#blightseed

[sadly-unfortunate]

[hyenakat]

palo and tigran for @serpentface !!

[echinacea-art]

Art fight attack on @serpentface! Ducks her favorite Beast

[serpentface]

The god Od depicted in a symbolic representation of the word's creation as a docile bull awaiting sacrifice at the altar.

It carries the foundations of the world in its horns (via a very old cross and wheel motif representing cyclical totality, now mostly used as a visual shorthand for the world). It has three sets of horns in the form of the lunar crown, a mostly obsolete symbol of Wardi royalty. The altar is decked with an orange lily motif, after a hardy native water lily capable of regrowth in waters that dry seasonally. This symbol of rebirth and fertility in a sacrificial scene evokes the sacrifice-rebirth cycle initiated by Od's primordial slaying, which is fundamental to the world's functioning.

This is a rundown on interpretations of the god Od, a deity that has a long history in the lands surrounding the Mouth of the eastern inner seaway, and the impact (or lack thereof) of its primordial sacrificial nature in religious practice.

The god Od appears in religious practices throughout the region, having the utmost significance to the Imperial Wardi faith and lesser or separate significance elsewhere. The five religious practices wherein variants of Od has longstanding historical significance are the Burri Faith, the (Imperial) Wardi faith, the Old or 'Heathen' Wardi faith, the faiths of the Hill Tribes, and the Wogan faith.

—

The name Od and most significant elements of this god have origins in the Burri faith, which was transferred across the sea to the Wardi, Wogan, and Hill Tribes in the time of its second and third empire.

The Burri Od is described as having been the first being. The universe began as a cosmic sea and empty, eternal sky, loosely representative of a primordial and fundamental female and male dualism. Od appeared at their borders as a result of their interfacing, in the form of a giant aurochs or bison whose hooves touched the seafloor and horns touched the sky. He dipped his head down to the silt and lifted it out of the sea in his horns, thus forming the foundations of the world. His semen spilled into the cosmic sea and created the first seven gods, who then killed and divided their father, giving the world its form with his body.

While significant to the creation story, Od is of relatively little importance in everyday practice of the Burri faith and is not commonly worshiped (rather his seven children are, as they were the original and most powerful group of gods and created life).

Though the Burri Od takes on a sacrificial role in creation, animal sacrifice is not central to the Burri faith and is only performed in specific contexts (some festivals and holidays, in times of great strife, and to a few specific gods within a wide pantheon). The Burri faith does not involve a sacrifice-rebirth cycle as foundational to the world's functioning and god's health, and offerings are instead mostly gifts to please and rightly venerate the gods (or avert the malice of less savory deities). Offerings of food, drink, and precious materials are preferred by most gods. When animal sacrifice does occur, bulls ARE generally favored, as a reflection of their primordial counterpart.

—

The modern/Imperial Wardi Od is partly an import of the Burri tradition, which fused with both native monotheistic/animist worldviews and animal cults during the reign of the 2nd Burri Empire and developed into a new faith, which has presently become the state religion of the Wardi Empire.

‘Od’ in the Imperial Wardi context is best translated as capital G ‘God’ (anyone saying 'God' is, in-universe, saying the word 'Od'). Its creation of the world plays out in a very similar fashion, but the first human life (rather than other gods) is created by Its semen mingling with the cosmic sea. It willingly sacrificed Its body at the hands of the first people, who formed the world with its remains. Its shed blood spattered the earth and can be found today as meteoric iron, and animal life emerged from the mingling of the blood and the soil. Its death initiated the eternal cycle of sacrifice/death and rebirth, with each begetting the other and necessary for the world to function.

Od's body is dead and the world is Its corpse, but Its spirit survives in seven 'faces' which govern specific functions of reality and society. The connection of Its spirit to Its body is maintained by right practice, right prayer, and right sacrifice (in the form of food/drink offerings, bloodletting, common sacrifices of animals and occasional sacrifices of people).

The Imperial Wardi Od is generally regarded as genderless and dual-sexed, and referred to with a unique deified pronoun most effectively translated as capital I 'It'. Its sex is of relatively little significance to everyday religious practice, and discussions of Its dualism are more likely to occur in scholarly and philosophical contexts (like debates on the minutia of how Its semen, milk, and menstrual blood are all mentioned in old accounts of creation, and how the implications of this should translate to body politics and taboo).

—

The Old Wardi or ‘Heathen’ Wardi faith is a separate branch of old ethnic Wardi religion with significantly less Burri influence. This is a minority practice that only survives intact in isolation. Its practitioners are often hostile to all foreign influence and the Imperial Wardi faith, and suffer minority status and religious suppression.

Its version of Od is a more intact surviving remnant of ancient Wardi monotheism, as an androgynous creator god who lost physical form in the act of creation, and lives on as innumerable spirit aspects of its whole. This deity is referred to as Od in describing its primordial form, but is mostly referred to as a unique word for spirit, which is 'the Koya'. Practitioners of the old faith often identify the seven-faced Od as a twisted, foreign misinterpretation of the Koya. 

This practice is somewhat animistic in nature and involves veneration of individual spirits that form a larger whole. Every aspect of the world has a spirit (plants, animals, minerals, bodies of water, etc) that exist in an ideal balance and as strands of an interconnected death-rebirth cycle. Each spirit is referred to as 'the [noun]-koya'. All discrete forms of life/matter have at least one attached Koya, while living beings also have a soul (which is separate from the Koya and reincarnated upon death).

Each Koya exists as a quintessential essence (ex: the lion-koya, the maize-koya, the iron-koya, the salt-koya) rather than separate individual objects having separate individual Koya, though unique landmarks do have their own (the Brilla River-koya is separate from the Yellowtail River-koya, though both share the freshwater-koya). Each individual may have multiple spirits (geese have the goose-koya, but also the bird-koya, the freshwater-koya, etc), a system that categorizes the world by intrinsic natures and precisely dictates how each physical body has unique metaphysical significance.

Animal sacrifice plays a somewhat similar role in Old Wardi religion to Imperial Wardi religion in the sense that it intends to maintain the stability and oneness of the divine spirit and a death-rebirth cycle. In this case, in freeing part of the spirit, balance can be brought to the Koya totality and restore the death-rebirth cycle. (Ex- in times of drought, the sacrificial release of the migratory goose-koya can encourage the return of the rains). This is far from the only way to re-balance the Koya. The most significant rites come in the form of songs that summon, release, or expel individual Koya as needed.

—

The Od of the Hill Tribes is a mingling of the Burri/Wardi Od and a much older goddess of fertility and agriculture, and is strongly associated with cattle and barley. This version of Od did not create the world and is only one of many gods, though she is said to have been born from the sea and carried up fertile soils with her (which is likely a direct result of Burri/Wardi influence). A few tribes venerate Od as a chief or patron god, though none are fully monotheistic (outside of converts on individual or clan levels).

She has a distant common ancestor with the Finn goddess Morgren (as the various Hill Tribes are descendants of a single proto-Finn population who migrated across the Viper seaway in prehistory), who is also a goddess of agriculture associated with fertility and barley (though in Morgren’s case, she is THE god of the staple crop barley and lacks the cattle association, and has no direct influence from the Burri/Wardi Od whatsoever)

Most of the tribes of Greathill do not practice animal sacrifice but offer grain and fruit to Od, and create a sanctified mix of crushed barley and oil that is anointed on livestock and people to confer Od's blessings of fertility. In some cases, the dominant cow in each herd is considered to belong to Od and will not be milked or slaughtered, and is buried with full rites upon its death.

—

The Od of the Wogan religion is distant to the rest of her counterparts, though has absorbed some Burri and modern Wardi elements over time and is referred to by the same name (a definite foreign import). She shares the fertility aspect ubiquitous to other Od variants, and is occasionally depicted as a cow.

She is a goddess of the earth and sea, who was wed to Iapedi, the god of the sky. The ocean is functionally her womb (which may be trace Burri/Imperial Wardi influence, or merely coincidental) and all life emerged from within. 

These are the only two true gods to the Wogan, though there is an additional element wherein the mating of Od and Iapedi also created innumerable spirits found throughout nature that act as an animating life-force. The concept is very similar to the Old Wardi '-Koya' (as the two faiths had close common ancestry), though this one lacks the sort of taxonomical system of its counterpart, and only ascribes spirits to living things. Each spirit in the Wogan religion is distinct (rather than each type of animal, plant, etc potentially having multiple spirits), and the spirits existing in each body are part of a greater whole that exists as a sentient consciousness that can be communed with (ex: each lion has A lion spirit, all part of The lion spirit, the latter of which can be engaged with).

Wogan religion strongly retains ancient animal cult practices common across the ancient Wardi-Wogan sphere, some of which have been translated into the faces of God in the Imperial Wardi context (both religions share commonalities of lions, snakes, albatross, migratory ducks, and cattle being significant sacred animals). The function of animal worship to the Wogan is communication and interface with the greater spirit of each animal (which can range anywhere from gaining personal blessing and protection, to dispelling plague, to 'lay off on eating our crops').

The Wogan faith does not involve animal sacrifice (though ancient variants almost certainly did). This is connected to traditional vegetarianism among the Wogan (as a means to avoid offending animal spirits), which some view as a point of pride and a mark of distinction against their Imperial Wardi majority.

[serpentface]

The two populations of native Wardi lions, a wild male and captive semi-domesticated (maned) lioness

Lions are one of the last extant true felids in this setting. The native Wardi lion population is low in density and could be considered endangered, (though relatively stable and not in active decline), having survived the continental interchange, changing climate, and sophont expansion that wiped out most other felids. They are most common in areas outside of the range of king hyenas (notably the deserts, edges of the salt pans, hills, and oak forests). The Wardi population is characterized by relatively light coloration and dark, scruffy 'mohawk' like manes. The only other known surviving lion population in the world is in the forested region east of Imperial Wardin, genetically isolated by the Blackmane mountain range and spared competition with hyaenadontoid 'cats'.

These animals had great significance in ancient 'heathen' Wardi culture (prior to colonization by two former Burri empires and development of the contemporary monotheistic faith). The exact details of these traditions have been lost to time, though they were clearly venerated, either as gods themselves or as sacred animals of a key deity (known from relics depicting a deified maned lioness)

Two distinct strands of this tradition survive into the contemporary. One is in the folklore of the Wogan people (an ethnoreligious minority in contemporary Imperial Wardin with common cultural ancestry with ethnic Wardi, displaced from their original homeland during the time of the last Burri empire). Wogan folklore casts maned lionesses specifically as minor deities who can shapeshift into human form, often to mate with men (with the resulting children being demigods). The Wogan culture hero Ianobi (semi-mythological founder of the ancient city that was sacked and rebuilt as Erubinnos) is claimed to have a lioness as a mother.

The other remaining branch of this tradition is Odomache (the 'lion face' of God in the imperial Wardi faith) and Its Odonii order of priestesses. Though their contemporary role is primarily interlinked with the military and as physical embodiments of imperial soverignty, they are also ceremonial keepers of a captive, semi-domesticated population of sacred white lions, raised primarily for roles in routine animal sacrifice (both as a conduit for God in consuming offerings, and as sacrifices themselves)

These white lions compose a solid third of the remaining Wardi lion population. The captive population is characterized by very light fur (which is not albinism but a result of selective breeding) and extremely small size. Maned lionesses occur with a higher frequency than in wild populations, and will be intentionally selected for breeding, seen as the most perfect representations of/ideal sacrifices to Odomache. They can be considered semi-domesticated, well accommodated to human handling, entering estrus more frequently, and showing phenotypical signs of domestication (especially spotted skin, some coat variations). While aesthetically pleasing, this captive population is heavily inbred and commonly overfed, and most animals have an unusually short lifespan.

[serpentface]

The pelatoche, an apotropaic visual motif widely used in contemporary imperial Wardin.

Belief in curses and attachments by evil spirits is a significant part of the cultural schema. This includes a variant of 'evil eye' beliefs- the gaze has great symbolic power and is known to inflict a state of metaphysical vulnerability, in which the body or soul is susceptible to change and transformation. Though metaphysical vulnerability itself is neutral (it can result in both positive and negative change), most attempt to avoid this state of being as it leaves one vulnerable to curses and spiritual pollution. Because it is impossible to avoid a sinister gaze altogether, many wear clothing and jewelry with this motif to neutralize ill effects.

The core motif consists of a vertical humanoid eye. If given only one distinct tear duct, it faces upwards. If the iris is colored, it is most commonly blue, gray, or white. Blue and gray eyes are considered most potent at inflicting curses (and thus can be potent at deflecting them), and white pelatoche are usually made with inlaid pearl (a substance believed in of itself to have a shielding nature). Mirrored surfaces for the iris, pupil, or entire eye are also common as a means of reflecting curses.

There is great variety in how the pelatoche is depicted. The above representation is a clasp for a cloak, made of gold with inlaid blue glass, and on the relatively ornate and realistic end of the spectrum. If multiple pelatoche are depicted together it is almost always in sets of seven, and in this case may be referred to as odatochent, which roughly means 'the eyes of God'. Odatochent are believed to be particularly potent against evil spirits (rather than just evil gazes) and tend to be worn as jewelry, often very gaudy with each eye containing different inlaid jewels (which themselves may each have significance).

The eye being turned on its side in of itself is a form of deflection. The distinctly yonic look of many variants isn't an accident either, as depictions of genitalia are also believed to have apotropaic qualities.

The common name itself - pelatoche - partly derives from and refers to Pelennaumache (one of the seven faces of God, this one presiding over the sea and heavily associated with luck, curses and fortune). The other key Imperial Wardi apotropaic symbol is the skimmer-woman, which is related to Pelennaumache and depicted as a woman with blue eyes, albatross wings (or the body of an albatross) and exaggerated genitalia. The pelatoche is a syncretic fusion between preexisting traditions of apotropaic eye symbols brought to the region by the former Burri empire and the regionally native skimmer-woman motif.

A sketch of the apotropaic skimmer-woman as it might appear on an amulet

[serpentface]

A hyaenodontoid 'bearcat', this species (perhaps confusingly) known as the king hyena (Usomakyniche in Wardi, more literally 'the hyena king')

Bearcats are the largest and bulkiest hyaenodontoids. While massive and powerful, bearcats largely subsist on scavenging, using their imposing size to drive smaller predators away from their kills. Their jaws are massive and muscular, and they are highly adept at quickly opening carcasses and crushing bones.

They are capable of making their own kills, but lack the stealth of their smaller relatives and are relatively slow moving. They mostly rely on stamina for active hunting, pursuing prey that is already injured or weak until they can get close enough to inflict a fatal wound. Predation on humans is rare (with most conflicts occurring when they attempt to drive hunters from a kill site or follow domestic herds), though they have a ghoulish reputation for stealing bodies awaiting cremation.

Like most bearcats, the king hyena is a territorial and mostly solitary animal, with males and females only coming together to breed. Males patrol vast territories, which usually contain the smaller territories of several females. When a male takes over a new range, it will usually seek out and kill any of the previous male's young (unless it is a female of reproductive age). Males sometimes form coalitions and control territories and breed with females together. Coalitions are near exclusively between brothers (on a selective level, this negates much of the conflict over breeding rights as both males share close genetic relations and benefit from protecting each other's young). These coalitions allow for control of more expansive territories and for individuals to mate with more females, and are often highly successful. Coalition size is generally two and rarely surpasses three, as few territories contain a high enough density of prey to support multiple large males.

The king hyena is found exclusively in the savannahs and grasslands of the central Wardin region. Their population density is low, but they are faring relatively well in the context of habitat encroachment, and are a key threat to the endangered native lion populations. Lions and king hyena rarely coexist in the same ranges, and most established lion populations are restricted to environments the king hyena does not fare well in (particularly desert and the northeastern forested regions).

[serpentface]

Hi! I love your work! I’m curious about Cynozepali architecture and social structure?

Just going to go with the Crown Cynozepali people here.

Crown cynozepali culture can be described as a feudal system. It is not even remotely territorial contiguous (and exact territorial boundaries mean little to flighted people) but rather are scattered habitations built on cliffs and mountain ranges.

The social structure is as follows

King and the kingslek (a king's wives, usually dozens). Historically the region was divided into many kingdoms, but is currently united under one royal family. The royal family only rules with the support of their lords, who provide them with labor and warriors. This position is historically fraught, and it is quite common for royal families to be overthrown by discontented nobility.

Nobility- ruling class who 'own' cliffs and prime grazing lands and are also considered the owners of their herds and the serfs who tend them Mercantile- this could be subdivided into several classes but generally speaking are free laborers and traders who are paid for their services. This class has the most upward mobility, and some especially rich mercantile families become noble houses. Warrior- a difficult social class to place. They are sworn to service of their lords and do not have freedom of movement, but are paid handsomely and provided upper class homes and occasionally obtain lordships. Servants- people who directly serve lords (and rich warriors/merchants) in domestic roles. They are paid for their labors. Serfs- the lowest class, who tend their lord's herds and fields of textile crops. As with most forms of serfdom, these are not paid for their services and are functionally slaves, and are considered attached to their lords. It is imagined and excused as a compact where service to their lords and king is repaid in protection, food, and 'safe' places to live. They are sometimes conscripted into battle as footsoldiers, wherein one of few possibilities for upward mobility (VERY occasionally) lies- serfs who prove skilled combatants may be enlisted as warriors, with all entailed benefits (and consequences) Monks- Lunar emissary monks exist somewhat outside this social structure. They have few possessions and live in small nests in white pines on high cliffs among the serfs, but are highly respected figures.

Social class is indicated most strongly by 'height', with the upper classes building homes nearest to the ground and serfs building homes high on cliffsides (not having to fly is considered a privilege and show of wealth). It is also indicated by the ability for polygamy. Caelin social structure is naturally polygamous, but male serfs are typically only allowed (or can only afford) one wife. Having multiple wives/being a wife with many others is a strong indicator of wealth and class.

Crown cynozepal is an interspecies culture, though built by and for caelin. The caelin majority does not translate directly into social structure. Nobility is restricted to only caelin and delkhin due to interfertility (though upper class delkhin are rarer), while most crown qilik are merchants or servants. The serf population is almost entirely caelin. Delkhin serfs cannot fly and mostly live in tents on the outskirts of their communities.

The homes of Crown Cynozepali serfs are built into cliffsides, taking advantage of naturally occuring outcrops and niches in the rock. The basis of the structure is usually built around the roots a tree (often the white pine, which grows on cliffsides and is sacred). A thick structure of twigs and grass is woven amid the roots as a foundation and forms the skeleton of the home. Clay, lime, straw, guano, and other materials are mixed to form the walls and are flown up mouthful by mouthful.

These houses are usually very small and crowded, formed of two narrow levels (an 'upstairs' where a fire is kept and food is cooked, and a 'downstairs' containing the sleeping quarters and a 'bathroom' window)

Cliff homes are relatively resilient (especially given most of the region has infrequent rains) but still require constant and endless maintenance. It is not unknown for heavily populated areas to experience mass deaths when the weight of dozens of homes collapses a cliffside.

The homes of Crown nobility and royalty are built on the ground, usually at the base of the cliffs in a naturally shielded area (such as in the mouth of a cave or under an outcropping. These are predominantly large, domed structures made out of bricks and reinforced with clay and plaster and richly decorated with fine pigments and frescoes.

The homes of the middle classes tend to be built higher up, but on solid ground (rather than cliffsides) and are structurally similar to those of nobility.