THE BROWNIE BELIEFS |
The Brownies of
Caelereth
have many patterns of worship that are quite distinct from the other races. Human
and elven anthropologists divide these beliefs
into five main Brownie religions, some of which can be further divided into
local and regional sects. These five main Brownie religions are described in
detail below.
Spiritism. These Brownies worship
literally thousands of gods. For them, every rock, every tree, every stream and
pool, mountain and valley has and is a guardian spirit. These spirits must be
appeased or bad things will happen, like a branch falling on your head or death
from drowning. Stories told around the fire, passed down from generation to
generation, of the exploits of these spirits keep the belief in the spirits of
individual natural objects alive. They live in constant fear that unappeased
vengeful spirits will harm them in some way. Appeasing most spirits is simple. A
word of recognition, request, or thanks, a small chunk of meat, a pretty feather
- all can be offered and seem generally to be accepted. Perhaps two-thirds of
the Brownie population of Caelereth worships the spirits in some way, most
commonly in the Vale of Brownies and in Akdor.
Sacrificing to Evil Spirits. Worship
of the evil spirits of the deeps is very common among the Rat
Brownies which live in the maze-like sewers deep under bustling cities.
Anthropologists have learned very little about this belief system, knowing only
that the spirits of the deep demand a constant stream of blood in sacrifice,
preferably of sentient beings. This bloodthirstiness of the objects of their
worship locks Rat Brownies into a ceaseless war, with the sole objective being
to capture members of other tribes and peoples to sacrifice in dark ceremonies.
Perhaps one out of twenty Brownies, almost all Rat Brownies, follow these dark
sects.
Avaism. One Brownie tribe, the Milken
of Milkengrad, worships the Dreameress Avá
the Beautiful (an elven Goddess). This tribe became severely disillusioned
with the spirits of nature, which they felt had abandoned them. They learned to
extol the Dreameress from the same elves that brought them to Milkengrad. The
Milken are the only Brownies that worship Ava, and they account for perhaps one
out of twenty of the Brownies of Caelereth.
Agnosticism/Atheism. The Brownies
that live on the edge of the Etherial Void
see a fusion of technology and magic as the solution to all possible problems.
Maintaining contact with many worlds, they trust heavily in their own abilities,
and see gods or spirits, if indeed any do exist, as largely irrelevant. They
believe that if push came to shove, any highly gifted and imaginative sapient
could dream up another entire world out of the Etherial Void which underlies all
the worlds. These Brownies make up perhaps one out of three hundred of the
Brownies of Caelereth.
Followers of the First One.
The members of the smallest Brownie sect call themselves the
followers of the First One. They maintain
that Caelereth and everything in it was made purposefully, lovingly, in
much the same way a potter shapes a beautiful vase from a shapeless lump of
clay. They believe that this world-maker made every world that is, and that he
desires the inhabitants of these worlds to know him personally, much as a parent
would wish to have a good relationship with his/her children. Perhaps one out of
a thousand of the Brownies of Caelereth are followers of this sect,
totaling less than a thousand, scattered throughout Caelereth.
Information provided by
Greybark
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