A few things...

[erin_hime]

Sorry for posting so much lately to the comm, but, hey, it has to be used at some point. In any case, my muse has been smacking me to post these up for a while now, so might as well humor her, and attempt it.

The first order of business is something I started pondering about today. Actually, I should say seriously pondering, because this has been

Comments

[callisto_chan]

I'm okay with whatever you decide to do with Freolic (though any new costume changes for Geoffrey might take some getting used to ;P) and I'm okay with the concept of "guerra" (if you want Latin forms, I saw three words that might fit: belligero -are [to wage war]; bellum -i n. (old form , duellum), [war, fighting]; or bellicus -a -um [of war , warlike]).

That being said, I'm going to be blunt and think you overstepped yourself with religion. If you don't want Sumika, Laulea, or Freolic to have religion/gods/beliefs/what-have-you, then fine, that's your call. But in that vein, Caelestis, Azibo, and Baldurnan belong to their creators, and if they want to have gods/religion in them, it should be their decision.

I had planned from the beginning for my kingdom to have gods (now whether or not they are real is another thing, but for argument's sake the people believe that they are); hence Antigone being a priestess; hence there being temples and families heavily involved in religion and the temples. Your idea, that they have gods but don't believe or worship them...well, I'll be frank, I'm not following the reasoning behind that. Why build elaborate temples to house the gods, with slaves and attend to them and such...if they have gods they don't believe in? To me they have gods and they are worshiped and sacrificed to regularly, and if I want to have that within my kingdom, it should be my choice.

(But, as an aside, Ariadne would fit perfectly with their conception of gods. Vengeful and needing to be placated with regular sacrifices or else she'll smite them...who knows, they might have a temple to her :P).

[erin_hime]

You are so lucky. I was totally going to bash you out, mostly because I was really irritated by the fact that the office manager made me wait until someone came back from lunch to leave, despite the fact that we were dead, and I had to wait an extra twenty minutes before I had to leave.

However, anijel 's response made my muse go whoo, and thus, I have a solution.

But next time, please remember this is my universe, my world, my...people. This is not Callisto-chan's Melohdia. This is Erin-hime's, and when I world build, it is a rule, not a suggestion, and you just need to deal with it. I'm sorry that your so used to working in set or your own universe, but you really need to learn to just deal with what I say. I do in fact run this world, and it's universe, so what I say goes. It's not God-modding, it's universe building, and it's my God-damned universe, no matter what you think. Not Callisto-chan's. Erin's.

That being said, way back in ancient Caelestis, when the people were first starting to come over, they started building elaborate buildings, because they were just starting to learn architecture, and were showing off. Eventually, having built everything else, they started on temples, because the Greeks/Romans were building great Temples and such, and the Caelesti didn't want to be showed up. They didn't have any gods, though, because they were like the Azibains and the Baldurnans in that they knew their gods couldn't hear them. So they were just places for the magical to convene and preform their magic on people.

At some point, the people coming into Melohdia pointed out that the Greek/Roman temples gave theirs names like "The Temple of Zeus" and the like. Still wanting to be Roman, the Caelesti invented names for their temples, like the Temple of Evariste (Shinzui: "Hey, that names sounds like your, Eva! Oh, and you know who else has a similar name? Eva Peron. And, you know, I think you look like her, too." The next days, Shinzui's body was found in a ditch...>.>), and the Temple of some other god I don't know the name of. Still, at this point, they were still just magic places, but also at this point, the Caelesti are starting to realize that Ariadne might have a connection to Earth, and thus, their gods.

So the people would go to the Temples, being magical and all, and pray to Ariadne, mostly just the newer Calesti who still believes in gods. Very slowly, especially after Melohdia was closed off, the people stopped praying to Ariadne, and started to think they were praying to whatever gods the name of the Temple was.

Basically what I'm thinking is that Caelesti religion is like Christianity/Judaism and Islam. They both worship the same thing, but viewed differently. The different gods of Caelestis are just Ariadne ("Dude, seriously, stop praying to me. I can't do anything"), but they all think they are different things. Not specifically different aspects of Ariadne, like her ability to give life or whatever, but just Ariadne by a different name.

This way, they worship something, but not anything really different than the rest of Melohdia. And its not the common Caelesti who worships the gods, either, as most of them just know Ariadne and the fact that she's a spirit, not a goddess. Just the really weird actually becomes priests and priestesses (and by odd, I mean the people who take a look at the religion, and go, hey I want to join that. And of course, their parents would be proud, although they know it's just fake and such.) Most go to their local temple to get word to Ariadne, but they humor those devoted to the religion.

Or something to that effect. You could just take my idea and run with it, changing bits and pieces or whatever. But that's my two cents. (sorry if that doesn't come out clear...I was sort of adding in things as I went...not specifically a concrete idea.)

And it's totally guerra. Because it's funny. :P And I think you know why.

[callisto_chan]

The different gods of Caelestis are just Ariadne, but they all think they are different things.

That part got me thinking that perhaps each 'goddess' is actually derived from an epithet they gave to Ariadne (ex: as Ariadne Evariste she would have been seen as helping with birth/life/whatever, as Ariadne Something-else, she would be the patron of some other particular aspect) and within time they were eventually confused? It would work for their female gods; maybe the male ones were perhaps originally old deified kings/emperors/statesmen that kind of became lost to history?

Speaking of that, would it be okay to have deified emperors and ancestral worship? The latter isn't really "gods" in any sense, more like familial devotion, even though there's a family shrine and sacrifices would be made (If I remember correctly, small offerings were made at mealtimes; kind of inviting your dead ancestors to eat with you. I got the concept from the Roman "genius", which was basically dead ancestors guarding their descendants, later took on a role similar to our concept of guardian angels).

I don't know about the emperors; I was thinking something along the lines of the Imperial cult, but that might not necessarily be popular, or only with a certain class of people.

[erin_hime]

Mostly what I was thinking was that they worship the 'gods', but always start their prayers with "Oh Great Spirit", although they have no clue why. Tradition really. But your way works as well. Especially since having the two names would get complicated after a while, so they would just start calling her by the one name as not to get them all confused. The gods I was actually thinking that it would simply be the exact same thing as the goddesses, except the people choosing the name decide on a male name because they want to 'worship' a male instead of a female, and that got lost in translation.

I don't think any of the ordinary people would be deified. Like I said, it would just be the one person they were praying to without them realizing it. The exception, of course, would be what's-his-name, the first Uni guy, who was probably deified before he headed back to Earth (or possibly because he headed back to Earth). I liked the idea of him being deified, because that would explain why people see Evania as a goddess instead of the priestess she is. What's-his-name would probably be like the royal god person or something, you know, because he's the only one who wasn't really Ariadne that people worshiped?

However, that doesn't mean that the people wouldn't have shrines and make offerings to their ancestors. I mean, hell, they worship a spirit instead of a god, they must have some concept that their ancestors walk among them or something. It just wouldn't be a god worship, but more like spirit worship. Or something. And most likely an ancestor that died within your lifetime, as I'm sure hosting your entire genealogy would get...tedious after a while. :P

The way they worship is really up to you. My deal is just saying what they believe, since I do technically own the people of Caelestis until you create them as NPCs. Does that make more sense?

[callisto_chan]

If they had an awareness that Ariadne was female I didn't think they'd create male names for her, hence the suggestion of deified kings/emperors filling part of the void, but thinking about it I suppose they could have created male "counterparts" for their female deities, which in most cases would simply be a male form of the original deity, which later evolved a seperate, contrasting set of attributes. (Like Anput being the feminine aspect of Anubis; there's a Greek example too but for the life of me I can't remember the name; I think Poseida and Poseidon?)

Yeah, I had an idea that Alexandros was very important to the Caelestians, though I haven't figure out exactly what he represents, besides the obvious one of being a protector for Caelestis' Uni.

Nah, the great thing about the ancestors is that after a while they could all be lumped together as "spirits of the Julians" or something similar. :P I'd have to figure that out, if venerating people who died within the person's lifetime was something seperate than venerating your entire genealogy. :P

Yes, that makes more sense; I'm sorry about earlier.