Blood of Vol

The Blood of Vol is a faith that believes in a divine spark within every individual. They believe that death is the end, that souls that fade in Dolurrh are obliterated, and that the universe is uncaring. If the Sovereign Host exists, then the seekers believe that they are uncaring at best and actively cruel at worst. The most basic principle of the Blood of Vol is that the universe is against us, and all we have is each other. If there are higher powers, they are cruel or uncaring, and we can't rely on them to help us when things get hard. The Blood of Vol is intensely community focussed, and the seekers really see the value in friendship, family, and community. There are no benevelont gods looking out for us, we have to look out for each other. Death is the end and there is no afterlife, so we must do everything we can to stop it from taking the people we love, and we should treasure the time that we do have. Because of this belief that death is the end, the Blood of Vol has a much more positive view of necromancy than the other faiths, there is nothing wrong with using the bodies of the dead to serve the living, there is no desecration if death is oblivion. Seekers of the Divinity Within are glad to be reanimated after death, and actively provide their consent for this reanimation to occur, believing that they can continue to serve their communities. This association with necromancy has led to the belief amongst outsiders that the Blood of Vol embraces death, and that it's followers seek to become undead, but both of these ideas are false. Seekers view death as the ultimate evil. They don't want to become undead, they want to discover the divinity within themselves and become divine beings, and the faith teaches that this divine spark is tied to the blood and to the soul. Undead can never fully harness the divinity within, and those that become undead within Seeker communities have sacrificed their own chance at divinity so that they may guide the living. To the Blood of Vol, it's undead members are martyrs, something to be appreciated, but not something to envy. Additionally, the public perception of the Blood of Vol is tarnished by the actions of the Order of the Emerald Claw, an extremist group from Karrnath that claims to adhere to the Blood of Vol, and use the faith as a means to justify their use of necromancy in acts of terror. Most Seekers do not support the actions of the Emerald Claw, and find the very idea of the terrorist organisation to be abhorrent and antithetical to the faith. Death is a big deal to the Blood of Vol, and most seekers would balk at the idea of using necromancy to kill others, consigning them to oblivion. The Blood of Vol has never ranged wide across Khorvaire, and most of it's following has been fairly concentrated in the east of Khorvaire, especially in Karrnath and the Lhazaar Principalities. For a time, it was the national religion of Karrnath, but following the rise to power of Kaius ir'Wynarn III, they have fallen from favour.

Symbol

The power of the Blood of Vol comes from within the faithful, and so an expression of this faith is deeply personal. As a result, every Seeker chooses their own symbol, something which has meaning to them. Some symbols are more common than others, and a safe bet is a tear-shaped red gemstone or shard of glass, a visual representation of the blood of Vol.

Rites

The rites practiced by Seekers are generally focussed on drawing the faithful together as a community, and encouraging people to find power within themselves and each other. The most important of these rituals is named the Sacrament of Blood, where each member of the community sheds a small amount of their blood into a basin. This blood serves a few purposes, it is a symbol of unity and a message that the community members would shed blood for each other, both metaphorically and literally. Additionally, it serves as a very practical way of sustaining martyrs within the community, vampires or mummies who have been reanimated to continue to guide the living. Through this ritual, martyrs who have lost their own divine spark can draw their power from the blood of the faithful, and the divine sparks of the community as a whole. Seeker communities have often formed either in, or nearby, Mabaran manifest zones. These areas are generally inhospitable or outright dangerous, but the faithful have discovered ways to tap into the energies of these manifest zones over the centuries. The rituals that the Seekers perform mitigate the negative impact of the manifest zones, preventing the blighting and sickness that occurs as a result of them whilst also powering the communities necromancy.

History

The Blood of Vol is indigenous to the continent of Khorvaire, with influences from both the Sovereign Host of Sarlona and the beliefs of the Line of Vol from Aerenel. The Line of Vol was a noble line of Aerenel with a long tradition of Mabaran necromancy, which already put them at odds with the other factions within Aerenel. The history of the Line of Vol is not widely known, but ultimately they were exiled or exterminated. These elven exiles settled in the Lhazaar Principalities and the land that would eventually become Karrnath. They brought their knowledge of necromancy with them, and their stories of the heroic family of Vol who sought to attain godhood, only to be destroyed by those who didn't understand. The people of eastern Khorvaire were entirely unfamiliar with Aerenel, and they blended the stories of the exiles with their own experiences of life in a land that is often harsh, and the often empty promises of the Sovereign Host's priests. In doing so they somehow discovered a divine force that they could draw upon to cast divine miracles, whilst the Line of Vol had never sought the divinity within, these first priests of the Blood of Vol found it. Despite the name of the faith, the religion was never actually practiced by the Line of Vol, and indeed the line of Vol was eradicated before the Blood of Vol came into being. The Blood of Vol is a faith born from the blending of elven and human myths and traditions from two different cultures, and they have no consistent mythology as to who this mythical "Vol" is. Some believe that Vol was the first person to discover the divinity within, and that they were destroyed by the Sovereign Host, others believe that Vol was simply the first Seeker of the Divinity Within, the founder of their faith. The true identity of Vol is largely irrelevant, the Blood of Vol is not concerned with worshipping martyrs, but in seeking the divinity within and caring for their communities.