The Mother Dragons Faith
"For the Mother Dragons did give themselves for us to walk and live, so too shall we give so others may live. Give up your coins, your time, your energy of self, and the Mother Dragons shall smile upon you as you embody their will."Formed in the Agarthan continent long before the Era System or official records start, The Mother Dragons Faith is a belief system that hinges on divine Draconic progenitors with scales that shimmered like precious gemstones. These divine progenitors observed the early times of mortal kind, and gave their physical forms and lives to enrich the land and the minds of the people, as the faith goes, even though their spirits and wills continue in the Divine Realms. With the faith coming from an act of divine charity, Generosity, Charity, and Action are key cornerstones of the faith and their beliefs, although the faithful of the various Dragons themselves have different key tenents. It is one of the most structured faiths in Edda, being on par with The Cabal of the Night Sky save for the fact that the Mother Dragons are not a state religion unlike the Cabal.
Structure
As mentioned previously, The Mother Dragons faith is one of the most structured of the faiths in Edda. For many, priesthood is a lifelong career and goal, one with many different avenues and applications. The first few ranks are specific to ones particular order, generally being preceeded by the specific Deity's name or gemstone. They are:
- Claw Priests - Neonates who spend most of their time studying scriptures, training in their particular avenue of Divine Magic, and attending to minor duties and daily chores their leading Heartscale Priests assign them.
- Fang Priests - Priests who have been training for at least one straight year and can perform 2nd Tier Magic reliably. While they'll hardly be left to their own devices, they can begin to undergo tasks such as blessings, exorcisms, and healings provided they are joined by more experienced Priests.
- Wing Priests - Priests who have been training for at least five consistent years, can perform 4th Tier Magic reliably, and have accomplished 12 assigned missions without incident. Wing Priests are provided more freedom in terms of clerical assignments, and are generally able to handle low-stakes missions alone, and are often chosen by Heartscale Priests to join them on longer, more dangerous missions. They also can begin to aid in sermons, baptisms, and social events.
- Scale Priests - Scale Priests have the same qualifications for promotion as Wing Priests, but while Wing Priests can specialize in many forms of Magic and divine paths, Scale Priests are more offensive and militant in their training, acting as the shields and swords of their Heartscale Priests.
- Heartscale Priests - Priests who have been training for at least fifteen consistent years, can perform 6th Tier Magic reliably, have completed 50 local missions and 20 missions away from their main temple, and have gained a reccomendation from another Heartscale Priest or Priest of higher rank. Heartscale Priests are the Generals of their local temples and are often leading sermons, missions, and various rituals both private and public, esoteric and mundane, mystical and folk. For those who wish to remain in their specific Divine track, this is the height of achivement.
- Wyrm Priests govern over particular neighborhoods or districts. While it's uncommon for them to manage more than one temple, with maybe two or three different Orders, in larger cities such as Agartha City there can be as many as 10 temples in a neighborhood!
- Drake Priests govern over sections of cities, and occasionally entire small townships. Their duties can often encapsulate 10-20 different temples and thrice as many Orders, so this starts to get quite hectic. Luckily they can mostly rely on the Wyrm Priests to deal with the more direct and personal issues.
- Wyvern Priests govern over larger cities and multiple smaller townships, with as few as 50 and as many as 100 temples and/or Orders under their purview. They mostly only handle larger, sweeping judgements and edicts, and are often the most influential faith-wise in a given region.
- Dragon Priests are the leaders of the entire Faith. Not only do they preside directly over the entirety of Agartha City, but they also make mass decisions on behalf of the entire Nation, and technically their faithful in other nations as well. Whereas the other roles have many, many members, there is only one Dragon Priest, and the position is only filled upon death or voluntary withdrawl.
Culture
The biggest cultural edict among The Mother Dragon faith resolves around the act of giving. Much like how the Mother Dragons gave their lives in their origin myth, followers are expected to give their time to their community, as well as being generous with their resources.
Followers of The Mother Dragons often organize charities, fundraisers, and donations. The more active and vocal among them might spend time organizing protests, creating rallies, or spreading specific papers or zines to spread the news. Many also enjoy assisting those who are already doing the above for non-religious motivations.
This focus on giving to others also provides a keen sense of who your "others" are, so the Mother Dragon faith also cultivates many community focused events and mindsets, even among the casually faithful or those who follow a different/no faith.
The faith also instills many with an appreciation for nature, as many of their divine dragons became key aspects of it, such as the sky, the grass plains, the night, etc. Unlike The True Giants Faith this manifests less as accepting the cycles of nature and more wishing to preserve nature and it's beauty, sometimes in unnatural or static states.
Assets
Agartha as a nation is home to a motherlode of precious natural resources, and while they might not have the sheer economic weight of Magnum Opus, they make up for the disparity in size and consistency. While the Church of Scales is not a state religion, it is a faith intrinsicly tied in with the culture of Agartha, and three of the current Circle Speakers are devout of the faith, with a position of Speaker of Faith being consistently filled for the last several hundred years.
Therefore, many people in power and many of Agartha's rich are generous to the church, resulting in a wide berth of assets for the organization as a whole, although there are many inner-Priest conflicts that boil down to budget, especially for more rural temples.
The Church also has a plethora of divine artifacts for various purposes. These are loaned out on permission of the Dragon Priest, but a few special divine agents have access to a handful full time.
Mythology & Lore
The Beginning
In the beginning of reality there was a chaotic void of space, and two titanic Dragons. They were not physical, flesh and scales, but rather energy given shape to glide amongst their respective realms. Bleith, embodiment of Time, and Gualan, embodiment of Space, glided next to each other in this empty realm. At one point, their paths converged, and their energies came together in a dance before they departed. When they left, a shimmering egg existed in the void of space. It grew and grew to the size of the sun while the various planets and asterisms of reality formed around it. Once the planets had grown and cooled, and Arcanoterra began to flourish with life, the hardest layer of the Perpetual Egg peeled off, spreading its wings wide as the Mother Dragon, Daoimean, burst into existance. In short order, the first generation of Dragons would spawn from the egg, each from a layer of the egg until the most diminutive Dragon remained, still sealed inside of a much more standard-sized dragon egg. While many of these Dragons deigned to remain in the astral realm between the worlds and planes, eleven of the sisters decided to live among the mortal realm, with the unhatched egg in tow. Daoimean took the charge to watch over them, even if she herself would not incarnate. And thus, the eleven sisters danced along the skies, seas, and land of Arcanoterra as Mana fled the world and eventually became Mortal Forms. They were even present for the arrival of The Tower, albiet as divine beings unchanged by it. They watched over and guided the newly created Mortal species as best they could, with many parables told to this day taking place in this time.The Sacrifice
But as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. While the Mother Dragons did their best to nurture and lead the nascent lifeforms, there was little they could do without their direction, which made many of them worry about their livelihood. The strength of Faith was strong from them, and was certainly desired, but even the pragmatic among them wished this society to continue for greater faith in the future. With many of the sisters stumped about what to do, since their attempts to teach the new Mortals only seemed to further their dependance, one of the youngest had an idea. Clachfala would take it upon herself to fly around the entire globe and see how other realms were growing, so they could get new ideas from them, as the Mother Dragons had been tasked to watch over the land that is now Agartha by the Will of Mana. Since she was a goddess of strength and battle, Clachfala felt that she would not be needed. And so she flew far and wide, but unbeknownst to her, another had hitched a ride. Guail, who held domain over secrets and darkness flew beneath her within the war dragons shadow, and observed the same thing she did: everyone was floundering and struggling as they adjusted to mortality, sentience, and single-mindedness. While Clachfala flew to find any proof, Guail flew back to their sisters, and reported the findings to their eldest and most emotional sister, Saphir. Saphir, who held domain over thought and imagination, had a beneficial but drastic idea. Soaring off into the sky above, she plummeted down with intense spped, dissiminating her energy and body throughout the entirety of not just Agartha, but all of Arcanoterra. This created a chain of sacrifices, as other sisters either gave their form in solidarity, in grief, or due to mortals needing their aspects to function. By the time Clachfala returned, there was only Guail and three of their sisters, Marmor of Truths, Òr of Preservation, and Amaitist of Beauty, as well as the unhatched egg remaining on what was now a massive mountain, a collective burial mound to their fallen siblings. While Guail tried to pass it off as purely the sisters decision, Marmor revealed their slicktongued siblings involvement and goading, enraging Clachfala to a degree that she lashed out at Marmor first and then at Guail, creating the Moon and Night Sky. With her own siblings blood on her hands, Clachfala decided she should go as well, imparting the mortals with the ideal of Justice rather than fury, and Amaitist and Òr followed suit, creating the Sun and the beautiful hues of the world. The young egg never hatched from its shell, but instead dissiminated her energy with the others, as Opal of Faith and Art. It was she who is credited with spreading the knowledge of her Sisters sacrifices to mortal men, and she who spurred them to maintain their faith in the Dragons who watch above, below, and within all things.History
The exact history of the faith is notoriously difficult to trace. It started long, long, ago as it was codified and had been through several eras of change when the Afallonian Era Calendar began in -3200 EE (more than 4,000 years ago). Even then, the oldest surviving records of the faith are dated back to at least -6000 EE, with consistent motifs and stories already being solidified. The spread of the faith in it's oldest forms seems to date back to before the first Mountain Agarthans broke out of World-Mountain Agartha, and it was already a faith they spoke of with great clarity and reverence. It soon came to spread over the rest of Agartha, and the gathering traditions of the Agarthan halflings began to push it to the sermon and community focus faith that it became. Throughout different eras of history and different forms of leadership, different Mother Dragons have been heralded as the chief among them, with new stories being "found" or created to explain the change, and many interactions with the spirits of the Mothers were spoke of along the way, with new stories, lessons, and parables being given to the most faithful followers. As Agartha grew as one of the three first Kingdoms, the faith became more and more interwoven with the culture of the people and the innerworkings of the nation as a whole, to the point that even in the modern day those who are largely agnostic or atheist still use many religious cultural norms and holidays on a casual level.Divine Origins
While the mythological origin has some timeline inconsistencies with how old World-Mountain Agartha is, it is true that the Mother Dragon faith has been spread nearly since the dawn of mortal kind. It's exact roots are impossible to trace, as consistent and detailed murals are found dating back to three millenia before the Afallonian calendar, meaning the stories were already spread and settled in their common themes at the time. While more has changed, adapted, grown, and been discovered over the millennia, we are no closer to knowing when it exactly started, but it is a very pervasive faith nonetheless.
Tenets of Faith
Each of the Mother Dragons and their particular devoted Orders have their own key tenents and rules in which they follow. The casual worshipper or devotee not in the clerical system itself only have to worry about a few:
- Live generously and give what you are able without requiring a return
- Do not hoard excessively and deprive others of that which they may need
- Do not harm those creatures with scales like our Mothers, unless in the circumstance of self-defense
- Do not bring undue harm to the natural world or your fellow man
- Do not hide the truth or censor the knowledge of the generations
Worship
Other than actions that reflect on the values of the Mother Dragons, the most common form of worship is verbal prayer, either said in a group or to ones self. It is customary to do this at least twice a day, after waking up in the morning and before going to bed at night, but specific holidays, wishes, or sermon days can change this amount.
In the past, people left offerings for the Mother Dragons along with speaking these prayers, and those who can still do so on a daily basis. Some only do it on Midday, the middle of the week, when temple sermons are usually hosted, wheras some only partake in larger offerings done on specific holidays devoted to the Mother Dragons.
Prayers by ones self are usually performed with both hands clasping together either a small gemstone, piece of jewlery with a gemstone, or a holy Symbol of Scales. Those devoted to a specific Mother Dragon or wish for a specific one to hear their prayers will often make sure that the type of gem matches said Mother Dragon, but it is not always considered necessary.
Political Influence & Intrigue
While the Mother Dragon Faith isn't as intrinsically interwoven into politics as The Cabal of the Night Sky and Afallon's theocratic government, it is a key part of Agarthan culture, and so even in casual ways it permeates every day life and political positions, opinions, and popularity can hinge on it.
In fact, one of the council that leads Agartha as a nation, The Circle Speakers, is a designated "Speaker of Faith" who serves the Church. On paper, they cannot have the position and authority they would otherwise have among the church in order to avoid potential bias, but how often have we heard that story?
Sects
Each Mother Dragon is worshipped by many in their own capacity, and the more prominant ones often have at least three or four larger Orders that act in different aspects of their divine domains. There's also a slew of second-generation Mother Dragons, demigods, draconic incarnations, and mortal heroes that the faith venerates and worships in small and larger ways, with many having at least their own order.
What Order one usually belongs to is denoted by the colors of sashes they wear with their Priest robes and/or what gemstone they have in their divine symbol (seen in the upper-right hand corner above). If they are in a sub-order or a specific sect, they will often have a different crest or a specific symbol on their person.
Live how the Mothers would
Founding Date
Unknown, Pre-History
Type
Religious, Pantheon
Alternative Names
The Church of Scales, The Dragon-Hearted
Demonym
Dragonites
Leader
Ruling Organization
Leader Title
Subsidiary Organizations
Permeated Organizations
Deities
Divines
Location
Related Traditions
Related Items
Notable Members
Related Ethnicities
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