Religious Organisations

On Cults

An excerpt by Archivist Thalen, Lorehold College, Strixhaven

Cults devoted to the Ashen Gods are as varied and contradictory as the deities they revere. They emerge in both the margins and centre's of society, taking root in places where doctrine falters and mystery thrives. Some are ancient orders with codified rites and crumbling temples; others are little more than fevered mobs, whispering to bones and shadow.

It would be a mistake to think of these cults as monolithic. Even those who serve the same god rarely agree on meaning-one sect may venerate Chronovorus as the ticking heartbeat of creation, while another heaps offerings of teeth beneath rusted clocks, swearing the god speaks in the spaces between seconds. Both might be right. I think-yes. I think both might be.

To many, these cults are threats-dangerous outgrowths of superstition and ungoverned magic. But what are threats if not truths wrapped in the wrong language? In studying them, I have come to see them not as aberrations but as reflections. Fractured mirrors,
yes, but mirrors nonetheless. They preserve rites we were never meant to lose. They protect texts we dare not read. They chant in tongues that still know.

They are dangerous. Oh, yes. Dangerous and necessary. Without them, much of what we know-or think we know-would remain hidden, or worse-silenced. And I have heard what silence sounds like when it breathes. I do not condone their methods. But I cannot, in good
conscience, ignore their significance .
... They know things.
I just needed to see for myself.

Known Cults

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from "Groups & Factions/Religious Organisations" and !"Groups & Factions/Religious Organisations/Religious Organisations"