#antitheisim

[theabsentartist]

The Skull and Crown Conspiracy

The dynasty of Alghastic was established over 1000 years ago. This was done through the elimination of a powerful nation to the North who practiced a religion that required significant ritual sacrifice. The city that would become Alghast was established by refugees led by Alghast himself. Alghast led a campaign upriver to defeat the rival nation but only a fraction of his force,  including his second in command/now pregnant lover, ever returned. The mother ruled as regent over the rapidly growing city of Alghast, named after their fallen leader, until the daughter came of age. Iohas of Alghast became the first queen of the kingdom, and her rule was marked with blood and faith. She conquered all lands from Bheala  to Fenhaus on the river's edge. For ten years the kingdom flourished under Iohas, until the Ossics arrived.

The Ossic cult was a new religion birthed in the city of Jeisser, east of the river Fesah. The Ossics preached a form of ancestral reverence combined with a militant antitheisim. They raged against the gods for leaving them to the will of the great evil in the north, who raided and pillaged, and sacrificed countless innocents. They propped up the heroes of man, primarily Alghast who had fought the enemy and freed the whole region from the tyranny of the raiders.

Many in Iohas' kingdom remembered her father, and those that didn't had heard the stories of his heroism from their elders. Iohas, in an attempt to limit the destruction the zealots were causing, adopted the faith. She rejected the gods and allowed the Ossics to burn their temples down, to be replaced by tombs and catacombs dedicated to the worship of man.

This story is a lie. One perpetuated by the line of Alghast and the highest of the Ossic clergy until even they had forgotten the truth. Alghast did not defeat the enemy, for there was no enemy to defeat. The northmen had given themselves to their god in a mass sacrifice. Dreams of the red river haunted Alghast, who then led an expedition north on the river. As they journeyed farther and farther north, Alghast's learned his dreams were reality. They sailed up a river of blood until they found themselves in a massive black lake. Something stirred beneath the inky blackness, it spoke into Alghast's mind. It made promises and threats, spoke blasphemy and curses, it told of an absent god and petulant divine children, it lifted the shroud of stars above and revealed the infinite empty stagnancy beyond. The gods of Alghast, and his father,  and his father before him, were nothing but points of light in infinite space. The man who was Alghast was broken,  ripe to be rebuilt by the thing below. It spoke again. It promised a place in existence, a permanence, a safeguard against the encroaching waves of unmake. But this is not a gift that is given freely. It required...sacrifice.

The Thing Below laid out the price it was asking of Alghast. The birth of a kingdom, the rise of a faith, the death of gods.

The message was relayed by Alghast to his forces, some 500 men and women on his small fleet. Some resisted, some threw themselves to the waters below, some were thrown themselves. In the end there was sixteen. These would be the messengers of the new faith. The Thing Below made Alghast lay with his  lover, to produce an heir to a kingdom that did not exist. And finally the sixteen drank of the black waters, thick with the blood of those who served before. They were bound to It now. They served so they would survive.

Isalda, companion of Alghast, took four of the sixteen with her back to their city. They and their eventual families became bound to the crown. Alghast took the remaining ten with him, to a small village nestled in the shadow of the mountains called Jeisser. Once in Jeisser, Alghast claimed to have seen the gods, they had turned away from mankind and left them alone on this world to die. He was burned alive by the villagers for this blasphemy, the fire burned so hot that no one questioned the black bones underneath the flesh. One by one, Alghast disciples made the same claims, and they were burned in turn. But before the last could make his claim, a villager came forward confessesing he had seen the vision too. And from there the cult grew. A doctrine was slowly built around the black bones of the nameless martyrs, as the people came to pray to their forefathers and folk heroes and these new saints, over their old gods.