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What follows is the first part of a didactic poem emerging from the oral culture of the Order prior to the Consolidation. Put to paper by St. Remiel in 109SC and approved as a part of the Charter to seal the Order's place in Dav's push for unification, it stands as the core dogmatic source for the Order's doctrine. Subject to many changes from its original penning, the following text preserves a great amount of the Order's pacifism and desire for unity through the word and words of the Lord of the Springs.

I have based this work off of the ancient Greek work of Hesiod, specifically Theogony and Hours and Days. The theology presented is a mix of a few things, including some themes found in my previous work, Om'Seriat.

Outline (* indicates those completed as of this post)

1) * Invocation
2) * Making of the World
3) * Leviathans and Justice
4) * Towers, Built and Crumbled
5) Toil Comes to the Urth
6) The Spring Emerges
7) The Ladder of Faith
8) The Seasons
9) On Work
10) Signs of the Taint

For Lo, let us hear from you the praises of your father, the Lord of the Springs,
Through whose divine Will men may be exalted in the speech of others
or through the same Will may remain nameless and without fame.
With ease He grants power, with ease He crushes the mighty,
And with ease He lowers the noble and raises the lowly.

Yes, our Lord of the Springs, who dwells in the Mountain with thundering water
or the high places man-wrought from stone and glass to mountain’s majesty compare,
With ease He straightens the crooked and He shrivels the insolent.
With booming report He lights the flame within our hearts,
With thunderous cry He slakes the thirst of body and soul.

In the recitation of these words, by mortal lips, sprung from immortal thought,
We gather and celebrate all that has been, all that is and all that shall ever be.
For the Lord of the Springs stirs the waters of the firmament as the waters of the Urth,
And by His command, bade both stars and men to move into being and out of being.
So has it been since the world was young and the age of men was still a dream.

In the beginning, all things were within the ancient Waters, unknown save for Him,
The firmness of the earth, the heat of the flame, the toil of man were but dreams.
A Will moved within the Waters; a sovereign voice that swept over the face of the Deep.
What was once All desired change; but to create, that which filled the emptiness,
Had to diminish His infinite being to make room for all the would be.

Out of the merest portion, the Lord carved the seed of matter from His vastness.
The ancient Waters shook with sorrow as the Lord diminished Himself but an iota.
In this first motion, the Lord planted the seed within the ancient Waters and begat all.
With a stirring from the depths, the Deep began to distill into parts yet unknown.
Layers formed and gained name as what was yielded took shape from the Maker’s Hand.

Water, a mundane mirror of Tides long passed, settled down into the Deep Places
Earth, heavy as sorrow and filled with promise, sank down to form the foundation
Fire, brother to moon and sun, reached up from the Urth to try and touch the Heavens
Wind, buoyant as joy and cold as scorn, speeds upwards until it distills into the Night
Ether, or pure darkened Void, congeals in the Heavens to form Starlight and Sun.

The Lord clenched upon Himself to yield to the budding creation and the new Urth,
Burgeoning with new forms and music, shook with the effort and suffering of His Will.
His infinite being, as it pressed inward, yielded shards and sparks of the Divine.
The Lord of the Springs and Father of All, witnessed as these sparks entangled in Matter.
From this selfless act, Life was born out of both triumph and sorrow, glory and pain.

When the first tribes of man walked the new solid ground, drank of sweet water,
They could not know of what He had hidden or what battles fought for them.
With Matter and Soul upon the face of the Urth, new shapes came from their mix
Some beautiful, some dire; all original and wild in the eyes of the Lord of Water.
And from the darkest of these things, those of sharp eye and cunning, came Foes.

These leviathans of Ether, manifest of hunger and desire, grew large upon
The myriad other shapes upon the face of the Urth, those peaceful and beautiful.
It was for these that the Lord had to craft the blade of Justice from Himself
To cast down the hungry beast of matter and soul to the Deep beneath Earth and Wave.
Locked beneath the pillars of the Urth, the leviathans waited and Man knew no sorrow.

The beasts remained within their prison as Man prospered upon the world,
In those days, industry was not hidden from men - day’s work gave a year’s wage.
With abundance and no fear, the Lord spared Man from the pain He had born.
Man moved across the face of the World and built great dwellings toward the sky.
The Lord was silent and watched his Children grow, a Father within the Waves.

The lands grew loud with the chatter of Man, stopping their ears to the sound of Water.
Questing for the Voice of the Lord, they dug into the Earth but found only treasures.
Their picks dug deep, desperate to hear the song of the Waves again but to no avail.
Striking down, they found Water in the Stone and praised it for being a gift.
Others dug deeper still and uncovered dark creatures that had been locked away.

In secret, they contracted with the Leviathans of the Abyss, seeking the Skills
That had yielded the World; out of their loneliness for the Voice of the Lord.
They stood upon their Towers and knocked upon the Sky, loneliness twisted
Into the sin of Rage and its twin Denial, screaming for the Creator to answer.
The Lord of the Springs, in sorrow revisited from the first day, replied.

Their Towers crumbled.

Omg, I love this...you write so well...

Just to note, but I'm not sure if you already took it into account:

The Lord of the Springs didn't exist as the "Lord of the Springs" before Dav's escapade. Before then, the culture was monotheistic, but probably more along the lines of Cyclist with reincarnation, etc. I'm not sure who or what they'd have called "God" before then.

Basically, Dav went on a pilgrimage, found the springs, drank the water, had a vision (psychotic episode or miracle?) and came back to establish the Order.

I think it's perfectly valid if the god before the "Lord of the Springs" did live in a mountain and the rest - but would he be referred to as the Lord of the Springs? Maybe it's completely valid because myths have a habit of being rewritten to be understood in modern context, so it might be totally cool if we look at it that way. Just something to ask and think on?

There's a mention in-game about the Fountis/Quelle/Source of the Lord of the Spring's power. It's in the Saint Aelwyn Cathedral and written in Eld in an inscription:

Take the chalice, fill it up. Draw the moonwell in the cup. Power
fills thee when you drink. Pour the blessing that you seek.

Most churches are supposed to have a Fountis Major or Minor depending on the size to represent the spring.

Others dug deeper still and uncovered dark creatures that had been locked away.

This line in particular rubs my thought processes wrong, though the rest of it is quite AWESOME.

In TI theme, the dark creatures are all extra-planar, leaking through in the form of magic. Logically, but never mentioned, is the possibility that the Lord of the Springs' Fountis/Quelle might be extra-planar as well.

Thanks for listening to my thoughts and opinions, and thanks a million times for such an awesome display of talent and additions to TI!

Kinky,

First off, thanks for the feedback. In spite of my many years of play on TI, I have rarely contributed literary pieces of this nature in anything other than my own game development projects.

The answer your concerns, I'd like to say that Remiel's work is somewhat modified from the pre-Davite Order in order to achieve the history changing Charter. There is going to some appeal to what I see as Dav's ideals - nationalism, divine right of kings and anti-magic. Beneath that, there is a great deal of unchanged (albeit the Divine Name and its permutations) mythology of exotic and foreign nature. I am sure that a great deal of this will be cut and altered by the subsequent Synod's.

To answer your concern about the 'digging' motif, I would suggest the connection between depth and the psyche/underworld. When the ancients could not explain the extra-planar nature of their gods, they placed them in the most extreme locations imaginable - the Sky (a god in its own right) is extended in the realm of Heaven and the Earth (also a great god) is extended into the Underworld. Given how matter was perceived in its elemental form (at least in my understanding of the time), spirit was in there with fire, water, earth and wind. The lightest of the five, Ether would fly upwards and congeal in the firmament to create stars. This 'ascent' of the infinitely fine mist of element was tied to the ascent of smoke upon the pathway of fire into the sky, etc.

In other words, because I am horribly prone to rambling in circles, for the sake of an oral tradition which was supposed to be able to be understood by near anyone, placing extra-planar deities 'underground' or 'in the sky' was far simpler.

I am of the hope that the LoS is sort of like the Hope left behind within Pandora's box. Amid the numerous extraplanar demons, the early faithful found succor and wisdom in the mystery of fresh water from stone. I have been reading a collection of essays on Mystery Cults or Mystery aspects of religion, and have become very interested in how religion operates on the concept of the unknown. The "mystery" of this faith revolves around the Cup. Remiel's tradition would place it along the lines of the engraving on the Church. Drawing the moon into the cup and partaking of a blessing. In Dav's tradition, it is a re-enactment of Dav's revelatory experience in the wilderness. Though I have done my best to keep Davism away from being Catholic or Christian, a good example of what the modern ceremony of the mass would be a unification of the Old and the New (Judaic and Christian) elements in the mass. The Cup that is raised is not only a symbol of Dav's partaking of the waters, but also all of those Orderites before him, and the Pagans before them.

As you with see in the remainder of the Scripture, one of the things I am pushing for is the Spiritual Life; a lesson wrought when the Tower fell. If one lives too much in the corruptible vessel of the body and does nothing to cultivate the spirit, then their life is meaningless. The LoS or deity breaks the Tower and places Man in a world that is not easy, but is not entirely cruel. The salvation in this world of corrupting flesh and fleeting lives is the Water and the faithful submission to those that speak for it/carry it.

Wolfie

Their Towers crumbled to their foundation and became as merest, humble earth
Thus touched by the Voice that had sparked all of creation’s glory.
The tongue that had dared chide the Lord and presume an absence BROKE
And Man became men as a flock becomes naught but sheep when the shepherd flees.
The sin of pride became forgotten, broken as the towers that had been erected.

The Seas, once sweet and giving of life, filled with the Tears of the Lord;
With such sorrow filling the land, man first began to know thirst.
The Lands hardened and no longer yielded food readily to the grasp of the hand.
Into these hard places, the Leviathans retreated - for their hunger could not be sated
On the simple life but only the affront and greed paid to the Lord

A few, it is said, carried the curse in their veins across the desolated Urth.
The tribes of men, some lost, but those we know remained upon it.
Be sorrowful to be of this race, but so Hope SPRINGS from the darkness.
Strive to be Righteous and sleep in Honour’s lofty bed or be revisited!
Wrath from a Tidal voice, issuing forth in gentle succor unless angered.

What doom’d the towers to fall upon the ground struck industry from man’s hand;
Where a year’s wage once wrought from a day’s work, now the Lord hid it.
Within the fields, the grounds became rough and only opened by the plow,
The fish leapt away from the sight of man, and the game became fearful of his step.
This was the penance to be paid and the crucible of cleverness and hearty spirit.

Within the cradle of the earth, the roaming tribes rediscovered the freshness of Water.
A tranquility poured from the hills, soothing the wounds of this new, far simpler life.
Those that partook of the Water understood that it was a gift to aid them.
A gift given so that life would go on! A chance to drink a draught of the spirit!
For in their previous life, they had lived only as corporeal vessel to Greed and Ambition.

Of all things in the world, beautiful and cruel, drink of this sacred place and remember.
The Voice in the Water that wounded Himself so that you might be.
The Voice in the Water that born the distillation of light and matter.
The Voice in the Water that wielded Justice against the Foes
The Voice in the Water that gave us the chance of a life of the Spirit.

Behold, the buoyancy of His spirit lifts us from the woe of Earth!
Behold, the departure of its Grandeur is but a return to His greatness!
Behold, when His spirit flees us, we are not but descending matter!
Behold, the succor given to those that Work and Proclaim upon the land!
Of all things in the world, beautiful and cruel, drink of this sacred place and remember.

Do not discredit those that are your betters by word or by fell deed;
Or the fortresses of the heart and those of stone would be only sand.
Swear no oath out of your power, either by the Lord or His creation;
If you do, you relive the Presumption of ancient times and are doomed as They.
Remember the lesson of those before - the body is a vessel, only, for that far greater.

I'm not sure how I feel about the shift from 'history' to 'modern voice telling you to do something'. In any case, I think this is the best literary work we have seen on Davite religion yet, and I hope my own tiny concern doesn't dissuade you from doing such a superb thing for the game.

Overall, I really do believe we need this sort of texture so people have something to quote and ruminate on when going about their IC lives. Being a Davite feels a bit empty - though no more empty than the other religions, I suppose.

K.,

One of the reasons I posted the WIP here is to get feedback! Even if I'm the one writing it, work like this should never be a one person job. If we can get our own 'Synod' together, maybe we could put together a 4th century SC version of the scripture instead of my 2nd century "horse's mouth" version.

The Great Burning has provided a good reason behind a lack of hard scripture, but it, like you said, makes things rather empty. The masses that I have been through over the years always varied quite a bit when they occurred. Standardizing that might help, or at least standardizing the dogma behind the ritual action. It is all well and good to say that most people on the known Urth are good Davites, but I think that has boiled down to 'not mages' in some cases. Deference to the Church, the royals and their servants is one thing, but I think a little more meat behind it would aid in justification. Granted, it has been hard-wired into the culture for a few hundred years, but unless there was a fundamental understanding behind it - a spiritual reasoning that would override concerns of the body (status, money and toil) - then people would eventually revolt.

I remember a paper I wrote many years ago about what I called the 'repentance engine' concept that the Dark Age European churches relied on to keep everyone in line. Philosophically, the earth was the center of the universe like the heart of a great machine. The work that the peasants did supported the nobility and the clergy. These possessed of the right of rule of land and souls, respectively. The nobility and the clergy, invested with the natural or divinely given ability to rule effectively kept the machine running. The product of this theology was meant to be two-fold, penance for the flesh and praise for the divine for all eternity like a choir of angels. With sin held over the heads of the peasants, no ability to advance, being bound to the land (a hold over from some of Constantine's mandates), and the divine right to rule, the system was designed to function continually without deviation.

If I was getting constantly terrorized by mages, then I do not think I could sleep at night unless I believed in something greater than the death of the body!

This has not received nearly enough attention for how awesome it is... clearly, you are an astute student of history and theology, and I think it reflects itself in a rich addition to the mythos! I hope to see this ingame in the near future!!