Order Of The Eclipse

= Order of The Eclipse =

General Information
The Order of The Eclipse is a non-deistic religious order with an unknown founding and origin. There is some speculation among members about the founding of the faith believing it to originate from outside Rathnir. The faith at its foundation is based upon astronomical inferences about the start and end of the universe found in its formative text. This text, known as the Black Night Book, details the origins of the universe as an event in which from absolute blackness sprang fourth great chaos know as matter. This era of chaos is looked upon negatively by members of the Order who see creation as disturbing the harmony that was non-existence. The Black Night Book is missing a great deal of content and the next legible passage is about the early days of the formation of celestial bodies in which chaotic matter started to condense into more material forms, these being the elements, fire, water, earth, and air or atmosphere. Two celestial bodies in particular are singled out in the Black Night Book for their purity, which means they are made of a single element condensed, these being the Moon and the Sun. The Moon is described as a celestial body made of only earth and the Sun of only fire thus making them more stable and harmonious. The Black Night Books greatest shortcoming is that all the middle sections are missing, illegible, or written in script that is incompressible the next legible section being the final few pages. These pages and the described events are from which most of the Order's ideals and ideologies come from and so their contents shall be shared in their own section.

The Black Night Book Final passages
The final three passages in the Black Night Book are about the conditions of existence and the end of time. It is from here that the Order of The Eclipse finds the foundations for their beliefs. The first of the three passages is a long poem that has been interpreted to comment on the fact that existence itself is chaos and suffering as it sprang fourth from a pitch black universe that existed in perfect harmony. Perpetual existence will bring only pain, and even death is not a true escape as the matter which constitutes all things goes on to exist in new existence thus the cycle continues. The next two passages cover an event described as the Final Eclipse in which the universe will reach a threshold of chaos and start a chain reaction causing its collapse. This event, although tragic, is viewed by The Order as an event which will end all suffering. Thus the Order wishes to spread the good news of this event in the hopes that those suffering will find hope in the ultimate finality.

Goals
The Order of The Eclipse (O.O.E) wishes to spread the word of the Final Eclipse and welcome it upon its arrival. Followers believe that war mongers, killers, plagues, and other persons/events that result in loss of life are unintentionally furthering the Final Eclipse as they both introduce chaos and free suffering souls from their mortal frames. As a result members of the O.O.E will gladly take up arms as merceries, or fund conflicts and wars monetarily or with armaments. However, members themselves are not required, and often discouraged, to go out and seek to kill anyone, instead they are encouraged to participate in conflicts that occurred naturally. Naturally occurring meaning that these events started without organized direct involvement from any group of O.O.E members. This does not apply if those members happen to be part of nations, militaries, etc. that are going into battle of their own accord. The O.O.E does not want conflict waged in its name as it believes the Final Eclipse will occur naturally and trying to further it through mass conflict carried out in the name of a faith that desires it may have unintended consequences. Instead the O.O.E seeks to provide a moral framework to those who find themselves involved in conflict. The monastic traditions of the O.O.E revolve mostly around funerary practices which seek to remove matter from the cycle of suffering by storing cremated remains of the deceased in red cross boxes and housing them in subterranean mausoleums. O.O.E members visit sites of conflict to find bodies which have not been taken care of and are left to decompose and cremates them to keep the matter out of the cycle of suffering.

Structure
The O.O.E has no real authoritative structure and does not demand devotees to attend gatherings or ask for donations, instead valuing mutual support of one another's military endeavors that occur outside of the faith itself. The O.O.E also asks that members do try and spread the faith and keep in mind its tenets and values. Within the O.O.E there is two sub orders, the Order of Dusk and the Order of Dawn. The Order of Dusk is a more militant branch of the O.O.E which appeals to members of the O.O.E who wish to be active mercenaries or members of their nations military. The order Of Dawn is a sub-order that focuses more on the internal aspects of the faith such as spreading its doctrine, writing religious text, carrying out funerary rites, and so on.

Heraldry
The O.O.E members often feature red or black crosses of various shapes and sizes on themselves, there are symbols of their goal to help end the cycle of suffering. The red cross is a wooden structure used to store the cremated remains of the dead where as the black cross, used by the sub-order of Dusk, symbolizes the progress towards death and the advancement of chaos they are typically not actually constructed.