Starfinder Religion

## Church of the Twin Sisters, Sarenrae & Iomedae

The church dedicate to worshipping both Sarenrae and her sister Iomedae is the largest religion in the galaxy. Their church and their Inquisition control hundreds of worlds and influence thousands more.

   Simplified Clerical Ranks:

* Acolyte
* Priest
* High Priest
* Inquisitors
* Prelate
* Twin Prophetesses

## The Core Gods

Within Pact world space there are twenty gods who exert significantly more influence than any other.

### The Gods of Old Golarion

* Abadar *Master of the First Vault* (LN) : civilization, commerce, law, wealth
* Besmara *The Pirate Queen* (CN) : piracy, space monsters, strife
* Desna *The Song of the Spheres*(CG) : dreams, luck, stars, travelers
* Iomedae *The Spirit of Golarion* (LG) : honorable battle, humanity, justice, valor
* Lao Shu Po *Grandmother Rat* (NE) : assassins, rats, spies, thieves
* Pharasma *Lady of Graves* (N) : birth, death, fate, prophecy
* Sarenrae *The Dawnflower* (NG) : healing, redemption, the sun
* Triune *The All-Code* (N) : artificial intelligence, computers
* Urgathoa *The Pallid Princess* (NE) : disease, gluttony, undeath
* Zon-Kuthon *The Midnight Lord* (LE) : darkness, envy, loss, pain

### Off-World Gods

* Hylax *The Forever Queen* (LG) : diplomacy, first contact, friendship, peace
* Yaraesa *Lady of Wisdom* (NG) : knowledge, mental perfection, scholarship, science
* Weydan *The Endless Horizon* (CG) : discovery, equality, exploration, freedom
* Talavet *The Storyteller* (LN) : community, self-reliance, tradition
* Eloritu *The Hidden Truth* (N) : history, magic, secrets
* Ibra *The Inscrutable* (N) : celestial bodies, the cosmos, mysteries of the universe
* Oras *Agent of Change* (CN) : adaptation, evolution, natural selection
* Damoritosh *The Conqueror* (LE) : conquest, duty, war
* Devourer *The Star Eater* (CE) : black holes, destruction, supernovas

## Lesser Known Gods

* Angradd *The Forge-Fire* (N): fire, tradition, war, efreeti
* Arshea *The Spirit of Abandon* (NG): freedom, physical beauty, sexuality
* Asmodeus *Prince of Darkness* (LE): contracts, pride, slavery, tyranny
* Black Butterfly *The Silence Between* (CG): distance, silence, space
* Calistria *The Savored Sting* (CN): lust, revenge, trickery, drow
* Eldest *Lords of the Fey* (N): ???
* Groetus *God of the End Times* (CN): empty place, oblivion, ruins
* Lamasthu *Mother of Monsters* (CE): madness, monsters, nightmares
* Lissala *Scion of Seven* (LE): duty, fate, obedience, Azlant
* Shelyn *The Eternal Rose* (NG): art, beauty, music, love

## Kasthan Cycle

Introduced to the Pact Worlds by the Kasathas, the philosophy of the solarians teaches that existence is an endless cycle. Stars are born, die, and are born again, alternately bringing life to the universe and destroying it. The balance of the cosmos rests on the Cycle, and it connects everything in the universe. Solarians act as clerics to the cycle.

## The Green Faith

The philosophy of druidism and the Green Faith may be the oldest in the Pact Worlds. The heat of a sun, the power of wind, and the beauty of a wild plant are all proof of the complexity and power of nature. The Green Faith teaches respect for nature and living in balance with the environment. Their clerics are called Druids.

## Sangpotshi

Also known as the River of Life, sangpotshi teaches that through reincarnation and examining one’s past lives, one can reach enlightenment. It is a religion without clerics but with a class of monks who provide guidance.

## Singularitism

Most common among Aballonian anacites, this is the belief that all life will eventually become interconnected as part of a vast distributed intelligence and that technological advancement is key to hastening the arrival of this godhead.

## Prophecies of Kalistrade

Based on the dream-records of an eccentric mystic, the Prophecies of Kalistrade promise vast wealth and success to adherents who follow strict sexual and dietary prohibitions, wear exclusively white, and abstain from physical contact with anyone who does not follow this path. Their clerics are known as Aramites.

## The Outer Gods

Nyarlathotep is the most infamous of the Outer Gods, but he is far from the only one of these incomprehensible alien entities whose influence reaches into the Pact Worlds.

The Daemon Sultan Azathoth (CN) is the Outer God of entropy, madness, and mindless destruction. It is a primal mass of raw power and uncontrollable devastation that lies at the center of the universe. The so-called “blind idiot god” is unaware of its own worshipers, and its mindless thrashings can devastate entire planets.

Shub-Niggurath (CE) is a monstrous fertility goddess said to have spawned a thousand aberrant young. Called the Black Goat of the Woods, she is the Outer Goddess of fertility, forests, and monsters, and her cult is widespread on fecund worlds covered with forests, jungles, or swamps.

Yog-Sothoth (CN), the Outer God of gates, space, and time, dwells within the Dark Tapestry, but his most fervent followers claim that he is the Dark Tapestry itself. Known as the Key and the Gate, Yog-Sothoth is coterminous with all space and time, and his cultists believe he is slowly preparing the varied worlds of the universe for a new age of horror presaged by the waking of the Great Old Ones, ancient godlike beings who serve the Outer Gods.

## The Song of Silence

Adherents of the Song of Silence believe in the perfection of undeath. The bone sages of Eox reverently credit the Song of Silence for the salvation of their race by teaching them the formula to become undying liches.

## Dominion of the Black

I n the vast gulfs between the stars, which some philosophers call the Dark Tapestry, exists a coalition of obscenely powerful, aberrant beings known as the Dominion of the Black. Intergalactic in scope, the Dominion is believed to control countless worlds across multiple galaxies, yet it is no empire in the sense that most sentient species would understand. Planets that fall under Dominion authority are less colonies than production facilities, and any living creatures merely subjects for strange experiments.

The so-called “leaders” of the Dominion defy explanation, other than that they are colossal, malignant entities of unfathomable intellect and inscrutable ambition. These overlords are known only by awkward translations such as Infinity-Ceases-Now, The-Five-Who- Speak-As-One, and The- Whispers-of-the-Void- Have-Eyes. Some scholars postulate that the Dominion follows the orders and whims of the Dark Tapestry itself.

A wide variety of bizarre creatures serve the Dominion of the Black. In addition, the Dominion’s infamous, living starships— disturbing amalgamations of biological and inorganic components with lifespans measured in centuries—are piloted by a species called shipminds, genetically engineered in the Dominion’s fleshfarms to fuse both physically and mentally with their ships.

All of these creatures view humanoid life as inherently inferior, suitable only for observation, experimentation, and genetic manipulation—or worse, as simply raw biological material to create servitor species and technology. The Dominion of the Black is also embroiled in conflict with the cults of the Outer Gods, most notably over the strange world of Aucturn, though the exact nature of this enmity is unknown. The ultimate goals of the Dominion of the Black remain a dreadful mystery, with only hints of its intentions—whispered to be the extermination of sentient life throughout the universe, or its replacement by something from another reality.

## Cult of the Devourer

Deep space provides cover for many criminals and outcasts, from mercenary pirates to demon binders and mutants driven insane by unshielded reactors. Yet the worst of these is likely the single-minded horror of the cult of the Devourer.

Civilized worlds often wonder why Devourer cultists bother worshiping a god of destruction when it offers them nothing in return. Yet what they fail to grasp is that nothing is exactly what such cultists desire. The Devourer’s destruction promises not just an end but a complete unmaking of all that is. It could consume not just the future but the past; not just the Material Plane but all existence. By advancing its cause, the grief stricken can literally undo past tragedies, making it so their losses never happened. By removing the afterlife, the guilty can avoid judgment. While priests of different sects debate whether this existence would be replaced by a new one more to the Devourer’s liking, their underlying premise is that the current existence has rotted, and it must be erased completely.

While the public thinks of Devourer cultists as sadistic cannibals, berserkers in gore-studded armor that raid ships for the joy of slaughter, this is only one facet of the faith. Such shock troops are called “wall breakers”—barbarians driven by sacred drugs to slaughter and defile, not for their own pleasure, but to break the spirits of civilizations. Complementing these are the “hidden ones,” pious sociopaths who move undetected among other societies, gathering information, recruiting, and planting the seeds of entropy. Priests and leaders can be from either choir (as the two traditions are known), and different congregations place different emphasis on these two tactics.

Above all of these, however, are the rare “atrocites”— individuals who’ve broken free from the Cycle of Souls in order to mastermind destruction on a scale grand enough to attract the attention of the Devourer. While individual cults may be fractious, battling each other as well as victims in their scarred and twisted warships, all immediately bow to the will of an atrocite, in whose empty eye sockets and storm- cloud halo they might find their final victory.