and it manifested as Ubibi, Goddess of Order. The sky, empty and passionless, watched all.
Nothing could truly exist in either Chaos or Order, but where they met, bits of land and life would form and be washed away. Neither noticed, but the sky did. The shock and sadness of seeing such futile attempts at existence broke the sky's indifference, and it became Vanoke, God of the Sky, Time, Space, and what simply is. Vanoke began collecting this life and protecting it, only to find it form into a child. He raised it as his daughter, Varsha. One day Varsha was too big to hide behind Vanoke and his clouds, and Ubibi and Deversain noticed her. They attacked, and she knocked them downwards, making room for the world. In their space, Varsha made land, which Vanoke protected with an endless sea of protecting water.
Varsha made the world and its life out of clay and became queen of the world. She made three children to call her own:

• Kragen, Goddess of War, passion, and law- she who battles Ubibi and Deversain, mother of Prisms
• Ustav, God of Life, Luck, Prosperity, and Magic, father of humans and dryads
• Silsta, Goddess of Stars, healing, and protector of the dead - she who governs the dead and aids her old grandfather Vanoke; mother of solars

All of whom she adored. And so the pantheon came together and the world was made

Myth of the Sun and Moon

For many eras, there were only two seasons or times of day: hottest brightest summer day and most cold and dark winter night. Life could only thrive in the twilight hours of dusk and dawn, but lived in terror all other times. Ustav decided he was done with this and gathered his siblings for a daring plan.
Ustav was going to steal the most precious jewels of Ubibi and Deverstain: the sun and moons. First, he needed a distraction. He had his sister Silsta go out at night with a bag of stars alone while Kragen waited with her sharpest sword on the highest mountain nearby. Deverstain and Ubibi accosted Silsta, demanding the stars. Silsta promised to give them to whichever Dark God could jump the highest, drink the most, tell the funniest joke, and defeat the other in combat. They competed and bickered for days while Silsta provoked them, but each foul God was secretly making its own plan to betray her and steal the stars. Deverstain planned to manipulate Silsta by smashing the world with her claws and killing as many as she could until Silsta cried and gave her the stars. Ubibi had stolen rats from the Earth and made them into monsters that would creep out and steal the stars.
After 30 days, finally Deverstain gave up and attacked while Ubibi sent her minions. Kragen, waiting on the mountain, leapt into the sky and smashed Deverstain terribly- leading the points of her claws stuck in the earth as Ederstone. Silsta threw the bag open and scattered the stars across the sky so that they could not be stolen, and then sent a wind to knock the minions down to Earth. There, Varsha gave them life and made them into people- Kobold. All the while, Ustav had been sneakily plundering both Ubibi and Deverstain's domains, seizing everything they had. Ustav finally returned, but as Ubibi and Deverstain saw him hanging their most treasured possessions in the sky, they entered a rage. They worked together to make a terrible storm of fire and night to destroy all life and sent it down on Earth.
Ustav, realizing what his plan had unleashed, leapt in the way and took the storm into his body. He was killed, but his spirit remained part of the whole world. Every spring and every fall, Ustav returns to life only to be killed once again by his mortal foes. He struggles forever to keep the world safe and prosperous, and his enemies struggle to keep him from making the world better.

The Prophecy of Eternal Springtime

Varsha gives us all spirits that contain a little bit of the land, which Ustav is a part of. Ustav is destined to one day be born as a mortal, to ascend as an unstoppable force of unending springtime. That person will be the Irunek , and they will need for nothing and be free from fire and cold alike. They will finally defeat both Ubibi and Deverstain and bring about eternal balance between their extremes.

Other Important Gods and Characters

Varsha and her three children may be the most powerful and authoritative of the pantheon, but that doesn't mean they are the most important to daily life. Other important gods include:

• Ertinar, son of Ustav and God of Rain, Wind, Seas, and Magic. Often credited with helping Ustav steal the sun and moon, he is known both as the son mourning his father and a joyous traveler. He spreads his father's love and knowledge to the world, teaching mortals magic and giving favorable winds to those who wish to explore the world. It is said that his father created Pangolins for him as a gift, and that he is the father of the aquatic races
• Hadash, meek son of Silsta and God of Animals, Artisans, and the Hearth. Known as the weaver of fate and the claymaker of life, Hadash rides a chariot pulled by eagles to visit between his mother in the underworld and those of the living. It is said that he once fell in love with a mortal and offered them rides to see their deceased, accidentally making them the first ghost after they tumble over the chariot's side. That spirit is known as Dulnek, the laughing/crying spirit.
• Rugon, child of Kragen and God of Plants, Shepherds, Fertility, and Crops. An indecisive shapeshifter, Rugon searched for their calling for many years before ascending to become the world tree- holding up the sky eternally to keep the world safe. All dryads are descended from their seeds.

Cosmological Views

Life, truth, goodness, and happiness all exist in balance of the two extremes: light and dark, chaos and order. The universe is infinite, but mostly extreme and unknowable to us. The sky, the earth, the sea, and the underworld all exist in a state of balance, alternating through cycles of extremes. This cycle of seasons is the cycle of all things- birth, adulthood, old age, post-death life, rebirth. This cycle can only be ended by finding the spirit of Uvara- unconditional kindness and 'spring energy' that can sustain eternal happiness.

Tenets of Faith

Followers of the Middle path:

• Moderate their material excesses. Life exists to enjoy, but never become lost in it.
• Give what they can. You and your community come first, but to give to others is to be more like Ustav, the Spring God
• Protect guests from harm. The world is dangerous to all life, so we must keep refuge
• Are loyal to their kin and community. Refuge is beyond one person; only by doing our part without hesitation or question can we keep the refuge we are born to safe. Our traditions outline what we must do.
• Are loyal to the Gods. The Gods do so much for us and shield us from harm, we must keep their sacred spaces safe and perform their traditions with care.
• Destroy threats to harmony. Those who threaten the peace and prosperity of others are a threat to us all and must be destroyed by any means.
• Respect what they do not understand. The world is vast and strange and difficult to understand, but there is much to learn from it. The Uvara is a promise to all living things and a community of all good life- they just don't know it yet.
• Survive. Even the Gods have struggled against the Cosmos to survive. To be like them, fight to survive at any cost.

Priesthood

Priests are identified by their vibrant colored robes adorned with a symbol of a rainbow circle. It is taboo for a priest to wear black.
Priests of Uvara are typically apprenticed from a young age from a dominant family in the community. Training includes memorization of holy stories, correct rituals, and sometimes Druidic or Bardic magic. As priests can marry, this can be a hereditary passing of the torch from parent to child. If a child of another prestigious family is particularly well suited for the priesthood, they may also be sent to learn, especially if there is an opening in a community or holy site. If there are excess priests trained in a community, they may be sent to an urban center or holy site to join a holy order; they may also take up a second trade and work to make money in cooperation with the community temple.

"One Day, Peace Will Come"

Founding Date

300ME/1201ME

Type

Religious, Organised Religion

Alternative Names

Rutogen, Spring-Promise Faith

Demonym

Uvaran

Subsidiary Organizations

• Autumn Court

Permeated Organizations

• Empire of Eketen
• Kingdom of Arvarun
• Kingdom of Aterek
• Kingdom of Dovenar
• Kingdom of Nidever
• Kingdom of Vetenka
• Sanctuary of Uvasten
• The Kingdom of Gennorholn
• The Kingdom of Hain

Deities

• Kragen
• Ustav

Divines

• Ertinar
• Hadash
• Kragen
• Rugon
• Silsta
• Ustav
• Vanoke
• Varsha

Location

Stildane

Related Traditions

• Frelden Festival

Related Ranks & Titles

• Irunek
• Rosgen
• Uvaran Archdruid
• Uvaran Priest

Related Plots

• The End of Innocence
• Vruhafen Never Sleeps