The Eyries of Urian

The church of Urian has weakened in the civilized world, though worship of the god remains strong in wild places. As people move into cities and have ready shelter and warmth, the need to fear the winds and revere the sun is sublimated to reverence for more earthly forces like commerce, craft, war, and medicine. For this reason, the eyries of Urian (as his Churches are called) and the Urianath (YUR-ee-uhn-ath) who worship there have become rare in cities.
The eyries are not secularly strong, and one of their holy orders has vanished from the world. Indeed, the greatest eyries stand high in the mountains, ancient and magnificent structures that offer a commanding view out across hundreds of miles of valleys. These eyries are remote and hard to reach, and it is rare for the skylarks—priests—to journey down from them. This does not make for a popular religion. And yet, for those who seek freedom from enslavement—of the body, the mind, or the spirit—there are few greater places than the eyries. Homes of contemplation, beauty, and austere wisdom, the eyries are a boon to many in their deepest need.
The eyries are roused to action when asked to aid the enslaved and the downtrodden. Just as Urian’s wind reaches every corner of the world, the Urianath believe Urian’s care should be available to all people and therefore abhor slavery. However, the Urianath are now so marginalized that, should they seek to topple a major power, they would need aid from another church to carry out the task.
The stance against slavery is universal in the faith. There are other points on which the Urianath vary. There are some devoted most to the sun and light of the Sky King. These Urianath strive against the undead and other forces of unlife. Others among the Urianath revere the Sky Father’s cold light of the moon and stars above all, and seek individual strength and glory, as the stars are individual points of beauty and light.
Urian has a peculiar view of the world: He either focuses on the highly specific details of peoples’ lives, or pays attention to trends across hundreds of years. This is best understood as the sun and the stars. The sun rises every single day; its cycle is one of the daily repetitions. Stars hang in the heavens, unchanging, for thousands of years, their fire never dimming. Their cycle is either so slow as to be immeasurable, or they are not on a cycle at all.
Urian sees the world through these eyes: the day-to-day and the very, very long term. Nowhere is this clearer than in his attitude toward the Urianath faith. He can become intensely involved with the mission of one skylark in a very specific predicament while ignoring everyone else in her eyrie, or he can go for hundreds of years without sending guidance or aid to any of the Urianath—even the most powerful. Most of them accept this as the reason the order of the griffins (see below) have been gone from the world for so long; they imagine the Sky Father hasn’t even noticed yet. Urian certainly has no reason to mistrust or dislike his church, but he also has the very practical details of being the heavens to attend to. And if he is capricious and uninvolved in his dealings with the Urianath eyries, he is even more so with the various nomads and barbarians who worship him on the fringes of the world.