Religion and History

At the end of time there was light and fire, and at the beginning of time the ashes of that fire scattered over the world and was sown as seeds in the earth, creating water and air and life.

This is the core belief of the Gospel of the Conflagration, the dominant religious tradition of the known world, from Andover to Cambra. The Gospel, as taught by the Church of St. Aloysius the First Teacher, holds that the universe has already ended at least once, with the great Conflagration that swept the world nearly nine centuries ago. That event wiped the slate completely clean, and allowed humanity to begin again: everything started over in that one chaotic moment, and the years since have been a gradual process of returning order and civilisation to the land. That singular moment of pure heat and light gave way to the world to come, reducing it to ash so that it could renew itself. This is part of a universal cycle that repeats every 40,000 years according to the Church's count, when the ash that makes up all matter in the universe settles and becomes too cold to create anything new.

The Gospel of the Conflagration asserts that everyone and everything is made out of a kind of cosmic ash, invisible to the eye, and this has also formed the basis of modern science. Every speck of ash itself contains countless universes within it, and it is the energy created by the division of these specks of ash in their material, consolidated forms that led to the Conflagration, allowing the ash to split and recombine and make new forms.

However, Aloysian theologians hold that the last Conflagration was imperfect, incomplete because of some error with the past universe, and it is humankind's goal in this present universe to discover the errors that came before and either undo them or avoid repeating them, so as to not corrupt the cycle of Conflagration further. One of the most well-known and dangerous side-effects of this imperfect Conflagration exists in the form of the Salt, which the Gospel of the Conflagration explains as ash that, in the wake of the beginning of this new universe, failed to split and recombine, and is essentially leftover matter from that universe, the Last World. Contact with the Salt, then, is inherently corrosive and corrupting because this lifeless ash tries to mix and recombine with the living matter of this universe, destroying the latter and spreading the former. Phenomena like the Dalefolk are a result of the Salt creating imperfect recombinations in the unholy guise of human-animal hybrids. Other such phenomena exist, like the nature of the Sleeping Isle in the west of the Great Sea that seems to appear and disappear with the phases of the moon. Those who are exposed to the Salt and go mad or become diseased as a result are suffering from the Last World's ash trying to impose its reality-beyond-time upon their living, settled ash. This can naturally only end in pain and death.

The clergy of the Church of St. Aloysius, men and women alike, are also dedicated to keeping the history of the world. Crucial to their belief is the long 40,000 year count, which they understand as imperative to keep of in order to be able to prepare the world for the next, more perfect Conflagration. When this happens, all those who have ever lived will become pure ash again, and time and life will begin again in the next, better universe. So goes the cosmic cycle. There is no deity behind this constant transformation: it is the will of the transcendent cosmos itself.

The Church is a single, international organisation, but its separate branches in each country are highly autonomous. The Andover branch is called the Riparian Church, the Carlian branch is the Church of the King, and the Cambran branch is the Eglise Urbaine.

Dalefolk do not follow the teachings of St. Aloysius or adhere to the concept of the Conflagration, and believe that the world is a continuously changing, spiritually-active organism. In the worldview of the Dalefolk, just as ants scurry around fields of grass and their sandy mounds as though they were forests and mountains, so too are we ultimately very small beings as part of a greater whole. Similar to the Conflagration, the Dalefolk believe that there was some great event in the past that created the world we know and ended a previous civilisation, but their perception of the Salt is that it is the source of the Conflagration, not an accidental byproduct of it: just as the Salt threatens the world today, it is ultimately what ended the Last World. Nothing living can survive the Salt, and so it is fundamentally antithetical to everyone and everything, body and spirit. Crucially, Dalefolk belief is ambivalent towards death, as normally after bodily life ends one's body returns to the living earth and one's spirit becomes part of all the other animals in the world, joining a great cosmic whole - but when one is killed by the Salt, it consumes both their mind and body, rendering them completely inert and outside of this organic cycle.

The Course of History

This is the title of the last will and testament of St. Aloysius, the enigmatic figure at the centre of the Gospel of the Conflagration. "St. Aloysius" was engraved on the interior wall of the church in the nave where the body of the man who bears that name was found. With him was a written document in Ancient Glostrian, the Enlightened Gospel, The Course of History, which outlined Aloysius' beliefs about the end of time and the imminent beginning of a new era. In this book he laid down many tenets of wisdom and common knowledge, such as the wisest ways to establish and enforce laws; how to ensure fairness in commerce; the ideal rulership of a state; and the simple virtues of generosity, compassion, and curiosity that all should strive toward.

Today, the body of St. Aloysius is interred in the sacred crypt of the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre in Cayem, while the original text he penned in his last days is held in a secret storeroom buried under his Cathedral in the city of Andover.

The beginning of history, measured from the original calculations of St. Aloysius, forms the origin point of the calendar common to Andover, Carlia, and Cambra, currently in its 883rd year by the traditional reckoning of time. The names of the twelve months - January, February, March, April, and so on - all come directly from the Ancient Glostrian text written by St. Aloysius as well, as do the names of the seven days of the week.

It is not known when exactly St. Aloysius was born or died, but it is widely accepted that his uniqueness comes from his existence as a figure that straddled the boundary between two universes: the end of the Last World and the formless beginning of our own, a time known as the Barren Days. Recent theological reinterpretations of The Course of History, combined with scholarly insights into it as a historical document recording the time in which St. Aloysius lived, have argued that the Salt was present in his time, and was a far more prevalent phenomenon than today. Evidently at some point it abated after covering much of the known world in the Barren Days, but why exactly it concentrated in places like Mercy, deep cave systems, and the outer reaches of the Great Sea is yet unknown. Its dissipation may have been gradual, as the body of St. Aloysius was only discovered in year 103 of the current universal calendar, and by this time his human form had been reduced to a frail skeleton. Some fringe theorists suggest it was the Salt itself that inspired and drove St. Aloysius to write his Course of History. We may never know.