Tempestry

Tempestry, also known as Rossan Storm-Worship, was the dominant religious belief on the island of La Rossa prior to the Second Calming. Largely ununified, but nonetheless widely followed, the religion largely centered around the fearful reverence of the Storm that surrounded the island. Declining in significance as the island industrialized, taming it to man's will, the last remains of the religion mostly died off after the Storm had retreated. The ensuing confusion, however, gave birth to a new set of beliefs among a small number of radical worshippers, the Cult of the Open Sky.

History and Beliefs

Tempestry followed no unified set of beliefs, and remained largely unformalized throughout history, instead being passed down through generations through oral retellings of stories and superstitions. It is likely to have emerged in several places on the island across time periods, slowly melding together through cultural exchange brought on by trade, especially following the Unification of La Rossa in 1044 TT. The stories which have been pieced together revolve around the destructive power of the Storm that surrounded the island for most of its history, and as such the beliefs are likely to have evolved with the contemporary conditions on the island.

Travel across land was highly difficult by foot, with passage being largely blocked by the island's distantly spanning mountain range. Impeding travel as the island's population dispersed across the coastline, the growing population and need for trade quickly saw a turn to sea. Although smaller fishing boats existed for some time, for the first time the islanders saw need of distant travel, and with it, they would for the first time encounter the full impact and might of the tempest. Vessels which took days or even weeks to create were destroyed in moments, their crews washing up to shore oftentimes more dead than alive. It was not until the trading company of Constanzo Miglio di Padeno, nearing the end of the 1300s TT, that La Rossa's most distant points became directly connected.

The Storm, while occasionally given human personality, for the large part became revered as an inhuman, uncaring force of endless evil. Characterized as a violent force of nature that sought to do nothing but destroy man's achievements, it became a rallying point, serving only to emphasize man's perseverence in spite of it. A debatably religious worship of technological innovation saw great pride and fame given to inventions and discoveries used in giving humanity independence from the ceaceless power of nature that surrounded it, allowing it to rise unbothered by the world that wished to end it. Although most of such creations remained in the hands of the island's growing aristocracy, families which secured their wealth with the rise of the Rossan city-states, the island's centralization towards coastline cities saw such technology being used every day before the eyes of great swathes of the population, embedding shared belief into it.

As the frozen stone of the mountainous regions allowed for no place for burial, and the limited soft dirt of the coastline being largely used for agricultural purposes, few graveyards existed on land going into the post-Unificationary period. The increasing viability of ships saw the rise of burial at sea. While the aristocratic Families saw use of their own private vessels in cases of death among relatives, most of the population disposed of their dead on regularly travelling ferries, which collected bodies from grieving families en masse. It is believed that such practices greatly aided in the spread of disease during local outbreaks and epidemics at first, before scientific advancements led to proper practices being put into place. While the reasons for burial at sea lied purely on land, the Storm's destructive nature saw it defining this ritual too. With no time being given towards what may be deemed proper respect for the dead on other islands, and with minimal passengers on board (with no one but the ferrymen, paid well for the risks taken, being present), the funeral rarely lasted more than a few minutes, and saw little more than the weighing down of the dead to prevent them floating back to shore before they were thrown into the sea in bags, the vessel departing right after. The Storm gave no calm to humanity, even in death.

Interestingly, the common threads of Tempestry make no reference to a God or higher power (although it is discussed whether the Storm should count as such). Although the supernatural appears in select individual stories, recovered from surviving past writings, it did not form a core shared belief of the now-extinct religion. Such lack of belief remains prevalent into the present day, although some recent converts have adopted the religions of other nations of the archipelago.

As the island became safer over the ages, with the rise of protective walls and steel hulls, the importance of the religion declined, and it now sees no significant number of believers, although some commonly told stories of the past survived into the modern day. The Rossan redbell, a delicate flower growing in the mountains of Montesuvia, has been taken as a symbol of humanity's fragility in the years after the Calming, and a proud sign of its survival.