Anghara

"If the Gods are omnipotent, or nearly, it stands to reason they are permitted to make mistakes."

- Proverb attributable to Camus Inakas

This article is the target of major revisions.

Anghara is a primordial diety, revered in the Petrenean Pantheon, though largely considered unrelated to the Awakened One, or perhaps a sacred precursor. Followers of Anghara consider their diety to be the source of all magic, divine and arcane, as well as the font of all worldly knowledge. It is known as the Eternal Origin, if an epithet is used at all. As a lawful neutral force, Anghara grants its followers who attain the capability to channel divine magic access to the domains of Law, Knowledge, Magic, Rune. Anghara is an intelligent force that makes use of no material weapons, but those entitled to a weapon through its patronage gain their proficiency in the scimitar. Anghara's symbol is a geometric stellation in a prismatic array of colours.

History

Anghara is the First and the Last, the intelligence of magic, which as a force of nature necessarily predates the arrival of other dieties in Ahren. Anghara existed before the planes began their procession and will remain long after they have gone, when the cosmos go cold and must be rekindled again.

Relationships

Anghara will neither force nor endure quarrel from any of the divinities worshipped in Ahren. It is the beating heart of the plane of Axioma, from which its complex but well-regulated geography originates, and so it is best known (and most likely to interact with) the gods which live there, such as San Heather or San Marino.

Appearance

If Anghara has a form that could pass for something a humanoid would recognize as alive, that form has never been seen. Anghara is energy, found (according to its followers) in the medium through which all magic flows. Anghara is therefore never depicted directly in the iconography of the church as a dogmatic position - it is no more sensible to attempt to draw it than it would be permitted.

Realm

Anghara isn't just native to Axioma, but a part of it. High teachings of the church (rarely understood even by lay followers of the diety]] make it clear that Axioma was not Anghara's creation, though Anghara's presence in that realm definitely changed it and made it what it is today. Such teachings reveal that Anghara is actually a flaw in the otherwise perfect order of the plane, which is what has allowed it to take a form at all.

Providence

Anghara's providence is surprisingly common. It relies entirely on the creation of prophets and oracles to get its messages through to its followers, having no meaningful physical form and few priests who can fully comprehend communion with it. Anghara sends dreams to its followers that reveal the secrets of the universe, be they the solution to mundane problems of craftsmanship, portents of futures that may yet come to pass, flickers of lives long since lived, or inspirations to great new depths of mastery.

Servants

Many serve Anghara, but none with quite the same loyalty as the Axiomites, beings of divine law given something not unlike flesh, who populate Axioma.

Unique Servants

The Prismatic Angel

Anghara's divine herald is an angel whose prismatic wings are said to appear to be different colours from different angles, as do their other features, allowing them to take form most pleasing (or fearful) to whomever they are addressing simply by turning in place.

Church

Anghara's church is not as widely followed as might otherwise be expected, as it places heavy strictures on laity and clergy alike. The church demands levels of obedience and social cohesion rarely imposed in Wisteria and the term Angharite has become slanderous shorthand for prudish and overbearing zeal. The church is primarily only found in the city of Baghar, where it is headquartered; a few scattered chapels may exist in other cities in the Shimmering Shore, but nothing of any great scale. Of note is the stricture that only high-ranking clerics, military officers, and nobles of Baghar can wear dyed fabrics - the laity and even middling clerics must wear white or unbleached linens.

Worshippers

Anghara's worship is universal in the city of Baghar, and of those who follow it, second only in faithfulness to the proper clergy are the city's Wizards (and, to a lesser extent, sorcerers), many of whom learned their trade in part through the church's teaching and training. Other men of science, like architects, engineers, and alchemists, are also known in that region for their piety, or at least their apparent piety.

Clergy

Anghara's clergy are often theurges who blend the divine magic it gifts them with arcane magic born of the mind or infused through their blood. The clerical class dress in the same white as the laity, though their clothes are often finer and more elaborate, and the highest priests occasionally dress in all manner of colours, the choice of which might give information as to which school or domains of magic they have specialized in. Chief of the theurges among the clerics of Anghara are the Erudites, a secret council of nearly-inhuman paragons, part race and part prestige-class.

As expected, the road into the clerical life is not an easy one. Education in religious matters begins late infancy and early childhood, as does general education in the city of Baghar. Those with the aptitude and the will go on to learn in secondary schools, and under apprenticeship to existing priests, the various prayers, rights, rituals, and laws of their faith until they can recite all from memory, though even the most prodigious must wait until adulthood before taking their vows and joining the clergy. The strict requirements of professionalism mean that there is no upper bound on how old one is likely to be before joining the clergy. Some take lifetimes, and some never make the cut, forced by age and circumstance to find their meaning in some more secular employment.

The clergy also maintain a warrior caste that protect sacred sights within the city made up largely of paladins, raised since prepubescence for the task and subject to incredible tests of purity and piety both throughout their childhood and throughout their working careers - these Paladins are the origin of the term, though it is applied elsewhere to similar consecrated warriors. Most who come into the Paladin class through this path rarely learn arcane magic, the practice of which is discouraged (though not outright forbidden) as a distraction from the proper duties of a Paladin.

Temples & Shrines

There are several minor temples to Anghara in the city of Baghar, though none as splendid as the main, domed temple and gardens at the center of the city. This temple has the majority of its space set aside for the rites, instruction, and training of clergy, accessible only to them on pain of punishment (often corporal, sometimes fatal to the intruder). The Archives of Baghar are part of this complex and considered the second most complete compendium of knowledge apart from the Library of Akasha in the Astral Plane, which is lost. There are volumes in the archives which no mortal recalls the correct name for the language of their origin, much less the secrets of their reading.

In a few cities in the Shimmering Shore and even among scattered camps in the Lordless Lands founded by the men of Baghar (or those driven from it in times past, such as the orcs of the southern hordes in the Orcish Nation, smaller shrines to Anghara occasionally crop up. These are almost always libraries first and places of worship second, and include a strengthened container for books and scrolls known as a Tabernacle which is the central object of worship.

Holy Texts

No one text is holy to Anghara, but indeed all conveyance of knowledge is, one way or the other, partly its doing. That said, there is a collection of scriptures known as the Litany of All Prophets which is the central teaching of the church and puts to paper most of its dogma and the religious basis for many of the laws of Baghar. This text is occasionally found among the libraries of mages in other regions, but as the men of Baghar rarely tolerate outsiders such volumes are prized and hard to come by, rarely originals, and often contain errors of transcription.

Church History

The church of Anghara is always seated in Baghar, but those who lead it change hands as often as the city does. The city itself is promordial; some say it was on Wisteria before The Almighty's salvation of the Men of the North, the Fire-Keeper's creation of the Orcs, or the civilization of the elves by Pyria Valeptor. Others know that it is less true to say the city was always materially there than to say that the city MUST be there, must always be there, as long as their are creatures to build cities and a world in which to build them; a natural consequence of the shape of Ahren and the confluence of forces that flow around and through it.

So to with the church of Anghara - if there is the spark of intelligence burning in a world, there is the seed of the church of Anghara.

Holidays

The church marks a number of holidays, be they as mundane as weekly and daily occasions of prayer marked with church services to seasons of particular fasting, with festivals and sombre holy days in between. Fasting is a common practice but on the few festive holidays it is a common practice for the city to "explode in its repressed colours" - for music, dancing, arcane spectacle, and all the other 'fruits of High Artistry' to be celebrated in their splendor, as is noted in Magister Idiodox's Registry of the Races