Faith of the Family

"*I suppose It'd be quite requisitory of the Royal Senate to enact a burdening response to these recent attacks on our peasant friends. To sit back, wait, and hope for a digression? Simply put, these spearfolk must be swiftly cut down before they grow in number.*"

—V.K Heimann - the 'Steel Tongue' of his days.
The **Faith of the Family** is a form of polytheism that is followed by the Gores. The original founders of this religion were the Blade Druids, named after their ability to forge steel weapons. It is said that these Druids planted a seed in the ground that sprouted a great and glorious tree that reached far into the sky. The Gores of this time were godless men, killing each other with bone clubs and sharp sticks as the North was too harsh a place for any progress to be made. When they came to the Great Tree, the Blade Druids taught them their ways, which included the belief of the Five Gods.

Five gods ruled the realms of man, each descending from the same bloodline. Thus these five gods were known as The Family, one that had a father, mother, two brothers and a sister. The true meaning of these gods and their combined roles were engraved onto rune stones by the Druids, left for the Gore tribes to ponder. After the Gores betrayed the Blade Druids and sacrificed them all to the Great Tree, the runes were forever lost in translation and the names and roles of each of the Five were doomed to be up to the Gores to guess. From then on the Goreic Kingdoms would steadily rise, each king proclaiming their own views of the Gods and how to please them. The Great Tree and its ancient defensive order under Clan Crast remained neutral to every Kingdom, as each king knew not to spill blood in those sacred lands, for it would anger the Gods.

The Mother and the Father are the two Gods that the Gores would come to agree upon when it came to their roles. While smaller details such as their names and backgrounds were never decided, almost every Gore society shared a similar belief when it came to their daily doings. The Mother gifts the world with the repeating cycle of life, populating nature with many animals that must all die at some point to fill the belly of another. Those who pray to the Mother are typically the outcasts of Gore society, slave women or men who were deemed unfit to live at birth, but somehow survived their assured doom. These people live in tall trees, using their poisoned blow darts against trespassers, avoiding all conflict as much as they can. The Father is a being of pure strength, making sure to raise the Mother's children through brutal conflict. Followers of the Father make up the majority of Gore society, as these people are forced to become killers at a young age. They live in infertile lands, and raid southern territories to survive.

Ever since the murder of the Great Tree at the hands of the Glaze, the remaining Gores have all banded together to avenge their tree. When the God of the Light committed suicide shortly after, his fractured power rained over the Great Tree, granting it a slither of life. Now the Gores have a glimpse of hope to keep their tree from dying through blood sacrifices, though it takes hundreds of corpses a year to simply remain alive. The Gores are not truly united, as the various tribes had hundreds of years of conflict and varying views, but they must now work in a common goal of restoring their tree through the genocide of Glazic people.

## Goreic Ideals

In the dark times of the present, Gore culture and ideals have reverted back into older ways. Even when the scattered Gore peoples have come together, there exists a great divide in beliefs. The average Gore clansman believes in his Gods and their gift of the **Grandfatherland**, a realm far above in the mountainous Kingdom where the immortals live. Those who make it there will bask in eternal glorious combat, where legends drink ale and smash their fists and axes into their brothers to dismember them in bloody spraying crimson, only to be reborn the very next day. All Gores seek to make it to this land, but in order to reach such a place they must die gloriously in combat. The craven or otherwise unlucky souls who have died without a spear in their hand would spend their eternity in boredom, chained in an underground cavern, left to rot and weep in lonely starvation. Another basic ideal of Gore culture is the understanding that pain and struggle is essential. Almost all Gore rituals involve horrifying, agonizing pain, to prove strength and godliness. With these common ideals, the average Gore is a brutish thing that lives a short, brutal life.

Gores acknowledge the existence of other Gods despite their own. To them they known as the "Second Family," which is composed of the Christ God, his older son Satan, and his youngest child the Undergod. Some Gores do not think of their own Five Gods in human form. There are some clans who think of them as animals, such as wolves or great stags. Other clans have a belief that the Five are ancient monstrous, many-tentacled beings, some so unbelievably gargantuan in scale that for a mortal man to witness them in their true form would burn out his eyes. These clans might also hold the controversial belief that these ancient beings do not bother with the tiny, infantile struggles of Mankind for their relevancy is that of a single drop of water to a great, unending ocean. As the first Family of Five are so ancient and impossibly massive, this Second Family is assumed to be mere offspring children of the first Family with meager power, and their passing would not even be noteworthy in the slightest degree.

## The Old Ways

Some Gores see the impact of the Blade Druids and their technology as a negative thing. Before those wise old men 'graced' the Gores with their steel weapons and knowledge of gods, the Gores still had their own beliefs and ways that were simply forgotten over time. These ancient Gores are said to be inhumanly strong, some standing up to ten feet tall. They would wear nothing but bear cloaks, and use giant bone clubs to smash and eat anything in their path. Ever since the Gores settled and started using technology, they became more and more weak.

It is not a dishonorable thing in Goreic society for a male fighter to give up all technology and go into the wild with nothing but whatever they can make with their own two hands. In Gore society, this is known as honoring the 'Old Ways,' by returning to the natural order. These people are not seen as traitors of the religion, or even as men who defy Gods. They are simply seen as those who do not need the Gods to survive, as true men make their own path in life or die trying.

The followers of the Old Ways are without a doubt the strongest of the Gores. An Old Way tribe under Clan Grock will never grow larger than a couple dozen, as they see any form of dependence as weak. Some Old-Wayers may go further north where the land is most brutal, and others may go south where they may slaughter and pillage to survive. These men will never barter or accept gifts, as it is seen as weak to take anything from a man who is breathing. They will never use forged steel or gunpowder weapons, as they make men weak, and can only be maintained by civilized folk. They can, however, utilize massive runestone swords and boulder axes that absolutely destroy anything in their brutal cleave. Their ways may be impractical when it comes to securing power, but through this harsh lifestyle real men are born, ones who can rival even the most equipped of civilized people.