Religion in 

This section covers religion as practised by the inhabitants of Jannuyani, Kilalammu and Chaigari, all speakers of various dialects of the Jannuyani language.

Religious History

What beliefs these nations followed before the Engsvanyali conquered them is a matter of conjecture. They do appear in the histories of the Fishermen Kings as allies against the Ssu, and in Bednjallan accounts as savage raiders.

It is likely that holy sites on high hills and mountains have been part of their worship for millennia. The Engsvanyali colonised these sites by putting impressive temples and monasteries on top of them which served as fortresses and administrative centres, the deities themselves being integrated into the Engsvanyali pantheon as ‘aspects’ of one of their twenty gods.

After the collapse of the Engsvanyali Empire the Temples declined in importance and power returned to the clan chiefs. The modern temples are often ramshackle affairs, built and rebuilt out of rubble left over from the Engsvanyali period. The difficulty in communication in this area has meant that the temples have tended to go their separate ways, and the gods now worshipped sometimes have little relationship to Pavar’s pantheon.

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Valley vs. Mountain

The temples in the cities of the valley are rather small compared to equivalent institutions in the Five Empires and the clergy there never have a place on the clan councils or in the courts of the great chiefs. Often a given temple will be pretty much ‘owned’ by a clan or group of clans, the clergy there being little more than ‘house priests’ and schoolmasters. The city temples are less well regarded than the hill temples. These dot the foothills of the valleys and are larger grander affairs, more akin to a monastery. Here you will find genuine remnants of Engsvanyali wisdom hidden in fragmentary libraries.

Higher in the mountains a more elemental strain of religion is found. The Engsvanyali were never powerful here, and only the hardiest and most mystical of missionaries stayed among the people. Many of the shrines here are visited by the softer lowlanders - there is more rleigous merit the greater the difficulty of the trek – but the clergy are often drawn from the local tribes and are illiterate. Their oral traditions can be very interesting, some have memorised whole lost Engsvanyali textbooks and passed them down the generations. How accurate these are is hard to say.

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Aspects and Avatars

The Jannuyani speakers do not really believe in Aspects. These were invoked by the Engsvanyali to justify their religious colonisation of the area and served to unify distant countries under the administration of one temple hierarchy, but since the collapse of the empire each temple has enshrined just one version of one god which are now treated as separate entities.

In areas where the more powerful states border or rule Jannuyani speaking areas there is a definite ‘nationalist’ felling that the doctrine of aspects is merely being used to try and dominate the local populace. This in Jannu’s western ranges the Saa Allaqiyar Priests of Light are trying to convince the locals that their various sun gods are merely aspects of their deity (ultimately derived from the Engsvanyali Nallál), and therefore, that they should pay tithes to their temple. Likewise in Hekellu the temple of Thumis has a shrine to Thek as if he was an aspect of their own god, which most of the local Jannuyani speakers steadfastly ignore in favour of their own Thek temple on a hill some tsan out of town.

The Tsolyani give some credence to idea of Avatars – mortals who are temporarily possessed by the spirit of an aspect of a deity and achieve powers and abilities beyond the human norm. Dhich’une was a recent very famous example, and there have been others –the Nine Inner Aspects of Ksarul are said to have living avatars hidden away somewhere by the temple, certain priestesses of Dlamelish are said to embody certain aspects of their goddess during rituals and Mirusiya was once attacked by an avatar of a demon servitor of Vimúhla (see the novel Flamesong).

The Jannuyani take this idea far more seriously. Several shrines have living avatars of their deities in residence and ‘avatars’ regularly spring up among the population of wandering lay-priests who continually wander from one pilgrimage site to another. One current example is The Young Master’ of Chaigari, considered by his followers to be an avatar of Hùrgmāk, as was the great Téngguren Churitáshmu, The Iron Fist of the Peaks.

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Demons

The Jannuyani have no truck with demons of any kind. The legends of their gods mention allies of the same kind as those mentioned in Tsolyani equivalents, but while a Tsolyani priest may deem it acceptable to call upon the other planar followers of his god, the Jannuyani do not. Even the summoning of a benign being such as a Mighty One of the Pearl Mists to help combat a plague is regarded as trafficking with evil and the unknown and is bound to end in disaster. The Jannuyani term for demon, shretek, is also applied to the Ssu and a few of the nastier animals; these creatures are regarded as ‘unnatural’ and to be exterminated.

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Stability and Change

The Jannuyani cultures do recognise these different strands among the deities, but do not worship Change deities. They appear in myths and legends as enemies of the true gods, and on occasion propiatory offerings are made to them in times of great disaster, but it is very rare that one finds a sect or shrine deliberately and openly worshipping a ‘change’ type deity.

The Jannuyani sects and temples have heard of the Concordat, but do not always apply it to worshippers of gods of the other alignment, especially where the deity is a legendary enemy. For example, any worshipper of Thek discovering a worshipper of Jrakka will consider himself fully justified in killing him out of hand.

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Pilgrimages

Pilgrimages in Kilalammu can be long or short. The shortest of all are from the townsman’s door to the door of the town shrine, a walk of a few minutes, the longest to a bleak mountaintop monastery 500 tsan distant. On any pilgrimage the person must remain silent, or they will have to return to their starting point and do the whole thing over again.

The frequency of pilgrimages varies – the short walk to the local ‘lowland’ shrine may be weekly or even daily, a longer trip of a day or two for a special holy day to a hilltop temple may take place once a year, and some sects ask that everyone make a really major journey to an especially holy place at least once in their lifetime.

The silence lasts from a designated starting point, usually a boundary stone on the edge of a village or town with the mark of the god upon it, and ends at a similar designated spot on the edge of the grounds of the shrine. The person must wear a cloth headband of a holy colour appropriate to the deity for the whole trip. If one comes across someone or a group wearing such headbands it is considered rude to address them unless there is especially vital information to be imparted.

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