Religion: The Dreamswallowers

梦吃 (Mèngchī) - The Dreamswallowers

Prior to its disunion Yunhai became the first nation to colonize the Sea, driven to do so by its religion: an evolution of ancient pagan traditions which began with simple animism. The Dreamswallowers faith reveres all magic, especially that involved with creation or alteration, and the ultimate goal of its followers is to wholly reunite themselves with the Sea.

The Dreamswallowers' creation story tells of a goddess who made an unwise sacrifice eons ago and brought ruin to the Sea. Captured peacefully by the other gods following a series of catastrophic omens, she was stripped of her magical powers and cast out to the Territories alongside her beloved. The goddess' name is long forgotten, and in the modern day she is simply known as the First Mother.
In Mèngchī spirits or gods of any sort are divine by being connected to the Sea, but are not seen as sacred or inviolable. The Dreamswallowers specifically worship any spirits, gods, and even monsters who bring about physical or mental change, or which are directly responsible for the creation of new beings or new states of being. Women are held in especially high regard in Mèngchī as they are naturally gifted with the ability to create life, and Dreamswallower states tend to host matriarchal societies as a result.
It would be easy to think of Dreamswallowers as magic scientists: biologists, herbalists, archaeologists, and even geneticists; and devoting oneself to the study and improvement of human understanding of a particular aspect of the Sea is considered a most admirable life goal. As a rule, the Dreamswallowers hate the concept of death and their faith is one that warns strongly against killing.

Followers of Mèngchī believe in an infinite cycle of reincarnation a la Samsara in Buddhism, and like Buddhism the greatest goal in the Dreamswallowers faith is to release others - and then oneself - from that cycle of rebirth. In this case, though, the means used to achieve this goal can be a little more varied: even trapping oneself in a hellish existence or in a mindless state (as a tree, for instance) are both valid approaches under the faith so long as one never truly dies.
For the Dreamswallowers, the power that originates from the Sea is not the result of a deity or deities as in other religions, but an endless dream from which all Creation sprung forth, radiating outward. Similar to The Reef near Ashimachi, The Everdream is a realm incomprehensible to human minds: it is the true unification of all things and the expression of no one thing, where beginnings and endings are united in endless loop for eternity.
Dreamswallower societies on the Coast are some of the only places where the Treetouched can live free of discrimination and prejudice. Xinyuan and Maqqia are popular destinations for Treetouched seeking to escape a life of slavery, and this is reflected in the population of those city-states. 

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Denominations

In the current world there are three major denominations of Dreamswallowers: the Yunhai Orthodox, the Maqqian Sojourn, and the Chosen of the Reef. All three of these are permutations of the same scripture. Any self-described Dreamswallower who does not personally identify with one of these specific denominations is simply referred to as a Dreamswallower or a Follower of the Dream.
The Yunhai Orthodoxy
Based outside the Sea, the Orthodoxy practices the general tents of Mèngchī in pure theoretics: with no access to real magic, the teachings of Mèngchī are revered and its traditions observed in exactly the same way as religions on Earth. The Orthodoxy predates settlement of the Coast by several millennia, and interestingly many of its beliefs have actually been proven, rather than disproven, by research and exploits in the Sea of Trees. Therefore the original scriptures have been modified very little after being tested against real magic. Given the difference in population density between the Coast and the Territories, the Orthodoxy is by far the largest denomination of Dreamswallower faith in Qarna, and most practitioners on the Coast will still identify themselves as Orthodox.
The Maqqian Sojourn
The Sojourn are spiritual descendents of the Ashimachi fugitives who went on to settle the Northern Reach. The first settlers of the Sea were Dreamswallowers, and as one can imagine being immersed in the realm of real magic and seeing their faith become reality had a profound impact on their scriptures and practices. Sojourners’ central practice revolves around communities coming together to create spirits and gods of all shapes and sizes to ease the difficulties of life and increase their own harmony with the Reach.
Bolstered by Azir minds over the last two centuries, the Sojourn has figured out the exact science behind the Rites of Apotheosis and have become so skilled at the process that in Maqqia spirits and gods of towns, businesses, and even individual homes are commonplace. They achieve this level of creation by forming ensembles of a dozen or more dreamers - known as Journeymen - who gather together and chew cosmic root to induce mass REM sleep. These ensembles each specialize in creating certain types of spirits or gods with certain themes, and have been known to travel in great caravans throughout the cities of the Reach to offer their services to people in need.
The Sojourn is also known for having some of the greatest artificers on the Coast within its ranks. Wonders like the Levanite crystals and dragonthroat sails which power their sandships were only made possible by the fusion of Aziran ingenuity and the Dreamswallowers’ continuing studies on the workings of the Sea. Of particular interest to the Sojourn is The Tear, a forbidding and hostile deep zone located in the Reach which forms an enormous chasm over 300 miles long and with a depth that has not yet been discerned by human researchers.
The Chosen of the Reef
The Chosen are a radicalized sect from the Ashimachi region, many of them denizens of Tailfeather but a number still living underground in Ashimachi and the surrounding area. For nearly a thousand years they have lived under the rule of the Chains but their faith remains strong because of one key discovery: The Reef.
Located just before the edge of the Threshold west of Ashimachi, The Reef is a deep zone where the laws of physics and reality are not broken, but rearranged in unnatural ways - matter itself is pulverized into a slurry and unified with other states in a way that is difficult for the mind to comprehend. A woman entering the Reef for the first time would find her mind fused with those of all the animals, plants, insects - even the dirt and stones of the Reef - and realize in an instant she had become one with the force of life within the boundaries of the deep zone. Any attempted act of destruction instead results in new life: drawing the blade of a sword across a man’s torso in the Reef would leave a trail of spontaneously generated body parts - eyes, mouths, fingers, bones - with no injuries to speak of.
The Saints of the Reef have all entered this deep zone and communed with the maelstrom of identities within. They successfully retained their own personae through this endeavor, and emerged as something different; something no longer human, but retaining a human mind.
Most important of all, the Reef is a place where spirits and gods can live free from the imprisonment of being bound to their soulgems or soulstones. This fact drives the core tenets of the Chosen, and is the reason the Reef is their ultimate Nirvana. It also serves as a source of minor artifacts for them, as the spirits and gods no longer need the deicite to live so the Chosen are free to collect them and do as they wish.
Their numbers significantly reduced and their activities heavily restricted by the Chains law in Ashimachi, the Chosen of the Reef found themselves unable to gather in sufficient numbers to perform the rites of apotheosis. The materials involved are also explicitly illegal to possess, import, or export due to the Chains’ disapproval of creating spirits and gods. Seeking a way to circumvent this, the Chosen devised a new strategy:
The first rite of initiation for the Chosen of the Reef involves stitching beads of deicite ore under one’s skin. The Rites of Apotheosis are conducted on an individual basis, and over time the new Chosen’s spirit manifests - a creation of one mind and one dream. While spirits and gods created using traditional methods are bound to specific geographical locations, spirits made this way are instead bound to the individual’s soul. As a result of this process, Chosen of the Reef all bear their own personal spirits and gods, although of course the latter are very rare and in all cases they are somewhat weak compared to what a Coast-dweller normally thinks of when he thinks of spirits and gods.
One such individual, known as Birdcatcher, acts as leader and messiah to the Chosen and is distinguished by a number of firsts: he was the first to attempt “smuggling” god’s ore in his own body after the Shogun’s takeover, and the first to become a Saint of the Reef. Birdcatcher is reportedly over a thousand years old, his body wildly mutated to the point where he is barely recognizable as human. It’s said that he can withdraw his mutations at will but vastly prefers to remain in that form as often as possible: he has carefully cultivated the Chosen in the shadow of Ashimachi’s Chains faith, establishing an underground society that inhabits ruins, sewers, and the long-abandoned temple to the Reed Mother.
As of LN 1283 things are finally falling into place for the ultimate undertaking: a mass pilgrimage to the Reef where all the Chosen may unleash their inner gods and find peace, or join the Sea themselves.