Temples, Prayers and Piety

[Orc Knight]

And your characters choice of deity.

Kind of something I've been thinking on, mainly because as of late I've been writing characters who tend to be fairly religious. So this is kind of a very broad thing in general. As my main character currently is perhaps not excessively religious, but she's often enough either making sacrifices to her preferred deities (All Mother in particular, 'Blood in the water' being one of her most common prayers before usually doing exactly that) or praying. Or even cursing as one does.

She also often is in temples and other places of worship. She's seen much and will often comment on grandeur or lack thereof within such places. And when it comes to worship and piety, she's generally what one would call fairly pious. And perfectly willing to give sacrifices as needed, including and up to the human ones. Though with an obvious preference for animal sacrifices. I generally haven't made religious characters much (being a None myself), so it's kind of a chance to see what everyone else does with this sort of thing.

Do your characters in world go to church, the temple or the woodland glade? Do they have a place of worship? Does someone take them to church? Do they put three doves on the alter for a chance at love? Give a sacrifice to the sea? Have gothic cathedrals? That sort of thing. Have at it, even as is per usual, my posts get rambling.

Also, the prayer to the All Mother of Dromeria that is shortened to 'Blood in the water' quite often in full:



Blood in the water,
a sacrifice to the sea,
a crimson path,
for the Mother of All to lead me.

*Insert sacrificial kill here*

 

[JBCrowson]

Gods in my world are directly involved in mortal affairs often enough that there really aren't any atheists. Temples to several are in most settlements of any size. They range from a small shack to vast complexes of buildings. Ports and other travel hubs tend to have more variety of gods represented as they are frequented by a greater diversity of folk who therefore worship more of the gods.

The city my MC originates in is isolated and practically monotheistic. Over time the religion has become entirely subsumed into politics between factions, and is led by the mortal incarnation of a different god than the one the religion actually honours. Because culture and religion are so intertwined in the city the MC does attend a few ceremonies. There is a prayer in one of them:
"Pangaea, creator of the world,
"Who begat us all,
"Provider of our needs,
"Succour to our souls.
"Scourge of the unworthy,
"Protector of the true.
"Hear your servants' prayers,
"As we beseech your guidance.
"Make known the worthy maid
"You will call to your side.
"Merciful mother, guard our city from harm
"As you promised to our forefathers.
"Keep your promise to your people,
"And keep your people to your promise."

 

[Ban]

There's an extensive amount of religion in my current setting, but it isn't located within buildings or shrines for the most part. The characters talk about the nature of the divine, the nature of the afterlife and the will of the divine, but they haven't engaged in ritualized prayer or religious services so far. Instead, there are a lot of what we in the Netherlands call "schietgebedjes" in the story. This literally translates to "little shoot prayers", but refer to the types of prayers one might mumble to themselves just before the moment suprême. The types of prayers you say when stood upright and out in the world, not the ones you kneel down for in front of an altar or other symbol.

 

[dollyt8]

It depends on which novel I'm writing and also which place in the novel my characters are currently in. For example, while religion is definitely not a central focus of Loyalty Fallen, each country handles it differently. Iridalys doesn't seem to have state religion. Navinor's state religion is based around it's king; basically believing that he is chosen by God and has the right to rule and demand worship as he sees fit. Tephraya doesn't have a state religion; it varies widely depending on which tribe you are a part of, and there are individuals who have a sort of spiritualism about the desert itself, and others incorrectly associate ruby magic with demons while gold magic is considered a religious practice.

In Obsidian Blood, on the other hand, religion is a much more central part of the story. Plant magic is considered "pure" and the society effectively worships plants, with a temple in place to ensure that worship is not corrupted. The High Temple persecutes members of other religions or practitioners of other types of magic, specifically obsidian magic or blood magic. There are rituals and worship shown in the story, and one of the characters starts out as a priestess until she becomes disilusioned with the temple. Another focal religion in the story sees a spiritual link with the Obsidian Stone, which is believed to give practitioners of obsidian magic their powers. The story is essentially about the clashing of these two religions.

In Ashbranded, my upcoming novel, the protagonist's society seems to have a kind of spiritual link with its volcanic ecosystem and in past centuries worshipped and sacrificed to them. However, the tyrant queen known as the High Volcaryn has forbidden any and all religions, so it's not a main focus of the book. If I do a second book, a larger focus will probably be the rise of new religions. Outside of the volcanic ecosystem, other societies worship differently. The other main religion the characters encounter is probably most closely associated with Catholicism.

The truth is that in most of my stories, I don't go too deeply into religion. The focus is only on religion as an aspect of culture that helps with the worldbuilding. I will say most of my protagonists tend to show beliefs/moral systems that are consistent with fairly traditional Protestant Christianity, but I don't really show prayers or the process of worship. There are occasional prayers in moments of great distress, but that's about it.

 

[Queshire]

Artificial Spirits are my setting's version of AI or other computer programs. It's to the point that the setting's version of cyberspace is said to be built on top of the spirit realm; in particularly sacred or haunted sites where the spirit realm comes close to the mortal realm you can expect reception to be spotty due to lack of room for cyberspace. That said it'd be an odd person who would worship them.

~~~

Regular Spirits are a varied lot. Smaller ones like a grain spirit might lack either the power to push into the material realm or the intelligence to do so. Others might have both the power & intelligence, but only want to focus on their job and don't deal with mortals. Some particularly sociable Spirits might have a dedicated temple to them, but generally they operate at a smaller scale. They might have a roadside shrine or a sacred tree. An average house often has a household shrine with icons of spirits highly regarded by the household while rooms often have a shelf somewhere with small figurines of spirits particular to that room. (Kitchen spirits for the kitchen, a spirit of health in a child's room, etc.) How much actual faith is invested in those spirits vs just being a cultural thing varies though.

Magic-wise Spirits rarely have the spare power lying around to empower people directly like Gods do. Instead they invest a comparatively smaller amount of their essence in someone to act as essentially a colored lens for their magic. The individual provides the actual mana but the spirit, say a forge spirit or something, turns that mana fiery & forge-y.

The big distinction between Spirits & Gods is that Gods rule over concepts while Spirits oversee things that actually exist. You might have a forge spirit that oversees a singular forge or even a particularly powerful forge spirit that oversees all the forges in a large city, but the actual concept of Forging is overseen by a god. Even something like a Love Spirit tracks & draws power from incidents of Love within a region instead of drawing it from the concept of Love as a whole. Any particular insights they might have into Love is just a result of experience and the fact that the spirit's own mana is aspected to Love.

~~~

Gods are both more powerful and more distant than Spirits. Considering that the last time the Gods had an all out war it brought reality to the edge of collapse modern day Gods are heavily restricted in what they can do in the mortal plane. As the Gods work on an interstellar scale even the risk of an entire planet being destroyed might not be enough for them to risk directly intervene. Instead they primarily rely on agents already on the material plane or sending lesser servants.

While it's not too unusual to see a temple dedicated to a specific God or group of Gods the most common temples are built to be applicable to the majority of gods. Of course that's not always possible depending on the God in question, but they aim for the majority.

Magic-wise a God is powerful enough that with the rite techniques just the aura they passively give off can be absorbed and converted into mana. This doesn't actually require the God's consent. A fallen cleric doesn't lose their magic, but A) the more in tune you are with a God's intent the more efficiently you can use their mana and B) a God typically won't be too happy about any mosquitos they find. This is mostly just to allow fun stuff like the aforementioned fallen cleric or things like a group of cultists drawing power from some sleeping eldritch abomination.

The gods do benefit from this though. They can weave the faith they obtain into Divine Energy. A God using their own power to direct and control Divine Energy can typically achieve greater results than a God who only relies on their own power. (Well, to a point, but that's drifting a bit far from the point of this thread.)

~~~

Now, with all that said, I've been pretty bad about having characters that utilize all of this. All of my characters in the setting acknowledge the existence of spirits & gods as a fact of life, but I'm not where I want to be when it comes to portray characters whose faith is important to them.

 

[Mad Swede]

Yes, there is religion in my setting. And the various characters do visit the temple every so often.

I started with the premise that in a setting where the equivalent of our modern science and technology does not exist there will be some system(s) of belief to explain the world and what happens. Then it became a matter of deciding how religion is organised, by whom and what impact this would have on other things in the setting. Then I started defining the religions themselves.

The characterss in my stories have varying degrees of faith as you might expect, and none of them (or the readers) know if the various deities exist or not. At least not yet...

 

[pmmg]

Most of my stories have religious themes to them, and I like religious themes. I think they are important to any story world.

In my big story, all of the characters are somewhere on a sliding scale of belief in gods, and reverence to them. (I would caveat here and say, I am not sure religion is the right word in some instances, as...belief in god, is not the same as belonging to a church...belonging to a church might be more along the lines of religion, and belief in god might be more along the lines of spiritual pursuits, or a desire to be right with the deity without recourse to a religion...but you all knew something like that already.) The role of gods and people's relationships to them is very important to the story, and the story shows many belief sets, including polytheistic, monotheistic, animist and pagan. Many characters struggle with what they believe and the cost of believing it. And many characters don't know which or what is really true, and are aware they don't know. Some characters do have formalized methods of worship and a culture that supports it, and others are much more free form.

The MC is pretty much the closest to a monotheist character in the story, and perhaps the only one in the story, but even they don't really know what is true. The more polytheistic characters in the story have many varying degrees of adherence to their faith. Some believe it ardently, some question, and some don't really treat it as important, or think the gods mostly indifferent.

I've not really put a lot of attention on the details of the various practices of belief sets until book 3, and now a bit harder in book 4. But the religious beliefs of many characters has direct impact on the story, and on the ways various character behave. I would not want the story without it.

 

[JBCrowson]

If you take religious belief to include animism then it is something common to all human cultures as far as I know. That leads the scientist in me to suspect that it has biological underpinnings in some way, ie that we humans are pre-programmed to believe something, with the culture we grow up in supplying the what. This is in keeping with other complex behaviours like talking where the learned language need not even be a verbal one. If religion is hard wired in this way, It is interesting to speculate how that might play out in an increasingly secular world - would religion surrogates come to be the focus of those belief circuits? A futuristic fantasy setting or plain SF might be a place to explore that idea further.

 

[Genly]

In the country where most of the action takes place in my novel, there is a belief system that is so intertwined with society that no one thinks of it as a "religion"; that is, something separate from other aspects of society. There is an old saying that the Inuit had no word for work because to live was to work. A similar concept underpins the magic-based belief system in my novel. The system is empowered by the magic that sustains it. It is a religion that works, and that can be proved to work. As a result, it has a powerful hold.

As it is so ingrained into the fabric of society as a whole, temples and places of worship are few, and mostly used for contemplation and the occasional ceremony. The people are still a little superstitious sometimes, though, and various talismans are used for luck (mostly family heirlooms).

 

[barrowyarrow]

I've written out a number of pantheons that I've attributed to different regions or races in my setting. There's a lot of overlap as some pantheons share deities and omit others for one reason or another. How religious a character is kinda depends on where I feel their story takes them, and being an atheist has a different meaning within the context of this world.

The gods in this setting are the literal stars in the sky and they can be seen moving about on whatever celestial business they might have. There's a caste of people called Astrologers who's job is keeping tabs on which star is what god and predicting events that may happen depending on those findings. Oracles in the setting are people with personal report with a certain deity and can speak with them for doctrine. The doctrine of a lot of these religions is stuff that the followers and religious leaders have come up with themselves. Much like how religions form in the real world, beliefs came from superstition and attempts to explain natural phenomena. There are some deities who are regularly engaged with their own church but these are the minority.

For example there's Mon-Var, the sun god. She isn't heavily involved in her church but has been known to answer prayers, be they follower or not. When she does hand down doctrine, it's a very big deal because she doesn't regularly get involved unless her attention is required. She has a place in almost every pantheon.

Or Mesundra, the god of champions. She's pretty involved in her church and speaks to her followers regularly. She has a known habit of grooming warriors in order to fight them herself. A sort of favoritism that makes the followers of her church very competitive. She doesn't so much hand down doctrine as she does just let her church run itself while she picks out the followers who earn her attention.

Then you have the dwarven cult who live underground and don't see the stars. They're atheistic, but not because they don't believe in the gods existence, but more that they don't believe in following them. They instead have a sort of hero veneration which reflects their meritocratic culture.

As far as practices, it depends on the god. Some want physical sacrifice whereas some just want a nightly prayer. I have one character that follows Mon-Var who sunbathes once a day even though there's nothing required of him to do so. It just kind of depends on how I want to characterize that god.

 

[Insolent Lad]

The gods are generally acknowledged to be real, as they occasionally visit from their own worlds, but no one--the gods included--knows whether there is 'one' god, a supreme being. Some sects (the Jevotes, the Munuists) insist there is, claiming only he/she is worthy of worship and the others are nothing but demons. Which, strictly, may be close to the truth. But those other gods are capable of doing one good or mischief, so it doesn't hurt to pray to them on occasion.

So we do have organized more-or-less pantheistic religions, with temples, priesthoods,etc. but most of the worshipers are willing to make room for other pantheons in their daily lives. Hey, one might be a follower of Jov but if Kamat can give you a hand, why not send him a prayer? The only intolerance comes from those monotheistic faiths I mentioned, and that varies. It may be noted that these gods live in other worlds of the infiniverse and main thing that makes them a god is the ability to travel from one world to another--if they wish, which most don't. Mortals can not move from their own world but can see into and communicate with others, so they may be familiar with one god or another. There are also places of power in the world where this communication is easier (the walls between the worlds are 'thinner') which become choice real estate for temples and shrines (or sorcerers' strongholds).

Now there are loads of myths about the various gods and pantheons which some believe but many recognize as metaphor. None the less, they are part of the culture and woven into people's lives. Diba may not actually hunt demons with her pack of white wolves but it's a good story for the young'ns, you know?

 

[Rexenm]

My answer? No. I tried the way of anarchy, and a lot of my stories don’t even have church or state, but a small element of crime. It is curious.

Though, I might add, that human interaction is fairly … religion is varied.

 

[Genly]

If you take religious belief to include animism then it is something common to all human cultures as far as I know. That leads the scientist in me to suspect that it has biological underpinnings in some way, ie that we humans are pre-programmed to believe something, with the culture we grow up in supplying the what. This is in keeping with other complex behaviours like talking where the learned language need not even be a verbal one. If religion is hard wired in this way, It is interesting to speculate how that might play out in an increasingly secular world - would religion surrogates come to be the focus of those belief circuits? A futuristic fantasy setting or plain SF might be a place to explore that idea further.

If religion is indeed hard-wired into human biology, then AI may end up emulating it. An AI messiah?

 

[JBCrowson]

Douglas Adams had electronic monks that would believe things so that their owners didn't have to.