Church of Fondeiro

The Church of Fondeiro was a satirical experiment dated from the year 3032 meant to dispel the need for religion in divine magic. Founded in the city of Fol Lossulli in Ienza, the church's intent is easily explained by a breakdown of its very name. In keeping with Nicta-slio tendencies of creating compound words to convey new ideas, "fondeiro" can be divided into "funding" (fonddi), "god" (eio), and "bullshit" (rocci). As a result, the intended meaning of fondeiro could be read as "it's bullshit to fund a god" or "funding god with bullshit". The Church of Fondeiro was created both in response to growing thoughts that divine magic could only be derived from a god, and consequently a religion, and the emergence of religions requesting money from their believers to fund the construction of holy sites or pay clergy. As a result, the Church of Fondeiro sought to demonstrate that not only could divine magic be derived from anything given faith, but also that then-modern religions were worthless at best and predatory at worst.
The Church of Fondeiro had four core doctrines, which were as follows:
#Money is actually the source of divine power, hence why the "false idols" of other religions seek money to be donated to them (to acquire power).
#Business juggernauts are powerful because they have money and consequently alter the universe with divine magic, even subconsciously.
#It is in all of the world's nature to pursue money and financial gain specifically because of this underlying association with money and divine might.
#By conserving money, followers of the Church of Fondeiro can amass divine potential themselves and exert divine influence.
In keeping with the focus of the church, initially, the founders refused any and all donations even made by people who supported the satirical element of the "religion". They also had demonstrations where they used coins and bills as a divine focus for casting spells. Eventually, the Church of Fondeiro became increasingly popular and chased out many religions from their home country of Ienza and "culturally adjacent" countries such as Nicta. Historians credit the demise of organized religion in northern Sualtorre to the Millennial Calm, but tend to regard the Church of Fondeiro as either the inevitable beginning of this downturn (created out of a culture already starting to scorn religion) or as the spark that lit the eventual anti-religion flame.
In the year 3098, however, the Church of Fondeiro had been waning in popularity for several years as it became increasingly divorced from its original cultural context, and its founders were long dead. The religion was picked up by mostly impoverished individuals who took the doctrines of saving money as a means to undo their current situations, and they pooled their money together in joint accounts to essentially combine their divine potential. When this faith gave them a small measure of divine magic, allowing them to use spells to create food and water without anything at all, the Church of Fondeiro lost its satirical edge and became a religion in its own right that waxed and waned in popularity depending on the economical situation of wherever the church took root. The name Fondeiro was retroactively deemed to be the name of a philosophy that connected material wealth to spiritual power and divine potential, and the rest of the religion was "reverse engineered" out of its satirical origins into a true faith.
As Gerualdi did not suffer from the Godbomb as badly as many other planets, especially in the areas where the Church of Fondeiro existed, this faith has had some minor enduring popularity since then and did not completely die out. However, it developed an association with post-apocalyptic hoarders and scavangers that would steal from others in order to amass divine potential when faced with the end of the world. As a result, some amateur historians have made it their mission to dredge up the true satirical origins of the Church of Fondeiro to "dispel" the religion and undermine the beliefs of its followers.
Category:Ealdremen Religions
Category:Ealdremen Magic
Category:No Spoilers