Faith of Ikoyo

The Faith of Ikoyo is a polytheistic religion in central and southern Auseka. It is the second largest religion on the continent, with over 6 million believers.

The faith has a curious relationship to the Faith of Nesreyrar. Both are based on largely the same ancient mythology, but their founders and first prophets revealed very different truths from those seeds. This has led to at times peaceful coexistence, when the similarities between the two religions were dominant, and at time bitter conflicts when the differences were more pronounced.

For the past century about, relations have been peaceful, but affected by a deep distrust and intense verbal conflicts. In fact, in the last thirty years alone, scholars from both sides have produced texts and proclamations proving the other faith as a disfigured, wrong version, in volume easily dwarfing the actual amount of holy texts on both sides.

Gods

Where Nesreyrar saw six and ten gods, Ikoyo discovered a deeper truth, or so he claimed: The gods are many, but they are grouped into three pantheons and those within the pantheons appear to be the same to humans who are not sensitive enough to see the subtle differences. This is because the gods choose to appear to mortals in human shape, even though their true shapes are inconceivable to mortal minds. They might appear sometimes as man and sometimes as woman, leading to the illusion of six gods.

• The Jardos are the gods of all that is alive and good. Order and nature, life and hope.
• The Karmak are gods of strength and power and all its expressions. Growth and expansion, battle and truth, challenge and victory.
• The last group, the Tossa are gods of the inner world and humanity. They support honor and love, beauty and art, song and dance as well as philosophy and magic.

There are close to a dozen gods in each of the pantheons, and they are accompanied by countless half-gods and other lesser entities.

Prophets

Ikoyo was a lesser noble from Cyrinia (today part of The United Provinces of Sila), their seat near the coastal town of Phaies. He was a scholar and explorer and became fascinated with the teachings of Nesreyrar early on, before they were very popular, as he had stumbled upon them by coincidence during his travels into the north.

For a time, Ikoyo became a follower of Nesreyrar, and one of his close friends. But when Nesreyrar went to the north, Ikoyo had a vision of his own and went south instead, where after two years of contemplation and writing, he began to preach his own version of the faith, claiming that Nesreyrar had mis-interpreted important aspects of the gods. The two men never spoke a word again, but both became popular and gained more and more followers.

Unlike in the north, Ikoyo brought others to his side and trained them as prophets. Where Nesreyrar remained a lone figurehead until his fatal expedition, Ikoyo soon became one of seven prophets, though always the most important.

(TODO: more about Ikoyo and also the other prophets)

Temples

(TODO)

Priests

Priests following Ikoyo dedicate their lives to one of the pantheons, and after a three-year initiation period will focus on one or a small number of gods within it. Male and female priests will follow different paths, expressing the male and female aspects of their chosen pantheons through their own words and actions.

And important aspect of priesthood within the Faith of Ikoyo is that Ikoyo ordained that all priests must be grounded in ordinary life. Every priest has to learn an ordinary craft for at least two years before he or she can become a full priest. While this has become a ritualized formality in larger cities, the priests routinely help out their communities with labour where needed in villages across the lands. There is even a stonemason's order within the priesthood, responsible for keeping and developing the secrets of construction of the large temples.

This page is still incomplete and missing content or details that are planned, but have not been added yet.

Rules and Traditions

(TODO)