Celestii Magni
Divine Origins
The coming of the Divine Angels was an event of such cosmological significance that it reset the Collective calendar of the Orbis to Year 1, though several thousand years after the fact, it should be noted.
In those late days of the decrepit Cumaean Empire, where religion was capricious and arbitrary, and the gods were impossibly distant, the Celestials returned with ascendant knowledge to a blessed community of heroes of the age, from whom the transmission of holy wisdom took place. As the old, dark and superstitious empire died, a new one arose from the opposite side of the world, filled with purpose, understanding, and enlightenement.
Cosmological Views
According to Celestii Magni, the physical world is the manifestation of impurities in the higher planes, created from the best intentions of an idealistic but foolish Creator god who is nevertheless incomprehensible and unapproachable by mere mortals or anything in creation. After the act of creation, the creator withdrew to the spiritual realm and ceased to exist in any plane connected to the physical one. Over time, ripples of the Creator's work, the wake where the Creator had passed through other planes, created spirits, false gods that the Ur-races and even the Elves worshiped in error. Other Gods rejected all faith, though they mimicked the Creator by withdrawing to the moon. But when the Moon Elves nearly destroyed the world, the Creator realized that creation needed true spirits to protect them, to guide them, and to watch over them.
The spirits came after the comet impact to the survivors, but ultimately were rejected in favor of the false gods who were worshipped by the Cumaeans. The false gods had great power while the true creator and his angels were separate from the universe, and couldn't overcome them directly until that Empire fell. The prophecy of the fall of that empire was met with laughter and disbelief, but thousands of years later it began to come true. The angels came again, then, to a small group of ordinary people in what would soon reorganize into the nation of Toz, and those people cultivated the knowledge and began spreading the faith, even as the great Empire began its collapse, of such size that it still took well over a thousand years for the world-nation to begin to split into pieces.
Tenets of Faith
- Self-determination. Enlightenment and wisdom are personal endeavors, and corporate ritual is valuable only inasmuch as it opens the inner eyes to see deeper truths.
- The universe at war with evil. The creator is outside of morality, but morality was part of the creation; those who embrace goodness commune with a higher existence, while those who pursue evil are no better than fiends seeking the destruction of everything, including themselves.
- Complexity for its own sake. No one sentient mortal could ever comprehend the true nature of Celestial thought; all the angels, saints, and feasts are worthy and canonical but no one is meant to know everything there is to know about the gods, their messengers, or the universal plan.
- Peace with reality. Curiosity is a virtue, but only when coupled with peace rather than greed, retribution or anger. Each living soul is merely a note in an eternal cosmic song, not intended to create strife or seek the harm of others for its own sake, no matter how strange and inexplicable the greater truths are revealed to be.
Permeated Organizations
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