Nostalgia Cults

**Nostalgia Cults** was the name coined by the Arkivists to describe the multitude of Polytheistic Religions which centered around the worship of pantheons of important cultural icons, politicians, inventors, famous figures, or even saints of the Beforetimes, who had come to be regarded as Gods and Goddesses by the misconceptions of their devotees of the Aftertimes.

Nostalgia Cults slowly developed over the countless centuries during and after The Sweltering, during which nearly all recorded memory of the distant past and its dying languages had all but been forgotten due to the widespread ignorance and almost universal loss of literacy that resulted from the extremely harsh conditions and massive depopulation of this apocalyptic era. These new religions drew their origins from visual landmarks such as coins and statues, as well as folklore and legends passed down orally by countless generations of tribal elders who attempted to make sense of the drastically transformed new world they found themselves living in.

Soon the new Pantheons entirely replaced the once-dominant Old Faiths, which had begun to die out with the end of the Old World. Nostalgia Cuts then would go on to be the most common religions found across Normaerika and beyond, until the later spread of the larger more centralized religions such as Mallasism and Moormunism across the continent during the Age of Stagnation.

## Gods and Divinity

The Deities which adherents of the many Nostalgia cults are considered to be supernatural beings, but are known by the Arkivists to actually be loosely based upon men and women of renown who lived during the technological Golden age of the Beforetimes, although many of these "Gods" were also based off of fictional characters or folk heroes and legends of the distant past. But due to the low technology levels of the Salvage Age, and the inability of all but Arkivists to decipher ancient history, the vast majority of people were unable to fathom that simple mortals could have ever constructed the inconceivable and now ruined towering structures, sprawling cities, and technological wonders built during the times before.

Nostalgia Cultists believed that the endless feats and seemingly magical inventions of the distant past could have only been accomplished with the divine intervention of their Gods. In fact, a core belief of nearly all Nostalgia cults is that in the long-gone "Golden Age" of the Beforetimes, their Gods and Goddesses lived alongside mortals on Earth, and guided them to unimaginable prosperity of the age. However, humanity had angered the Gods due to their increasing impiety and arrogance and returned to the heavens after deciding to punish their mortal subjects, destroying the ancient world in The Sweltering.

Different nations tended to construct their pantheons with Gods and Goddesses who embody the respective cultural traditions, morals, and skills of their people. But in reality, these divine beings are just deifications of actual and mortal people who lived in the distant past and had a great influence on the ancient culture of the regions their new nations now inhabited. Each one of the Gods of Nostalgia Pantheons often represented a certain aspect of life or profession, with most followers choosing to revere a God who resonated most with their personal goals or situations. The Pantheons often included an inner circle of Major Gods, who were the main and most well-known deities of their peoples, often serving as the civic gods of a nation or tribe, while the outer circle of the pantheons included a multitude of sometimes hundreds or even thousands of minor Gods and Goddesses, representing nearly every aspect of being. Many families, particularly more powerful ones, would even have their own household deities which they traced lineage to and worshiped in private shrines within their homes.

As the cultures of Normaerika became more connected under the Khagoan Empire at its peak, foreign Gods of conquered peoples and tribes would join the greater multi-national pantheon of the Empire, with analogies being drawn between many deities of different cultures. The Khagoan Empire was generally tolerant of all their subjects' religions, besides Arkivists whom they viewed as suspicious and even atheistic, yet tolerated them due to their College's immense knowledge of ancient subjects and science. The Arkivists, although rejecting the Nostalgia Cults as bogus religions, supported them due to their reverence of the technologically advanced ancient past which the Arkivists hoped to one day rebuild after their Re-Enlightenment of the New World.

## Mythologies

In general, Nostalgia Cults develop many shared similarities in their mythologies and teachings.

Creation Myths generally take place during the Beforetimes, when they believed their Gods lived side-by-side with mortals across the Earth, where they utilized their supernatural powers to assist their mortal subjects in creating the prosperous and technologically advanced civilizations of the ancient era, such as the mythical Kingdom of Uesay, which once spanned the continent. Men and women lived much longer than they did in the Salvage age, and there was a great abundance of everything a person could ever need, so no one was capable of true suffering. But then, depending on the religion, the mortals either grew greedy and ambitious, abused the gifts of the Gods to make war upon their fellow man, disrespectful to the pristine world which the Gods had created for them, or became impious and began to ignore their Gods.

As a result the Gods grew angry with their mortal subjects and chose to depart from the world back to the heavens. They then tore a Great Hole In Sky and allowed the blinding and ferocious light of the Sun to beat down upon the world endlessly, beginning the Thousand Years Summer as their divine retribution. This caused almost the entirety of the Old Worlds people to perish while the Gods looked away with disgust. However the few survivors of the Summer were spared by the Gods to give mortals a final chance. As a result the followers of the the Gods would never again neglect the Gods and make sacrifices to them so that they would never again become displeased with them. Followers of Nostalgia Cults hoped that one day their Gods would once again see their piety and return to the Earth live amongst mortals once more, bringing about a new Golden age.

Every God has a misconstrued story which is often based on tall tales or the actual history of the real-world figures they represent. Many great ancient military commanders being represented as War Gods, great leaders or the founders of old world nations as Creator Gods, or aviators or inventors being labeled as Sky Gods or Gods of innovation or craftsmanship.

## Relationship to Arkivism

Due to the fact that the Gods and Goddesses of Nostalgia Cults are based on regular people from the Beforetimes who were not Gods nor Godlike in anyway. The Arkivists view Nostalgia cults a illegitimate and composed of false idol worshipers who could very well achieve the same feats of their so-called deities if they joined the Arkivist cause and abandoned their worship of long-dead men and women. The Arkvist's firmly believe that the wondrous technological innovations and now ruined grand cities of the Beforetimes were not built by ancient mankind with the help of the Gods, but by Mankind and Mankind alone, and that it is now all of humanities duty to work towards building new and better version of the civilization which preceded the Great Summer.

The followers of Nostalgia cults in turn view the Arkivists as arrogant atheists who claim that they are on the same level of the Divine, viewing their research of the ancient sciences as black magic and sorcery which they utilize in vain attempts to achieve Godhood themselves. The Arkivist refusal to sacrifice to the altars of their Gods is also seen as heretical and disrespectful. Nostalgists also do not believe the Ancient Anglish Language, which the Arkivist College uses as a liturgical language, is the actual language of those spoken during the Beforetimes, and claim that it is rather a language of Demons and their disciples.

## Notable Nostalgia Cults

* Khagoan Pantheon
* Hollywood Pantheon
* Texhun Pantheon
* Yenkee Pantheon
* Muesippian Pantheon
* Mexihtec Catulicism