Black Feather

The Black Feather, also known as the Crow Cult, was the cult of Coltaine, the Black-Winged God, that first arose on Seven Cities after the fall of the Chain of Dogs outside Aren.The God is Not Willing, Chapter 17, EpigraphThe God is Not Willing, Chapter 11, US HC p.191 Within a dozen years, it had become the dominant religion on the sub-continent, although it had quickly entered a period of schism with numerous subsects, many of them secret and decidedly gnostic.
Temples of the Black Feather could be found in every major settlement. Symbols of the cult included the eponymous black feather as well as X-shaped forms wrought in silver and gold and gilded red-gold butterfly pendants and brooches.The site of the the Fall was a place of pilgrimage. Temples commonly housed Wickan cattle-dogs.
The majority of the faithful came not from the military, but from the poorest of the Malazan Empire's population--specifically the indebted, the benighted, the lame and the sick.
For a time certain subsects of the cult kidnapped soldiers to be sacrificed in a ring of the destitute in the poorest quarters of Aren. Although these events were eliminated by bloody reprisals from local authorities, the ultimate effect was to spread the faith like wildfire beyond Seven Cities to all the territories of the empire.
The Malazan Military despised the cult.
==Rituals==
On Genabackis, temple priests ate flies and constructed wings of black feathers. One day a year, one of the priests leaped to their death from a high tower and then their corpse was nailed to a wooden cross and left for the crows to pick clean.The God is Not Willing, Chapter 13, US HC p.216
==Notes and references==
Category:Religions