Children of the Sun

Those that worship Vitta, also known as the children of the sun, are the most common religious affiliates in the world. Almost every city has a temple of the sun with most places having it as the primary religion. While this religious has done a great job of spreading over the surface world there can often be fairly drastic shifts in the teachings based on the culture of the locals. For example, in Udrend they worship the sun god, but view it as the tenants of a great warrior, but in the Serene Gardens they focus heavily on peaceful worship with violence only ever being used in self-defense.
The children of the sun have an order of priests, paladins, and clerics called the Holy Order of the Sun, but they are also commonly referred to as the Sun Shields.
The religion as it currently exists only dates back about 650 years with some records putting its founding in the same year that the great maelstrom came into existence around the known nations. Prior to this there was a different religion to the sun god, but that temple has fallen to great disrepair and much information about it has been lost to time. The temple is known to be deep within the jungles of Zandajin, but the exact location has been lost to the wilderness. About 50 years after the rise of the children of the Sun religion is when the great temple in the golden sand sea was built and along with the neighboring city of sunstone. The religion of the children of the sun was officially adopted into both; the main city-states of the Oreshi coalition and the entirety of the Vulanti empire.
The basics of the worship that most people practice involves a prayer at dusk facing towards the settings sun and a ceremony of thanks in the morning facing towards the rising sun. Holy magic is incredibly common amongst the priests and clerics of the children of the Sun so it's become quite common for them to provide necessary healing and treatment, especially to the poor, as they travel from city to city. While major cities often have multiple sun god temples that provide healing services to the people of the city at all times. This is led to helping the sickly and injured becoming a major tenant of their religion.
The sun god is the easiest of the gods for any common person to meet. They frequently present themselves to the people of sunstone, and especially at the Sun Temple itself. However, notably, this practice has diminished in the last couple of years with the sun god becoming an uncharacteristic recluse. Something the priest of the religion have tried, and failed, to hide.
There are only scraps of information that survived after the original sun temple was abandoned. The highest order of masters, who work directly with the sun god, are said to have more information, but it is closely guarded in their ranks. While it is certain the term Children of the sun didn't exist before the maelstrom there are some scraps that talk about the children of fire. It's often considered to be an old mistranslation. Through study of old scrolls and manuscripts it's been possible to glean that there appears to be some sort of dispute between the sun and moon god, despite the fact that officially they're still on good terms. Some of the remaining old records of the gods also indicate that at one point there may have been a fire god of sorts, but there's nearly an unbelievable lack of stories for histories mentioning such a god in the last 650 years.

Type

Religious, Organised Religion