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antishurtugal_reborn2019-09-01 10:39 pm
oblakom) wrote in antishurtugal_reborn2019-09-01 10:39 pm
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Of the religions of Alagaёsia, the Cathedral of Dras-Leona and the Cult of the Helgrind
My (failed) attempt to explain the lack of human religion in Alagaёsia and the Cult of the Cathedral of Dras-Leona, piecing together what we know about the recent history of Alagaёsia – from the Fall of the Riders and the exile of the elves onward. Now, I am by no mean a religion expert, but if someone has a few minutes to waste, this is what I came up with.
OF THE RELIGIONS OF ALAGAЁSIA, THE CATHEDRAL OF DRAS-LEONA AND CULT OF THE HELGRIND
After the Fall – Backstory:
The Cult of the Helgrind was born at the end of the second decade after the Fall of the Riders, in the city of Dras-Leona, in a period of transition between the domination of the Dragon Riders and the elves and the stability of the reign of King Galbatorix. In a matter of few years, humans had witnessed a bloody internal war in the faction of those who were supposed to grant peace, the disappearance of the elven presence from the world and the coup that had put the young human Rider Galbatorix on the throne of the Broddring Empire. Even for a rapidly changing race like the mankind, this was a lot to put up with.
Between those who were thankful for the possibility of finally having a human monarch guiding the human race instead of the shady elves, and those who had venerated the Dragon Riders and were calling Galbatorix Mad King and Usurper, the Broddring Empire was split in two factions, even if the latter was growing weaker year by year.
The Banishing of the Names, the Riders’ most coward and wicked action, was not damaging only the Forsworn anymore.
The maddened dragons of the Forsworn, uncontrollable and feral as they had become, were burning and killing people and only King Galbatorix seemed to be able to stop them, chasing the monsters away on his own black dragon Shruikan. In the first two decades of Galbatorix’s reign, the idea of dragons as majestic and wise protectors of the human race was quickly substituted by the idea of dragons as feral monsters who needed to be controlled to prevent them from laying destruction. To explain this sudden change of their nature, voices were spread about dragons having been controlled until that time by the dark magic of the elves, who had based on this power their power over the human race through the Order of the Riders.
The fact that right after the disappearance of the elves the dragons had showed their true colors as feral beasts of destruction instead of noble and wise protectors was good enough of a prove for the mankind to grow suspicious of magic and of the elven race. After all, no human could remember having ever heard a dragon talk – only their so-called Riders always said things, claiming that those were the dragon’s words. No human could remember a dragon gifting the humans with their wisdom – only their so-called Riders talked about the wisdom of the dragons. Could the dragons have always been nothing more than beasts the elves were using to keep control over the human race? People still loyal to the Order said that human children were chosen to be Riders as well, but, again, no human could remember ever seeing a human Rider… only elves that claimed to be the former human children.
King Galbatorix’s rebellion and the internal war of the Riders seemed to have scattered all the illusions of the humans, replacing them with a cold truth. And when, in the second decade of his reign, the King took the decision of burning certain books about the history of Alagaёsia and forbidding certain ballades about the Dragon Riders, the population took it as a purge to free the mankind from the last lies of the elves, and happily erased the elven culture from its history.
But without the elven culture to guide them, and with the realization of how much of their life had been influenced by what elves said and believed, the humans struggled to find themselves and started to feel lost. Many claimed Galbatorix to be guilty of the new clime of uncertainty. But as King Galbatorix put the Broddring Empire back on its feet little by little and the quality of life increased, old, almost forgotten pagan cults slowly started to remerge from the campaigns, were the influence of the elves had not managed to suffocate them entirely like it had happened in the cities. But generations of people looking up to and trying to appease lords who professed the absence of gods and the futility of the pagan rituals had taken a heavy stroll on the humans. Almost all the old gods were forgotten, and many rituals had lost their meaning. But it was all the human race still had.
The Burning of Dras-Leona and the construction of the Cathedral:
The second decade of the reign of King Galbatorix was coming to an end, when two of the Forsworn were ambushed and backstabbed by the former Rider Brom when they were visiting the city of Dras-Leona. Maybe because of foolishness, maybe because of carelessness, Brom did not consider the consequences that his own actions would have brought over the population of Dras-Leona: feeling their Riders die, the two maddened dragons went on a rampage against the city, burning it and tearing down houses and killing the soldiers who were desperately trying to contain the fury of beasts. Despite their claim of being saviors of the population, nor Brom nor his companions Varden stopped to try and save the city and fled taking advantage of the general panic.
However, someone else took pity in the population. From the four-peaked mountain near the city, the Lethrblaka Kyantassera sighted the burning city and flew down from her nest to put an end to the massacre. Alone, she fought both the mad dragons and risked her life to keep them away from Dras-Leona, and killed one before being joined by the male Lethrblaka Iyamneein to take down the second dragon as well.
The habitants of Dras-Leona had feared the four peaked mountain until that moment – for many had claimed having sighted winged shadows flying around the peaks at night, and blood chilling screeches filling the air. There were voices of the mountain being a fool, cursed place were humans disappeared to be devoured by hideous monsters – something that was not entirely a legend, for Iyamneein had a taste for human flesh that nor Kyantassera nor Galbatorix could entirely contain, and his servant Shade Durza practiced blood magic and necromancy and experimented in secret on the poor souls who ventured too close to Iyamneein’s reach. For all the dark legends that surrounded the mountain, the citizens of Dras-Leona had given it the name Helgrind.
However, the day of the Burning of Dras-Leona the demons of the mountain had flown to the aid of the population and saved the city. And if the wise and beautiful dragons had turned up to be monsters, why couldn’t the monsters of the night turn up to be the protectors of the city? And why were they appearing only now that the Riders had fallen and their myth had been scattered and the dragons were laying destruction?
A week later, a group of brave seven traveled to the slopes of the Helgrind with offerings of gratitude for the winged shadows who had saved the city. But of the two Lethrblaka only one was there that day: Kyantassera had left the mountain soon after her fight against the two dragons to meet King Galbatorix in Uru’baen, and Iyamneein, for great luck, was alone.
The Lethrblaka, surprised but greatly pleased by the turn of the events, flew down from the peaks to meet the humans. Here, aware of the new, feral reputation of the dragons, Iyamneein gave great display of human-like behavior to gain the trust of his visitors and subtly show them that he was everything the dragons had “pretended” to be. Then, Iyamneein took advantage of the humans’ ignorance of magic and took flight toward the mountain, disappearing in one of the hidden entrances that Durza had enchanted to look like a wall of stones. To the humans it appeared as the spirit of the four peaks had descended to meet them and then returned to the stone. This miraculous disappearance inside the stone wall, united with the Lethrblaka’s human-like behavior and the facts that he showed no wounds nor scars of the ferocious fight against the dragons (which had been healed by Durza) greatly mystified Iyamneein in the eyes of the seven humans.
Seeing all the seven men returning alive and unharmed from the cursed mountain was already a miracle in the eyes of the citizens of Dras-Leona, but the story they brought back with them, story of massive, benevolent creature who had descended from the mountain to meet them before returning to the stone made it look like as they had witnessed the presence of one of the forgotten gods, once venerated, come again to protect mankind now that they had finally freed themselves from the influence of the elves.
For the humans of Dras-Leona, who, in a matter of days had witnessed not one but three miracles (the “miraculous” arrival of the two Lethrblaka who saved the city, the seven men who returned alive from the cursed mountain and the appearance of one of the gods of the mountain), it was duty to properly thank the gods who had returned to them despite having been forgotten for centuries under the influence of the elves, and the nobles of the city donated great amounts of money for the construction of a Cathedral in their honor.
Right after the beginning of the construction, Iyamneein flew down from the mountain again and, in a moonless night, he circled four times the site where the Cathedral was to be constructed, loudly screeching from the sky, and the humans knew that the gods were satisfied.
Soon after the beginning of the construction of the Cathedral life became more pleasant than ever for the citizens. The forests around the city became richer of animals to hunt, the Urgals started to avoid the surroundings of Dras-Leona, something that made roads safer for the merchants and increased wealth and favored the economy, and even the mysterious disappearances of the humans around the Helgrind chased. It was easy for the humans to associate their new luck with their reconstructed bond with the gods of the mountain, and the newborn religion gained more and more popularity in Dras-Leona.
Hunting farther form Dras-Leona and protecting the territories from the Urgals was as easy as breathing for a Lethrblaka. Only Durza was unsatisfied, because Iyamneein now forbade him from hunting humans for his experiments, and in truth Iyamneein himself missed the taste of human flesh, but he was not doing anything he hadn’t already done, many, many centuries before in a land that was now lost forever, and he knew that humans would soon come to him themselves.
He was right.
Dras-Leona’s citizens interpreted the previous and the current actions as the behavior of cruel and fierce gods, who could become generous protectors, but who were not to be crossed. The gods had killed people as a punishment when the humans were ignoring their existence, but now that they were venerated as it was due to them, they were once more lenient toward the humans. And no one wanted to trigger their rage again. So, offerings kept being brought to the slopes of the mountain and soon, as the idea of the gods as judges, protectors and punishers of the human race cemented in the minds of the people of Dras-Leona, criminals and traitors of the Empire started being brought to the Helgrind as well to face the judgement and the wrath of the gods. No criminal ever returned, and their bones lied scattered at the slopes of the mountain as sort of macabre monitor.
At the beginning of the third decade of Galbatorix’s reign, the Cathedral of Dras-Leona was completed and Iyamneein was ready to take an action. Luck had smiled at him once again: Kyantassera, his biggest worry, had decided to have nothing to do with the newborn Cult and King Galbatorix, feeling the need of a stable faith to calm the humans and generally too busy to really care, had decided not to oppose them and prevented Kyantassera from doing so.
The Cult of the Helgrind:
The Cult of the Helgrind is nothing but a perverted version of the ancient pact of coexistence between the races of humans and Lethrblaka that existed in their ancient and lost land.
Iyamneein took many years to teach the humans. Firstly, using Durza as his voice, and then speaking for himself, Iyamneein donated many things to the humans that lived in the Cathedral. First and most important: he donated them their history and the ancient beliefs on the afterlife that their races once shared, beliefs that sounded much more comfortable for the short-lived race than the strict atheism of the elves.
The Cult venerates the Lethrblaka and the dead.
The Old Ones, as the Priests of the Cult call the Lethrblaka, are the immortal and terrible gods who watch over the human race. The creatures who remember a time when humans didn’t exist in Alagaёsia yet, a time before the Order of the Rider and a world were humans, under the command and protection of the Lethrblaka, were free to chose their own destiny. The knowledge of a previous existence, of the land King Palancar had abandoned, tales of the human race before Alagaёsia, really looked like something only a god could offer them. Unlike humans, and like dragons, Lethrblaka do not decay unless killed. Iyamneein remembered a time way older than King Palancar, so old that the Priests’ minds could barely fanthom it, and he gave his knowledge to the humans.
Iyamneein knew what humans murmured: that dragons never gave them any knowledge, greedily keeping if for themselves – and that the new gods did it as first thing.
…and its beliefs…
He talked about a new plain of existance, awaiting humans in the afterlife. Could they see Durza the Shade? And so, how could they claim that the sentient creatures are made of flesh and only flesh and leave nothing behind after it’s decay? Believing that there was nothing beyond their life didn’t go against the same concept of the existence of spirits and magic? Spirits were summoned in the world of the flesh from some other place – a place that was awaiting them all after their last breath. The elves were all fools.
The Cult puts the world of the dead in the ground and believes them to be the ground. Every step someone takes, every house someone builds is always on the bones of the dead. Everything returns to the ground; you cannot be buried in air or water. The dead are the solid ground under the feet of the living, and the Cult claims that the dead guide the actions of the living, and that the living cannot ignore the actions of the dead, but pay them respect and carry on what the dead cannot do anymore.
…rituals…
The Cult doesn’t use coffins. The holes made for the graves are deep, and the deceased gets buried only with clothes, without sheets or anything: the dead want to see who’s descending in their world. A body buried in sheets is a sign of shame and sin, it means that the buried person is too ashamed to show the face to the dead, for a reason or another. It means that it refuses to be found by their loved one. If one or more members of a family died together, they get buried in the same grave.
The corpse can be placed either on the back, with face looking to the sky, either – rarer – on the belly, with face looking at the ground. The latter are people without any tie to world of the living. People whose family is all dead and have no reason to keep looking at the world of the living and so they look down, where everything awaits them.
…and sacrifices.
Blood sacrifices and body mutilations are a perversion of the pact that humans and Lethrblaka once had.
If Lethrblaka can avoid it and generally do, their younger self – the Ra’zac – are stuck with human flesh which they need to consume at least once a month to not grow weaker, starve and get ill. Other types of meat can fill their stomachs, but they don’t have the same nutrients. To work around this problem, in their ancient land humans offered their dead flesh to the Ra’zac as a payment for the protection the Lethrblaka offered them: when a human died (unless they had expressed a different will in life, which was extremely rare) their four limbs were cut from the body to be fed to the pupae, leaving all the essence of a person – head and organs – for the family to be buried. It was a millennia old tradition and a part of the burying rituals that allowed the deceased to repay their protectors and thank them for the protection they will give to their children and grandchildren.
But Iyamneein, as the years passed and his influence over the humans of the Cathedral grew, decided to extremize it. He led humans to think that the payment could come while they were still alive, and that it could be used to appease the wrath of the gods and obtain absolution from minor sins.
The influence of the Cult in the city grew to the point that law enforcement allowed flesh sacrifice in the Cathedral as an alternative to prison or public lashing. People who sacrifice an hand, an ear or an eye are seen as sinners who repented their sins and had the courage to sacrifice to placate the gods of the Helgrind and are way better accepted and reintegrated in the society than those who chose to face prison or lashing, because the latter are seen as imposed by the society and so unwillingly taken, where the first are a sign of personal growth and repentance and so a prove of the sinner willingness to change.
…I will stop here for now. Originally, this post was supposed to cover also the birth of the Ra’zac and the story of the High Priest we met in Inheritance, but I decided to keep this already long post focused only on the Cult as a whole and the Ra’zac and the Priest can very well cover a post on their own. Also, half of you probably gave up at something like the second paragraph – be it because of my cringeworthy English or because of how boring this post is.
However, if someone managed to read this whole thing… you’re either a saint or a genius, friend. Here a cookie *handles a cookie*.
What do you think?
OF THE RELIGIONS OF ALAGAЁSIA, THE CATHEDRAL OF DRAS-LEONA AND CULT OF THE HELGRIND
After the Fall – Backstory:
The Cult of the Helgrind was born at the end of the second decade after the Fall of the Riders, in the city of Dras-Leona, in a period of transition between the domination of the Dragon Riders and the elves and the stability of the reign of King Galbatorix. In a matter of few years, humans had witnessed a bloody internal war in the faction of those who were supposed to grant peace, the disappearance of the elven presence from the world and the coup that had put the young human Rider Galbatorix on the throne of the Broddring Empire. Even for a rapidly changing race like the mankind, this was a lot to put up with.
Between those who were thankful for the possibility of finally having a human monarch guiding the human race instead of the shady elves, and those who had venerated the Dragon Riders and were calling Galbatorix Mad King and Usurper, the Broddring Empire was split in two factions, even if the latter was growing weaker year by year.
The Banishing of the Names, the Riders’ most coward and wicked action, was not damaging only the Forsworn anymore.
The maddened dragons of the Forsworn, uncontrollable and feral as they had become, were burning and killing people and only King Galbatorix seemed to be able to stop them, chasing the monsters away on his own black dragon Shruikan. In the first two decades of Galbatorix’s reign, the idea of dragons as majestic and wise protectors of the human race was quickly substituted by the idea of dragons as feral monsters who needed to be controlled to prevent them from laying destruction. To explain this sudden change of their nature, voices were spread about dragons having been controlled until that time by the dark magic of the elves, who had based on this power their power over the human race through the Order of the Riders.
The fact that right after the disappearance of the elves the dragons had showed their true colors as feral beasts of destruction instead of noble and wise protectors was good enough of a prove for the mankind to grow suspicious of magic and of the elven race. After all, no human could remember having ever heard a dragon talk – only their so-called Riders always said things, claiming that those were the dragon’s words. No human could remember a dragon gifting the humans with their wisdom – only their so-called Riders talked about the wisdom of the dragons. Could the dragons have always been nothing more than beasts the elves were using to keep control over the human race? People still loyal to the Order said that human children were chosen to be Riders as well, but, again, no human could remember ever seeing a human Rider… only elves that claimed to be the former human children.
King Galbatorix’s rebellion and the internal war of the Riders seemed to have scattered all the illusions of the humans, replacing them with a cold truth. And when, in the second decade of his reign, the King took the decision of burning certain books about the history of Alagaёsia and forbidding certain ballades about the Dragon Riders, the population took it as a purge to free the mankind from the last lies of the elves, and happily erased the elven culture from its history.
But without the elven culture to guide them, and with the realization of how much of their life had been influenced by what elves said and believed, the humans struggled to find themselves and started to feel lost. Many claimed Galbatorix to be guilty of the new clime of uncertainty. But as King Galbatorix put the Broddring Empire back on its feet little by little and the quality of life increased, old, almost forgotten pagan cults slowly started to remerge from the campaigns, were the influence of the elves had not managed to suffocate them entirely like it had happened in the cities. But generations of people looking up to and trying to appease lords who professed the absence of gods and the futility of the pagan rituals had taken a heavy stroll on the humans. Almost all the old gods were forgotten, and many rituals had lost their meaning. But it was all the human race still had.
The Burning of Dras-Leona and the construction of the Cathedral:
The second decade of the reign of King Galbatorix was coming to an end, when two of the Forsworn were ambushed and backstabbed by the former Rider Brom when they were visiting the city of Dras-Leona. Maybe because of foolishness, maybe because of carelessness, Brom did not consider the consequences that his own actions would have brought over the population of Dras-Leona: feeling their Riders die, the two maddened dragons went on a rampage against the city, burning it and tearing down houses and killing the soldiers who were desperately trying to contain the fury of beasts. Despite their claim of being saviors of the population, nor Brom nor his companions Varden stopped to try and save the city and fled taking advantage of the general panic.
However, someone else took pity in the population. From the four-peaked mountain near the city, the Lethrblaka Kyantassera sighted the burning city and flew down from her nest to put an end to the massacre. Alone, she fought both the mad dragons and risked her life to keep them away from Dras-Leona, and killed one before being joined by the male Lethrblaka Iyamneein to take down the second dragon as well.
The habitants of Dras-Leona had feared the four peaked mountain until that moment – for many had claimed having sighted winged shadows flying around the peaks at night, and blood chilling screeches filling the air. There were voices of the mountain being a fool, cursed place were humans disappeared to be devoured by hideous monsters – something that was not entirely a legend, for Iyamneein had a taste for human flesh that nor Kyantassera nor Galbatorix could entirely contain, and his servant Shade Durza practiced blood magic and necromancy and experimented in secret on the poor souls who ventured too close to Iyamneein’s reach. For all the dark legends that surrounded the mountain, the citizens of Dras-Leona had given it the name Helgrind.
However, the day of the Burning of Dras-Leona the demons of the mountain had flown to the aid of the population and saved the city. And if the wise and beautiful dragons had turned up to be monsters, why couldn’t the monsters of the night turn up to be the protectors of the city? And why were they appearing only now that the Riders had fallen and their myth had been scattered and the dragons were laying destruction?
A week later, a group of brave seven traveled to the slopes of the Helgrind with offerings of gratitude for the winged shadows who had saved the city. But of the two Lethrblaka only one was there that day: Kyantassera had left the mountain soon after her fight against the two dragons to meet King Galbatorix in Uru’baen, and Iyamneein, for great luck, was alone.
The Lethrblaka, surprised but greatly pleased by the turn of the events, flew down from the peaks to meet the humans. Here, aware of the new, feral reputation of the dragons, Iyamneein gave great display of human-like behavior to gain the trust of his visitors and subtly show them that he was everything the dragons had “pretended” to be. Then, Iyamneein took advantage of the humans’ ignorance of magic and took flight toward the mountain, disappearing in one of the hidden entrances that Durza had enchanted to look like a wall of stones. To the humans it appeared as the spirit of the four peaks had descended to meet them and then returned to the stone. This miraculous disappearance inside the stone wall, united with the Lethrblaka’s human-like behavior and the facts that he showed no wounds nor scars of the ferocious fight against the dragons (which had been healed by Durza) greatly mystified Iyamneein in the eyes of the seven humans.
Seeing all the seven men returning alive and unharmed from the cursed mountain was already a miracle in the eyes of the citizens of Dras-Leona, but the story they brought back with them, story of massive, benevolent creature who had descended from the mountain to meet them before returning to the stone made it look like as they had witnessed the presence of one of the forgotten gods, once venerated, come again to protect mankind now that they had finally freed themselves from the influence of the elves.
For the humans of Dras-Leona, who, in a matter of days had witnessed not one but three miracles (the “miraculous” arrival of the two Lethrblaka who saved the city, the seven men who returned alive from the cursed mountain and the appearance of one of the gods of the mountain), it was duty to properly thank the gods who had returned to them despite having been forgotten for centuries under the influence of the elves, and the nobles of the city donated great amounts of money for the construction of a Cathedral in their honor.
Right after the beginning of the construction, Iyamneein flew down from the mountain again and, in a moonless night, he circled four times the site where the Cathedral was to be constructed, loudly screeching from the sky, and the humans knew that the gods were satisfied.
Soon after the beginning of the construction of the Cathedral life became more pleasant than ever for the citizens. The forests around the city became richer of animals to hunt, the Urgals started to avoid the surroundings of Dras-Leona, something that made roads safer for the merchants and increased wealth and favored the economy, and even the mysterious disappearances of the humans around the Helgrind chased. It was easy for the humans to associate their new luck with their reconstructed bond with the gods of the mountain, and the newborn religion gained more and more popularity in Dras-Leona.
Hunting farther form Dras-Leona and protecting the territories from the Urgals was as easy as breathing for a Lethrblaka. Only Durza was unsatisfied, because Iyamneein now forbade him from hunting humans for his experiments, and in truth Iyamneein himself missed the taste of human flesh, but he was not doing anything he hadn’t already done, many, many centuries before in a land that was now lost forever, and he knew that humans would soon come to him themselves.
He was right.
Dras-Leona’s citizens interpreted the previous and the current actions as the behavior of cruel and fierce gods, who could become generous protectors, but who were not to be crossed. The gods had killed people as a punishment when the humans were ignoring their existence, but now that they were venerated as it was due to them, they were once more lenient toward the humans. And no one wanted to trigger their rage again. So, offerings kept being brought to the slopes of the mountain and soon, as the idea of the gods as judges, protectors and punishers of the human race cemented in the minds of the people of Dras-Leona, criminals and traitors of the Empire started being brought to the Helgrind as well to face the judgement and the wrath of the gods. No criminal ever returned, and their bones lied scattered at the slopes of the mountain as sort of macabre monitor.
At the beginning of the third decade of Galbatorix’s reign, the Cathedral of Dras-Leona was completed and Iyamneein was ready to take an action. Luck had smiled at him once again: Kyantassera, his biggest worry, had decided to have nothing to do with the newborn Cult and King Galbatorix, feeling the need of a stable faith to calm the humans and generally too busy to really care, had decided not to oppose them and prevented Kyantassera from doing so.
The Cult of the Helgrind:
The Cult of the Helgrind is nothing but a perverted version of the ancient pact of coexistence between the races of humans and Lethrblaka that existed in their ancient and lost land.
Iyamneein took many years to teach the humans. Firstly, using Durza as his voice, and then speaking for himself, Iyamneein donated many things to the humans that lived in the Cathedral. First and most important: he donated them their history and the ancient beliefs on the afterlife that their races once shared, beliefs that sounded much more comfortable for the short-lived race than the strict atheism of the elves.
The Cult venerates the Lethrblaka and the dead.
The Old Ones, as the Priests of the Cult call the Lethrblaka, are the immortal and terrible gods who watch over the human race. The creatures who remember a time when humans didn’t exist in Alagaёsia yet, a time before the Order of the Rider and a world were humans, under the command and protection of the Lethrblaka, were free to chose their own destiny. The knowledge of a previous existence, of the land King Palancar had abandoned, tales of the human race before Alagaёsia, really looked like something only a god could offer them. Unlike humans, and like dragons, Lethrblaka do not decay unless killed. Iyamneein remembered a time way older than King Palancar, so old that the Priests’ minds could barely fanthom it, and he gave his knowledge to the humans.
Iyamneein knew what humans murmured: that dragons never gave them any knowledge, greedily keeping if for themselves – and that the new gods did it as first thing.
…and its beliefs…
He talked about a new plain of existance, awaiting humans in the afterlife. Could they see Durza the Shade? And so, how could they claim that the sentient creatures are made of flesh and only flesh and leave nothing behind after it’s decay? Believing that there was nothing beyond their life didn’t go against the same concept of the existence of spirits and magic? Spirits were summoned in the world of the flesh from some other place – a place that was awaiting them all after their last breath. The elves were all fools.
The Cult puts the world of the dead in the ground and believes them to be the ground. Every step someone takes, every house someone builds is always on the bones of the dead. Everything returns to the ground; you cannot be buried in air or water. The dead are the solid ground under the feet of the living, and the Cult claims that the dead guide the actions of the living, and that the living cannot ignore the actions of the dead, but pay them respect and carry on what the dead cannot do anymore.
…rituals…
The Cult doesn’t use coffins. The holes made for the graves are deep, and the deceased gets buried only with clothes, without sheets or anything: the dead want to see who’s descending in their world. A body buried in sheets is a sign of shame and sin, it means that the buried person is too ashamed to show the face to the dead, for a reason or another. It means that it refuses to be found by their loved one. If one or more members of a family died together, they get buried in the same grave.
The corpse can be placed either on the back, with face looking to the sky, either – rarer – on the belly, with face looking at the ground. The latter are people without any tie to world of the living. People whose family is all dead and have no reason to keep looking at the world of the living and so they look down, where everything awaits them.
…and sacrifices.
Blood sacrifices and body mutilations are a perversion of the pact that humans and Lethrblaka once had.
If Lethrblaka can avoid it and generally do, their younger self – the Ra’zac – are stuck with human flesh which they need to consume at least once a month to not grow weaker, starve and get ill. Other types of meat can fill their stomachs, but they don’t have the same nutrients. To work around this problem, in their ancient land humans offered their dead flesh to the Ra’zac as a payment for the protection the Lethrblaka offered them: when a human died (unless they had expressed a different will in life, which was extremely rare) their four limbs were cut from the body to be fed to the pupae, leaving all the essence of a person – head and organs – for the family to be buried. It was a millennia old tradition and a part of the burying rituals that allowed the deceased to repay their protectors and thank them for the protection they will give to their children and grandchildren.
But Iyamneein, as the years passed and his influence over the humans of the Cathedral grew, decided to extremize it. He led humans to think that the payment could come while they were still alive, and that it could be used to appease the wrath of the gods and obtain absolution from minor sins.
The influence of the Cult in the city grew to the point that law enforcement allowed flesh sacrifice in the Cathedral as an alternative to prison or public lashing. People who sacrifice an hand, an ear or an eye are seen as sinners who repented their sins and had the courage to sacrifice to placate the gods of the Helgrind and are way better accepted and reintegrated in the society than those who chose to face prison or lashing, because the latter are seen as imposed by the society and so unwillingly taken, where the first are a sign of personal growth and repentance and so a prove of the sinner willingness to change.
…I will stop here for now. Originally, this post was supposed to cover also the birth of the Ra’zac and the story of the High Priest we met in Inheritance, but I decided to keep this already long post focused only on the Cult as a whole and the Ra’zac and the Priest can very well cover a post on their own. Also, half of you probably gave up at something like the second paragraph – be it because of my cringeworthy English or because of how boring this post is.
However, if someone managed to read this whole thing… you’re either a saint or a genius, friend. Here a cookie *handles a cookie*.
What do you think?
no subject
I know! I am writing my fanfiction and there are TONS of characters whose interactions and stories are absolutely amazing and way more interesting than Eragon's.
For example Galbatorix and Shruikan! I really like how their relationship is coming off - in my story. Incredibly, Galbatorix and Shruikan are a better parallel for the Original Eragon and Bid'Daum than Eragon and Saphira! A human and a dragon who were not meant to be together, but they still made it work. Like the Original Eragon, Galbatorix hatched Shruikan without a spell to bond their souls, they developed a friendship and Shruikan chose him as a Rider because he loved him, not because a spell decided for him when he was yet to be born. How cool that could be? The dragon who the elves always called the most tragic slave revealing to be actually the freest of the dragons! (Honestly, fuck it. My Shruikan loves his tiny human).
Or... Oromis and the Ra'zac. Please.
"There are a lot of rules for interacting with humans" - [16 years old Ra'zac explaining 800+ years old Rider why 100 years old Arya sucks at dealing with humans].
OR OROMIS AND MORZAN FOR FUCKS SAKE.
What's the point in having immortal characters if you cannot see them meeting people/creatures from their past centuries after? If you don't use them to explain the different sides of a story and come to term with the fact that things were not always like they believed, that even with the best intentions they were not so morally superior than their enemy? If you don't use their immortality at all?
Kyantassera remembers the Burning of Dras-Leona of many generations before. Brom was there. She lived the story from the Empire's side. Oromis was probably told the story by Brom. Make them talk about it and BAM! Grey hystory and a chance to add dept to Brom's character!
no subject
I know right? The whole immortality thing is utterly pointless in canon, to the extent that Eragon barely so much as stops to think about it. Which is both weird and stupid, because living forever is kind of a big deal. As it is it's just another Sue trait when all is said and done, because god forbid the self-insert Mary Sue be allowed to get old