Verses from the Dawn of Time
Within the Orkina religion, the Rekrabia tells the story of the world's creation and the Ancient Gods who would mold the world into what it is today. The Rekrabia is the first book in the Enlightening Texts, a collection of books used to foster a deeper understanding of the Ancient Gods and the world they created. Determining the original author of the Rekrabia is difficult due to its age, though it is believed it be either the founder of the Orkina faith, Narratal, or her disciple, Hormil. This also applies to the year of its creation, though sources suggest that the year 1071 AE is the most accurate.
Those looking to fully understand the nature of the Ancient Gods will begin their journey by reading this book and drawing their interpretation of the story they just read. From there, the pilgrim will embark on a long pilgrimage across the entire continent of Stelwen to further their understanding of the gods, culminating in the pilgrim developing their thesis on the Ancient Gods and selecting their patron gods.
Foreign Legacy
For the longest time, the Rekrabia served its role within the Orkina religion and circulated among its followers. With Stelwen being relatively isolated from the rest of the world before the Dreddar's rise to power, getting a copy of the book was quite difficult. However, after the founding of Derraken, foreigners had an easy way into Stelwen for the first time in years. While anything pertaining to the Orkina faith was banned, travelers could take copies of the book from territories outside of Dreddar control. From here, the book first circulated among scholars and historians who eagerly studied it as their first proper look into the mythology of the Orkina religion.
Despite being a religious text, the Rekrabia cultivated an audience who enjoyed the book as a piece of literature despite its religious undertones. The books circulation outside of Stelwen was the catalyst for Orkina mythology's boom in popularity among novelists and artists. Among these works of art is Otake Kitamura's Rekrabian Chronicles, a rewriting of the Rekrabia that draws away from the book's religious origins while telling the same story as the original. While the popularity of Orkina mythology among foreign artists who separate their gods from their faith has been seen as disrespectful to some Orkina faithful, more progressive followers have embraced it. Furthermore, the open to interpretation nature of the faith, particularly regarding the Ancient Gods themselves, means outsiders learning about them and using them as a means of expressing themselves is seen as perfectly in line with Orkina traditions.
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