According to temple doctrine, the pantheon formed when the world’s first mortal city asked six questions of the dark: What was forgotten, what must be hunted, what could be made, what must end, where do the dead go, and how can the living endure? Each question became a deity. Oras claims this is only a metaphor, while Nyx insists the questions were asked by someone whose name no living tongue may pronounce.

The world rests upon the Back of the Sleeping Earth, surrounded by the Celestial Sea. The sun is a wound of living radiance, the moon is Syl’vara’s unfinished mirror, and storms are Ranya’s ordered breath. Beneath the world lies the Cinder Deep, where decay becomes fuel for renewal. Oras claims that the gods emerged from the first secret, though Nyx alone remembers what existed before it.

The religion has no universal hierarchy. Instead, each deity maintains a distinct priestly tradition, and regional temples negotiate authority through the Concord of Six Lamps. Oras’s archivists preserve doctrine, Nyx’s judges oversee funerary law, Ranya’s stewards manage civic and agricultural rites, Grima’s wardens protect wild borders, and Syl’vara’s makers educate spellcasters and artisans. The Cinder Matron has no recognized place in the Concord, though her hidden cults imitate its ceremonies with blackened lamps. Every temple keeps six lamps, but the sixth is traditionally left unlit so that no community forgets the danger of absent gods.

The Sixfold Assembly is worshipped through overlapping household, civic, military, and funerary traditions. Most communities honor all six while favoring one patron deity. Clerics commonly serve a single god, though temples often form uneasy alliances: Oras and Nyx maintain archives of the dead, Grima and Ranya protect rural settlements, and Syl’vara sponsors schools and magical workshops. The Cinder Matron’s cults are outlawed in most kingdoms but thrive among besieged cities, revolutionary cells, and rulers who believe annihilation is purification.

The dead pass beneath Nyx’s Veil into the Hall of Weighing, where memory is stripped from the soul and Oras records every hidden deed. Nyx judges the soul’s balance, while Syl’vara may call certain spirits back to guide the living. Those claimed by Grima’s wild places are believed to return as guardian beasts, and those consumed by the fires of the world are reborn through the renewal of the unnamed pantheon.