Church of Titanius

Titanius, god of light, the creator, the only one. Or at least, that’s what the believers believe in.

The religion was founded by the High Elves, and now three countries (Kingdom of Froturn, Kingdom of Etrand, Earldom of Etrancoast) have it as their state religion. The main reasonfor the religion’s popularity might be that it is “for everyone” - it theoretically forbids all sorts of racial discrimination, but the reality is different: the “invitation” to join the fold is mainly for Elves and Humans, although there are some races which they gladly accept or just merely tolerate - such as Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings, however there are some races which are deemed as incapable of worshiping Titanius: for example, Orcs are considered too "barbaric and demonic"'' to be accepted. But then again, it's not like the orcs would want to convert anyway - except for a few civilized ones like Hens Londers.

The head of Church is the Hierophant. One of the most important laws regarding the church is the Yanus Protocol.

History
The Church of Titanius has been the state religion of the Kingdom of Froturn ever since it has existed. It is said that before the unification of the High Elves by Queen Salvia the Great, each and every High Elven tribe had their own local deity with a different name, and the High Elven religion wasn't actually monotheistic but monolatristic.

After Salvia unified the realm, she did not ban the worship of the local deities, instead, she proclaimed that her own was the superior one, and all the local deities were lesser gods. Some of the more loyal clan leaders renounced their own deities, "demoting" them to mere saints, wrongfully deified prophets or prophets-turned-demigods; while the more fierce clans continued to be staunch worshipers of their own deities, reluctantly paying lip service to the official stance that their god was subservient to the all-father Titanius.

After Salvia died and Froturn degenerated into a collection of warring states ruled by petty warlords and their clans, there was only one thing - other than language and culture - that was keeping the High Elves of Froturn together: religion. All of the warring clans, to justify their claim on the title of King of Froturn, renamed their own local deity to Titanius, claiming to worship the one and only true god. Eventually, by the 9th century BEKE, Froturn was re-unified, both in secular and religious matters. Local deities were banned, the Titanius worshipped by the King of Froturn was proclaimed the one and only true god - everyone who disagrees would be branded an infidel and burned on the stake.

The newly unified state of Froturn cemented this newfound religious unity by compiling a holy book, the Book of Visions, adopting the Yanus Standard of the Classical High Elven language as their holy language. New courts of law were formed to enforce religious laws, promote Orthodoxy and discourage Heterodoxy - the precursor of the Inquisiton. The Yanus Protocol was signed to regulate relations between the state and the church.

Fast forward to six centuries later, to the reign of King Naeredus the Missionary - the Titanist religion starts spreading beyond the borders of Froturn. Titanist missionaries visit Etrand, and while they initially failed in gaining the high amount of converts they anticipated, in the late first century BEKE, a tribal leader named Corlagon converted to Titanism, unifeid the then-pagan tribes of Etrand during Corlagon's Wars of Unification, forming the Titanist Kingdom of Etrand.

Three centuries later, the Word of Titanius has spread ever further - Etrand has annexed former Hulra, while the Principality of Artaburro was founded in formerly unclaimed territory. While previously at odds with the Cult of Nature, due to the historical competition for converts, after the Demonic invasions of Artograch, the two religions have entered good relations - they borrowed ideas from each other, borrowed arts and symbolism. Cultural exchanges occurred, the two religions borrowed a lot of concepts from each other. It was the the golden age of mixed arts, when Wood Elven, High Elven and Human music, paintings, sculpting and architecture were joined as one, when Titanist churches were decorated with flowers previously only found in Dragoc, when the people of Dragoc gladly drank Froturnish wine.

During the 8th century AEKE however, this religious harmony was starting to rot as Queen Cairi of Dragoc began sending missionaries into Titanist countries to convert people to Naturalism. This caused a crisis in the religion, as many religious leaders began wondering what has made their flock so susceptible to being stolen away by a foreign religion. To make matters worse, King Bryant I of Etrand and King Cael'mus of Froturn took action to reduce the Church's power, supposedly in the name of religious tolerance, but in reality with the motivation of increasing their own royal authority and wealth at the expense of the Church.

King Cairbré I of Etrand in the late-middle 8th century has banned foreign missionaries and did what he could to hand back the power to the Church that his father had discreetly and gradually stripped away from them, giving the Inquisiton the green light to do as the please. A little less than one century later King Ivahó of Froturn did the same as Cairbré, banning missionaries, bringing religious relations between the Church of Titanius and the Cult of Nature to an all-time low.

Sevaral priests believe that the actions of Ivahó and the late Cairbré (and his successors) are little more than symptomatic treatment for the problem at hand, and the reforms have to be made to eradicate the problem at its cause, to make the Titanist religion appealing and fresh again - however, with the limited intellectual freedoms within the church, proponents of reforms often have to lay low, because - quite counterintuitively - in this time of perceived crisis, it is much easier to get accused of being a heretic and burned on the stake than centuries ago.

Religious doctrine
According to religious doctrine, in the beginning there was silence, darkness and chaos, any anything which was born in those times got immediately destroyed. This period was inconceivably long, but somehow, Titanius was born, who is the personification of light and order, mighty and strong. Titanius fought the darkness and chaos, and won. After his glorious victory, Titanius started creating the world: the lands, the stars, the waters. After that, he created life: plants, animals, creatures. After creating life, he then created the Proto-Elves, gave them souls and eternal life, and also their own Eden: an island, where the people were always happy and didn’t have any problems. Their life could have been perfect, but darkness and chaos wasn’t fully destroyed yet, and has worked with all its force to destroy Titanius and his created world. Evilness has corrupted the souls of the Proto-Elves, who destroyed the Eden succumbing to the temptation and turned away from Titanius. The god of life could not have allowed evil to be dominant again, so he punished the Proto-Elves, and altrough he didn’t take away their soul, but he made them mortals and started to torment the proto-elves with natural disasters which fored them to leave the island. After the left the island, Titanius destroyed the Eden. Altrough the people have forgotten about Titanius, Titanius hasn’t forgotten about them. He led them to the continent of Artongrach. He also created the Angels, whose duty is to help the people to turn back to the right direction. It has been very long since the Proto-Elves split into 3 races, but the High Elves were successful to turn back: they saw the light and Titanius adopted them. The god of light promised that those who start to go on the path of Light are rewarded with afterlife in Titanius’s New Eden. So more and more children of Titanius turned back to him, and regardless of how many people did they split to, Titanius always accepted them gladly. But evil hasn’t been sleeping for long, corrupted and damned souls, who turned to the Darkness, became demons and swore an oath to destroy everything. Altrough many people believed that the evil demons will be victorious, Titanius sent his strongest angels: the seraphim. And with their help, the demons were defeated.

The Church of Titanius believes in a mixture of reincarnation and heaven-and-hell. They believe that people go through a time of paradise as a reward or a time of suffering as punishment before they eventually reincarnate. Nortiimus is equated with hell, and it is believed that the Demons are little more than physical manifestations of the most evil and wicked souls.

Without enough space to write down everything, we only wrote the creation myth in a simplified version, and in addition to a creation myth, Titanius also has laws, which determine what is good and what is evil. We don’t have space to write down all of them, only the most important ones:


 * Respect Titanius and never curse his name, never blaspheme
 * Do not live a selfish life, serve the community of Titanius.
 * Order should be the most important in your life, never give in to temptations of chaos.
 * In order is broken, do everything you can to restore it.
 * Respect everyone who is devoted to the Path of Light.
 * Try to convince people to start following the Path of Light.
 * If someone turns to the Darkness, punish him/her for the blasphemous act.
 * Use all your strength to destroy the creatures of chaos and darkness.

Attitudes towards sexuality
Reproduction is seen as the primary function of sex - while recreational sex is not considered a sin in itself, believers are still discouraged from indulging in it in excess.

Homosexuality is considered a sin, and before the invention of Sodobane, people were actually burned for being homosexual. After the invention of sodobane, religious perception of homosexuality has shifted from viewing it as a deadly sin to viewing it as a "sinful disease" - a curable disease, for which it is a deadly sin to reject cure, Sodobane.

Heresy
Most of Titanius’s worshipers are part of the Church of Titanius: this means that they assist in the building of new temples, they play Church tax to the priests, and they attend rites in the churches. In addition to that, they also pray to Titanius at home. This would be alight, but there is also church corruption, exploitation of believers, and sometimes the Inquisition appears, which has only innocent victims most of the time. So this is why the cult of “outcasts” is born. Those are the ones who believe that the Church has not right to exist, and only the faith matters. The Church persecutes those who belong to the “outcasts”. The outcasts usually hide in old sanctuaries and ruins, and their rites aren’t led by a priest, instead an average believer. Although they do not call themselves “outcasts”, instead they call themselves “True Believers” or “Orthodox Titanists”, but those of the Church regard them as heretics and and (wrongfully) associate them with demons, that means they use their Inquisition to purge Etrand and Froturn of them. The truth is that an average “outcast Titanist” is usually much more religious than an average Priest from the Church. The most famous “outcast” community is the Order of the Eternal Crystal Flower.