Hierarchy of Heksala (Heck-saw-law)

The is one god, one world, and one people, separated by illusion, ignorance, and spiritual uncertainty. Through the word of God, we find certainty. And God, they are Good and Evil; they test us and hurt us, and yet give us the tools to transcend all suffering. Only Heksala, "the Path of the Survivors", can transmute our dangerous and hurtful world into pure goodness, by bringing our souls into line with the intention and mind of God.
While there is only one God in Heksala, that God is not a jealous God. God has many aspects and there are many spirits of great power that can be respected, though true harmony can only be found by unifying them into God. 
Heksala sees itself as the true Keveket, and builds off of Keveket foundations with new revelations and cosmological elements. The two religions are extremely different in many ways, and Heksala has its own names and alternative versions of many Keveket spiritual ideas, but the two religions nonetheless acknowledge a shared heritage. Where Keveket seeks to map the world as a mathematical model, Heksala seeks to build a symbolic cosmology of sacred numbers, colors, realms.

Structure

The Hierarchy of Heksala is led by the Hierarchs - an oligarchic council that decides the overall direction of the faith. These Hierarchs also sit on the Highest Order - a joint-religious supreme council of Maradia that maintains religious peace and regulates what magics and technologies are considered legitimate and which are considered forbidden. 

Rank	Role
Hierarchs	Meet in a council for ultimate decision-making
Arbiter of Head Office	Run the head office
Arbiter of Branch Office	Run the branch office
Justicar	Act of office agents
Black-white Cleric	Manage the spiritual and political needs of a region or extended tribal community
Head Priest	Manage the priests and common-priests of a province or clan
Priest	Administer moral advice, community outreach

Chosen by the Hierarchs, the Arbiter of the Head Office does most of the practical leadership and might be considered the top executive; in emergencies, they will be the first to give orders. They rule from the Head Office at the Tevem capital of Kahuwara. Alongside the Head Office, a number of Branch Offices operate in Bachabong, Kapuru, Reletas, Obentrama, and now in the newly opened Mitichet regions. The Justicars serve as the agents and day-to-day religious workers of this religious upper management.
The upper hierarchy of Heksala may be place-based, but the lower hierarchy is fluid and mobile; they are assigned to perceived tribal-ethnic communities rather than by geography alone. The Black-White Clerics (also called BWCs or High Clerics) work closely together to manage most of the actual ritual and lived religious elements of Heksala, and command the Head Priests and Priests of the religion who attend to actual communities. It is unsurprising that the BWCs consider themselves the real religious leaders, and can get into bitter feuds with the Office staff; this is perhaps the most obvious weak point in the Heksalan order, and it has been the divide most successfully exploited by outside enemies. 
Outside of the Office-Cleric hierarchies is the Meninjra - the ceremonial executive, chief judiciary, and chief mediator, whose job is to settle political and religious disputes. The Meninjra is also the highest judge, for cases of extreme controversy and division; both the Offices and Clerics have their own courts, but both appeal to the Meninjra. The Meninjra has no legal or material executive power, though, and is strictly forbidden from issuing edicts or commanding forces. The Meninjra is always a descendant of the Prophet Itimus' family, chosen by the prior Meninjra and confirmed by the Hierarchs.

Culture

Species Preference: Careful Balance

By dogma, Heksala preaches for the perfect equality of all species, as all people are of the same spiritual essence. Heksalan religion sees an inherent connection between the "four material Nations" - dryads, humans, prisms, and solars - and has a legal framework for enforcing a material and political balance between these groups. Any group that claims to rule multiple species must include the voices of those species in their leadership. However, if a certain species has a "claim of the body" to a specific trade or region (food or medicine specific to them, or a biome "suited for" them), they are to have greater role in that sphere. In terms of "suitability", prisms are seen as mountainous, humans as arid and cold, and dryads as lush/wet/hot. Solars are people of all realms, who are not to be excluded from anywhere they roam. While the Hierarchy doesn't always realize its vision of harmony, this system of ideal relationships has generally worked to diffuse tensions that the neighboring Temple of Ishket has sought to inflame.
The Heksalan religion does have an odd preference for Solars - while there are only a few cliques of solars in power, solars are generally fetishized and revered as beings of great wisdom and power. Elites, who regularly deal with solars, are less romantic about things (but still traditionally treat solars with greater respect), while commoners tend not to know how to react. Prisms, meanwhile, are in an odd place - their elites tend to be at the top of society (with longer lives better able to master education), while commoners struggle more than other species to gain status (as they can be held to higher standards for their lifespans, and can struggle to get the food and medicine support for long-distance travel). 
Lastly, certain species outside of the Material Four and their hybrids can sometimes be in a weird spot. Pearl Pangolins, Cephapeople, Vespers, Kobolds, and other species that are obviously not of the Four are in the dogma as Fey-turned-mortals, and are seen as magical, strange, and a little untrustworthy. Haltia and Selkies were once treated like this as well, but have been officially deemed to be human variants by the high court. Those deemed feyblooded are not necessarily disliked individually or openly hated, but they are exoticized and can struggle to acheive traditional positions of prestige or authority for it.

Money, Markets, and Status

Education, emotional control, piety, and material wealth are seen as interconnected traits that ought to go together in a virtuous society. Flamboyant displays of wealth are frowned upon, but being rich is seen as a product of virtue (or, alternatively, immense wickedness - the rich are either heroes or villains). To signal wealth, the rich give gifts and distribute wealth to their subordinates during the seasonal gifting feast ritual; they also go to fancy schools and on great pilgrimmages, and give to charities. A great deal is said about work ethics and about saving resources as virtuous paths to success, and wealth is usually legitimized in "giving back" and "doing one's duties". In some ways, the wealth is seen as a communal treasury that is glorified as the riches of God - the elites are just God's devoted servants. This can create some tension, as the 'communal treasury' is really not in service of the community, but there is a great deal of rhetoric about how this inequality is a necessity to further God's mission - and how riches and material things are illusions that can only corrupt and delude people, and should be spent on empowering God's word. Indeed, God gives financial success to the most worthy, so that they might spread the word and attract the greedy back to wisdom. By succeeding in foreign markets, Heksala hopes to convince foreigners to accept God's truth; they will come for the riches, and stay for the spiritual fulfillment and honest living. Heksalans are taught that, in a free and open global market, God's truth would run wild and bring all people into one Nation. In business, Heksalans are taught to cooperate together but compete with all their heart against outsiders. 
While Heksala claims meritocracy and "success of the best" (best typically defined as Educated, Wise, Strong, and Sharp), it reinforces status at most every turn in practice. Rituals and ceremonies are all very hierarchical and favor wealthy, educated community leaders. There is no formal dogmatic support for hereditary authority, but there is also a notable example of religiously legitimate hereditary authority (the chief religious judiciary is inherited). Education and seminary licenses are much easier for moneyed people to get, and once you find a place in society you are encouraged not to rock the boat. There is a kind of "duty-bound individualism" in Heksala, an emphasis on changing oneself to fit fate over changing the world. This is counterbalanced by anti-materialism; all are equal before God, so just be patient and you will find prosperity on another Plane. Changing yourself to succeed where you are will pay off, either in this world or a future world.

Mobility, Mysticism

Mobility is a miscellaneous element worth noting here - Heksala sees travel as essential for spiritual growth. Coming of age ceremonies involve spending a year working abroad, and pilgrimmages are greatly encouraged. Nomads are privileged in this system, as are sailors and merchants. Mobility can also be conflict resolution or a desire for change - if you don't like it, leave and find a place that works for you. Groups that seek to tie people to a single place, restrain movement, or penalize fluid commerce are all standing in the way of God's plan.
Another notable thing is that Heksala loves mysticism. Prophecy can happen to anyone, and the world is alive with spiritual activity. While only licensed ritual specialists can perform community rituals, everyone is encouraged to engage with the divine in their own lives - whether it be with fey spirits, omens, or ancestral callings. This spiritual activity should be reported to the local priest to be optimized and kept in harmony, but the primary agents are everyday common people. Similarly, the basic spiritually important systems of categorization are commonly disseminated to the people: the spiritual meaning of colors, they rich cast of spirits, and the power of the Secret Number (4) are all taught. Other places might say this is state-sponsored superstitition; to the people, it is a remarkably populist spiritual empowerment.
For a rundown of the main stuff: There is an Otherworld or Spirit world, led by big Elder Spirits who are fickle and strange. The Number Four is sacred and essential to the universe and is called the Secret Number (despite not being secret). In terms of colors, no color is "bad", but all are situational. Black is creation and abundance, white is destruction and isolation. Red is war, competition, and struggle. Yellow is wealth and craftsmanship. Green is health, disease, and fertility. Blue is knowledge, travel, and magic.

History

Early Mysticism (Pre-600 ME)

Heksala traces its origins to a mystical strain of the Keveket religion, the Toruket, or "Inner Peace", movement. However, Toruket is only one piece of the Heksalan historical puzzle; there were other threads of mysticism and religious thought that built Heksala, even if the religion's own histories largely ignore them. For centuries, the plains and forests of Northeastern Maradia have had their own religious movements and ideas - ones that have interfaced with popular Maradian folk religion and more fluid commercial strains of Keveket in a way that the highly formalized elite dogma of the priesthood has not. This spiritual ecosystem, abundant with tales of alternate worlds and prophecies, is what pushed Toruket out from being a Keveket heresy and into its own full-blown religion.
Religion on the Maradian plains has always had a stubborn streak of independence. This can be partially traced back to the Hobanong Movement of the late Divine Era and early Modern Era - a semi-organized religious movement that formed in opposition to the pre-Keveket Cult of the Living Stone. Hobanong was not dogmatic or consistent (and actually facilitated more tribes adopting certain stories and beliefs of the Cult), but rather created a common language of ceremonies, rituals, and trade festivals for tribes to reaffirm their mutual solidarity against external military aggression. The Hobanong movement empowered a number of federations to attack the empire when it collapsed from 150 - 180 ME, driving back the Westerners and leading to nomadic tribes occupying their colonial cities. Hobanong as a coherent movement also fell apart without a pressing external threat. Different tribal groups drifted back apart; some embraced modified Keveket, othes embraced their own local religions, and others ended up ironically embracing their own versions of the defunct Living Stone faith.
It took until the 300s ME for Westerners to make any effort to convert plainsfolk to Keveket; the nomadic pastoralists and scattered small-farmers were deemed unsuitable for conversion. Rather than a formal missionary effort from the branch offices, though, it was merchants who spearheaded Keveket evangelism into the plains - they more than the branch offices recognized the plains as dangerous and important, and sought to strengthen trading relationships and insulate the region from potential Ishket religious forays. Keveket spreadslowly, mostly to tribal elites and market spaces. And while this diluted version of Keveket was spreading over inter-tribal institutions and markets, other members of The Lunar Pantheon began meddling in the affairs of the individual tribes and their on-the-ground religious practices. The tribes themselves balanced the influence of these many divine interlopers through a flexible and tolerant stance towards religion. A wide variety of mystical beliefs, rituals, and organizations blossomed across the plains, held together in a tolerant harmony by Hobanong-Keveket superstructures. This stewed for several centuries.

Toruket: The Early Days (600 - 700)

The centuries of warfare against the Temple of Ishket, combined with the increasing stern brutality of Agamine and the militarism of the Hierarchy led to the Keveket becoming more elitist, exclusive, and dogmatic over time. Critics of the religious leadership, unable to quietly reform the religion by argument and petition, began openly criticizing the Hierarchy and demanding radical change. This faction called itself the Toruket - and this is where the story of Heksala traditionally begins.
The Toruket were a diverse bunch: naturalists, mystics, individualists, animists, and decentralizers, all sharing the same label. They began as a loose political party/movement within the priesthood and the more politically-involved middling classes, with many different groups all self-identifying as Toruket while pursuing their own goals. As the movement gained ground and provoked reactions from the established offices, peripheral groups that felt neglected or overly-regulated by the Hierarchy began to join the Torukets. Rural priests and merchants were particularly drawn towards Toruket as a vehicle for protesting excessive technological and commercial scrutiny and rural neglect by the offices. When the central Toruket began to be violently suppressed, it was the merchants and rural priests who spread the movement out of the Keveket heartlands.
Lunar support, notably from Agamine himself, led to Toruket resistance groups lasting an unusually long time and posing a continuouis threat to the Keveket institution. After failed compromise and negotiations imperiled the unity and stability of the Keveket highest order, a series of brutal purges rolled out in the 700s ME targeting any dissent. The largest and most politically legitimate Toruket group, the Commission for Peaceful Refinement, led by the ex-Arbiter Norunem the Witty, was infamously slaughtered when they gathered for prayerful study in an event remembered by Heksalans as The First Day of Treason. Norunem himself escaped the executioner's block via Comedy Magic, mocked the Hierarchs, and promptly slipped mid get-away and fell off a massive building to his death. By the mix of comedy and tragedy, Norunem became a Ghost - and a very prominent and public one. Norunem troubled the Keveket for centuries, as the Hierarchy struggled to turn in the necessary paperwork to exorcize him. The ghost kept Toruket organized and active as long as he could; he kept his teachings alive and undermined authorities at every turn through the power of relentless public debate and mockery.

Toruket: The Resistance (700 - 1200)

While Norunem persisted and worked with a handful of ghosts and cats to organize resistance, Toruket cells persisted in the Keveket heartlands. Norunem was finally exorcized in the late 1000s, but by that time the networks no longer needed him. And while the ghost was an intellectual pacifist committed to most mainstream Keveket dogma, the underground Toruket were not. They intellectually radicalized and embraced whatever means they could to fight back - notably assassination. The Toruket became the top smugglers of the continent, and branched out into whatever crime was lucrative to raise funds to bankroll revolts and infiltrations. When Norunem was exorcized, the crime connections became all that sustained the movement as a unified organization.
Over the 1100s, Toruket militants emptied out of the imperial heartlands and moved entirely to the periphery, where the authority was weaker; the heartlands purely served as recruitment grounds and customers bases. The movement began to fall apart into several wings based out of the different directional frontiers - but the most relevant one to this story is the Eastern Toruket, who focused their efforts on the Logota Sovereignty. Logota the easternmost heartland province, but bordered the great plains. It was also broken into a bitter class war in the 1100s, with Theia the Liberator, and Haru (as well as other Lunar Gods) both pledging support for the rebels. Eastern Toruket flourished.
Toruket as a network and as a Keveket-identifying movement did not last much longer. The Great Purge of 1200, in which the God Agamine and The Maradian Enforcers coordinated mass killings of dissenters, rebels, and critics. The machinery used to suppress abuse of constructs was sharpened and implemented on a massive scale to mercilessly crush any threat to Keveket leadership; weaponry that was once forbidden by religious law was built and deployed, some designed by the God-Engineer himself. The start of this purge is remembered by Heksalans as the Second Day of Treason.
During and after the Purge, two Lunar Gods intervened to allow some Toruket to escape: the God Haru saved a number of people from death, and the God Emesh kept alive their writings and knowledge and helped these refugees escape eastward, towards the plains, and find an adopted home among the nomads and river-farmers. This is known as The Departure (though you might translate it as The Exodus). Emesh, in his shepherding of the refugees, had a bias that shaped the remnants of Toruket; he favored the more unusual, mystical, "unique" splinter-intepretations that had grown over the prior centuries. Those who survived the Departure became known as the Heks - a word that means survivor, descendant, or one who remains/inherits; less regal and formal than an heir, but more instrinsic.
This is the narrative core of the history Heksalans tell their children of their faith. Heksalans have an entire holiday dedicated to mourning the Days of Treason, and numerous stories of heroes and prophets escaping Keveket persecution during the purges or Departure.

The Toruket's New Home (600 - 1230)

The plains of 1200 ME that the Heks arrived in were obviously different from the Lunar Cult days of the 500s ME previosly mentioned in this history. In the 600s, parallel to the original Toruket, a singular group of warrior-merchants united all of the plains by guile and force and reforged a single united identity - at least briefly, before the federation/empire collapsed after two generations. This centralization created a new set of political norms and rituals for plains unity, as well as the idea of a single Northeast-Maradian cultural identity: the idea of all tribes being members of the Abang, the Nation, led by a single political-ritual leader, the Meninjra. The Meninjra office remained after the empire collapsed, evolving into a kind of ceremonial leader and political mediator who held power exclusively in the old imperial capitol.
No empire fully united the Abang in more than name, not even the original one. The diversity of the plains remained an on-the-ground reality. And yet, the idea of unity and the ceremonial leadership of the Meninjra had very real effects. Sometimes, this pseudo-nationalism fostered peace and cooperation between plains polities; sometimes, it created division, conflict, and exclusion. Similarly, in some ways this nomad-coalition device made religious violence worse, as Keveket priests encouraged outwards violence towards non-Keveket targets outside of the Nation - especially the Temple of Ishket to the South and the "pagan" animist nations even further East. Within the Nation, though, structures of tolerance were reinforced as ethnic identity trumped religious identity - everyone was Keveket within the Nation as long as they performed Keveket rituals of submission before the Meninjra.
When the Purge of 1200 came, the East had its own agenda apart from the Keveket elite. A local warlord had, as the "Meninjra's hand", unified the Eastern plains politically and elevated the Meninjra as a puppet-emperor. The institutions that bound the Nation together were under strain - energized but fragile. At the same time, the Cult of Haru had become ascendant among the Nation's merchants - Abang merchants had monopolized Adamantium trading networks coordinated by Solar nomads, and a shared devotion to Haru was essential in maintaining these sprawling cross-continental relationships. Agamine demanded total submission to the Keveket authority, which would mean losing the Haru cult - losing that essential trade. It would also mean humbling the Meninjra before the Branch Offices, undermining their authority right when it was being questioned. Even worse, it would almost certainly mean civil war, as tribes expecting religious protection might face massive persecution. Torn between Haru and Emesh demanding that the Abang welcome the Hek exiles and Agamine demanding total submission, it isn't surprising that the nomads chose rebellion.
A civil war ensued; some coastal and riverlands settlements supported the Keveket after the Maradian Enforcers dramatically assassinated the Meninjra. However, this Keveket mostly lost this war - while they were formally able to install a friendly Meninjra and force a peace, nomadic armies plundered Keveket lands weakened by the Purge. Agamine lost his nerve at the last second, and refused to authorize a mass escalation of previously-forbidden weapons of war; the Maradian Enforcers pulled back military operations to just a handful of assassinations, and the unsupported and unorganized Keveket polities were crushed on the battlefield. The Keveket Hierarchy pivoted to try and put the cat back in the bag; they would just put the Meninjra back and pretend that everything was fine and that they had won. But the tribes noticed how vulnerable and dysfunctional the Keveket were. When a coalition of tribes hired solars to resurrect the old Meninjra and forcibly reinstalled them, the Keveket offices simply let them. The unstoppable robot powerhouse of Keveket was left humiliated and vulnerable; the vague threat of a robotic army was now a laughable pile of parlor tricks. When the resurrected Meninjra marched back into the capitol in a bloodless coup, Toruket priests marched with them.

Prelude to Revolution (1230 - 1430 ME)

An awkward few centuries of attempted compromise followed the failed Purge; it is during this period that Eastern beliefs and Hek beliefs merged together into something new. Eventually this exploded into a formalized Heksalan religion in 1440, but first beliefs needed time to cross-pollinate and develop. Immediately following the Purge War, Agamine directed Keveket authorities to use commerce to create peace where force had failed - and for a century the Keveket intensely invested in making it profitable for Easterners to remain under the Hierarchy. Mining ventures, particularly of the enormous Adamantium deposits and considerable Moonstone of the interior mountain rim, intensified; the riverlands and coast prospered as the tribes funnelled goods into subsidized trade centers. The region boomed economically; Eastern merchants rode this wave of prosperity further into the periphery, forcing open new markets further East and North in the search for new trade goods and customers. And yet, this economic boom was artificial and temporary; the Keveket soon had their own internal problems to deal with. 
The wild success of the East during the late 1200s and early 1300s had jumpstarted a rising empire - a new Sovereignty, not as dependent on the legitimacy of the Meninjra this time. This was the Tevema Sovereignty, a powerful coalition of merchants and nomads united under a warrior-elite that was deeply drawn to Toruket. The Tevem tribe, the founders, had once been Lunar cultists associated with Emesh, Haru, Wimbo, and Hiku - they worshipped Niriet, the Rainbow Serpent, above all, and believed each of the Lunar Gods was associated with a particular color and base element of the world. The Tevem were feared militarists known for mercenary work for the Keveket and religious war against the Eastern animists; they were also famous hunters, known as a major supplier of bison for trade Westward. The Tevem notoriously valued trials of pain and endurance, and even considered Gem Plague to be a trial with the potential for unlocking immense spiritual power rather than a horrific disease. The Tevem leadership had adopted Keveket protocol and certain beliefs (connecting Niriet to Halcyon), but had thrived in relative obscurity with their beliefs mostly intact. A single warlord, Lady-Sovereign Lantara Tevenjra, skyrocketed the Tevem from being the muscle of other more dominant tribes, to being a successor to the Hand of Meninjira. Embracing Toruket was an essential part of this: the Keveket heresy bridged traditional Tevem-specific belief, cross-Abang belief, Lunar cult, and Keveket dogma excellently. It gave Tevem leaders the tools to engage with larger systems without subordinating themselves to those systems. And they exploited those systems excellently, becoming refined merchant-lords with international contacts a few generations after unification.
In 1330, the Branch Offices of Keveket marched against one another for dominance; they would continue to fight until 1370, when the Latashu Sovereignty essentially took control of the Hierarchy. The Keveket were not economically useful while they fought each other; their subsidies vanished and the bubbles brought by prosperity popped. The Meninjra called the Eastern tribes to an assembly, to navigate the crisis as one. The assembly voted to side with the Logotan Branch Office, their closest neighbor with the most direct business connections to the plains. Unfortunately, the Meninjura's coalition quickly began to bicker over perceived ethnic difference, conflicting business interests, and religious differences. This bickering collapsed the coalition after their side of the civil war began to lose; the assembly had simply chosen the more dysfunctional and poor side of the conflict. When the Western Offices won, they punished the traitorous tribes by imprisoning the Meninjra, promoting their tribal allies, and by permanently ending all forms of tribute or subsidy towards the East. Regional preference and a desire to punish rebellious tribes ultimately saw Agamine's pragmatic economic-entanglement strategy withdrawn - and, in the process, the old tribal authority was broken. The new Hierarchs worked to disrupt tribal institutions and turn the tribes against each other. In doing so, they paved the way for a new system that was far more open in opposing them.
While many Abang tribes further West that were openly anti-Keveket were censured, persecuted, or subjugated during the 1330 war, the Tevem managed to hold onto their power. The war was a loss, but the Tevem managed to secure loot, territory, and political primacy; and without the Meninjra to enforce peace and stability, the Tevem were able to roll over their weaker neighbors with impunity. The Keveket initially even supported the Tevem, seeing them as an easily controlled threat whose aggression would distract the tribes from rebellion and push them closer to Keveket vassaldom. The Keveket realized they had miscalculated when the Tevem began meddling in truly dangerous arts - specifically, the Tevem had assembled exiled, defected, or kidnapped Keveket workers and scholars to reassemble the secrets of construct manufacture. The Enforcers worked to foil this plot, but too much had been learned already - large-scale military action was required. This military action was continuously delayed, however, by more drama back home; the Keveket had a second Branch Office war from 1420 to 1428. The Tevem led a tribal coalition in raiding in plundering the East again during this war, and managed to extract a tribute agreement from the Eastern Branch Offices. They also took in a new wave of refugees and heretics. In 1427, the Tevem welcomed these heretics formally into their fold and their leader, Lord-Sovereign Lemtesek Tevenjra, made their challenge to Keveket open: he cast aside the formal Keveket rituals and announced that he had witnessed a powerful prophecy that invalidated the ruling Keveket order. He said that Kevwen, or "the Truth-time", was coming - a prophetic time when the Hierarchy must accept the truth or be destroyed - and that only he and his priests could save Keveket by taking control. In the final year of the war, the Keveket marched against the Lord-Sovereign with many tribal allies, killed him, and crowned a new Meninjra to negotiate an end to the war on the plains. The Keveket did not want to waste resources on a costly extension of an already-destructive war, especially not when the plains tribes were so challenging to invade and the possibility of accidentally pushing them towards Ishket was on the table. The new Order made it clear that they simply wanted to turn back the clock to the good old days of the early 1300s; the plains could have de-facto religious freedom as long as they held Keveket political rituals and had stabilizing Keveket institutions. The Tevem even got to keep their empire; Latashu didn't mind their raiding, pillaging, and tribute-taking of the Eastern offices (who cares if they raided Latashu's enemies), they just didn't want them to pursue construct-making or open religious revolt. 

The Prophet Itimus (1430 - 1440)

Even in 1430, few people outside of the tribes realized exactly how close a new religion was to forming in the East - but there were few illusions in Tevema. The 1427 attempt to claim the Hierarchy was basically an aborted Heksalan Revolution, attempts to stop it simply delayed the inevitable. Priests of a new united mysticism were already synthesizing the eclectic traditions and heresies of the East during the 1420s and 1430s, just under a variety of names. The tribes were sick of being turned against each other, neglected, and exploited - it was clear that pseudo-nationalism wasn't working anymore. Ancient Hobanong unity ceremonies, energized with Keveket heresies and Lunar prophets, were forging a universalist religion that could bind together the diverse communities of the East. Over the 1430s, Keveket priests and officials bribed and intimidated tribal elites into performing the past, while tribes, bands, and villages on the ground were coming together to imagine their own future.
The spark that set off the powderkeg was a charismatic mercenary and priest named Itimus. Itimus was half-Tevem and half-Logotan, raised by horse nomads but educated to navigate Keveket society. Itimus was as much an idealist as a mercenary can be, and he preferred small-time adventuring to more consistent military contracts; he was bookish and curious, always asking annoying questions of his employers and any nearby priests. When he had made enough money for his clan that he felt he had done his duty, Itimus began pursuing scholarship and mystic knowledge. Ever-loyal, he returned to act as a commander during the 1420s war, but he was all too happy afterwards to leave fighting behind. As he grew older, he became infamous in Logota for heresy and esteemed in Tevema for his wisdom, and he ascended to become an advisor and bodyguard for the Tevem royal family. He was overjoyed at the chance to give his favorite granddaughter, Tusema, a royal education and life free of violence. 
In 1439, the Enforcers led a joint-Keveket operation (largely manned by the Meninjra's troops) to Tevema to dismantle the last vestiges of the Construct program. Itimus rode out to negotiate, and was captured along with many others. The original plan, to release Itimus and any others not in possession of sensitive knowledge, went wrong as overzealous judiciary staff refused to release any prisoners. This raid into the Teveman royal compound, done without warning, enraged the royal family and many in Tevema and boiled into a scandal. The Logotan Sovereign, unwilling to lose face, insisted on verifying that all of the prisoners were neither criminals nor heretics before their release. Itimus and several others who were known in Logota were tried (while those unknown to Logotan notables were released quietly). In his cell, Itimus began to suffer from health problems, and during his worse episodes insisted that his suffering had opened himself to visions of the future. Had granddaughter Tusema practically moved into the holding area, and she dutifully recorded each and every one of his visions and ideas. He preached to her in a way that he never had before, with stunning clarity and directness. Due to bureaucratic error (and immense judicial apathy), Itimus was sentenced to death rather than released as planned; he was branded a Traitor to Agamine, a Thief of Forbidden Knowledge, a heretic, a rebel, and a bandit. He was executed brutally in public, while his beloved family gathered to watch and protest. The Masked One, always interested in funny and tragic deaths, came to judge him - and at the same time, Itimus used his Tragic Wish. Itimus begged to have his legacy live on, to matter in death like he felt he hadn't in life; and so the Masked One granted his memories, his skills honed over his lifetime, and his knowledge to Tusema. The mischevious Masked One took the opportunity to commune with the girl, and gave her the gift of its own wisdom. The divine intercession shocked the crowd, and Tusema returned to her people marked as someone special. 
Tusema returned to Tevema a prophet. She was infuriated at her dear grandfather's injust death, scared at the sudden changes to her mind, and emboldened by the divine aid. Incensed, she rode to the Meninjra demanding justice. Three times, she was rebuked; after the third attempt, the Meninjra's guard attempted to capture her, and she fled the city with her growing band of followers. She returned to Tevema, where lesser local prophets and mystics gathered around her. She gave them her grandfather's teachings, augmented with the Masked One's revelations. Her family helped her impose order on the motley crowd, and they marched to the Tevem demanding justice. The Tevem pledged their support, and she marched with them a fourth time to the Meninjra. This time, the Mediator of the East relented and called an assembly of tribes. In one final re-enactment of the ancient unity ceremonies, they held a festival of prophecy in which Tusema convinced many of the Meninjra's Keveket advisors to join her movement. Her followers seized the Meninjra and effectively took control of the city in a chaotic brawl; Tusema ritually redeemed them and announced that the Nation was over. There was to be One People for One World under One Faith devoted to One God. They would seize the Keveket Offices and they would teach the world peace. They were the Heks, the Survivors, and this was their Path to Salvation for all the World. Heksala was born, and the Revolution had begun.
As a final note on the specifics - Tusema is often also called Itimus, as she adopted his name ritually and donned Moonstone armor with a facemask modeled as his face. The pronoun situation there is complicated; she went by both he and she pronouns after the Martyrdom of her grandfather. Generally, Hek religious texts refer to Tusema as she/her when referring to her as a person and he/him when referring to him as a religious icon/symbol. As this is the end of the text focusing on Tusema as an individual, I will not be referring to them as Itimus.

Heksalan Power (1440 - 1600)

Itimus' faith exploded across the plains and beyond, moving through Eastern trade networks into the far Eastern forests and mountains. It also struck into many Keveket Vagabond communities (poor rural communities denied full status and support), spawning peasant revolts across Northern Maradia. With speed and efficiency, Itimus led the Heksalans to attack Logota; they even managed to expertly dissemble and move Logotan arcane factories to Tevema in 1451, finally realizing the dream of nomad construct production. However, breaking into the Keveket heartlands in the West was extremely difficult, and the Heksalans were beginning to face internal divisions. In 1456, Itimus negotiated a peace known as the Kahuwara Accord; Heksala had not conquered the Keveket, but had secured the right to exist as an equal and legitimate religious institution. The Heksala formed their own Hierarchy, affirmed certain standards with the Maradian Enforcers, and settled into trying to make the most of their gains. Itimus stepped down from formal leadership and took the reformed status of Meninjra; no longer the guide of a Nation, now the guide of all the Faithful. The Heksala also agreed to a military alliance against the Temple of Ishket to the South - they were still under the Keveket umbrella, and there were some misguided politicians who even thought that the schism could be mended in a few centuries. However, the revelations of Itimus and nomadic traditions effectively pushed Heksala so far away from elite Keveket that it was by all means an entirely different religion.
The East spent the next two centuries flourishing. Industry boomed, huge cash crop plantations emerged, and Heksalan trade groups rose to prominence across the continent. There were many dogmatic issues to be resolved, internal divisions mediated, and laws to be written. One of the first major challenges to boil into public view was the Obentrin Affair of the 1500s: as Heksala had formed the distant Northeast kingdom of Obentrama, on the frontier of Heksala trade networks, had its own religious revival. Obentrin religion adopted certain Heksala aesthetics, but had extremely different emotional intent and ideology; it celebrated pleasure and sought to create an end to all pain, and sought the eradication of the self through community enjoinment and ritual rather than the perfection of the self. Heksala was willing to tolerate such deviance but as Obentrama integrated rapidly into Heksalan trade and religious networks, conflict between priests began to occur. When the Obentrin lobbied for their own arcane factory, priestly disagreements were dragged into court before the Meninjra. Ultimately, the Meninjra ruled in favor of the Obentrin, but demanded strict concessions around factory administration that hobbled the kingdom's production in the long term. The Obentrin remain to this day as a wing of Heksala that doesn't quite fit in with the rest. Nonetheless, Heksala had chosen openness instead of exclusion - it continued to absorb new ideas and groups, but many worried that the movement was drifting apart. Certain elements within the Heksalan hierarchy began to agitate for war, to unify their people against a common enemy and recapture the energy of the 1400s. 

War and Peace (1620 - 1850)

In 1620, the militarists were granted a golden opportunity. Keveket, Heksalan, and Ishket leaders had all mutually written to each other about the need for unity - both internally and across the continent. At the Vetuzan War Conference of 1620, major political leaders were invited to coordinate what would be a great contest of wills: the War of Control, a war between the faiths to decide who would carry out the will of Agamine. This polite and friendly conference set the continent on a path to mass destruction, as the War of Control spiralled into an endless chain of conflicts that afflicted all of Maradia from 1620 to 1780. In the end, some borders shifted and a Highest Council was made to represent all of three faiths in regulating the use of constructs and forbidden technologies, but mostly it was just mass death and destruction that set the continent back centuries. The voices of reason who helped end the war came from outside: the Painted Host led by the legendary Paladin Patana the Painted, strongest and most accomplished paladin in recorded history. Patana not only ended the war, but brought in a flood of social reformers and idealists eager to address some of the continent's greatest challenges. 
Following the 1780 Peace Accord, Heksala de-escalated its hostilities towards Ishket and pivoted to oppose new invaders from Nafena: The Final Choir of Vetevism and The Singing Church of Orisha. Heksala has had the least direct exposure to these faiths of the three Maradian Hierarchies; they have fought the Vetevic Choir in the South and snuffed out Orishan cults in the mountains, but geography mostly shields Heksala from the Nafenan missions. Additionally, Heksala is perhaps the least vulnerable to Nafenan missionaries; attempts to convert their territory have so far been miserable failures. 

Modern History

If the 1800s was the century of reconstruction and social reform, the 1900s has been the century of revival and innovation. Starting in the late 1800s, a powerful Solar bard - named Ultraviolet-Corona of the Clan Journey of the Great Ocean among solars and Aether to non-solars - with knowledge of many magical arts and traditions joined the Heksalan community with a group of other solars from around the world. Aether and their group were not true faithful, but opportunists seeking somewhere where they might be doted on with minimal effort -  but they brought with them a whole world of knowledge, commercial contacts, and religious ideas. As the solars local to Maradia and Nafena are extremely isolationist and as a rule do not join or live among non-solar groups, it Aether's group easily made an impression and had a lot to offer. And, as the 1900s got on, Aether and a few of the other solars began to actually want to involve themselves in the Heksalan religion; they applied their magical arts for the Hierarchy, offered bits of religious insight, and even travelled along the tropical Northern coasts encouraging local communities to convert. This solar activity even managed to attract a brief visit from Haru, who gladly offered divine insight and support for the Hierarchy (even as he expressed displeasure towards Aether's antics and involvement). The Aether community and Haru's visit both energized the light, solar, and Haru elements of Heksalan faith and mysticism, and spurred a new set of prophecies and religious excitement from local communities.
This change has encouraged the Heksalan Hierarchy to look for new horizons and opportunities for positive change. They have, at Haru's advising, doubled down on a peaceful approach towards Keveket; they have also forcefully lobbied for new technologies and Construct applications to be accepted by the Keveket and Enforcers. Internally, the Heksalans are looking towards expanding their religion and their trade networks; they have started tinkering with naval technology, have embraced a friendship with the selkie Khilaia, and have turned towards a decentralized missionary approach towards East-Maradian mountain and tropical areas. Heksala has dreams of being the merchants of Maradia, who encourage innovation from Keveket and Ishket engineers at home and sell new products abroad. What shape this will take is anyone's guess.

Mythology & Lore

Creation

In the beginning, there was chaos. Then from nothing came something: a singular point of divinity, creation, love, meaning, and knowlwedge. This original divine impulse and original truth is the one true God, and it was called Tua. But Tua was lonely, insufficient; as a thing of good, it sought goodness and perfected itself. In the Path of Perfection and Self-Discovery, one became two: Here and there, something and nothing, within and without, before and after. These Tuas could now think, speak, meditate, debate. They were called Hut and Niriet; one and many. Their world was barren and lifeless, but it was a world. Their debate and contemplation and reunification created a new revelation of what they were and could be. Two became three:

• Tua-Hut (or Singular God), the unity of all things, formless and purely abstract; it would be deeply wrong to try and represent Tua-Hut by any image or sound
• Tua-Niriet, the plurality of God, the transformative potential of God, the unknowability of God; sometimes portrayed as a rainbow serpent, or a shapeshifter with serpent's eyes and many heads and arms
• Tua-Halcyon, or God as an entity of intent and feeling; God-as-Person, often represented as a humanoid - typically a Solar in "accurate" portrayals

This was known as the Third World. The Tuas made and ephemeral worlds of magic that danced around them. Countless spirits came from the chaos, given meaning from by the Tuas. These worlds blended together and lacked the structure and coherency for their residents to find moral truth; they too were insufficient for the goodness the Tuas sought.
The Age of Three ended when some of the ancient creatures created a false law, and sought to call in the remaining chaos that churned around the ring of the world. Chaos burst into reality as a Great Flood; while the Tuas saved much of the world, time and space began to melt around them. Facing chaos once more, Tua turned inwards and sought perfection. The chaos froze as Tua imagined Order, Purpose, Limitation, and Law. Tua became four - The Architects

• Tua-Halcyon; Law, Purpose, Continuity, Light; The Present
• Tua-Niriet; Possibility, Change, Travel, Paths, Discovery, prophecy; The Future, called by foreigners the Chimera
• Tua-Lumitay; Memory, Ghosts, Souls, Persistence, Consequences, Permanence; The Past, called by foreigners the Masked One for its more visible aspect that chooses ghosts. Tua-Lumitay has four masks they use to commemorate the four base tempers: joy, tragedy, resistance, and acceptance.
• Tua-Hut; Unity, Mathemetics, Simplicity, Truth, Peace; The Timeless; called the Hidden One by foreigners, as they lack understanding that she is not hidden, but simply a purely cognitive and abstract being

With four faces and four names, the Tuas no longer saw Chaos as external to their world; they would recognize the meaning of all of it, and give it the order it craved. The Tuas brought all the world together again as a single beam of light; they took the form of a pyramidal prism of glass (one point, three edges, four faces; the ultimate geometric recognition of divine unity). Light passed through glass and became many colors - these colors, this fractured light, became the many fragments of divinity that could make a world.
The Fourth World is a naked illusion; it is temporary tangible sensation cloaking permanent spiritual truth. Unlike prior worlds, souls are apart from bodies, a clear and tangible sign that material things are false. And yet, the illusion has meaning - the struggle of life, the realness of it, gives the conditions for true learning and growth.
The Fourth world is defined by movement through the Four Realms: The material world, the Otherworld, Heaven, and Hell. Four kinds of mortals were born into this world from a new batch of souls: Humans, solars, dryads, and prisms. Other creatures, like aquatic beings, Pangolins, and Kobolds, came later - they were Feyfolk/Etherfolk, beings of the Otherworld, who migrated into our world and obtained our bodies. This is why magic and afterlives work differently for them.

Lesser Divinities

Beneath God but above ascended mortals like the Lunar Pantheon are a series of Lesser Divinities whose works and conflicts explain much of the unexplainable in the world. There are two categories of these: the Colors (divine aspects) and Eldest (powerful spirits)

The Colors are the tangible, magical aspects of God that are active in the world. The Colors are the essence of magic, and are most present in the material world. While they are ultimate aspects of Tua, they are more specifically aspects of Tua-Halcyon, and therefore have the prefix "Halcyon" for each. The Colors are not necessarily beneficial even if they are benevolent; they are suffering as well as joy. They exist to make you better and wish to guide you correctly, but they can be terribly painful to interact with and their lessons are not easy to understand. Each color is, at its most basic, a simple mathematical constant and element of existence - but they do supposedly have personalities that can be interacted with. There are two greater colors and four lesser colors:

• Halcyon-Iros: Black, one of the two strongest colors. Black is passion, abundance, action, fertility, life, rain, heat, water, healing, joy, wrath, grief, community, noise, and complexity. All colors come from and return to Black. Iros is jolly, fat, and holds a cornucopia and scepter.
• Halcyon-Ali: White, one of the two strongest colors. White is absence, cold, death, silence, peace, dryness, sand, salt, individualism, focus, simplicity, melancholy, and understanding. All colors come from and return to White. Ali is stoic, skeletal, and holds a sheathed weapon and a scroll.
• Halcyon-Miram: Red, the essence of most radical change. Keeper of the dead, master of fire, she who turns the world-wheel and tears down our most basic illusions. Stern fire-queen, with worms at her feet, a falcon on her arm, and a crown of fire upon her head. Heksalans carry her symbols for war.
• Halcyon-Flu. Yellow, the illusion's most visceral and gleaming things. Wealth, trade, minerals, food, drink; these are the domains of Yellow. Flu is very specifically non-living material success; those around her are depicted as joyful, but she is not. Around her neck is a gem-studded serpent - a warning - and she carries a merchant's scale in one hand and a chalice in the other.
• Halcyon-Hida. Green, the color of life and bodies. Green is health, sickness, coming of age, sexuality, childbirth, old age, hunting, animal husbandry, and agriculture. Hida is old and young, and many genders; they are not simply the 'ideal body', but all bodies. They often have animal or plant aspects.
• Halcyon-Oro. Blue, the color of distance, knowledge, movement, and magic. Blue is the teacher and the student, the nomad on their journey, the pilgrim and the sailor, the bird and the fish. Oro is often shown as crossdressing and transformative, blending norms and crossing a social boundary together very overtly. They have a horse-hair shawl, a shepherd's crook, and a compass.

The Eldest are the wisest, wiliest, and most powerful spiritual vestiges of the Third World that live mostly in the Otherworld, but have great power and ability. The Eldest, also known as the Archfey, are less morally pure than the Colors - but they are important spirits in navigating the world successfully. While there are usually ten or twelve Eldest listed by Heksalans, only six really matter:

• Arakina: The Supreme Prophet of the Otherworld, a true servant of God. Basically the secret other Lunar God for the Otherworld, a powerful force for good - but still not infallible for inherently divine. Said to have eyes like glowing rainbow gemstones, smooth shell-like skin that is jet black and ivory white, fingers like writhing serpents, and a face like a mask that only changes when not looked at by mortal eyes. You pray to her to undo curses and invoke her name to shame lesser spirits from her world. Arakina enabled the intermixing of the prime four species, so is the mother of all hybrids.
• Amarn-Emun: According to Heksala, the Keveket God Emun, lord of the Earth, is actually Amarn, the King of the Otherworld. Either name works, as he collects names for himself by the dozens. Amarn is lawful to the extreme; he cares about the exact phrasing of what you say and the exact word of Divine Law. He is a "good archfey" akin to Arakina, but is distinctly more dangerous. He is the Lord of the Threshold between the material plane and Otherworld, and as such is a powerful force for exorcisms of all kinds. He is extremely specific about oaths and promises, though, and can be downright cruel if he feels crossed or denied his due. Adamantium resonates with him, and he sent Pearl Pangolins into this world for their loyal service to him.
• Telesper: Another Keveket God claimed to be an Archfey by Heksala. Supposedly the first Vesper, Telesper is the blind god of prophecy, song, and bardism. It is said that Telesper is Hiku Matsune's Otherworld partner, and as such has the secrets needed to disrupt Lunar curses or scheming. Telesper is themselves a fickle creature though, always in need of amusement and flattery. Moonstone resonates with them.
• Renpara: Queen of the Underworld, lady of tunnels and chasms, scribe of secrets. Renpara is shapeshifter on the outside, with an eternal magical flame where her heart should and her eyes are embers regardless of her form. Renpara is a master smith and knows many secrets, who can make any seed, any crystal, or any magical item. She is also not a generous creature; she can curse those who insult her, and she is said to send monsters or plagues upon any who she thinks stole from her. Kobolds are a group of her servants that escaped eternal servitude to her by praying for mortality. Renpara is behind the distant mysteries of Ederstone and Dragon Forging.
• Heshaba: Queen of Cats, who sneaks into the sky to watch mortalkind at night. A mischevious gossip with her own strange internal code. Heshaba grants second chances and turns of luck to those she favors.
• Lumatol: The Otherworld's greatest merchant, the Magician of passage. A notorious shapeshifter known for their love of gold - which they work into a golden silk they cannot resist wearing and showing off - Lumanol is Amarn's funny little rival, the opportunist always looking to twist or evade the law. They love to try and use their Otherworldly magic to bind mortals to their service, particularly proud mortals in need of a good humbling. They invented druidic magic, and created Selkies as part of a trade. Lumanol may be selfish, but they can inspire cunning and insight in those that please them. Lumanol is also the creator of Aquatic Species and is the reason that Leviathans can cross from the Otherworld to our own.
• Kayau: A shadowy amphibious monster that appears during grim times and either conjures or foreshadows other monsters arriving. Associated with Gluttonmaws, Merfolk, and Leviathans.

That's a lot of entities! This robust cast of characters is the basis for much of Heksalan folklore and storytelling - the Tuas are simply too perfect and too powerful to play a part in the dramas of myth and legend.

Myths, Legends, Histories

The Fourth World has Four Ages: Mythic/Infant, Divine/Child, Modern/Adult, and Ending/Old. This is the basis for Heksalan understandings of history.
During the Mythic Age, the world was new, malleable, and dangerous. Lacking tools and facing great challenges, the ancestors of that age relied on Divine Truth to acheive the impossible to carve the landscape and lead their peoples across the world. Stories from this age are called Myths; they are timeless, marked in space. Myths remind you of what is right, but also of your belonging in the world; every people has their myths to relate to the world and their passage through it.
During the Divine Age, the world became more robust - but also began to lose its way. People lost the wisdom of their elders, and began to follow the ways of fallible and basic spirits. The Eldest began to meddle directly, and new species (cats, pangolins, vesper, aquatics, kobolds) migrated into the material world, further confusing things. Twelve monarchs, three of each of the base mortal races, rose up in their hubris to replace God entirely. They banded together to build a tower to talk to God; when they reached God, they demanded power over heaven. God refused, and explained their error. Impatient, the twelve kings summoned every ancestral magic they had, every connection to the Colors, to destroy God. They failed to see that the Colors were God, and it was of no effect. God laughed, swept their tower away, and resurrected them amidst the rubble. Rather than accept defeat or listen to God's lessons, the twelve kings were overcome with rage and jealousy. They declared that God was just a powerful wizard - they could be God, if they had different, better magic! And so the twelve kings bribed Lumatol, the Trickster, to let them into the Otherworld to get some magic of their own.
The twelve kings stole into the vault of Renpara, Queen of the Otherworld, and plundered her secrets. They each took one magical art for themselves, and returned to the material world as heroes. All of mortalkind rejoiced at their gifts. When Renpara found out what they had done, she and her husband (King of the Otherworld), entered a rage. They invaded the material world, and a horrific war ensued. The twelve kings, still bitter, built their tower again while their subjects fought to survive. Finally, the twelve kings reached the top again, brandishing their stolen magic. God sighed and dispelled the illusion of reality for them; their magic, their riches, and their bodies were all just light and sensation. God then offered them a deal: to lose their memories, their riches, their lives as they knew them to be reborn as sacred emissaries of goodness instead of evil. Ten of the twelve accepted the deal and were reborn in new lives as The Lunar Pantheon . Two - one human, one solar - rejected the deal. The human who rejected God became the Helltaker, a terrible creature that fled to Hell rather than accept death; it is said that he tries to drag many worthy people to Hell, that the Gods then take back. Desmia worships him. The Solar who rejected God, the most powerful and cunning of all the twelve kings, became the Adversary - the ultimate enemy of God.
With the twelve kings dethroned, the war with the Otherworld could end. The monstrous child of Amarn and Renpara, the bloody princess Arakara, continued to slaughter mortals, but God called her to Heaven for her own rebirth. The reeemed Arakara swore to forever keep the peace between realms - and so the Divine Age began to come to a close. The ten reborn Lunar Gods each worked wonders rebuilding the wartorn world. Mortalkind abandoned its quest to usurp God and seize ultimate power, but now had a great challenge ahead of it: to rediscover the divine moral truths of their ancestors.
An important note: the legend of the twelve kings of the tower is important not just in what in condemns, but in what it doesn't condemn. The legend's connection of some of Heksala's greatest heroes to the Kings is interesting not just for the element of radical forgiveness, but in that the Kings' actions were not necessarily all bad - they did ultimately bring new magic to mortals, and ultimately their stubborn efforts led to the essential prophets being born. The interrogation of the moral weight of this story is an important process for worshippers, and also serves as a parallel for Heksala's emergence from less-refined and less-true traditions.
Other Divine Era stories exist - a mix of Keveket legends and mythologized tales of the Lunar Pantheon. These tend to be called legends as opposed to myths - a little more grounded, more about moral teachings in semi-legendary history than mythic ethnic origin stories or worldshaping stories.
It is worth noting that, while all of the Lunar Pantheon is revered in some way, four of them are placed above the rest as Lunar Prophets:

• Agamine the Lost, the original prophet of all that is material, who has turned towards aiding souls undergoing their journey through Hell, Heaven, and the Otherworld. Patron of students, teachers, the dead, architects, engineers, and those seeking inner peace. An extremely important figure, and arguably the most visibly worshipped Lunar prophet. Always depicted in solemn meditative silence, turned inwards. Anyone seeking to channel the creative unity of Tua-Hut (God as Oneness) should pray to Agamine, not to that aspect of God.
• Haru the wandering Sovereign of Heaven, master of light and seer of colors. Seen as a powerful intermediary, and is a common object of prayer for those seeking to pass their wishes to the Tua-Halcyon or the Colors.
• Emesh, the shapeshifer - a solar in the last life, reborn a prism, then a human, then a dryad, and now a master of all forms. A keeper of ancestral wisdom and a magician known to provoke prophecy. Dabbler in the fey realm and master diviner, a trickster who tests and questions as a way to enlighten. Intermediary to pass prayers up to Tua-Niriet.
• Orchid of Blue, the Lawmaker and Record Keeper of Heaven, patron of oaths, commerce, and justice. Orchid supports doctors, lawyers, merchants, and bureaucrats; those who live by systems pray to her. Associated with God the Preserver, or Tua-Lumitay; helps give prayers up to the Masked One.

A final note is that religious history of Heksala is fairly important; more grounded and literal than the myths or legends. The religious histories emphasize the martyrs and the persistence of the sages in the face of terrible persecution. These histories are the Modern Era.

The Ending Age

Our world is only one step on the great path to perfection. Like all things, it will be tested and it will end - and from the ashes, a Five-faced Tua with build a Fifth World. It is said that this world will end in an armageddon that, like God, is singular but four-faced. The Adversary, Helltaker, Kayau, and Lumitol will march an army of the lost from Hell and Spirits from the Otherworld to lay siege to Creation. They will puncture four holes in the world by asking four impossible questions; they will find the points of contradiction in creation and open them like wounds to spill forth uncreation. A terrible battle will ensue, called Wanapadan, that will destroy the illusion of the world and return it to a raw spiritual state - to be reshaped by God's next form.
An entire age, the Ending Age, will occur before Wanapadan. It will be the age when all prophecies come true, and it will be a time of reckonings. An essential foretold event is the Kevwen, or Truth-time, when the Heksalans will unite all who follow Agamine's laws under a single banner of enlightenment and when all of Maradia will be of one temple and one mind. It is unclear if this will occur long before the end or during it, but this is a necessary occurence for the Wanapadan to finish - the world will have symmetry, as mortals began with sacred unity to God and will end with it.

Cosmological Views

Heksalan worldviews preach that the body and sensations of the world are fundamentally illusory. Material things and bodies are real in that their actions have moral value and meaningful consequence, but they are dust and lies compared to the soul. Souls can be moved around, but can only be created or destroyed by God. The Material Plane, Heaven, Hell, and the Otherworld are the four material-illusory realms that souls wander through during their time in this world. Souls move between these spaces regularly, as movement is the natural state of existence. While bad people are drawn to Hell by the evil there and good people are drawn to the virtue of Heaven, these are not inherently morally-exclusive spaces - nor are they final destinations. The end of a soul will occur during the final apocalyptic battle of Wanapadan, when God calls forward the loyal, worshipful, and good people into the next world and destroys the wicked and unfaithful. To endure Hell as a good person while keeping faith is essential to ascended from a Fourth-World being to a Fifth-World being.
Okay, so what are these worlds? And what of their denizens? Well, Heksala does not claim to have the other realms all figured out, but they do have important answers about them for navigating the Survivor's Path.
For one, the three other realms are all more fluid and tangible; the illusion is less consistent and real-feeling there, but the distance between body and soul is also less detectable. Make no mistake, souls have bodies in Heaven or Hell - sensation is bodily and inherently illusory. This thinness of the body is part of why creatures born of these other realms have such outlandish shapes that often correspond with their intent and magical role; it is also why a material life is so important for such creatures to acheive spiritual enlightenment.
So, the Worlds:

Material and Otherworldly

Our world, the Material Plane, is the plane of Law; Laws structure all parts of the world with extreme consistency. There are three main prophets to understand the material plane by: Agamine, who mastered understanding physical laws, Haru, who mastered curating a connection to the Colors of God, and Emesh, who mastered connections between the present and the ancestral past. You probably understand this world.
The world that most intersects our own is the Otherworld, the plane of Chaos. The Otherworld is essentially the remnants of the prior world reformed in harmony and balance with the new Lawful Material Plane. The Otherworld is not conceptualized consistently; some stories emphasize a shared geography (ie water spirits living in the Otherworld version of a spring), while other stories paint it as a truly alien landscape unrelated to our own. Sometimes, the inhabitants of the Otherworld are nature spirits, sometimes they are monsters, sometimes they are feylike creatures who obey specific rules, sometimes they are basically weird people.
Heksala's defense of the Otherworld's literal existence puzzles many, given the lack of concrete evidence and no verification by the Lunar Gods. In many ways, the Otherworld as dogma is a direct claim that the power of the Lunar Gods is limited; they were once mortals punished for stealing from the Otherworld before being reincarnated as their current selves, so it makes sense that God would restrict their ability to view into that place. That the Lunar Gods don't see it makes sense - and Heksalans are taught that the Lunar Gods fail to see many things clearly or accurately. For example, the Gods fumble with health, crop blights, animal epidemics, natural disasters, Leviathans, Ghosts, prophetic states, the stars, the fate of some species after death, and other notable topics - all things that spirits are involved in.
Heksalans see subtle involvement of the Otherworld in many things; unexplainable lost items, unusual spoiled food, odd diseases, animals acting weird, Warlockery, prophecies, and shooting stars. Heksalans view holy places and weird places as being particularly close to the Otherworld, as well as the open ocean and deep caverns. Species that are not Humans, dryads, solars, prisms, or hybrids are all seen as Otherworld migrants with a special hereditary bond to the strange and otherworldly. Some forms of magic are also seen as Otherworldly, such as Bardism, Druidism, Wizardry, and Sorcery - all of which are seen as originating in the Otherworld and having a special aspect attracting or repelling Otherworldly beings.

Celestial and Infernal

Heaven and Hell exist in Heksalan cosmology as extremes of opposed possibility shaped by divine principle. They are a more direct form of "Teaching Place" than the Otherworld or Material Plane; they are realms where experienced souls are tested and taken on journeys of potential enlightenment. Unlike other religions, Heksala insists that all souls will walk both Heaven and Hell before the end of days. Hell is particularly brutal to the wicked and Heaven is particularly sweet to the virtuous, but all mortals contain at least a little sin and virtue - they will experience some celestial pleasure and infernal pain. The only way to truly escape Hell's suffering is to live God's wisdom, learn to walk beyond pain, and to fill your soul with God as a master of the Survivor's Path. Much ink has been spilled describing what Heaven and Hell mean for mortals, and how to embrace it.
Hell has its own locals - devils - that test and torment visitors and, if they can, craft evil curses for the living. Heaven doesn't have a native species, so it seems logical that Hell's devils are just very bad people given hellish bodies. Just as Lunar Gods can influence the world as ascended celestial beings, devils - especially their leaders, the archdevils - can work evil into our world. Thankfully, Hell's power on the world is weak (until Hell's gates open to the earth during the End of the Fourth World). The archdevils, cowards all, are difficult to find.
It is because of the soul's fated movement through both Heaven and Hell that it is important to satisfy and study all of God's Colors - White/Ali may be a scary color, as can Red/Miram, but you will be thankful you welcomed them to your table when their guidance steers you through Hell.
A great rope or serpent moving through four great spokes, with the sacred word for unity (Hut) at the center is a very prominent sacred symbol in Heksala because it is a constant reminder that the soul will always be moving through the realms, orbiting God. It also suggests a fifth Realm, the Center, God's residence. This place, often called Lachen (all-center), is purely theoretical and not agreed upon as a literal place by all priests. In Heksalan mysticism and fantastical accounts, Lachen frequently appears as the place where those who have learned all that can be learned ascend to God's side.

Tenets of Faith

• Look Inwards to Find Your Path: The most important spiritual path is the path of personal strength and growth. You must curate a spiritual relationship with God and a spiritual relationship with yourself. 
• Walk the World and Know Its Wonders: If it is possible, the faithful should embrace physical change and mobility. Go on pilgrimmages during holidays, journey during major life changes, and seek new horizons. When journeying into foreign lands, report discoveries to the Hierarchy so the faithful may know the safest paths.
• Open Your Mind to the Unseen: The world is alive with omens and spirits to look out for. God is always speaking, if you master being able to listen. The pursuit of knowledge cannot be bound to the strictly measurable.
• Respect That From Which You Take: Ritual languages provide the means to give thanks to the spirits and to God. Be gracious and thankful for the bounty of the land.
• Give to Your Community: Duty is a spiritual tool of immense value; to cultivate discipline and devotion to those you love is the earthly path of those born on the material plane. Your clan, your people, your town - do what you can do make them prosper. But remember that we are all One Nation of God, and that the highest calling is to bring prosperity to all mortalkind.
• Respect All People, For All Are One: To take or harm a mortal without just cause is wicked. You cannot harm a person's immortal soul, but God disapproves of harming their body.
• Do Not Harm the World: Consider the world as a system, and your place within it. Use the mind given to you to consider the broader implications of your actions for the world and for your own spiritual health. 
• Find Resolute Strength of Self: Master the flesh and overcome sensation. Retain your independence from material luxury; teach your mind and soul to drink pain like warm milk. The soul is all that matters. It is not enough to say it. You must embed it into your life. One day you will walk the halls of Hell. This is your chance to master pain and adversity on your own terms 

Ethics

Laws and Scripture

To understand Heksalan religious commandments and "law", it is good to understand the actual texts and learning of the religion. The Heksalan canon, or Yabyach, is a collection of a number of different texts, teachings, oral traditions, poems, and hymns that are considered theologically relevant and of particular note. There are four formal parts to the canon:

• The Riwamalin, the revelation writings, dedicated to cataloguing the revelations of Agamine and Itimus, as well as sacred histories; largely static
• The Allemalin, a series of philosophical texts expanding on correct action, rituals, and cosmological implications; the interpretations and arguments of the early Heksalans and Toruket. Mostly static, but can vary from place to place
• The Nubikenja, which technically refers to all canon Heksalan prophecy and recorded omen readings. In practice, important prophecies and subsequent revelations are chosen by the Hierarchs for elevation. This prophecy is both mortal and immortal - so it includes a great deal of Lunar Pantheon statements. Actively growing and being curated.
• The Yachakenja, which is a compendium of honored Heirarch/Meninjra teachings and classifications; essentially, a collection of administrative guides, legal cases, poems, rituals, and more recent theological debates. Actively growing and being curated.

Not all of these are equally important. The Riwamalin is a direct, static, universal truth - it is extremely important in a way that the Yachakenja is not. And yet, the former is vague and mostly descriptive rather than prescriptive, while the latter provides more solid rules.
When it comes to the Riwamalin, the core text, it is worth noting that there is great emphasis placed on divine word - the direct things said by God to mortals. See Heksalan Words of God for these. These words are vague and enigmatic, but they do give some rules:

• Constructs  must be regulated and never used as killing machines (priests assert that using them incidentally as tools or vehicles that enable you to kill is acceptable, but the machine cannot be given the order to take a life).
• Do not use your strength or knowledge, or share your strength or knowledge, without caution; consider the moral consequences
• Evangelize, to bring all people under one community
• Life is to be protected and suicide is banned; people have an inherent moral duty to materially or morally provide for their community
• The unknown is to be examined, not rejected
• To purify the body before engaging in rituals of divine communion
• To consume food that represents God as a form of communion
• To view the world as a series of ordeals; to seek out internal emptiness and quiet as a path to peace
• To seek choice within your ability directed inwards, embracing free will while remaining loyal to God and to the Hierarchy
• Meditation as a divine tool essential to self-mastery

So there are two essential rituals to participate in (purification, wisdom-eating) and possibly a third representing providing for community (gift-banquets), with meditation (broadly defined) as a prescribed ritual practice. There is a political mandate to regulate constructs, magic, and potentially dangerous technology, as well as to encourage conversion. 
Beyond the word of God, there is a religious call for pilgrimmage and travel. This call for pilgrimmage scales with wealth and ability; the wealthier the Heksalan, the further they are expected to travel. Some travel short distances to local shrines; others travel to the sacred cities of Kahuwara and Vitoza. Heksalan elites have been known to travel beyond the sacred land, often carrying missionaries with them - missionary work abroad and pilgrimmage are equivocated in Heksalan law, though the most prestigious Heksalan journeys aim for places with mythic value (such as the Isethra Tree, Suwirsha, Miuta, or - extremely rarely - Nekiton). 
Other religious obligations or rules include the need for prophecy to be recorded and presented before a priest. As a rule, ascetecism is important - especially in ritual contexts. Sex, meat, violence, and intoxicating substances are all seen as ritual impurities; indulging in these impurities during a sacred time or in a sacred place, or generally in excess, is considered morally wrong. Money and riches are not to be displayed in non-religious contexts in sacred spaces. 

Ethics and Justice

Heksala's moral framework is best understood as an individualist system that tempers Keveket's consequentialist ethics with intent; while consequence matters, intent plays a major role in defining an act's morality. People are assumed inherently good but also inherently unrefined, with vices and ignorance corrupting their actions and leading to bad consequences. Bad consequences are to be analyzed for what vice or sin led to them - people are seen as doing something inherently a little wrong (or at least thinking wrong) when a bad thing happens. Restraint is seen as more virtuous than action, and the weight of consequences is usually on the actor. This is less absolute than in Keveket, but more than in other faiths.
Heksala is a faith with an unusually distinct concept of secular and religious justice. The Hierarchy views religious courts as temporary things, created to react to some kind of unusual conflict; priests should act more as mediator or advisor than judge.

Worship

Heksalans do not have regular weekly worship, but they do punctuate the calendar with frequent community rituals. There are two major regular rituals that act as "ordinary worship ceremonies" distinct from the others: Wisdom-Eating and Gift-banquets.

• Wisdom Eating occurs 12 times a year, essentially once a month. Worshippers reaffirm their loyalty to God, purify themselves (often by washing in water that is prayed over and sprinkled with Wanderbloom ), and consume a small morsel of food of a specific color (often sprinkled slightly with the ashes of prayer-papers). These days are days where all abstain from work, sex, intoxicants, and luxuries.
• Gift-Banquets occur four times a year, once a season. These are community events where villages, clans, guilds, and towns all host food sharing for all of the faithful. Elites distribute gifts, often of wealth, to the most valuable and accomplished members of the community. Alcohol is consumed in ritual toasts followed by prayers as gifts are distributed. Members of the community make promises on this day, declaring their goals to bring new wealth or common goods to the community. Those who fulfill their promise get to dine alongside the community elites at the next Banquet.

Ritual purification is also a common part of Heksalan ritual life, but it is not always the whole community being purified - it might be a specific group for a ritual, or families with children entering a betrothal, or someone seeking good fortune. While many rituals are local, group specific, or specific to a specific time of year, there are certain rituals that do happen relatively frequently, though. Each of the Four Lunar Prophets (Agamine, Haru, Emesh, Orchid) get minor community rituals (located whenever one of their weeks start) that often bring local people together.
As for everyday spirituality, meditation and prayerful focus are considered important tools for maintaining spiritual purity. 'Meditation' here encompasses both classical sitting meditation and things like walking in a large circle, striking a reed on the ground, speaking sacred poems and emptying the self of all worldly concerns and feelings.
One of the forms of worship that make outsiders uncomfortable is self-mortification: the use of self-denial and self-inflicted acts of suffering to purify the self and strengthen the soul. Most people's acts of suffering aren't flagellation, but are rather acts of exercise - sometimes pointless - to cultivate both mental and physical fortitude. Mystics may do things that frighten the outsiders, though, and ordinary people can partake as well. Heksalans believe that they will one day be tortured in Hell (even if just a little compared to heathens) and that these kinds of practices offer a way of make themselves immune to pain. Additionally, there is an element of meditation here; by recognizing that the flesh feels one thing but the soul feels another, Heksalans can glimpse "beyond the illusion" of the material world. So, to Heksalans, this is not a matter of guilt, but of preparation and purification.
Another divisive form of daily Heksalan worship is the appeasement and communion of faerie spirits. A major duty of the local priest, and of the local community, is to keep the area spiritually in balance with the Otherworld. This annoys the Keveket, as it "legitimizes supersitition", and it enrages the Temple of Ishket, and yet the Heksalans insist on continuing this practice as a formal function of the priesthood.
In terms of religious change-of-life rituals, Heksala is big into weddings: weddings can have a lot of social pressure even for those in the lower classes. They typically take four days, and involve the community coming together to help make it happen. Coming of age, meanwhile, is more of an ordeal than a celebration; transitioning from childhood to adulthood means travelling out of familiar territory on a work pilgrimmage, to act as a servant, apprentice, or acolyte for one year.
The traditional Heksalan funeral involves a return of the body to the world. Sky burials (feeding corpses to birds) is done for some (mostly humans and dryads), whole solars and prisms are buried. 
The Ortesian Language is used in rituals and scholarship. The Tevaran language is commonly used and has spread through this faith as well.

Priesthood

Priests are chosen by their superiors, but must have a seminary license, given by a monastery or seminary school after years of training. People can get seminary licenses without joining the priesthood or being chosen - many Heksalan community leaders have seminary licenses but no interest in becoming priests - and these institutions can also offer advanced theological degrees or certificates for continued study. An informal class of acolytes and scholars gather in these places, and tend to be favored in clerical hiring (both as priests and in other positions). Most curious, though, are those mystics and shamans who get their license and then proceed to act as religious specialists without actually entering the priesthood. These people can be chosen for priests - while most picks are acolytes, popular mystics are wild cards in the selection process. Unlicensed mystics are generally not in the good graces of the Hierarchy, and face pressure to go through the education process. This also has a way of weeding out especially deviant local traditions and ensuring that syncretecism occurs on the Hierarchy's terms.
Common Heksalan priests wear a tall black hat, called a Kweski, and vestments of four colors during rituals. Priests select their preferred colors to represent their approach to spirituality, though most priests end up with colors selected by their predecessors or community. Priests do not perform regular sermons, and only some priests preach sermons at all (typically during festivals or rituals rather than during a regular community prayer) - priests are above all ritual specialists, keepers of religious rules, and community religious coordinators. Floating priests (who move freely between needed groups), nomad priests (tied to a specific band or group of mobile faithful), and sedentary priests all work a little differently; one of the most challening and important parts of being a priest is adapting your religious knowledge to the assignment at hand.
Head Priests also wear a Kweski during ceremonies, though theirs may be decorated with their clan or province insignia. They also tend to wear very visible wooden necklaces, with four holy symbols draped across the neck and chest. Head Priests must have at least five years experience as a priest before promotion, and are selected by the Clerics. Their duties are much more administrative than the common priests, but still involves plenty of daily ritual; most are assigned to particular holy sites. 
Black-White Clerics have a striking costume: whenever they appear in public or ritual settings, they must be entirely in black and white makeup, hair dye, and clothing, often in striking ways. They have two hats to switch between: the typical Kweski, and the Tipi-Kweski, a far taller hat than the Kweski (often needing to be strapped to the head) and one that is covered in strings of white beads of glass. They choose half of their own replacements (the other half being chosen by the Offices) from the priests, Justicars, and High priests. Clerics are expected to run much of the day-to-day of the religion outside of the big cities. They tend to be rather secluded from mainstream society.
Justicars, or Office Agents, wear four-color headresses (White, Black, Yellow, Blue) bearing the insignia of their office, as well as face-covering scarves; their identity is visually consumed by that of their office. Justicars are not really priests so much as they are elite bureaucrats; many have some ritual duties, but that isn't their main point. They gather information, manage resources and accounts, and represent the Offices in the field. The Office bureaucracies hire Justicars from within and without the priesthood; having a license is usually required, but not always.
Arbiters, the head of the Offices, wear black-and-white robes with rainbow belts and vestments, and circlets that bear their insignia four times in four colors (White, Black, Yellow, Blue). Arbiters are the masters of the Office bureaucracies, who must have an advanced religious education and are chosen by the Hierarchs.

Political Influence & Intrigue

Heksala's Hierarchy has vast political influence over those kingdoms that embrace it - the Branch Offices are typically large political powers, and the Hierarchy expects strict adherence to their regulations and rules. However, this political influence tends to concentrate wherever constructs flow - peripheral parts of the Heksalan world have a lot of political freedom and religious autonomy.
Perhaps the most notable political group within the Hierarchy is the Holy Archive of the Drifting Glass, also known as the Glass Archive. The Glass Archive is the Hierarchy's intelligence agency, an organization dedicated to exploring, recording, and collecting. These "archivists" range from actual bookkeepers, to financial analysys, to merchant-explorers, to codemakers, to spies. The Glass Archive, which answers to the Hierarchs, Head Arbiter, and Meninjra, gathers and analyzes information about other political organizations, foreign lands, distant markets, and even otherworldly planes. 
Indeed, the Archive is the only intelligence agency to successfully establish an information-gathering presence outside of the material plane. Most of the Lunar Pantheon dislikes this (as they consider it improper and unwise for any material polity to actively engage with the realms of the dead), except for Emesh, who directly assists and enables their inter-planar communications. The Archive does not have an immense interplanar presence, as it is expensive and difficult to maintain without relying entirely on Emesh, who they know is not a trustworthy/reliabe intermediary - nonetheless, having a presence at all is extremely unusual. The Archive's spies in heaven work to collect information from their fellow dead about foreign lands, while their spies in Purgatory work to create a navigation system and eventually a way to map that plane. Most of the Purgatory network is dependent on a small number of 'sages', who have used Heksalan teachings to confuse and repulse whatever hateful logic rules that place - after years of trying to break them, the Plane seems to prefer to ignore them now as long as they don't try and help others in Hell. This small handful of Heavenly and Hellish spies have a goal that many find distressing: to engineer a way to get to the "Otherworld" or Spirit World. The Hierarchs seem to believe that, by gathering evidence of the Otherworld, the Hierarchy can peacefully convince the Keveket and Temple of Ishket to submit to their superior wisdom. 
While the Archive's interplanar operations are the most attention-grabbing on paper, they are a neglible portion of the group's total activities. The Archive's largest and most ambitious goal is to infiltrate and open foreign markets and business opportunities to Heksalan merchants: worming their way into the Khilaian fleets, embedding themselves into the corporations of Zerua, asserting Heksalan traders into Keveket colonies overseas, and attaching agents to Solar migratory bands. These financial goals are downplayed, as the Archive frames itself as a harmless scholarly institution of exploration, learning, and education - the Archive moves extremely cautiously to avoid notice, and to especially avoid alienating foreign markets. The Archive plays the long game, taking Agamine's conservative caution to heart. And they were founded after the 1780 peace treaty (and only really took off in the last century), so by their metrics they are quite young. 
The day-to-day of the archive is largely benign - they map, organize language education programs, translate foreign scholarship, brainstorm about business, study foreign cultures, and help coordinate the Heksalan postal system. Their general preference for long-term subtle planning has made them vulnerable to competition from other, more violent, big intelligence agencies - most notably Hiku's Orishans, who have attacked the Archive across Maradia (while they Goddess has worked to interrupt them across the planes).

"Find Unity and Peace"

Founding Date

1480

Type

Religious, Organised Religion

Predecessor Organization

• Keveket

Demonym

Heksalan

Deities

• Agamine the Lost
• Emesh
• Halcyon
• Haru
• Orchid of Blue
• The Chimera
• The Hidden One
• The Masked One

Location

Maradia

Official Languages

• Ortesian Language