Spirituality and Religion
The blending of elements of scripture and research. The Draconic Pantheon is widely accepted as truth across Terra, not only by the faithful but also by many magi and contemporary scholars. While direct empirical evidence of the gods remains elusive, the influence attributed to their power, both historical and metaphysical, is difficult to dismiss.
Scriptures of the Old
Across Terra’s diverse cultures, the Varkadian Faith, centre on the veneration of the Draconic Pantheon, remains the predominant religion among sentient species. Its origins trace back to lower Gurdal, in Bravoure, where its foundational texts were composed. Initially known as the Scripturas Veritatis (“scriptures of truth” in Eruditan) and later as the Scripturas Veteris (“scriptures of the old” in Eruditan), these writings form the core of the faith.
This body of literature, composed in lyrical form, narrates the creation of the cosmos, the emergence of the dragon-gods, the development of Terra’s civilisations, and the roles of lesser celestial beings. While many followers consider the texts a historical and theological record, a significant scholarly tradition, particularly among the magi, regards them as mythologised interpretations of more mundane events. The Scriptures of the Old thus occupy a space between reverence and critique, standing as a cultural landmark in Terra’s ongoing negotiation between faith and empirical inquiry.
Mythos
Storms of Creation
During the primordial event known as the Storms of Creation, the cosmos underwent a violent transformation that gave rise to the Titans, dragon-gods representing elemental and divine forces. Among them is Varko, the alabaster-scaled sky deity, whose form and presence are likened to the upper atmosphere itself.
Dracuuria, revered as the Mother, is credited with shaping the natural world through her divine breath, forming mountains, forests, and plains. D’hjaak and Bishet, conjoined twin dragons, symbolise duality in harmony, embodying the coexistence of opposites within a unified being. Guan, the horned dragon, represents victory and perseverance, serving as a mythic figure of resilience. In the oceanic depths, Sabys, a serpentine aquatic titan, functions as guardian of balance within the natural order.
Collectively, the Titans are venerated as custodians of Terra’s elemental and metaphysical foundations, their roles preserved in myth, scripture, and oral tradition across cultures.
Varko, the Solar God
Dracuuria, the Mother
Birth of Terra
In the celestial domain known as the Domain of Stars, the dragon-god Varko, sovereign of the skies, perceived the void of the cosmos as a canvas for creation. From this vision, he formed Terra, a world teeming with potential, and Luna, its satellite counterpart, to serve as its eternal sentinel. To guide this new realm, Varko summoned his divine peers, assigning each a sacred role in shaping and maintaining the world.
Dracuuria, his consort, was entrusted with forming the natural world, mountains, forests, and life itself. She chose Uno as her prodigy, an early mortal species, to carry forward her legacy, and thus created the Erudites. Sabys, the preserver of life, was appointed caretaker of Terra’s waters, ensuring the conditions for early life to flourish.
D’hjaak and Bishet, conjoined entities of balance, were tasked with instilling harmony and unity among the emerging sentient lifeforms. Guan, a symbol of perseverance and faith, was charged with inspiring resilience and hope in the mortal heart. And Morxairen, the silver dragon of Terra’s dawn, was appointed as the Moon, eternal watcher and guardian of the world, his light a silent vow to protect Terra from the shadows beyond.
However, the harmony did not endure. The Erudites, despite their divine origin, grew prideful and strayed from their intended path. Their rebellion fractured Dracuuria’s purpose and trust. Heartbroken and prepared to give up on the world, she instead encountered the fornalfar, a descendant of Uno, whose nature held untapped potential. She had her next prodigy.
Yet the fornalfar, though gifted, eventually grew divided and covetous. Distressed by their discord, Dracuuria questioned their inability to live in unity. Determined to try again, she turned to Primo, a new mortal prototype, and from him came humanity. But once more, her hopes were met with disappointment as humans repeated the patterns of ambition and conflict, even worse so this time.
On the verge of relinquishing her final hope, Dracuuria encountered Primulus, a smaller, sturdier being, a relative of Primo. In it, she saw a new possibility. From Primulus came the dwarves, a race that embraced joy, truth, and communal harmony. They built a society rooted in celebration and craftsmanship, free of divine interference.
At last content, Dracuuria withdrew from mortal affairs, satisfied that her vision had taken root in the world she helped shape. In this renewed world, Varko's vision persisted. His leadership guided the early shaping of civilisations, and under his gaze, Terra grew.
Sabys, the Preserver of Life
D’hjaak and Bishet, the Twins of Unity
Guan, the Horned Dragon
The Silver War
Harmony among Dracuuria’s children was never destined to last. The elves, fractured by internal conflict, turned upon one another. Humans became mired in perpetual war. The dwarves withdrew into hidden strongholds beneath the earth. And the sithrax empire rose, ruthless forgers of an empire driven by conquest.
In this age of chaotic expansion, Morxairen recognised the great potential of mortals. He sought to improve them with his power, convinced he could forge unity. Motivated by his love for the Mother, he imbued several mortals, elves and humans, with the ethereal threads of the cosmos, magic. He ignited what would become the first generation of magi. His actions, however, were deemed a severe transgression by Varko, whose retribution was swift. Morxairen was cast into the Chaos Dimension, a formless void beyond the Fabric of Realms.
Morxairen, the Silver Dragon
Ghydra, the Mortal God
Khor, the Chaos Demon
Gods Against Erudites
Around -6,000, the Erudites declared war on the gods, igniting a brutal conflict that pitted the arcane against the divine. In their pursuit of autonomy, the Erudites engineered a device capable of killing gods, a construct later referred to as the Deus Occisor. But the weapon turned against all mortal life on Terra. Faced with an existential threat of their own making, the Erudites sought an uneasy alliance with the gods. Together, they confronted the unstoppable force they had unleashed.
Though the being was ultimately subdued, the devastation left Dracuuria in a state of grief and fury. In a final act of judgment, she released the Deluge, a cataclysmic flood that submerged most of Sarvamsaha. Though their cities lay in ruin, it was not the Deluge that had erased them. Their disappearance had another cause, one unknown even to the gods. Their absence was total, their legacy reduced to silence, leaving behind only fragments of their once-great civilisation and a mystery that endures to this day.
In that moment, the gods resolved to withdraw. No longer would they intervene in the affairs of mortals. From then on, they would remain distant, watchful guardians, bound by sorrow and experience, leaving the fate of Terra in the hands of its remaining inhabitants.
One Final Act
In their absence, the fractured mortal world fell into disarray, adrift in the chaos of divine silence. Seeing the suffering below, Ghydra, son of Dracuuria and Varko, pleaded with his father for permission to restore peace. His request was granted, but at a cost: Ghydra would walk among mortals not as a god, but as one of them. To fulfil this purpose, he was compelled to renounce his godhood and immortality, taking on a mortal form to guide fractured peoples toward balance and reconciliation. Ghydra is the father to all mortal dragons, drakes, and wyverns that walk Terra.
Redemption in Chaos
Beneath the skies where dragons once soared, a dark force stirred from the depths of mortal despair. This entity, known as Khor, emerged as the antithesis of the celestial order, a demon-god embodying the hidden avarice and malice within mortal hearts. Those who succumbed to Khor’s whispers were transformed into grotesque reflections of themselves, consumed by unholy fervour and unleashing ruin across Terra.
In this time of peril, Dracuuria, Mother of Creation, implored Varko, King of the Gods, to lift the exile of Morxairen, believing only he possessed the insight and strength to counter the spreading corruption. Moved by her plea, Varko relented, and Morxairen was released from the Chaos Dimension.
With divine sanction, Morxairen descended into the conflict, waging war against Khor’s followers. He drove them into the subterranean depths, banishing their blight from the surface of Terra. His triumph marked a turning point, and with it, he was welcomed once more into the Domain of Stars, his exile rescinded and his place among the divine restored.
Lesser Deities
The dragon-gods are said to have given rise to numerous lesser divine beings, many of whom emerged beyond the doctrinal boundaries of early Varkadian Faith. As worship expanded and diversified, later scriptures incorporated these entities into the broader celestial hierarchy, often describing them as progeny or emanations of the primal Titans. Among these deities are:
Amarynth, the Goddess of Beauty
Vicarinth
The Devas
Mort, the Lord of Death
Sun and Moon Gods
The Crimson Star
Among the lesser deities once recorded in pre-canonical texts is the Crimson Star, a divine figure stricken from the Scriptures of the Old. Known as Ava, she is believed by some traditions to be the illegitimate offspring of Dracuuria and Morxairen, though alternative interpretations suggest the influence of Khor. Ava was originally tasked with the divine mission later assigned to Ghydra, long before his emergence.
Descending into the mortal realm, Ava lived among humans in mortal form, teaching reverence for nature and the inherent dignity of life. However, her guidance was ultimately rejected. Driven by ambition and conflict, mortals turned against her, and despite her warnings, the world descended into war. Overcome with despair and the failure of her mission, Ava ended her own life, a divine tragedy largely erased from official doctrine.
Sects that revered Ava were cast out of the Varkadian Faith, with many exiled from urban centres. In exile, these groups formed a deep bond with the natural world and gave rise to the druids, individuals said to draw their magic from nature itself or from the lingering echo of Ava’s divine essence. Though references to these druids persist in scattered traditions, their existence remains largely unverified, occupying a liminal space between folklore and faith.
Death
In Terra’s spiritual cosmology, it is believed that the souls of the departed journey along a luminous river of stars, ascending toward the realm of Divine Justice. There, a final judgment is rendered. The soul is either granted passage to the Domain of Stars, a plane of celestial harmony, or cast into the Serpent’s Maw, the gateway to the Nine Layers of Hell. Within these infernal depths, condemned souls endure cycles of tribulation until their essence is purified, allowing for eventual reincarnation upon Terra in pursuit of redemption.
However, the Underworld is unyielding. Souls that attempt to flee their fate succumb to spiritual decay, losing form and memory. These corrupted remnants are retrieved by celestial custodians, known as Cleaners, and cast into the Hollow Earth, a purgatorial realm known as the Waste Plane. There, some fade into eternal stasis, while others, driven by wrath and despair, evolve into the malevolent beings known as demons.
A rare few have eluded this fate by slipping through unstable portals within the Shadow Realm. These escapees, called voidwalkers, are irreversibly transformed, cut off from divine and infernal order alike. Neither alive nor fully dead, they are regarded across Terra as aberrations, cursed beings forsaken by both the gods and the damned.
Prophecy
Legends speak of passerine birds as vessels of prophecy, their songs said to weave the threads of fate itself. Their trills and warbles form the subtle fabric of destiny’s unfolding. The shadow of a golden eagle sweeping across the land is viewed as an omen of death, while the graceful flight of swans, rising like spectres against the sky, heralds rebirth and the healing of cosmic fractures. Such omens, deeply embedded in the Varkadian Faith, represent only a fraction of the broader symbolic language used to interpret the will of the divine.
At the threshold between mortal life and the celestial planes lies the Halls of Prophecy, a hidden realm known only through whispered myth. Existing in a liminal state, this ethereal sanctuary is said to be where divine forces scatter glimpses of potential futures. Access to this domain is limited to those of extraordinary attunement, mortals or immortals touched by fate, vision, or divine lineage, who may briefly enter this sacred space and glean truths from the ever-shifting weave of what may come.
Within these hallowed halls, time flows with an otherworldly rhythm. Moments stretch and collapse. An entire eon may pass within the stillness between two breaths. Here, the past, present, and future intertwine in a fluid continuum, a timeless ballet visible only to those capable of piercing the veil that separates existence from insight.
Dragonborn
In the intricate tapestry of Terra’s mythology, the Dragonborn are revered as the Children of the Gods, mortal vessels chosen to embody a fragment of divine essence. The rite of naming a Dragonborn is a sacred tradition rooted in an age when the echoes of the dragon-gods still reverberated through the peaks and valleys of the world. Prophecy holds that in eras of looming darkness, when the shadow of war spreads across the land, individuals infused with draconic essence would arise, ordained to wield powers beyond mortal comprehension.
At such turning points, the most devout clerics, those attuned to the celestial harmonies, are seized by visions. These prophetic trances unveil the identity of the chosen one, the mortal destined to bear the title of Dragonborn.
The naming rite itself is a convergence of the three primal forces that govern the Fabric of Realms: the natural, the sacred, and the arcane. The natural realm prepares the mortal, refining their spirit through trials and transformation. The sacred realm weaves a divine tether, binding the soul to the celestial. The arcane, wild and ineffable, tears through the veil of reality to open a conduit to the Domain of Stars, the divine cradle from which the dragons once descended.
As recorded in revered scripture, this convergence summons a fragment of Ghydra’s soul, the first mortal dragon to walk among mortals. Descending like a falling star, this divine spark merges with the mortal vessel in an act of profound unity. Thus, the Dragonborn is named, a living conduit of ancient power, bearing the cumulative strength and memory of those who came before. In times of greatest peril, they stand not only as protectors, but as the embodiment of hope itself.
Only those bearing the blood of the dragon-gods may be named Dragonborn. Throughout ancient history, these divine beings, often walking Terra disguised in mortal form, have sired children with various species, leaving behind a hidden lineage scattered across the world. The presence of draconic heritage can be revealed through an ancient ritual of bloodmagic, a rare and closely guarded practice that detects the dormant essence of the divine within mortal veins.