Ketherism

Ketherism is the established religion of Kalgachia. It is a gnostic evolution of Minarborian Shrub-worship which is itself a variant of the horticultural belief system practised by the Deep Singers, a race of genetically modified beings who once lived in central Brookshire. Certain elements of Ketherist liturgy and dogma have also been absorbed from Benacian Judaism, as practised in antiquity by the population of Ashkenatza and its descended disapora.

The Ketherist Creed

The precepts of Ketherism can be summed up in the following assertions:

1. All human souls originate in an immaterial realm of eternal balance and harmony known as the Garden Ketheric.

2. A portion of the Garden Ketheric is being infringed upon by the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption, a cancerous realm sustained by the psychopathic totems of powerlust and reductionism which must constantly expand to survive. The entire material universe is a manifestation of the overlap between these two realms.

3. The Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption prevail the easiest where physical matter is sparsest; all causes of suffering and human vice ultimately originate in the heavens - conversely, salvation and human virtue originate from beneath the ground.

4. By the efforts of the Ketherist faithful a portion of the material world known as the Garden Physical, corresponding to the territory of Kalgachia, has been wrested from the agents of the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption (foremost among whom are the gods of other Micran religions with a certain emphasis on Cedrism). All other parts of the material universe, enthralled to those agents and their subordinate Archons in varying degrees, are known as the Tumultuous Wastes.

5. The seeds of the Garden Physical were sown by agents of the Garden Ketheric known as the Benefactors, divided into the Deep Singers and the Liches, who were immune to the very limitations of life and death respectively (control of these two phenomena, coincidentally, being kept from humanity's grasp by the two highest gods in Cedrism, Mors and Viviantia). The ascent of the Benefactors over Brookshire, culminating in the messianic rustling of a sentient shrub called Minarbor who led millions of followers to escape Shireroth and establish Minarboria, lay the foundation for humanity's final reconnection with the Garden Ketheric.

6. With the fall of the Benefactors, the continuation of their mission relies on the initiative and work ethic of the faithful masses they left behind. Supplication and genuflection are the vice of the feeble and submissive. The departure of the Benefactors and the subsequent collapse of Minarboria was a necessary event to cull these individuals and advance those of more pro-active faith.

7. The spirits of the faithdul dead return to the Garden Ketheric, although some maintain a spectral presence as its agents. The Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption will be destroyed when a critical mass of humanity becomes immune to its deceptions through Ketheric gnosis. At this point the material world will cease to exist, and the souls of all virtuous humanity will be returned to the Garden Ketheric whence they came. The souls of the wicked dead end up in the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption, although some maintain a spectral presence as its agents. The annihilation of that realm, however, entails the annihilation of all who are bound to it.

8. The chief weapon of the Ketherist faithful against the agents of Irredeemable Corruption, and their human servants in the Tumultuous Wastes, is jollity in the face of cynicism. A jolly soul is a saved soul.

Social Role

The practice of the Ketherist faith is guided and promoted by the Church of Kalgachia, which maintains a place of worship in every Kalgachi town. These hold religious services daily, the principal service being held on a Byeday (except those in the Lieutenancy of Bergburg which are held on a Thanksday in deference to local sensibilities). Attendance at Byeday services is scrupulously monitored by the officiating clergy and filed against a central record maintained by the Church of Kalgachia for each Kalgachi citizen. This record is frequently called upon by organs of Kalgachi state and private employers, with any gaps or other inconsistencies having a disastrous effect on the subject's career prospects and/or welfare eligibility equalled only by the absence or loss of an Urchaginka. Although the attention of church congregations to the finer points of liturgy and sermon cannot be guaranteed, the consequences of non-attendance generally ensure that at the very least, Kalgachi citizens make themselves present for church services once a week and absorb a decent amount of Ketherism's memetic power through subconscious and sensory means - indeed certain phases of the liturgy are tailored toward those who are fast asleep in the pews.

People of Nezeni ethnicity, being the only surviving descendants of the Benefactors in Kalgachia, are generally inferred to have a holy quality about them. This elevation of social standing, a well-ingrained phenomenon dating from their Deep Singer ancestors' exclusive stewardship of the Minarborian Church, is demonstrated by their almost complete domination of the Ketherist clergy in the modern day - although the Minarborian prohibition on other ethnicities ministering to the population no longer stands in Kalgachia, allowing sufficiently dedicated clergy of other races (most commonly Lywallers due to their innate jollity) to advance through the Church's ranks.

Liturgy

-more to come-

Monasticism

The Church of Kalgachia operates a wide network of monasteries across Kalgachia, although these more commonly resemble large villages or towns - built half-underground in the usual Kalgachi fashion - which are closed to all but serving monks. Although the monks' primary function is to cultivate their link with the Garden Ketheric from the silence of their underground cells and thereby obtain useful revelation for the Ketherist faithful, many spend a portion of their day working in one of their monastery's industrial or agricultural concerns. Others look after the administration of their monastery's subordinate parishes, work which constitutes the bedrock of Kalgachi provincial governance.

The Kalgachi monastic tradition is perhaps the most salient difference of the Ketherist faith from its Minarborealist origins, the latter having considered any form of spiritual seclusion to be an inherently selfish and degenerate habit amounting to an act of spiritual theft from the pervasively social Garden of Minarbor. Ketherist monasteries retain the general idea that revelation should be shared with the wider faithful, but rather than frontload such insights through church liturgy as occurred in Minarboria, monastic Ketherists disseminate the greater part of their spiritual treasures through occulted and memetically encoded means via the Troglodyti, ostensibly to imbue the Kalgachi people with Ketherist gnosis before the Archons of Irredeemable Corruption can intercept, co-opt and pervert the message. This is most often achieved through selected organs of the Kalgachi media although it can be manifested in almost any sensory form from architecture to horticultural displays to municipally-funded wind chimes. In return for providing this service the Troglodyti are permitted to recruit, transfer and initiate the more insightful Ketherist monks into their own ranks at will - a will which occasionally contradicts that of the monk concerned, although the subject is generally blessed with enough intelligence to know the value of co-operation.