Navana

The New Way of the Risen Orchid

Navana is literally translated as "The New Way". It is a New Way away from the old Church of Ekaza, but it is also a way for the New to manifest. It is a religion that salivates over ideas of "progress" over the new world that is just over the horizon. A perfect future society where all are educated, wise, brave, and healthy, in a society of mutual respect and cooperation. In this coming 'Utopia', all shall exist in perfect social harmony and work together to solve all of the world's toughest problems under the watchful eye of carefully moderated Philosopher-Monarchs - the greatest of which, Orchid of Blue, already sits on her throne in heaven waiting for this to begin.
As for right now, the Church of Navana prepares for Utopia through its three great pillars of reform: education for all who ready for it, medicine for all who deserve it, and policing to bring safety and 'normalcy' to all. They only ask that everyone act according to their station while they perform these great labors; that all people follow the sacred codes of conduct (known as the Nevmaka) that regulate social etiquette and functioning. And when one sees another person cheating, it is important that their indiscretion be reported to the proper authorities so that society can punish them. This is the theory behind Navana.
In reality, Navana is a great system of power that rules West Sonev with an iron grasp. Compared to Ekaza, Navana is lenient and compassionate, but any outsider will immediately recognize that things are wrong here. Surveillance is constant, local cultures are slowly eroding under church micromanagement. Paramilitary groups anonymously punish those who would dare deviate from social scripts, and the church's drive for utopia is an unsustainable rush of new technologies and institutions with no end in sight. Everything is reduced to power, gilded by a veneer of benevolent compassion. And while public violence is largely taboo, threats of quiet violence are everywhere. This is an authoritarian technocracy obsessed with middle class aesthetics and mechanisms of 'polite' control, gorging itself on a glut of technologies, markets, and unconditional divine support.

Structure

Rank	Duties
Supreme Architect	The supreme leader of Navana, chosen and legitimized by Orchid herself.
High Overseer	The regional leaders of Navana, associated with the great empires. Nine exist
Archbishop	Sub-regional leaders
Bishop	Local leaders of the priesthood
Priest	Temple-keepers, preachers, communities leaders

Navana is a top-down religion, with all power coming down from the divinely-appointed leadership. Priests are ordained by bishops, who are chosen by archbishops, who are chosen by overseers, who are selected by the Supreme Architect. The Supreme Architect's very title is intended to evoke the Architects, who the Supreme Architect channels through their connection to Orchid. Below is a map of the High Overseer districts (as not all High Overseers are equal in status):

The current Supreme Architect is a half-dryad paladin by the name of Ischetri Vetuza. Ischetri is a competent, militaristic leader of the faith, a rare example of a Miutan aristocrat who has spent most of his life on the front lines against Runeva. He is a very formal man of clear military bearing, who has a history of treating those below him well. He is educated, experienced, good with numbers, skilled at politics, and bears the perfect balance of gentleness and ruthlessness to earn him respect across the clergy. While he despises public speaking in non-military settings and avoids public appearances when possible, he is commonly known and admired as a paragon warrior-philosopher. Perhaps his only flaw his is penchant for escalation, especially in military matters: whenever Navanan life is lost, Ischetri always demands his pound of flesh. 
The only figure in modern Navana able to rival Ischetri in popularity, influence, or power is the greatest of Orchid's paladins - another half-dryad by the name of Ilumev the Thornbreaker. Ilumev may not be the administrator that Ischetri is, but he is a phenomenal warrior and spellcaster known for doing the impossible: slaying one of Suwota's thorns in battle and living to tell the tale. While Ischetri and Ilumev are not necessarily politically opposed, both are big people with big egos that are bound to come into conflict as Navana's role in government changes.

Culture

Status and Behavior

Everything in Navana revolves around status. Status is definitely influenced by social class and occupation, but it is more than that. Status is given by the Church, typically according to the recommendations of the local priest and community, and it is supposedly determined by "virtuous behavior". Community members are encouraged to report to lay-religious organizations or even the local priest if they witness one of their neighbors or family members commit a particularly good or evil act, with reporting itself being a way to raise one's own status. Priests and lay-societies then convene annually to compile whether someone's behavior is improving or deteriorating, and punish or reward accordingly. Status decides access to education, whether you get access to medicine before someone else, and whether your community takes you seriously or not. Status can be gained by volunteering to join the church military or the medical divisions as well, but behavior will always be the deciding factor when it comes to keeping any status gained. 
So what is good behavior? It is obedience, discipline, and etiquette generally. It is how well you function in the society and how well you follow the church's taboos. It is also generosity and mutual assistance. So, naturally, it can vary a great deal depending on who is keeping track. Priestly positions are a big deal in Navana, and priests have immense social power. And this power isn't just over the lower classes (though it is a lot more pronounced and unrestricted there) - Navana encourages social mobility, and this means that well-behaved lowborn can rise just as it means that poorly-behaved high-born can fall. And the higher one climbs in Navanan society, the greater the pressure to act perfectly. 
To prevent the commonfolk from organizing against the church, a constant sense of paranoia is encouraged. Selling out immoral friends and family members is a cornerstone of society, and the wealthier the person the larger the target placed on them. The church has been known to dole out morality fines and then divert some of that money to those that helped them, after all. In the Navanan periphery, this selling out tends to be fairly rare and reserved for extreme cases of immorality; in the Navanan urban centers, it can reach police-state levels of surveillance. 
The other side of all this is that those who master the system can advance rather well. Family origin is not nearly as important as virtue and skill in Navana, and there is an upwards pressure to move as many people into the middle class as possible baked into the system. Once in the lower middle class, education and healthcare are plentiful and there are lots of opportunities to maintain your position - including joining anonymous paramilitary societies that police social deviance. 

Marriage and Species

One of the quirks of a status-based society are contract marriages. Essentially, all marriages are negotiations of power. One party can be made superior, one can be made inferior, or both can be equal. A superior spouse is seen as an educator and moral guide as well as a lover and is given legal and economic power within the relationship. Superior spouses can lend their social and legal power to their inferior spouses, providing potential social opportunities for the inferior. Every five years or after a major change in status, the relationship is then reviewed and the contract can be renegotiated. Particularly wealthy high-status individuals have been known to take on a number of orbiting inferior spouses at the same time as a sign of their status. Inferiors also make for useful employees or servants, so there is an economic benefit for wealthy individuals to take on a number of prestige spouses as well. While children of equal marriages take precedence as heirs over the children of inferior spouses, the estate of the superior spouse is expected to provide significant benefits and social advancement to all inferior spouses they take on. This is a system that is intended to distribute wealth and status from the superior to the inferiors as a kind of social equalization, but it is also a system with a lot of capacity for abuse and exploitation. It can also make for legal headaches, particularly when people start marriage chaining. Basically, while it is seen as scandalous for an inferior spouse to have multiple superiors, an inferior spouse can take on their own inferior spouses to increase the prestige of both themselves and their superior. So, in extreme cases, a wealthy leader can have a harem of spouses that each has a harem themselves - like marital Reaganomics, the money and status trickles down. 
But what about species preference? Well, the Navanan church is mostly pretty good about balancing the needs of the different species, and the legal structure is well-designed in keeping it that way. The big exception is when it comes to Half-Dryads and Half Prisms, which are considered divine gifts in need of preservation. The church encourages tax cuts and status increases for families that increase the number of half-dryads and half-prisms, and both groups are looked on with perhaps more optimism than usual. Hybrids are seen as attractive, trustworthy, and quick-learners. The idea behind this is that hybrids bind the dryad, human, and prism communities together and prevent species conflict by personalizing the other species and making their biology normal. That said, it doesn't quite reach levels of systemic oppression targeting any one species - the hybrid policy does seem to be working in bringing the communities together. By far the greater axis of oppression in Navana are those who struggle with the norms and etiquette of society; people who are eccentric, neurodivergent, or foreign-raised can struggle in these societies and will usually be funneled into cheap labor or military occupations. That Sonev's growing adoption of new technologies relies on having that cheap labor doesn't particularly help.

History

Roots of Navana

According to official theological positions, Navana is a splinter sect of Ekaza, and a history of pre-1200 Navana would be a history of the Old Ways of Ekaza. However, long before Navana officially formed, religion in West Sonev was quite different from the religion of the East. The lands of the West were always a melting pot a world apart from the conformity and continuity of Runeva. All sorts of migratory groups met and intermingled, and when Orchid of Blue arrived in the -500s DE with her fleet of Runevans, they added their religious tradition to the mix. Orchid's descendants, the Miutans, created the first version of Navana in the late Divine Era by mixing Orchid cult, Runevan traditions, and local religion for their royal priesthood. This Miutan syncretic pantheon was more a declaration of state power than ideological changes (a kind of "every god loves us" boast), but as Miuta rose in power many other kingdoms copied their pantheon.
When the Divine Contact arrived at the dawn of the Divine Era, these diverse local pantheons united under a shared Cult of Orchid. Other Lunar Gods had their cults they collected as well but in the Western lands where Orchid cult was already associated with rulership, Orchid had a clear head start building influence and interfering in politics. Several of the other Lunar Gods eventually tried to dethrone the Cult of Orchid through war and intrigue, leading to a period of sustained low-level conflict known as the Cult Wars that raged across the 500s ME. These attempts at "balancing" the pantheon among the lunar Gods ironically only crystallized Orchid's place at the top in the West and South, and for the most part the other Lunar cults only made gains in the Northeast (eventually priming that region for conversion to Elemeer ).
The Cult Wars changed the religion of the West substantially. For one, the strengthened Orchid cults were brought together across kingdoms and given more consistent shared ideology - as well as a shared vision for the future. The very idea of "Utopia" originates from this time period, in the rhetoric of victorious Orchid cults. Secondly, it generated a united peace movement in the 600s known as the One Ekaza movement - a continent-wide group of priests who wanted to join together and mediate religious disputes peacefully rather than allow the cults to fight openly. The One Ekaza movement ultimately starved out popular desire for more religious war, and brought clerics from Miuta and Runeva together. Orchid and Suwota emerged as the twin leaders of this new loosely-defined religion of greater Ekaza (with the Northern center not being comfortable with either but lacking alternatives).
The One Ekaza period was one of peace and religious cross-pollination. The West brought Orchid, half-dryad ritual, clerical medicine, and the idea of "Utopia"; the East brought the idea of the war against the Great Evil, top-down united religious structures, and cross-continent bureaucracies. This period lasted (with small local interruptions) from around 690 to 910 ME. And while the two centuries of cooperation certainly brought Sonev's priests closer, the West and East never really were as united in doctrine or hierarchy as they claimed. Miuta and Runeva remained the two poles of Ekazan power, with neither dominant over the other.

Ekaza Splinters

The first great disruption of the One Ekaza Period were the Faro invasions: nomads from the Southwest who conquered their way across the South, West, and East. The Faro were never able to cross the great straights to conquer Miuta, and they failed to invade Runeva, but the lands in between them were mostly conquered by foreign armies. The Faro were not Ekazan themselves but instead followed their native tradition of Esarat, or the Great Mystery. And the Faro were also open to non-cleric-regulated use of the Divine Contact. While the Faro did not oppress Ezakans and largely converted by the end of the century, their political disruptions drove a major wedge between West and East. They also allowed the old cults of Lily, Theia, Hiku, Ishkibal, Jade, and Emesh to act up again across the central kingdoms of Sonev. The limits of Suwota and Orchid's powers were both put on display, and the unity movement largely splintered.
In the wake of the Faro conquests, Miuta and Runeva did their best to carve out their religious spheres of influence on their own. They weren't in opposition, but there wasn't much of a united front either. Twin crises in the 1000s did their number on both Miuta and Ekaza, preventing the old order from returning after the Faro were defeated. In the West, Miuta collapsed from civil war and a group of pesky Leviathans; in the East, Runeva entered a violent revolution that saw Suwota put on trial and the very foundations of the faith questioned.
Despite the Ekazan order basically falling apart, Lunar cults struggled to make meaningful political gains - the Gods seemed less interesting than in prior centuries in pushing their advantages, and those cults that did rise mostly fought one another. People seemed more receptive to completely non-mainstream religious movements. Mystery cults, fringe religious movements, and even cults started by one particularly quirky leviathan gained ground far more quickly tha any of the Lunar cults. The very fabric of Sonevan religion was aflame.
The most successful of the new religious movements were one of the last: the Followers of Elemeer in the far East, who rose in the late 1100s. The localized politics, outside theology, and united lunar support made it extremely attractive, and it spread like wildfire from 1190 to 1300. But just as Elemeer was gaining steam, Miuta and Runeva were recovering. A new Church of Ekaza formed in the East in Runeva, with undivided loyalty to Suwota; and a new Empire of Miuta had risen in the West, loyal to Orchid. The two met together in 1204, when Suwota called a clerical council on the suppression of Elemeer in the city of Arda - and their differences were made obvious immediately. In 1205, the council failed and the Western clerics stormed back to Miuta to hold their own. The Western clerics condemned the East; the Eastern clerics condemned the West. Orchid chose her favorite, the philosopher-priest Sarafa, to represent her at the Western Council of 1205, and Sarafa was elected the first Supreme Architect. Sarafa announced that Ekaza was obsolete, and that there was a New Way revealed by Orchid: the way to Utopia. And so Navana was born.

Early Navana

The larval Navana of 1205 had energy and regional legitimacy, but it lacked the structures and influence necessary to take back the entire West. Elemeer crawled into the periphery (particularly the North-center), and deviant cults still blossomed across Sonev. The Navanan church also had its own internal problems. The emperor of Miuta had a virtual stranglehold on church appointments, and Orchid struggled to counterbalance the secular powers that were.
Not even a century after its founding, Navana was dragged into a grand religious battle royale: the Great Coalition War of 1290 - 1320. This war drained Navana's coffers and influence, but strengthened its organizational muscles and instilled a new sense of militarism into the church. A new church was developing within the old - a militaristic international organization deeply loyal to Orchid was struggling to be born, while the old empire-led church clung to power. In 1475, this tension finally detonated the Navanan church entirely. The Empire of Miuta had entered a succession crisis, with one candidate aligned with one church faction and a second with the other, and every other opportunistic group piled in shortly after. It became known as the War of the Overseers, as the regional church heads rose above the cluttered imperial factions as the true centers of power. This war ended in 1499 with the church formally divorcing itself from the Empire of Miuta, and openly embracing its more radical international elements. The doctrine of Navana shifted dramatically with the new order, towards a utopia-or-apocalypse alarmism backed up by a call for a global religious crusade. The tenants and codes of Navana were formally gathered into the New Nevmaka, the guiding codes and writings of Navana that have led the church ever since.
From 1499 to 1600, the new Navanan church fought to recollect itself. The energy of the new church carried through, allowing for a flurry of reconversion and construction. Outside pressure against Navana petered out in 1600, as Runeva's counterattacks drew away most immortal attention. And in 1650, Navana and Elemeer made peace: at the Elemeer religious council known as the Diet of Harlyra, Navana sent military advisors and representatives to provide support and sign pacts of religious co-existence. The same year, the Lunar Gods formally agreed to stop undermining the Navanan church in order to better suppress Runeva.

Modern Navana

The focus of Navana, now safe from divine and political elite infighting, became internal order and military supremacy. But while the church has prospered since 1650, the governments that govern the church lands have often stumbled. While church organization and power rose to counterbalance Runevan aggression in the 1700s, the kingdoms squabbled and struggled to implement clerical suggestions. When Miuta itself began to convulse with public disorder in the early 1800s, the church began drawing up plans to seize the empire for itself.
In a curious turn of events, an unlikely hero rode to the church's aid: Enasha Arshi, a human warrior of legendary skill who gathered a massive following after she escaped Suwota's grasp in 1819. While Enasha was a member of the Faro nomads who had little inherent respect for Navana, her forces were capable and her skills as a commander were great. She seemed like a major growing threat to the established order - but if she were to convert and work with the church, she could also be a useful instrument of Orchid's will. Enasha, the supreme pragmatist, was willing to cooperate - and when she invaded Miuta, she worked closely with the Supreme Architect to conquer it quickly and with the church enshrined in law. Enasha conquered a massive empire before riding against Suwota's armies. Navana rode with her, and governed much of her empire for her. All through the 1800s, the Supreme Architect of Navana used the Empire of Enasha to project influence across Western Sonev. The New Way was ascendant. 
In 1895, Enasha's grandchildren divided her empire in three. Navana remained strong. A golden century of the church followed, from 1895 to 1990 - but the three successor empires have recently begun to collapse in on themselves. Dreams of a possible grand theocracy of Orchid have resurfaced in recent decades as these empires have suffered from infighting and revolts. Whether these dreams will come to pass is anyone's guess.

Mythology & Lore

Creation

In the beginning, chaos created the world. This chaos was alive, and its name was the Wildspirit - the most powerful and fundamental of Gods. The Wildspirit was many things good and bad, and she created an imperfect world of great potential. Inevitably, the Wildspirit destroyed all she created - she devoured her God-children, consumed worlds, and had her creations destroy one another in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
The Wildspirit had one daughter she could not bring herself to kill - Tunelo the Halcyon Spirit, spirit of goodness and life. The Wildspirit raised Tunelo as a daughter and taught her all she knew - but Tunelo lived in fear of being devoured by her fickle mother. Three more daughters the Wildspirit created - Paizu, Sunkoshi, and Pachita - and three she tried to consume, but Tunelo convinced her to delay. Mustering her bravery, Tunelo stood up to her mother and politely demanded that she stop. The Wildspirit, ever-capricious, offered Tunelo a deal. If Tunelo would explain why the Wildspirit should not, the Wildspirit would listen; but if the Wildspirit found her arguments unconvincing, she would consume Tunelo as well. Tunelo agreed, knowing that the Wildspirit would surely devour her when she finished. So, Tunelo spoke for ten days and ten nights, and her words rang with such perfect order that they shaped the very world. The Wildspirit was perplexed and confused, and spent ten more days and ten more nights sitting perplexed. The Wildspirit decided to attack Tunelo anyways, but Tunelo again spoke and the Wildspirit listened - this time to stories and songs, which hid the secrets of her truth in their beauty. After twenty more days of speech and perplexion, Tunelo did it again with rituals and rites. The exhausted Wildspirit was so disoriented after three rounds of verbal thrashing that she did not notice what was going on: that Tunelo's words were weaving themselves into threads of law and order, and that each of her sisters had plucked one from the air. The three sisters bound the Wildspirit in the threads, immobilizing the primordial chaos before Tunelo.
The Wildspirit was imprisoned, but not so easily turned or slain. While Tunelo sapped her power and claimed the universe from her, she spat forth her last and most horrid creation - the Darkness, the culmination and expression of all evil that has been and will be. In the end, the Wildspirit was consumed by Tunelo and the Darkness escaped to haunt the world forever.
Ever since, Tunelo has reigned as the cosmic empress of an ordered world. She battles the Darkness beyond the sky every night, and every day she nurtures the world and ensures that it marches ever closer to Utopia. Utopia is an inevitable state of the universe, when all chaos is driven away and goodness and order alone reign. It waits only on us to make it.

The Tale of Orchid

Tunelo has hidden the truth of the world in plain sight, but only those who follow her virtuous path of knowledge can see it. To help guide mortals while she is busy, she and her sisters created many helpful spirits.
The two greatest of these spirits are Maniva and Misefuwin. Maniva is the lesser god of dreams, knowledge, and writing, and is the scribe of Tunelo; Misefuwin is the lesser god of travel, discovery, and innovation, and is the courier of Tunelo. Maniva and Misefuwin were once ordinary helper spirits, until their efforts to inspire mortals to goodness came into direct conflict with the Darkness. The Darkness was more powerful than them and undid their efforts at every turn. But the Darkness was too proud for its own good, and offered them a deal: if they would each create a mortal incarnation of themselves and hide these incarnations in mortal society, they and the Darkness would have a fair competition to see if they could be tempted to evil or good.
Maniva and Misefuwin agreed, and their incarnations were Orchid and Ispi - a normal dryad born to Runevan nobility and a normal human born to the docks. At first, the Darkness easily turned the evils of society against them. Orchid was raised in a secluded social bubble of wickedness, and Ispi was denied all education and social agency. But, against all odds, both fought their way to one another. Their curiosity and hopes for a better world allowed them to move beyond their limited stations and perspectives, and they fell in love as Maniva and Misefuwin once had. They raged against the Adversary's machinations and rejected their wicked temptations. The Adversary was ashamed and enraged at losing this impossible deal, and moved the elites of Runeva to capture and kill these lovers. But Tunelo intervened, gathering the good people of Runeva to build five massive boats to flee Runeva for a chosen land across the sea. This new land is now known as Miuta, the heart of the faith. And in this sacred land, Orchid and Ispi were blessed with the first Half-Dryads as children. The lovers ascended to Tunelo's side after death, to channel the powers of Maniva and Misefuwin and guide mortalkind to enlightenment.

The Pantheon

Navana's pantheon includes:

• Tunelo, the Heaven-Goddess, maker of Dryads, Prisms, and Solars. Supreme God of Justice, Truth, Power, Order, and Creation.
• Tarek, the Three-faced representation of Tunelo's will rippling through the material plane. Has three aspects: The sun, the earth, and the trees.
• Maniva and Misefuwin, Gods of Love, Dreams, Curiosity, Innovation, and Intuition
• Orchid and Ispi, Gods of Honor, Compassion, Ethics, Knowledge, Writing, Learning, and Law - the refined, mortal versions of Maniva and Misefuwin
• Pachita, the Moon Goddess and master of prophecy, magic, childbirth, and rebirth
• Paizu, God of Cats and God of Strength and Fortune. The God who gives wisdom, strength, and even sentience - the God of ascension and improvement
• Rohdsa, God of Riches, abundance, rains, and the sea
• Ukivo, God of Magic, Change, and Technology

There is also Sunkoshi, the God of the deep sea, smoke, lies, poison, illusions, and emotion. They are sometimes good but always dangerous.

Cosmological Views

Reflections, Duties, and Agency

Reflections between heaven and earth are a major theme in Navanan cosmology: the heavens are fundamentally unjust because they are reflections of an unjust earth. The Gods have a duty to improve the heavens just as mortals have a duty to improve society, but the Gods are not obligated to make heaven perfect until mortals have made their world perfect as well. This is because goodness is fundamentally made of duties and obligations we have between each other, a truth that extends beyond mortal society and shapes the very universe. 
Relatedly, the Gods have a Divine Compact with mortalkind in which they have to prove the virtue of their godhood actively through their behavior. All forms of station are not inherent - even godhood - but must be maintained through proper behavior and values. Even Tunelo herself must live up to being Tunelo by acting with grace and the highest of virtue. This isn't to say that the Gods owe services to mortals (or even that they can never make mistakes), but rather that they must play the role of God and must maintain their relationship as a benevolent superior to mortalkind. 
While the Divine Compact has never been so truly broken as to cast a deity from full godhood, it is used for the rankings of the Lunar Pantheon:

• At the top is Orchid of Blue, the smartest and most godly of the Lunar Pantheon. She lives up to her role perfectly, almost as if she created it
• Second is Jade Atharzen, Goddess of Law. Jade is flawed but understands station, and her ability to craft laws and military institutions are second to none
• Third is Haru, God of Commerce and Medicine. Haru is a deeply respected figure in Navana, though his mortal form undermines his divine legitimacy
• Fourth is Wimbo Aizitu, God of Bravery. While he rarely keeps to divine etiquette, he lives up to his station as god of strength and inspiration in the ways that matter
• Fifth is Emesh, God of Knowledge. He is a liar and a shapeshifter and not to be trusted, but learning is so important that he ranks up there anyways
• Sixth is Ishkibal, the Master of Wars. Ishkibal is allied to Orchid and therefore understands his slightly inferior station, but he is uncouth and spouts dangerous ideas. That said, he is useful and generally conforms
• Seventh is Lily of Red, the Archdruid of the Wilds. Lily is tainted by the wilderness in her body and views - she demands personal obedience that oversteps the bounds of the divine compact, she approaches all things in matters of primal strength, and she fails to understand the value of structure. She is polluted, untrustworthy, and on thin ice
• Eighth is Hiku the Witch, God of Illusions that falsely claims to be master of inspirations and dreams (which would be two of Orchid's domains). Hiku was once master of magic, but has lost her way and been corrupted
• Ninth is Theia the Liberator, another Wild God who seeks a return to nature. Theia is the most dangerous to society, as she seeks to undo all progress in her endless quest for a nostalgic return to the mythic age. 

Agamine the Lost is believed to be dead.
All of this makes for a worldview that has surprising mortal agency. People can change anything in Navana, if they work together and act virtuously. In  fact, it is the mortal destiny to achieve Utopia - the final form of the world, a living paradise devoid of suffering built by mortal and divine hands working together. All civilization strides towards Utopia, all innovations and developments inevitably lead to the joyous end of history. It is not an apocalypse, but rather an end to the world of suffering as we know it.

Tenets of Faith

• Aid the Forces of Good: Be loyal to the empires and forces of the faithful, for they are vehicles of utopia. If you are not so blessed as to live under a Navanan government, be loyal to the Navanan communities and political factions. All you do to support the armies and engines of Navana, you do for the greater good.
• Seek Wisdom and Knowledge: Education and knowledge are keys to good behavior and overcoming ignorance. Seek education, learn what you can, and remember that knowledge is worth more than gold
• Be Orderly in All Things: Impose order on your life. Follow a schedule, a routine, and give yourself good and regular habits.
• Be Clean: Disease is the greatest weapon of evil, and disease comes from unclean living. Wash regularly, remove dirt from your living spaces, eat on plates on tables, clean your drinking and eating vessels twice a day, and wash your clothes three days. Do not let wild plants or grime contaminate your house, and do not let your spaces be in disarray.
• Do Not Pollute Your Body with Drugs: Through your base flesh, poisons can harm your mind and your very soul. Anything that changes your perception or mental state is an attack on your very being. While commoners may indulge in a beer, drunkenness is forbidden. Hallucinogenic drugs, opioids, coca wine, and marijuana are also considered sinful.
• Be Disciplined: Carry your posture well, think before you speak, demonstrate care in your attitudes and control of your body and mind. Do not indulge in base instincts such as eating food or public displays of affection in public spaces. When in the square, do not betray any trace of lust or gluttony.
• Respect Social Status: Act appropriately in your relationships. Bow to superiors; give inferiors respectful distance. Children should respect and defer to their elders; a spouse who is made dominant in a marriage should be given respect and be generous with their inferiors.
• Let All Violence Serve A Purpose: Unless violence is strictly ordered and serving a purpose, it is not fit for public or community sight. 

Ethics

Navanan tradition rejects approaches to ethics and virtue that revolve around intent or consequence. Rather, Navanan ethics focus on behavior and inherent virtue: a moral decision is not judged by saying "is this choice inherently right?" but by asking "was the actor acting in a dutiful and virtuous way?". In order to understand the moral character of a decision, it is important to understand where the person making that decision fits into society. 
Society in the Navanan outlook is essentially compromised of power relationships. Everyone has a role, every role is mediated or controlled by other roles, and some roles will have more access to important decision making than others. To complicate matters, everyone has many roles: one person can be upper-lower-class, a butcher, a son, a brother, a spouse, a father, and a community leader. Each of these roles interfaces with other roles (father to children, butcher to farmer and to customer, etc) isolated from the others - and each of these interfaces has a different power relationship. Codes of conduct must exist for each power relationship, and these codes must be made as benevolent and virtuous as possible - a child must care for their parent and obey within a certain range, but a parent must also provide sanctuary and respect. Only when every role is played benevolently is society functional; otherwise the social compact is unfulfilled and things fall apart. 
So part of any ethical judgment in Navana is "what was the correct behavior for a ____?" rather than "what was the correct choice ethically?". But there is more than duty in Navana - after all, society is always changing and should always move towards an ideal state. So every social role ought to (in a just society) move as close as possible to lordly behavior (also translated as gentlemanly behavior or aristocratic behavior). Lordly behavior in a Navanan context is less about wealth or power than a standard of discipline, etiquette, and personal behavior. A 'lord' speaks less and does more; a lord respects in ways that dignify their rank; a lord helps strangers without being asked and asks nothing in return; a lord punishes themself before others can punish them; a lord sees the common good as their personal good; a lord treats their children with love and all below in rank as their children; a lord seeks no wealth. The only things greater than a lord is a Sage, who is someone who has so infused their very being with virtuous behavior that they teach it without meaning to. All people will be sages in Utopia, but for now all people should strive to be lords. As a rule, all people regardless of role or rank should seek to embody the four moral behaviors: courage, wisdom, justice, and moderation.

Worship

Ritual is incredibly important in Navana, and is seen as critical for any personal connection to the divine. Ritual is seen as both formal etiquette to the divine and practice for curating virtue. The dead must be honored and treated with their appropriate social respect as if they were alive, because they spiritually are alive in Paradise. Community celebrations are important as re-affirmations of social harmony and mutual respect before the very Gods - a performance of you and your neighbors at their ideal best, appealing to the heavens for blessings and a better afterlife. 
There are a few holidays where things can get a little topsy-turvy; where rank is flip-flopped and everyone dresses as one another. These are the profane days, the days when the Gods are at their most distracted and the Darkness must be kept at bay by summoning and then ritually destroying the socially disharmonious behaviors beneath society. People get drunk, have affairs, have fights, conduct animal fights, gamble, and do drugs in publicly sanctioned spaces, only to have that behavior be wiped away by a purifying ritual afterwards.
Personal worship of the Gods is not typically done through prayer, but through practicing virtue and education. Meditation on morality and the world are seen as paths to the divine, as practical offerings of one's attempts at wisdom to appeal for divine inspiration and connection.

Priesthood

The priesthood of Navana wears blue robes to mark their status - the more blue and the richer the hue, the higher status the priest. The Supreme Architect goes so far as to cover their robes or armor with lapis lazuli and to tattoo holy scripture onto their body with blue ink. 
The priesthood of Navana is not chosen from the local communities, but is rather trained in regional seminary schools and assigned to various communities by the clerical administration. Seminary schools teach the six arts: theology, ritual, history, mathematics, current affairs, and medicine. All priests are expected to receive at least a passing grade in all six arts to become a legitimate priest. These schools are extremely isolated, insular, and disciplined, and generally require prospective priests to break down their personal identity to succeed. 
Priests are expected to maintain their abilities in all six arts while serving community functions, and are expected to prove that they remain astute and informed if they are to be promoted.

Political Influence & Intrigue

The Church of Navana has immense political clout in countries that are majority Navana. The clerical administration is involved in education, taxation, medical care, and bureaucracy. The church also likes to fiddle around with political leadership: doctrine calls for states to be led by philosopher-kings and those of superior virtue, and the church does its best to lobby for those it considers the wisest. 
Aside from political meddling to improve local leadership, the Navanan church has two main international causes that they are deeply committed to projecting power for: fighting disease and fighting the Empire of Runeva. 
For the former, the church pours resources and as many brilliant minds as possible into studying anatomy and testing various medicines. Diseases are studied and catalogued, and then all possible remedies are tested and documented. The greatest victory of the medical corps of the Navanan church is the smallpox vaccine - the use of powdered cowpox to immunize humans and half-dryads against smallpox, which is mandatory for all residents of Navanan states. The church also has a robust number of healing paladins used as emergency health response units, as well as several massive facilities producing healing potions. The church also has a secret weapon, known as the elixir of Orchid, which can supposedly cure any illness - but is difficult to produce and has a small chance of causing deadly allergic reactions.
As for the actual military operations, these are known as the March of Light. Essentially, the belief is that the Empire of Runeva has fallen to the cosmic evil known as the Darkness and must be purged from existence.

Sects

The Church of Navana is fairly unified. There are different schools of interpretation, of course, but these schools are so fluid and diverse that they don't really have any clear lines between them. The closest things there are to organized factions are the Militarists, who believe that the fight against the Empire of Runeva is the path to Utopia above all else, and the Theocrats, who believe that secular government is a mistake that ought to be undone. 
Outside of the mainstream, there are two main heresies: Zinvana (the old way) and Garimeer Navana. Zinvana is simply a blanket term for followers of older writings of Navana. It is extremely rare to find self-proclaimed Zinvanans, as most consider themselves proper Navanans and are labeled as Zinvanans by theological enemies. 
Garimeer (or the Way of the Origin) is a bit stranger: essentially a rival shadow church that has haunted Navana for centuries. Garimeer has survived over the centuries by mimicking much of Navanan theology and claiming it for themselves, with various modifications. Garimeer theology tends to be a little more flexible than mainstream Navana, and can blend in elements of Elemeer at times. The most unusual thing about Garimeer is the leadership. The Supreme Architect of Garimeer Navana is a Leviathan that has haunted the Miutan coastline for centuries now and has long claimed to be chosen by Orchid to rule the church. This leviathan is known as the Deep King or the Sunken God, and it is unknown if it is a group of leviathans, a title passed between leviathans, or really just the same ancient creature. Either way, the Deep King has led their Leviathan cult in Western Sonev for centuries and has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Order, Progress, Civilization!

Founding Date

1205 ME

Type

Religious, Organised Religion

Demonym

Navanan

Permeated Organizations

• Empire of Miuta

Deities

• Halcyon
• Orchid of Blue

Divines

• Orchid of Blue

Location

Sonev