Gods, Religion and the Divine

The Gods of Turian

Because Turian's population has, for the most part, been imported, resettled and stolen from other universes one should not be surprised that there is a multitude of gods and pantheons that are worshipped. Basically, most people have brought their faiths with them and stuck to them, at least for a time.

On the other hand, there are some gods that have evolved or just have shown up on Turian itself. There are gods who are no longer worshipped and others who have kept their following over the millennia.

The Divine

In a world where the people know gods exist are those gods still gods? Worship and faith have different meanings when you not only might have seen miracles happening but you can and will experience the working of the gods. Why have faith? While I might not be able to answer that question at this time, we will find here the basic thoughts about what makes divine work in Turian. Some rules ideas and general thoughts on divine entities.

General axioms:

• Sacramental rituals are powered only by the will and blessing of the gods.
• Not all members of the clergy are able to channel divine energies outside of the sacramental rituals of the church.
• The quota of individuals within the clergy who would be classified as clerics in D&D or Blessed ones in TDE is about 7 %.

Channelling the Divine:

When it comes to the hierarchy within a church that can be very specific or very loose depending on faith etc. There is however a common item in most of the various churches. They do differentiate their fully invested priests by their ability to channel the divine energies. When it comes to titles, nomenclature or hierarchy within the church such ability is, in most cases irrelevant.
There are generally three levels of inherent abilities:

1. At the lowest level, the individual can call upon the divine for all acts within the rites of the church. Blessings, ex-communications, transmutations, healing to some extent, word bindings etc.
2. At the intermediate level, we would find the Clerics and Blessed Ones of the various RPGs of low to medium power.
3. At the highest level, we would find those beings that are true Saints of their deities. An example would be high-level Clerics in D&D.

Divine beings:

There are certainly divine beings in the universe of Turian. Divine is to be understood without orientation of good or evil, simply as something that transcends the regular world a higher or lower form of energy and matter. For some, there is even the question if the gods are gods at all.
“While many try to form a hierarchy within the divine, often by suggesting that parent gods are superior to their offspring, by older gods being more powerful than younger ones or by assuming that the relative power of such entities relies on the number of followers or devotedness of such, there is no indication that such a hierarchy or its rationalization has any relation to reality. Because in reality, we do not even know if such divine entities are real at all.”
Magistra Feldiosa ab Durlinos

Due to the facts mentioned above there are many gods in Turian. So many in fact that one might ask if those gods have enough followers to give power to them. But as Magistra Feldiosa ab Durlinos so eloquently put it - there is no indication of such needs.
And she also offers us this thought:
"Please take into consideration how many different gods we know of. We know of gods who just care for certain people or just a certain function, phenomenon etc. Gods are personifications of a volcano or a river. We know of so many gods, but what do we really know? Are there many or just a few, or one? Maybe, we just use different names for the same gods, or we name gods who are just manifestations of whatever the gods might really be. We do not know for sure, but we know that the gods, or the beings we name so, take the measure of us and our actions in our daily lives that they themselves take action and provide or punish. And I for one - am grateful and fearful, am anxious and hopeful - because of that."