I'm going to talk a little bit about the development of religion in this conworld. More specifically, I'm focusing on the religion of the Garanih, the region which includes Axanak, Parvary, Gahal, Walesa, and Guney.
(This is a map of the present day. Regions in all caps are the names of countries, while the rest are regional names. Note that these overlap; Guney is used for the island of which the country of Guney occupies the northern portion, Andej also refers to the mountain range which predominates in the country. Gahal is currently a region, but for most of the period under discussion was independent).
Religion, and culture more generally in the Garanih must begin with Guney and Guneyic religion. The earliest accounts we have of either come from the semi-mythical realm which began the 1st Era [1] but the first really substantial accounts come from around 400 1E, where the northern half of Guney Island begins to be historically attested. Northern Guney island is well-watered and fertile, with a warm tropical climate comparable to South Florida. The result was a high population density, including a large urban population for the time period as well as dense rural populations too. The Guneyese grew rice and kept chickens, and supplemented their diet with large amounts of seafood. They also invented writing, which is how we know about their life and culture. Their society was patriarchal, but women had some power, particularly when married, as they had equal rights to their husband's properties; rich women outranked poor men. Additionally, traditional rules of inheritance meant that all children, regardless of gender, inherited a share of their father's land and possessions; this meant that Guneyic society over the documented course of history had a large amount of population pressure. The dense population meant that the Guneyese were organized around small city-states which frequently fought minor wars.
In any case, these city-states shared a common language and common devotional practices, centered around a small cast of deities:
Owa--father of the gods
Mabüö--mother of the gods, goddess of night and the moon
Argök--god of the sun and light, god of war
Kügnü--goddess of fire, agriculture, fertility [2]
Maŋa--goddess of rain and pastoralism, intellectualism
Nihus--god of the ocean
Religion in ancient Guney wasn't something you believed; it was something you did. Core to Guneyic religion is the concept of the procession; a rite practiced on the 9th day of every week [3]. Processions lasted all day, varying in time depending on the deities worshipped. For example the goddess of fire, Kügnü, had her procession at high noon, in the heat of the day, while Nihus, the god of fish, had his procession in the early morning, at optimal fishing times. Which procession one took part in varied based on what was important to the person at any given moment; a fisherman who hadn't caught many fish might go in Nihus's procession, but after abundance returned he might march in a different one. Processions usually consisted of marching to a centrally located temple site, usually accompanied by drums and tambourines, as well as offerings, usually flowers [4] and food among the rich.
Aside from procesisons, there were a few other common religious practices. The countryside was scattered with small shrines, and stopping by them with flowers or grasses was common practice. Additionally, nearly everyone went to the island of Karati, a tiny atoll whose lagoon was the birthplace of the gods.
Like most traditional religion on earth, the Guneyese had no concept of exclusive adherence; thus they happily borrowed deities from neighboring peoples. Maŋa likely came from the pastoralist people who inhabited the dry leeward southwest of Guney island, for example. But in their early years the Guneyese had relatively little contact with their neighbors outside of small-scale trade, and thus relatively little theology was borrowed.
Among elites, there was an increasing belief in what later generations termed "reciprocalism" -- namely the view that the world consisted a force, commonly called
Morbi, or Power. Morbi is asymmetrical; in the view of these early philosophers the gods had lots of it, and that was the primary difference between them and regular people. Balancing the power in an appropriate way was of great concern to these philosophers; in effect this became the theological justification for offerings, which were the best human recompense for divine favor.
Processions and Power intersected with the Guneyic vision of metaphysics. In this view, Gods were not omniscient nor omnipotent, but rather very powerful beings who traveled across the human world in processions of their own. Their power came from human offerings, and these offerings also could draw attention and intercession from the gods, who may have been elsewhere in the world. After death, good people would go march with the gods in processions of ecstasy and altruism. Bad people would remain as malevolent ghosts until their wrongs were resolved.
The Rise of the Cult of Kügnü
However, around 700 1E [5], Guneyic religion rapidly became defined by the worship of the fertility goddess Kügnü and her sons,
Arkat and
Degün. This shift's origins aren't especially clear. Kügnü was always popular among farmers due to her association with fertility. It is believed that a long famine in the 680s, combined with plentiful harvests in the 690s, led to increased appreciative devotion. Recent research has also emphasized the popularity of Kügnü among elite women, whose devotion influenced their politically powerful husbands. Regardless, the amenable elites of the various Guneyic polities adopted the fanatical devotion which defined Kügnü worship. These included day-long processions, often accompanied by Dionysian celebrations of mass drinking, as well as instances of "Kügnü possession," in which women, usually elite married women, would "become" Kügnü and issue blessings and occassionally prophecies, as well as participate in frenetic dancing and long, frenzied processions.
None adopted this way of thinking more zealously than the city-state of Gambos, which combined Kügnü worship with an imperial ambition. Gambos made short work of Guneyic city states, and declared itself as the Guneyic empire, marching north to the island of Walesa, and on to Gahal, then called Guney Gaahal, or New Guney. The people there enthusiastically adopted Guneyic religions, customs, and language. Only Western Walesa, or Wale, retained its original language and culture. The long-running problem of increasingly small and marginal inheritances and overpopulation was solved by conquest; those with poor inheritances could move to Walesa or Gahal and have a large estate [6]. Guneyic culture spread extensively in Axanak as well as the language of prestige even without full-on conquest; the popularity of old Guneyic as a lingua franca is the reason why Proto-Axanic is undocumented.
It's worth noting that the rise of Kügnü did not mean the removal of the traditional gods. Rather, they lost much of their luster as objects of devotion, and became primarily of theological interest--much like many early important gods of Hinduism.
Arkat and Degün had unique roles in the cosmology of Guneyic religion. Arkat in many ways was associated with Argök; theological commentaries of the time explained this away as Argök being another form of Arkat. Arkat's profile is as the god of the sun as well, but this was extended into the sky as a whole, and light. Degün, on the other hand, was mostly purloined from the Wale goddess of the moon, albeit gender-flipped. Degün rules the sea with his tidal abilities, and is traditionally seen as the patron of arts and aesthetics. The opposition between these two led to an increased interest in dualism, and the two gods became common shorthand for opposites.
This period also saw an increased interest in eschatology as well, perhaps inspired by indigenous beliefs in Gahal (reinforced by the fact that many of eschatologists were Gahalese). Many theologians began to view this world as the latest in a series of cataclysmic world-remaking events, in which everything was redistributed by corrections in imbalances of Morbi. Here the gods and people were both results of the current era--they did not precede its making at the beginning of time. Opinion on the preceding eras, before the cataclysms which produced the current one, were mixed; some believed it was run by powerful spider-like creatures, while others thought that humans had gills and lived in the sea. Often these preceding eras were allegorical or thought experiments rather than overt declarations of clear facts.
This was how things stood around 980 1e, before everything would be changed by a profound political and philosophical challenge. Coming up: Wale Skepticism.
[1] History in this world is commonly divided into eras; four as of the present day. The current year is 614 3e; the 1st era lasted from 1 1e to 1650 1e, while the 2nd era lasted from 1 2e to 421 2e. The 3rd went from 1 3e to 1104 3e, so there have been 3,789 years in the historical calendar, though as said above much of the first few hundred years of the 1st era are semi-mythological in attestation.
2] Guney Island has a fair few volcanoes, and the fertility of volcanic soils was well known to the people of the region.
[3] The people of this world generally divide the year into weeks of 10 days.
[4] This was and is a common custom when visiting anyone's house as well; it has spread with the spread of Guneyic religion.
[5] Men could be possessed by Kügnü too. Traditionally Guneyic society, while not homophobic per se, was highly disapproving of male "submissiveness" or "effeminacy"--Kügnü possession provided an acceptable justification for either, whether socially or sexually.
[6] Although the economic aspect of Guneyic imperialism is very important, there was a theological aspect too--a large polity could offer large offerings to gods, and on a large scale.
Let me know if this makes sense, or if there are things I should clarify! When a conworld sits in your head for long enough, it's easy to leave out information that may seem obvious to you.
