Religion & Gods
Religions play an active role in the Shadow World, with various gods taking active roles in the unfolding of the storyline directly and indirectly. The deities of Kulthea are divided into several categories
- The Lords of Orhan, considered unambiguously good by most human and elven societies.
- The Unlife, identified in the authorial voice as unambiguously evil.
- The Dark Gods of Charon, ranging from ethically complex to outright evil in how human and elven cultures view them.
- Local Gods, animistic embodiments of places with immense power over that geographically limited region. (Though the spheres of influence for some local gods, such as Mynistra, can be quite large.)
- Other Entitites, such as demons, spirits, dragons, etc., that can convince a population that they are worthy of worship.
Religious organizations on Kulthea are dedicated to one or more of these gods, as understood through the filter of their priests and lay worshipers, giving rise to the potential for dispute between different groups worshiping the same god. Religious groups dedicated to the Dark Gods of Charon are usually, but not always, forced by social pressure to hide their places of worship.
Read more about this topic: Shadow World
Famous quotes containing the words religion and/or gods:
“We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone. There was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)