Cult of the Living Stone

In the tales of priests and parents, Maradia was once dominated by a terrible line of tyrants. They perverted the Constructs given by the God Halcyon to the prophet Agamine, and in doing so plunged the world into an age of darkness. The people were made to worship constructs, made slaves to the tools meant to liberate them; the wicked priest-kings lived decadent lives of cruelty and excess built on an empire of lies. Heroes fought with truth and courage against this empire and cult, shattering it to improve all the world. 
Before Keveket, there was Sangralawat - more commonly known as the Cult of the Living Stone. This was the first organized religion of Maradia, which scooped together animistic concepts and mystic movements and combined them with a militaristic political structure and a formalized dogma. No current Sangralawati communities remain; it is by all accounts an extinct religion, a historical shadow known only as the villains of religious histories. All modern Maradian religions paint them as tyrannical, duplicitious villains who sought to twist the legacy of the risen mortal-god Agamine into a nightmare. Even to the Lunar Pantheon they are a faded memory.
Of course, for its time, the Cult was not some cartoonish evil empire - it was brutal and domineering, but it has been remembered as a fraud when it was simply an imperial religion of its time and place. While it is true that priests controlled the idols and "spirit vessel" constructs of the religion, there was a sincere belief that use of the Empty was a kind of spiritual conduit to the living stone; the kind of cynical construct puppeteering (using the Empty as theaterical devices to say whatever the priests wanted) used in modern stories was relegated to specific political struggles that betrayed Sangralawati tenets and values. The Cult was, at its core, an attempt to order the world in a strict moral and legal order that could persist for centuries while maintaining sacred bonds with a variety of places and entities. Of course, it did absolutely also hope to crystalize a very specific political order into eternal rule as well; it was, at its core, an elite religion grafted onto a wide variety of local beliefs and traditions.
The formal self-name for the Cult, Sangralawat, means Those who wake stone. 

Structure

The Cult's structure became more complex with the expansion of the empire, but at its core it was fairly simple:

Title	Role
Hierarch	The Supreme Ruler of the Cult, who could only be of Royal Blood
Arbiter	A subordinate regional ruler, chosen by an allied city of the empire
Priest	Keepers of the sacred practices and places; allowed to commune with stone
Initiates	Day-to-day religious workers and ritualists

Outside of the hierarchy, reporting directly to the Hierarch, were the Enforcers: agents of the empire tasked to control the flow of constructs. This order was reorganized by Agamine into The Maradian Enforcers, who remain active to this day.
The core concept - the Hierarch who commands the Enforcers and rules over the vassal-ally Arbiters - remains foundational for many Maradian religions, notably Keveket and Heksala

History

The Origin Years (-500 to -260)

The Cult of the Living Stone was originally the closest companions of Agamine, who assembled as a group to try and keep constructs out of the hands of bad actors. Based out of his home city of Vetuza, the Cult operated a commercial network across the Maradian urban heartland of the 500s and 400s DE. By the time Agamine died in 490 DE, the group had become overtly religious and quite more than a charitable association of oath-companions; it had hundreds of members and dozens of temples. While it didn't call itself the Cult of the Living Stone formally while Agamine was alive, it was called that internally by the followers of Norusangra - a mystic and prophet who joined the group in the late 500s (but had long sought to curate a relationship with Agamine). After Agamine's death in 490, Norusangra began contesting some of Agamine's closer companions for leadership; when they finally gave him a seat at their council in 480, the Cult elements began to formalize. In 450 DE, the followers of the now-dead Norusandra became dominant in leadership and transformed it fully into a religious movement that fully deified both Agamine and Norusangra. This transformation still took time; things were still ambiguous across the 400s, with the Cult basically serving many of the old charitable services.
In the early 300s, the Cult formalized its dogma and embedded itself into the region;s religious-political hierarchy. In 396, the Cult created its own military branch: The Maradian Enforcers. In 379 DE, the Cult of the Living Stone merged fully with Vetuza's royal cult - the Cult of Bema-Emun. From 379 to 260 DE, the Cult was a powerful coalition of priests, merchants, and craftsmen, connecting urban centers across the continent and increasingly included in the highest levels of government. Rural landowners even waged a brutal war against the Cult in the late 300s, furious as their power slipped away into the hands of these craftsmen and priests. This war, and other wars during this period, concentrated power in the hands of a small clique of hereditary rich elites within the Cult. In 260 DE, the Cult had finally acheived one of its original goals: the end of formal warfare between city-states in Maradia, by creating the Maradian League - a coalition to unite the continent in harmony and peaceful dialogue. It was also, unsurprisingly, a League that favored Vetuza.
It is worth noting that the large island of Silum to the North of mainland Maradia had its own independent branch of Agamine's companions. It split entirely away from the Cult when the Maradian League was founded, and has an entirely different history.

Making an Empire (-260 to 0)

The Maradian League enshrined the Cult and Enforcers in political power; in doing so, it enabled a massive internal coup. The old Council of Friends, the original heirs to Agamine, were abolished in favor of the Hierarch - the absolute religious ruler, the descendant of Norusangra. The Cult had been stratifying and hardening in structure for centuries, but it was now a formally autocratic and deeply heirarchical religion with no trace of Agamine's carefully built ethical regulators. The League sought to constrain all construct use to an elite priestly class, and promoted a singular legal code (based on the religious code of Vetuza) across all member cities. Rural elites began to integrate into the hierarchy, and the League steadily expanded its influence from a handful of city-states to a sweeping coastal region.
In 247, the first of several factional rebellions broke out. The Maradian League became the Vetuzan/Maradian Empire. This empire continued to face problems, and a brutal civil war ensued at the start of the 100s DE. In 179, the Cult finally seized total control of the League and transformed it into the Empire of Living Stone. The Hierarch became the Emperor, though the two titles were split between two different family members from 179 to 84 DE. This early imperial period was strict, legalistic, and intensively extractive - though it was not initially expanionist. It ruled much like the League for much of this period, but perhaps more efficiently and constructively. Particular emphasis was placed on construction projects and craft skills. Craftsmen were separated from their communities, pushed into Imperial Charters - special production communities that centralized skills, knowledge, and labor of many tribes and towns. The economy rapidly centralized under the state; the Empire sought to be the ultimate middle man, collecting labor and resources for massive redistribution. Some people really prospered under this system; many others suffered greatly. The Nafena-Maradian slave trade, suffering from many of its prior biggest customers rejecting slavery by the interference of the Architects, began to redirect towards the Empire. Many others simply lived enserfed lives similar to slavery. However, the true era of slavery and exploitation required the militarization and expansion of the Empire - it is when the Cult went from buyers to creators of enslaved people that the true horrors began.

The Empire of Bloodied Stone (0 to 150 ME)

Maradian philosophy and religion had, for centuries, strongly prohibited large-scale violent territorial expansion - and it was difficult to get around the fact that Agamine and his companions (including Norusangra) had been ardently opposed to military expansion and military aggression. While the Cult had done well in using soft power to more or less expand with impunity (in the footsteps of the founders), there were limits to this strategy. To unleash the full potential of the empire, there was a subtle philosophical shift over the imperial period that legitimized more and more aggressive tactics. A series of centralizing reforms under the Enforcers and military and a restructing of political power in the late Divine/early modern period finally snapped the empire into place, though. What was once a condensed but highly developed state exploded from 0 to 100 ME into a massive empire.

As shown on the map above, the Empire already had immense political influence over a number of cities that it was consolidating - the Maradian League had been basically a regional affair (despite continental aspirations), but was ready to diplomatically consolidate lots of new territory. However, the raw resources needed to fully tranform these cities into ideal construct-production areas were controlled by a wide variety of autonomous tribes, federations, and other groups that eluded the Cult's influence. To create a true empire of all Maradia and create the eternal prosperity and peace imagined by Agamine, leadership felt that it was necessary to embrace violence. A new series of prophecies were revealed, illuminating the need for rapid consolidation and perfection. Vassals were whipped into line, their leadership brutally purged; new lands were conquered; raids by Maradian warriors swept across the continent. Slaves poured into mines from conquered lands, and enormous numbers of forcibly resettled craftsmen were marched into new Imperial Charters. Entire cultures vanished, broken apart to feed the empire.

Fall and Legacy

The seeds of the empire's collapse were sown long ago; the cities were divided, the royal family bickered, and the economy was unsustainable. Paladins began to appear, bringing their own prophecies of revolution. Dozens of pit mines were overrun with furious ghosts. And finally, in 150 ME, the Divine Contact reached Maradia and allowed Agamine to directly condemn the government and coordinate resistance to it. The Enforcers turned early, seizing the construct production line for Agamine and paralyzing the empire; then, a small army of Agamine's paladins seized most of the administrative centers. The urban mechanisms of control that enabled the Empire to work were hijacked by Agamine's will and turned against the royals. The cult was destroyed, their dogma ridiculed, their holy texts recycled like garbage - too worthless to be burned. Agamine swiftly built a new religion, and encouraged the absolute destruction of the old. Holdouts resisted for thirty years, but were snuffed out. Keveket replaced the Cult with such ease that the old faith was forgotten in a few generations. No Maradian empire would hold such territory again.
While the Empire and Cult were utterly obliterated, their legacy remains. The road system built by this empire remains the foundation for the modern Keveket inter-city infrastructure; the massive fleet of constructs and libraries of centralized craft knowledge remain in use as well, built on over millennia. The modern day Branch Office system was built on the skeleton of the imperial administration. And some of the worst sites of exploitation remain haunted to this day - some of the least humane mines produced a number of tragedy ghosts, and after centuries of abandonment some of these ghosts have become deranged in their boredom and isolation. These sites are infested with monstrosities and have a way of attracting new deranged individuals or monsters to them. 
Theologically and culturally, the Cult has had lasting impacts across religious lines. Most of Keveket's pantheon is inherited from the Living Stone, as are many of the stories held in Folk Keveket. The idea of "mirror worlds" or "Other worlds" so central to Heksala and Ishket may come from this cult as well. Heksalan ideas of continuous prophecy have a direct line of inheritance from the Living Stone. While most of these themes and ideas predate Agamine and were simply codified and standardized by the Empire, the Cult played a significant role in reinforcing some local traditions and stories over others.

Mythology & Lore

The Sangralawati had a deeply unstable religious dogma that varied wildly over different localities. Belief and consistency of stories were not considered particularly important; rather, the Laws, rituals, and the sacred crafts were all considered the core of what made the religion real and valid.

Creation

The universe began with chaos - the world began as Crawling Flame, a thousand leaping ideas and things and possibilities that changed from state to state without clear life or death. And then, one day, one thread of light became a stone, a crystal prism, that flung out all other strands of existence in a brilliant explosion and rainbow. That crystal was, in that brief moment, true divinity - it was God the Unity - and it was destroyed during that explosion, that Cosmic Awakening. While God may have been alive for only a moment, that moment was an age in the mind of true divinity. It created the Plan and the Law - essentially, fate and morality. And through the permanence of these things, God remains forever alive in their echoes. And, more importantly, God's body and truth is the very fabric of reality. God the Unity was referred to as Jima-Orta; they were not a main focal point of worship, though.
While Jima-Orta was gone, gods and spirits abounded in the new world. Gods of particular note were beings known as the Jima-Anar, fragments of divinity that became beings greater than the rest. However, the Jima-Anar were not absolute and unkillable; they rose and fell over time as all things do. Along with them are the Jima-Tet, what one might know as common spirits. These are all extremely generalistic classifications; the line between the Jima-Anar and Jima-Tet is fuzzy.
The two oldest (and perhaps greatest) beings in the world were Bema - the Earth - and Emun - the Underworld/Other World. These two world-gods have witnessed the world end be reborn many times, and they are the wisest and strongest of all things. The world ended last when Fire and Water sought to marry despite the forbiddance of the Law; they destroyed each other, the sun was extinguished, water became steam, steam became rain, a torrent of suffering rain flooded all existence. Bema was submerged and the old world was destroyed. Only a small handful of people survived - Prisms and Solars, the oldest children of Bema. These small original people survived by escaping, through good ritual and practice (as well as sacrifice to the mole-God Aviwari), to the Otherworld. Their peity and grace inspired Emun to promise to protect them and give them many gifts as long as they were true to him and practiced right action. His first gifts to them were companions to guide them back to Bema once the waters receded - humans and Dryads. Bema was able to escape the flood by crawling onto the Turtle-God Rekagu. This was the beginning of our world.

Stories and Gods

With the world renewed, the world settled into a new pantheon:

• Emun, the Lord of the Underworld, master of magic and knowledge, and Lawgiver. Also the historical patron god of Vetuza, the capitol
• Bema, the Earth Incarnate, God of life, fertility, cave safety, and abundance
• Aviwari, the God in the Walls, the Digging God, the Lord of Worms and Moles; Maker of Doors, God of Change, Discovery, and Growth; also guide of the dead and the Masked One
• Rekagu, The Master of the Seas, Turtle that Carries the World, Granter of Second Changes and Refuge; also the patron God of Palamun, the imperial port
• Rumatar, The weaver, the crystal spider, the scholar and scribe of the Gods
• Agnielos, The Sun, the Ur-Volcano, the Igneous Serpent; heat, creation, strength, war; a being with ties to the Otherworld (like Aviwari) with particular association with dryads
• Telesper, The Song-Bat, another liminal being with ties to the Otherworld and particular association with humans
• Uvong, the Rain-bird, master of storms
• Rekagu, The Mountain King, Lord of Salt, Keeper of the Earthquake Monster
• Arakina, The God of Roots and Mosses
• Lumanol, The Lunar Essence, the Spirit Dancing in the Dust, The Ore-Maker

According to stories, the city of Agamine - Vetuza - is a truly sacred axis of the world, where the veil between worlds is thin. A specific cavern complex, the Ancestral Path, was traditionally identified as the place where mortals emerged from the Otherworld into our own world. A group of early prisms, led by the culture-hero, Pritek, swore to defend the Path and keep the sacred law. Pritek and his kin had to fight many monsters to tame the landscape; in those ancient days, magic ran wild and dangerous creatures stalked the land. The lineage of Pritek, the Pretekedeks, had ten great incarnations that were guided by Emun's Will to slay all the monsters of the land. But the eleventh Pritekedek, Anrajamek, was tempted from the path of Emun and broke his pact; he violated the law and polluted his flesh with sin, spilling wine and filth upon the sacred gateway. The monster-hunter lost his strength and his will; the law became lax; plague fell upon the land; evil creatures were left to fester on the rim of the world. The unfaltering love and support of the pantheon became conditional and distant. Many of the other benevolent spirits fluttered around the world to other tribes, who had wandered across the world to build their own homelands. And the seas remained dangerous and monster-infested - the terrible hurricanes of the coast and the dreaded Leviathans both plague our word because of the unfinished work of the Pretekedeks.

Agamine and the New Age

The Sangralawati had a number of myths and legends (some of which have been adopted into Keveket), but perhaps it is most important to understand the myth of Agamine the Prophet. For the world goes through many ages of magic; there was the Age of Myths (magic), then the Age of Rust (struggle and renewal), then the Age of Salt (exploration and invention) - and finally, the Gods came together to turn the world into a new age, the Age of Prophecy. This would be an age of divine intervention, continuous revelation, renewed divine law, resurgent magic, and spiritual communion. To pass the world from age to age, the pantheon spawned a divine child as the herald of their return. This child, who would be called Agamine, was to be a conduit for new Law and new magic; it is from him that the power of the age flowed.
Agamine was born of the monarch King Munapari, a wise sage with an eye for justice. Munapari was a pilgrim whose twin siblings had slaughtered each other over a great treasure hoard containing an enchanted emerald - and Munapari, choosing peity over wealth, sacrificed the entire treasure hoard and emerald to Emun. For his wise rejection of greed, Emun sent the ghostly Aviwari to grant him a boon. Aviwari put on a mask of a beggar, shapeshifting into a humble monk, who approached Munapari and asked him what the greatest treasure he could ask for was. A dialogue ensues - Munapari says a stable and good nation, Aviwari asks what makes it that, etc, etc. At the end, Munapari concludes that what he truly needs is a child wiser than himself. Aviwari vanishes, only to revisit him in the night as a cave breeze to impregnate him with a child - Agamine.
Munapari initially considers young Agamine a miracle, but Munapari's son-incarnation, Munaparek, immediately despises the child. Munaparek hatches a plot with Munapari's evil ministers to drown the young Agamine in the river to die. Munapari stumbles upon the plot and Agamine is simply throw into the river, and he washes away to a hermit family. Munapari looks for his long-lost child; before he can find Agamine, Munaparek spiked his father's wine with poison and seduced Munapari upon the sacred altar of Emun. Munapari immediately threw himself into a deep canyon to sacrifice his own life for forgiveness; he arose as the first Ghost, given a second chance by Aviwari. Munaparek, for his unrepenting sins, spawned a horrible monster called Tabavala.
Agamine lived a normal life as a hermit, and learned to be a great inventor. He created the Cult of the Living Stone from his disciples. When Munaparek tried to stop Agamine, the Tabavala devoured him.  Agamine unleashed the Age of Prophecy, and it is by him that the Law was reforged. Agamine was not personally the King that Munapari asked for - Aviwari was too wily to give a gift so direct. Rather, Agamine resurrected the lineage of Pritek and established a new sage-king: Norusangra.

"The Deepest Gods' Resounding Calls"

The Cult of the Living Stone at its largest imperial size, along with component cities

450 DE - 180 ME

Alternative Names

Sangralawat

Demonym

Sangralawati

Deities

• Agamine the Lost
• The Masked One

Location

Maradia