Children of Ar'guzan (Ar-guh-zahn)

In the south-central area of the Obsidian Ocean is a group of islands known as the Fountain Archipelago. These large, tropical islands are uninhabited save for a single town: Ar'grazan. Ar'grazan is the home of a religious group of people who call themselves the Children of Ar'guzan. Their history is long but surprisingly uncomplicated. After they were first introduced to "Ar'guzan," they have largely remained to themselves and stuck in their ways, developing a deep culture of traditions built around a tsunami that occurs every five years on the dot.

Origins

Though they do not remember it, the Children of Ar'guzan are descended from followers of Isael. During the great naval battles that raged across the Obsidian Ocean during the Reckoning, a fleet of sailors became marooned upon the islands that would come to be known as the Fountain Archipelago. Stranded and isolated, they fought for survival on the largest island, which they came to know as Isaekina. For five years, they slowly built a small town on the coast, preparing a fleet to take them back out onto the seas.
Then, in an event known only as the "Night of Falling Stars," these predecessors of the Children felt the earth quake and boom as stars plummeted from the sky on the far horizon. They did not know it, but this was one of the final battles of the Reckoning being waged. What they knew was the devastation it wrought. As the earth trembled, the sea raged. A tsunami swept across much of Isaekina, and the marooned survivors were further devastated.
Those few who survived the Night of Falling Stars came to fear the sea. They forsook Isael -- for she was goddess of the ocean, among other things -- and retreated into the jungles of the islands. For many years, this small tribe of people became more and more primitive and fearful, even long after the earth stopped shaking and, though they did not know it, the Reckoning had ended.
Over the course of decades, these primitive peoples began to realize a pattern: every five years, the earth would quake with five resounding booms. Then, a series of tsunamis numbering five, each larger than the last, crashed upon Isaekina's shores. With these waves, fish aplenty were deposited upon the beach. This terrified tribe of survivors began to grow a religion around this phenomenon. They began to believe that the booms and the resulting tsunamis were because of a god in the waters at the heart of the Fountain Archipelago. 
They called this god Ar'guzan. Thus were born the Children of Ar'guzan, who forgot the Reckoning and Isael and how they had arrived on the Fountain Archipelago in the first place, instead forging a culture built around Ar'guzan, the Wavemaker. Isaekina became Ar'kana, and they built a town around the beach where the tsunamis hit -- safe from the disaster, but close enough to immediately harvest the feast it leaves -- called Ar'grazan.

Ar'guzan

To the Children of Ar'guzan, their namesake is a benevolent god who rests at the heart of the Fountain Archipelago. Deep beneath the sea, beneath the coral reefs and the white-rock crags, he sleeps. They believe that he will continue to sleep until the Rupture -- the Children's apocalypse belief -- at which point he will rise to defend them and the archipelago, leaving them as the sole survivors of this believed cataclysm.
Though he sleeps, Ar'guzan still protects his Children. Every five years, thumps his tail five times, creative the five-fold tsunami that occurs on the archipelago. With this act, he removes any fouling debris from the plentiful sea that runs between the islands, and deposits weeks' worth of food on the shores of Ar'kana. In this, he provides for his Children even while he rests for the Rupture, for he is a good god, a kind god, a benevolent god.

Mythical Depictions

Similar to -- and perhaps the inspiration for -- the descriptions provided by sailors, the Children of Ar'guzan believe that he is a titanic leviathan who sleeps in a ouroboros at the bottom of the sea. They hold that he is around a mile long, covered in scales the size of a house, with two ait-sized pectoral fins. He has four glowing-yellow eyes, and a maw capable of swallowing fleets. It is with these things that he shall protect his Children.

Culture and Traditions

The entirety of the Children of Ar'guzan's culture is built around their god; more specifically, it's built around the tsunami "he causes" every five years, on the dot. On Elendiir 30, Estilian, every 2nd and 7th year of the decade, the tsunami comes. With it, it brings food, it brings a new start to the Children's calendar, and it brings more reassurance of their god and his benevolence.
They built their home, Ar'grazan, along the rim of the beach that the tsunamis hit. They have developed methods of riding the waves back out to get rich fishing while the ocean is still roiling. The coming of the tsunamis is their one and only holiday, which they call Wavebreak, and they celebrate it for a full week. They have contests to see who can gather deposited fish the quickest, and have hunts to see if treasures "bequeathed by Ar'guzan" wash up on the shores.
It is also during Wavebreak that the elders of the tribe, known as the Ar'ganites, perform rituals to bless the sky and sea for the next five years. They use storm sorceries and magics -- which they claim/believe are amplified during Wavebreak -- to bring peaceful seas and skies. Whether or not these magics work is debatable, but they believe they work.

The Ar'guzan Known by Sailors

Type

Religious, Cult