Servants of Saturnine

## Star of Saturnine

The Star of Saturnine; the religious symbol of the Servants and Cult of Saturnine. The trinity is understood to represent the balance between life, death, and what will come next. Whilst the three rings represent the multiple layers of the Saturnine Journey. The 8 spikes represent the Diaspora and the Servants travelling in all cardinal directions

The **Servants of Saturnine** are a religious diaspora community worshiping The Saturnine. The Servants maintain strong and distinct cultural and religious practices common across the diaspora. The Servants of Saturnine can be found within a multiplicity of nations as a minority religious community.

The Servants of Saturnine {the religious community} and the Cult of Saturnine {the religion} are effectively intertwined and always will be. The theological beliefs of one cause the cultural practices of the other, effectively making the two dependant on each other.

## History

Not much is known surrounding the history of the Servants of Saturnine. This is because many of the records relating to their early history were destroyed by the regimes that persecuted them, whilst many more were lost to time. In spite of this, brief overview of their history can be ascertained:

### Pre-Diaspora

The earliest known history of the Servants of Saturnine surrounds their oppression. The religious community originated in a land far away, with the details of that land being lost to time. The reasons for this are largely speculated to be due to the Diaspora causing a mass loss of record keeping, in conjunction with the Diaspora causing the Servants to travel far away from where they lived originally.

What is known is that the religious community arouse in a stateless and borderless manner across several different states. These far flung religious communities all worshiped The Saturnine as the most important gods of the land. The cause of these religious communities all related to the birth of the Cult of Saturnine and the beginning of more nuanced understandings of death. This religious belief was extended to religious and cultural practices surrounding the worshipping of death and passing. These aspects of the community drew in the ire of the states which maintained the communities of Servants within them. Many of the states slowly developed a disgust towards the Servants, mostly due to their modes of worship and their "Interlacing" ritual. This disgust developed into fear and persecution as many communities of Servants were forced to renounce their religion or be put to death.

This persecution of the Servants of Saturnine was so omniprevalent that practically every state, nation, and culture which the early Servants knew off hated them. This hatred spread to the religious community becoming second class citizens within the states they lived in. Tens of Servants would die weekly through religious lynchings.

This all culminated with the Great Diaspora. Across the period of a decade, practically all Servant of Saturnine communities left their homes and travelled in hope of a new land free of persecution.

### Diaspora

The diaspora constitutes the majority of the Servants' history, moreover it is the area of Servant history that the least is known about. Grand migrations split up the formally tightknit communities of the Servants, thus a cohesive and holistic compilation of the history of the Diaspora is fairly unknown. Furthermore, due to the decentralising of Servant communities their common language began to diverge gradually. It began to incorporate more aspects from languages certain communities encountered within their travels. Due to this and natural language divergence, the language of the Servants is consistently inconsistent. Spelling is variable and there is no real consistent spelling within the language, instead it relies of context of the words surrounding it as well as the phonetics of the word. Additionally words from disparate languages are often incorporated within day to day communication as well as scripture notation.

The duration of the diaspora is largely unknown. It is speculated to have started thousands of years ago, with the diaspora still largely in effect to this day. Due to the diaspora the majority of Servant communities don't know about each other's existence.

Through the diaspora, many of the Servant's cultural identify was cemented. The communal and familial culture of Saturnine communities was entrenched and new customs organically emerged to reinforce it. An example being the adoption of communal child upbringing. Many communal aspects of the Servants which emerged from the diaspora still maintain relevance to this day.

Through the diaspora the Servants travelled a multiplicity of far flung lands, from which exotic dyes and materials often were procured. Often the local Servant community would scavenge for local dyes and fabrics or materials the materials used to create them, before departing and commencing their travels. They'd later utilise those dyes and fabrics to dye their clothes clashing and characteristically vibrant colours. Furthermore a secondary piece of clothing was develop to protect the vibrant clothes underneath - an exceptionally thick travelling cloak often colloquially referred to as a "Cloth Vail".

### Modern Developments

Modern developments of the Servants of Saturnine mostly constitutes the diaspora slowly winding down and coming to an end with religious settlements being placed all around Eftar, with notable settlements exist within Kistello Patria and Ascium.

The settlement found within Kistello Patria contains the largest settled community of Servants within the entire known world. Servants maintain high ranking positions within the government of Kistello and are broadly respected socially. Saturnine scripture - especially "Their Tale" - is abundant within the grand Xiebel library, so much so that it's one of the most common types of books within the library. The success of the community is mostly understood to come from Kistello Patria accepting the Servants wholeheartedly and recognising the religion. Kistello Patria Servants are generally seen as representing the voice of international Servants.

The settlement within Ascium maintains a similarly large community of settled Servants however it ultimately is smaller in influence and population than the one in Kistello. The Ascium servants are notable for the construction of the Ascium Grand Temple however little else is known about them.

Other smaller communities can be found everywhere, largely through the prevalence of small temples dedicated to the Saturnine.

## Cult of Saturnine

The Cult of Saturnine broadly worships the deity known as "the Saturnine". The Saturnine is acknowledges as a single deity however they are also acknowledged as multiple beings, also described as consciousnesses. This is due to them being countless separate consciousnesses and people which all act and represent one singular god/idea. Due to this the Saturnine is referred to with the plural "they" within scripture. The origins of the Saturnine are codified within "Their Tale" which maintains status as the most widely known and distributed piece of Saturnine scripture; possibly being the most widely distributed book in history.

The Saturnine is seen as the ultimate caretaker and guide of all sentient beings. This is because they guide all those who are sentient from one plain of existence to the other. This process is known as the "Saturnine Journey" and is largely to be seen as near infinite in duration, with each layer of existence within the journey giving the individual a chance at learning more about existence. The next plain of existence is known as "Satnea", thus it's the next place a person will go after dying.

A core belief within the Cult of Saturnine is that the Saturnine is in a way synonymous with the concept of death itself. This is manifested in scripture through the Servants understanding "death" as simply a sentient being meeting the Saturnine. The meeting is always described positively, sometimes even described as the pinnacle of existence.

Due to death being understood in this way, the Servants of Saturnine are staunchly opposed to violence and are perpetually dedicated to aiding those who require help. The opposition to violence is understood through the fact that those who serve the Saturnine ought not disturb when the Saturnine wishes to meet them, all death should be exclusively applied through the Saturnine and not through a blade wielded by a human. This logic similarly applies to why the Servants ought to help people, even at their own expense, this is because a lack of food, shelter, or clothing can cause premature death, which always ought to be avoided.

Due to the Saturnine's love of sapience and their pivotal role as the caretaker of sentience, the Servants of Saturnine dedicate their life to the Servitude of the Saturnine. This servitude manifests in many ways, the largest one being the worship of the Saturnine however many other acts of servitude are common within the Cult of Saturnine. Those include but aren't limited to: clothing those who are cold, feeding those who are hungry, heal those who are sick, house those who are homeless.

### Interlacing

Interlacing is an important ritual within all communities of the Servants of Saturnine, it is the most venerated act of worship within the Cult and it's also the main method of acquiring more scripture.

Interlacing aims to temporarily kill the user in order for them to momentarily meet the Saturnine, after which the user would be brought back to life. Interlacing allows the user to converse with the Saturnine and exchange information. Said conversations often are written down and relayed to other Servants, thus becoming scripture.

Interlacing is achieved through the consumption of "Satcybe" which is a rare organic drug. It is unknown whether the drug momentarily kills the user or if it causes it to seem as if the user is dead momentarily. Satcybe is the most important substance to the Servants, so important that it trumps the importance of any one piece of scripture - as without Satcybe the Servants would loose their ability to communicate with the Saturnine before their real meeting.

### Respect for the Dead

The most prevalent belief held by the Servants of Saturnine is their respect for the dead.

The Servants heavily protect and venerate all the dead, this includes all sentient beings as well as animals. This protection causes the Servants to heavily preserve dead bodies for up to a month before carefully burying them. The coffins which dead bodies are buried in are renown for their craftmanship, with these Saturnine coffins often containing small pieces of gold and gems as ornamentation. A similar treatment is carried out for animals, however the less intelligent a species, generally the less effort is dedicated to the protection of their body and the creation of their coffin. This belief also extends to the Servants being religiously dedicated to vegetarianism.

### Unnegotiable Pacifism

As mentioned beforehand the Servants of Saturnine are dedicated to the concept of pacifism due to their inability to take a life before the Saturnine decided to meet them. Thus Servants are religiously prohibited from carrying tools intended to cause harm - this extends to swords, halberds, lances, and so on.

### Other beliefs and values

The Servants of Saturnine maintain other notable values. Those include the values of fraternity, companionship, and indomitability. It is important to know that many values differ somewhat between disparate Servant communities.

## Culture

The Servants of Saturnine are multicultural by their very nature. This is because Servant communities are constructed form various cultures, races, and species, unified by the binding agent of the faith. Due to this each community is a unique blend of its members when cultural practices are concerned. Furthermore, these Saturnine community cultures are further blended and incorporated within cultures of nations they settle within, as the Servants within Kistello adopt many cultural norms of the Kistelleti native population.

### Clothing

A large portion of Servant culture is maintained through their attitudes towards their clothing, said traditions emerged during the diaspora. Clothing maintains large amounts of cultural weight within Servant communities largely due to the difficulty of its creation whilst travelling. Within the diaspora acquiring good quality wool or other forms of textiles was extremely difficult thus the few clothes which the Servants had access too where cherished. Because of their scarcity they were passed down from generation to generation and practically each piece of clothing becomes its own piece of artwork, meticulously detailing the history of who owned it - which was expressed through many creative ways, such as miscellaneous frills or eclectically dyed splotches.

### Cuisine

The food that the Servants traditionally eat are heavily influenced by the nations that they encountered as well as the materials they found within their travels. This causes the Servant's cuisine to become extremely varied, any one community usually cooks and eats different types of food.