Draconism

Draconism is the national religion of the Kingdom of Daelyria. It is a polytheistic religion with fourteen main gods in the pantheon. It is native to the region of Daleryia, and has no reach beyond it as of the writing of this article. Worship is done at home or in temples, and sacrifice is done by burning objects. It has a long written and oral tradition of myths, stories and rites. It concerns itself with the question of the world's birth, its destruction, and man's meaning. Fire is holy. It is seen as important to Draconists that people acquire balance with their sins and virtues. They are also usually religiously tolerant, saying that all gods or stories are simply reflections of the Fourteen in the eyes of other peoples with other beliefs.

Prayer
Worship and prayer in Draconism is done either at a temple or at home. It is not uncommon for priests to use a psychedelic substance known as Shade of the Evening or Shade of the Morning, one of which grants visions of the future (Shade of the Morning), and the other of the future of present (Shade of the Evening), similar to Dragon Dreams, and often concerned with the fate of the world. It is common also to look into fires while praying, to see glimpses of the future of past, granted by the goddess Tessarion.

Sacrifice
Sacrifice is not uncommon in Draconism. Traitors or criminals are often burned alive so that their souls can be cleansed by the holy fires. It is commonplace to burn items like food or coal for the pleasure of the gods. Burning animals can also be seen upon as a good way to please the god after a bad harvest, a wave of banditry or a lost war. All temples have pits in their middles where sacrificed people, animals or items can be burned.

Vice and Virtue
In Draconism, it is seen as incredibly important to find a balance between your sins and your virtues. One who is greedy, therefore, should try to weigh up for it with kindness or with restraint. They believe also that what man strives to become is the centre of the spectrums of sin and virtue, as portrayed in the Book of Blood, a primary Draconistic text:

''He who is made of naught but truth will hurt those around him and himself, but he who speaks naught but lies will have the same effects. One must strive for balance, to speak truth when one can, and lie when one must. The same can be said for courage: one who rushes straight into battle at every chance will most surely die, but he who is a coward and avoids confrontation may be hated or delay something to the point which it can become hurtful. Such is the way with all things.''

-the Book of Blood, verse thirty-six

(note here that the ancient Daelyrian word for battle and confrontation can be used interchangeably, and so this may refer to someone who is brash)

The fourteen vices are:

Pride, self-loathing.

Wrath, complicity.

Greed, wastefulness.

Lust, seclusion.

Sloth, recklessness.

Gluttony, self-neglect.

Envy, apathy.

In between these you have the seven virtues:

Confidence.

Righteousness.

Generosity.

Chastity.

Consideration.

Health.

Trust.

A recurring theme between the virtues is that they are they are all tempered by reason and logic, the highest of qualities in Draconism. In addition to the vices and virtues, there are also Divine Qualities. These are things on which a good Draconist should focus and try to emulate. These are:

Determination.

Kindness.

Cunning.

Valor.

Patience.

One is to be selected at the process where you transform from a child into a man or woman.

Ceremonies relating to death, birth and marriage.
In Draconism, it is commonplace to burn the dead, as soon as possible after death. The soul can then be separated more cleanly from the body, and the quicker after death the burial is done, the less corrupted by rot the soul will be, and therefore cleaner. The remaining bones are then turned into bonemeal to plant a tree, the wood from which his or her descendants will be burned on. This creates a much stronger link between the family in the eternal halls of the gods. Afterwards, it is customary to party, and a child conceived on the night of a burning is said to be blessed with the knowledge of the deceased. In Illeryon, a small sect or subgroup would mix the blood and the ashes of the deceased and drink it to gain the power of their predecessors.

Weddings are performed by a priest, and can be held with family and friends, or as a public event. The newlyweds will then be locked into their houses for a week, food supplied from their families and given into the building. This is not as common in working families, since the family has to work, and is more a feature of more high class families where heirs to the house are more important and need to be procured to seal the alliance. The weddings oaths are:

"Will you, (groom) of house (house of groom) take to wife (bride) of house (house of bride) till blood or fire parts ye?"

It is the same but with the genders swapped afterwards, and they will both cut their palms and mix their blood before it can be burned, to purify their union.

Ceremonies of birth are held a few days after the actual birth of the child, where they are named. An exchange of gifts is customary at this event or gathering.

Pantheon.
There are fourteen main gods in the Draconistic pantheon. Other smaller and/or regional gods and spirits also exist, but these are the most widely worshipped.

Arrax - Ruler of Gods, law, order, justice, governance and strength.

Aegarax - God of all creatures that walk, run, swim or fly. Creator of the first dragon.

Balerion - God of death and the Underworld.

Caraxes - God of the sea, twin of Meraxes.

Gaelithox - God of fire, stars, moon, sun and the dawn, rival of Meraxes.

Meleys - Goddess of love and fertility.

Meraxes - Goddess of the sky, twin of Caraxes.

Shrykos - Goddess of beginnings, endings, transitions and doorways.

Syrax - Goddess of wine, fruitfulness, parties, festivals, madness, chaos, drunkenness, vegetation, and ecstasy.

Tessarion - Goddess of music, arts, knowledge, healing, plague, prophecy, poetry, beauty, and archery.

Tyraxes - Goddess of reason, wisdom, intelligence, skill, peace, warfare and battle strategy.

Vermax - God of boundaries, travel, communication, trade, language, and writing. A psychopomp who escorts dead souls to the Underworld or to the Eternal Halls.

Vermithor - God of smiths, crafts and artisans.

Vhagar - God of war.

The pantheon of Draconism (sometimes referred to as the Fourteen) all live in either Eternal Halls, or in volcanoes when they bless the mortal realm of Rathnir with their presence. When assuming avatars, they go into the forms of dragons. There was a war between the Fourteen and the Voidborn, a race of demigods spawned of Balerion, god of death. The seal between the worlds was then created, making the overworld, then the nether, which served as a buffer realm, and also the residence of Balerion, who was punished for the behaviour of his children to guard the pass and the dead souls cursed to hell. With magical powers bestowed by Vermax, you can create passages between them. This is called inter-dimensional fire magic.

Myths.
The Draconistic pantheon is riddled with myths and stories of ages long ago. They will be listed here.

The Creation War
In the beginning, there was nothing but the Eternal Halls, where the gods had slumbered from before the beginning of time. Outside it there was only chaos, a vast madness of destruction and the random creation and destruction of matter and energy. One faithful day, the greatest of the Fourteen, Arrax, awoke. He saw the chaos outside his home and, with his limitless power and vision, began to draw. He pulled the different shades of creation into lines and boundaries, and formed order. The world became itself, formed from the primordial storm, the gasses pulled into oceans and land. He painted one world first, but though his power was endless, his skill was not as of yet. The world could barely harbour life, and it quickly was consumed by the power of chaos outside the world. Then great Arrax created a new world. This one lasted longer, and was indeed prospering for long ages. Then the Voidborn came. In the Underworld, Balerion, second only to Arrax himself in might, had been mating with the dead he found most lovely, for he was lonely in his halls far beneath the earth. From this union spawned a race known only as the Voidborn, powerful demigods. Balerion, lonely as he was, loved this most of all, and doted on them with powerful gifts. His children soon fell victim to pride, and took up arms against their father and the other gods. The world shook with the chaos and corruption they brought forth. Though they were killed by the Fourteen, their corruption settled in the world. Mighty Arrax along with Vhagar and Shrykos destroyed the world, fearing that the men upon it would be corrupted by the Voidborn. They created a third world, and made a buffer between the realm of madness and chaos that lay beyond the world, taking the place of the Underworld. It was called the Nether. Balerion was set to rule it as punishment for the gifts he had given his children in the war against the gods.

The Birth of Man
One day, Aegerax looked out at the world, melancholy. The world was filled with plants and vegetation, a courtesy of the power of Syrax's coupling with the Gaelithox. But Aegerax looked out at it and thought it too inanimate. He decided to fill the world with curious beasts, and created thirty-two spirits to help him. He shaped them out of the primordial clay that formed most of the world at this point, and imbued them with the breath of life. At last he created a being in his own image, and named him Styveryles, a being who could think in the same fashion the gods did. The gods were very smitten with this creature of Aegerax, and gave him gifts: Arrax gave him the ability to be just, and to be fair. Caraxes gave him the knowledge of how to craft boats and ships. Gaeltithox gifted him fire, and painted the sunsets beautiful for his pleasure. Melys gave him a passion for love and all that was beautiful. Meraxes gave him the swiftness of the flying bird. Shrykos gifted him with the power of changing to his environment. Syrax learned him to harvest plants from nature. Tessarion gave him the power of music and art, and Tyraxes gave him reason and logic. Vermax gave him the gift of writing and language, while Vermithor gave him the power to shape metals. Vhagar gave him the power to destroy his enemies and foes. Only Balerion gave him no gifts as of first. He lived far beneath the Eternal Halls, as well as the overworld, but far down in the dark Underworld, where news did not reach him. Styveryles was lonely, still. All his joys like smithing and hunting were fine on their own, but he craved a companion. So Aegerax made a new being, shaped after the form of one of the female gods. Aelyx was born of the same stuff as Sryveryles, but was fundementally different. She was the daughter of Meleys as much as of Aegerax. They were made for each other, and soon, with the passion of Meleys, they brought forth forty sons and forty daughters. Fearing incest, which was not for common men to do, Aegerax, who had become confident in his abilities, created more men out of the primordial clay of the world. But sometimes he went with too much haste, and there came cracks in the men and women he created, and so they became cruel. And so, man was brought forth upon the world.

Daelos Ashborn
In the days when the third world was still young, and the men upon them had not yet created their great empires, there was a man called Daelos Ashborn. The son of Meleys and Balerion, and should therefore have been a god by birth. But since he was a bastard of the two, he was born a demigod, since Meleys was married to Gaelithox. His fury was said to have caused a great drought, and Daelos is called the Ashborn because he was born in the ash of this drought. Galithox's fury was not yet calmed, and he wanted to give Daelos an impossible task: traveling to every nation in the world of Rathnir. Daelos was, however, of unparalleled strength and determination. He became a champion of wrestling and partook in many wars of the early age. He visited every land and impregnated a woman in each one. Having finished Gaelithox's task, the god of fire was content, if still sulky. The myth at this point deviates. Daelos had a hundred children with a hundred different women, and in all the stories all the children but one die before getting further heirs. In one of the myths, the remaining child, Illyax, killed all of his half-siblings, crowning himself the heir to Daelos's legacy. In other tellings of the tale, Gaelithox is angry that Daelos finnished his tasks, and so killed all his offspring but Illyax, who doused himself in water to be resistant to Gaelithox's fire. The third and most popular of the tellings is that the sons all died by their own foolishness (sometimes a deliberate effort by Balerion, god of death and fait, who wished to see his grand-children), all but Illyax, who was too clever to die. Illyax went on to have three sons, Maekar, Aelys and Jaehaerys, and a daughter, Daella, the daughter the eldest and therefore inheriting his legacy. Daella was said to be the very picture of Meleys, her great-grandmother, and the most lovely person in all the world, and took the name Synderys, meaning shadow lord. She was, in fact, so beautiful that she enticed the heart of Caraxes, god of the seas. She had another demi-god son, Theon, who had a son, Vyserys, who had a daughter, Nyfera, who was impregnated by Vhagar, and the passion of their love was said to be what painted the dusk beautiful. The brief union brought forth Dusk Synderys, co-founder of the kingdom of Daelyria.

Holy texts
There are a few holy texts in Draconism, many of them in the great book called the Drackara, which is comprised of many books. There are also the Dialogues of Prophets, and the Philosophys, comprising philosophy and ethics, while the Drackara is comprised of stories and teachings. These texts can be interpreted in many ways, and one of these interpretations almost caused a schism within the Draconistic community.

The Drackara
The Drackara is a religious book comprised of many shorter books, letters, hymns and songs. They are framed as a cohesive narrative, and are all set in chronological order(though interpretations vary as to the true canon). The longest texts are The Book of Blood, divided into chapters, the Book of Fire, divided into verses, and the History of Heroes, which is a compilation of shorter historical events written down by a family of priests who sought out Daelyrian heroes and recorded their deeds. The complete list of texts:

-the Book of Blood

-the Book of Fire

-Fires of the Future

-the revelations of the 31st winged serpent

-the Sikagoloth

-the History of Heroes

All of these include stories and teachings.

Dialogues of Prophets
The Dialogues of Prophets is a text comprised of many dialogues between prophets and people around them, explaining the gods, how best to live and prayer. It elaborates on something brought up in the Book of Fire, saying that the best way to know the gods is to study what they made. It is often read along with the Drackara as a companion text meant to clarify and elaborate on things said in that first great book.

Philosophys
The last of the great Daelyrian texts is the Philosophys. It is comprised of many stories, though all these are meant only to be used as examples, and are not actual events. In it one can find reflections on religious duty and a myriad of other subjects. It is the shortest of the holy texts.