RELIGION GUIDE / HELP / LORE / RELIGION In play: help religion. Also doctrine, faith, the descent, heresy, sin, afterlife, church of the nine, ninefold. IN THIS TOPIC 6 Sin Splintering The Afterlife Saints and Seals The Clergy Other FaithsThe Church of the Nine: the city's one faith, what counts as sin, and how splintering brings the dead back.
There is one major religion in Deshret: the Church of the Nine, run by Sepulchre. Its central doctrine is that technology must be kept under strict control. Reckless technology, such as free-thinking machines, towers of light reaching the clouds, and attempts to reach beyond the boundaries of the soul, is what brought the Burning and destroyed the old world.
A faithful citizen might take one of the nine Saints as an example, wear their seal, confess regularly to a priest, avoid cyberware, and make sure they are prepared for splintering.
Sin
Sin and heresy here look nothing like Judeo-Christian ideas. Sepulchre does not preach about sex or relationships. Sin is yearning for the damned world above, or for the corrupting technology of the past. That is why the Church disapproves of cyberware: the sins of the old world came from joining man and machine.
There is a smaller focus on making peace and avoiding feuds. Deshret survives only through webs of interdependence, so priests urge people to let grievances go.
Splintering
Saint Marrow, the Prophet and leader of the Founders, created Sepulchre. His death and miraculous return in the first year after the Founding set the pattern for the Church's holiest mystery: splintering, the revival of the dead. Through holy ritual, the clergy keep a shard of your soul and guide it back into a body. But every human soul is flawed, so something is always lost on the way. Only Marrow was perfect enough to come back unchanged.
To be splintered, you go to Sepulchre, which records an impression of you as you are at that moment. After death, you can come back at any adult age you choose, as a version of yourself with no scars, injuries, or other marks of your past. The real cost is in the mind. You forget everything since your last splintering: if you last updated it five years ago, you lose five years of your life.
There is more. The effects differ from person to person, but people tend to come back changed. None are as pure as Marrow, and the damage adds up, with more of the soul lost with each death. That is why the Church looks at the ruling line of House Vesalius as more and more degenerate: one soul, cut into shards for three bodies, over and over.
Splintering costs money in advance, with sleeve and shard fees, so not everyone can use it. Some go without: people executed by the state or the Church, people too poor to pay, people who die again before they can splinter again, and a rare few who choose not to. It takes serious heresy to be refused. The Church teaches that even the worst can be redeemed, and points to Saint Cassius the Betrayer and his penance.
The Afterlife
The afterlife is not eternal bliss against eternal torment. You are either saved or erased. The Church teaches that the Hum is part of Saint Marrow. If you are faithful, your soul lives on in that mass with him, and your place in the Hum is what lets you be brought back into a body. Continued existence is salvation, and that is heaven. The oblivion of dying without splintering is hell. The surface and its doomed people are held up as proof of how terrible life and death are for the unfaithful.
Saints and Seals
The Church venerates the nine Founders as Saints, and each has an order within the Church that shapes how its clergy practise. Marrow's order is very orthodox. Vael's is a hospitaller order, Ferro's works with its hands, Cinder's are scholars, Vesper's are hermits, Severin's are martial, and Wren's are mendicants.
Lay people choose Saints to guide them too. Clergy and lay folk alike may wear their Saint's seal on their clothes or as a tattoo. The finest seal tattoos come from Sepulchre itself, though other artists may draw them. Only the eight classic seals are canon, and their basic form is sacred, though it is common to vary where they sit or add a decorative border.
The Clergy
The Inquisitors root out heresy. The rest of the clergy handle the Church's daily work: schooling, tattooing seals, hearing confession, giving blessings, building community, and shepherding the flock. Other duties depend on the priest and their order, such as charity, or nursing for those who follow Vael.
Other Faiths
No other religion has any real foothold in Deshret. Preaching another faith is not necessarily heresy, but it is not looked on kindly. People know other religions once existed, but Sepulchre does not want the details leading anyone astray. Talk about old faiths and expect odd looks, and maybe some attention, as people start to wonder why you care so much.
Read next: help saints, help seals, help the hum, and help sepulchre.
NEARBY [P] PEGASUS [N] SAINTS LORE 36 Abkal Cabiri Coterie Deshret Districts Diving Glossary Great Houses Guilds House Amari House Drepane House Kadesh House Morcant House Qamarat House Rook House Valcora House Varga House Vesalius Kolkhos Languages Law Life In Deshret Materials Mythos Ophirian League Outriders Pegasus Religion Saints Seals Sepulchre Splicers Symphony Technology The Hum Vulcani
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