Tue Feb 10, 2015 7:43 pm
The cult of Wee Jas in the Pale/Jasidan Guild (variant)
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The cult of Wee Jas in the Pale/Jasidan Guild
The proscription of non-Pholtine religious practices and organizations did not come down all at once, but developed over time.
Stages:
1 Sacrifices to Pholtus required of all inhabitants. Evil cults (Nerull and Incabulos by name, others added later) outlawed.
2 political struggle; cults of Wind Gods (Oeridian Agricultural Gods) vs Pholtine church *
3 Pholtine victory in political struggle, increasing marginalization of Wind Gods and other “pagan” cults
4 series of orders effect confiscation of temples, bans on sacrifices to other gods, expulsions of “pagan” clerics, and so forth.
*The local cult of Wee Jas allied with the Church of the Blinding Light during the struggle against the Wind Gods.
That old alliance may help to explain why a certain bizarre loophole in the law books has never been corrected: the cult of Wee Jas is legally considered to be not a religious group but a secular guild. Its priests stand in the law as “clerks”, a category broad enough to encompass most literate professionals. Wee Jas herself is never referred to as a goddess in official Theocracy edicts and codes, but only as a “Power of Law.”
The Jasidan guild handles tasks that pious Pholtans cannot perform without afterward undergoing extensive ritual purification: washing and embalming corpses, digging graves, studying necromantic magic useful against undead, and so on.
Members of the guild make offerings to Pholtus as well as to Wee Jas. Travelling away from the Pale, they usually conform to local customs when such do not conflict with their own traditions.
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Notes on published source material, cultures/ethnic groups, and gods:
Wee Jas being worshipped in the Pale comes straight out of the Dragon Magazine article that first details her (beyond the line of info in the 1983 boxed set).
I am including the Oerdian Agricultural gods among the "pagan' gods of the Pale, as per the LGG.
I stick with the 1983 presentation of the Pale when it comes to Oerids and Flan. That is, the two peoples have mixed quite a lot. (Guide , page 13, describes them a FO, with the majority mixed in stock)
This differs from the presentation in the LGG, where the two groups have tended to remain separate and follow different religions.
The greater degree of intermarriage in my Pale means that the cultures have mixed more. Thus being a ''pagan'' isn't related to being ''Flan.'' It's about gods and traditions.
Indeed, most of the gods worshipped by ''pagans'' in both my version of the Pale and in the LGG are not of Flan origin.
The cult of Wee Jas likely entered the region from some other country, a place with Suel heritage. I haven't decided where just yet.
LGG also lists Phyton.
I'm not sure how I want to handle that. I do note that he's Suel in origin.
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