The Shova Church of the Ancestors

While most of a Shovani Lizardfolk's life revolves around service to the state and community, many Shovani believe that in death they will return to the wild as spirits in mortal form. These creatures, made of the composite souls of many fallen lizardfolk, will allow them to return to their natural state hunting and foraging without the constraints of society or social role. Unlike many religions with ephemeral or distant afterlives, the Shovani believe that the collective reincarnation of their ancestors has already happened (and continues to happen), and that those ancestors walk the earth in the form of creatures called dinosaurs.
Like many religions, it sounds absurd unless you've been raised believing it to be the way of the world, and talking most lizardfolk out of this being an inherent part of reality is about as likely as convincing them you own the moon. There exists a small group who openly question the doctrine, but they are largely ignored because service to Leviathan and the Shovani state in life is what really matters, at least in terms of a lizardfolk's obligations to others. If they want to forgo rebirth, most muse, it's their own loss.
Some look forward to joining the dinosaurs (collectively, "the ancestors") as a kind of rebirth or nirvana. Others simply expect it as the natural course of events for a lizardfolk soul. It is because some portion of the body of a lizardfolk must be taken to the dinosaurs to be consumed that the Shovani practice air burial. After most of the corpse is eaten by nearby lizardfolk, tradition demands leaving portions of the dead out for aerial scavengers that then supposedly return to the jungle to be eaten in turn. If this is not possible, the soul of the lizardfolk supposedly remains with one of the ones who ate it until they pass on together.
It's perhaps unsurprising that the Shovani, themselves reptiles in a society based around one giant reptile, would look to dinosaurs as religious symbols. Various major types of dinosaur are supposedly made up of souls that led different kinds of lives, Much as Gods ruled over particular elements or domains in ancient Greek mythology, different types of dinosaurs are thought to be able to influence their respective domains in the lives of specific lizardfolk. Lizardfolk might pray to the Stegosaurus for revenge, the velociraptor for skill in the hunt or the Anklyosaurus for protection.
Naturally, the T-rex is considered the head of this "pantheon" and is both a parental figure from whom all lesser dinosaurs supposedly hatched and a symbol of the inevitability of death. Everyone is the prey of something. Some have argued that Leviathan, the mountain-sized hydra that rules all of Shovani society, is in fact a sacred amalgamation of several t-rex, though the belief is not widely shared.
When lizardfolk clerics and shamans pray to dinosaurs, though, there's considerable debate about to whom they are praying. Some argue that all dinosaurs of a certain type form a kind of collective consciousness that watches over certain aspects of lizardfolk life, some think individual dinosaurs each have influence over only the descendants of those whose souls constitute it. Still others contest that only the T-rex is capable of dispensing power, while the rest of dinosaurs live out paradise in Rovitar as its servants and companions.

We will return, even greater than before.

Type

Religious, Organised Religion