Before mortal history, twelve powers gathered around the living sun of Aodhán to keep the Vast Outside beyond the world’s shell. Their covenant ended when Ozhur proposed binding the sun into a permanent ward. Sythrassa concealed the plan, Eimhir altered its terms, and the attempt killed Aodhán. The remaining gods scattered to distant stations, founding a religion built on incomplete revelations and sacred disagreement.

The world hangs inside the Vast Outside, a dark ocean pierced by twelve divine paths. The sun was once Aodhán’s living eye, crossing the heavens to keep the Outside at bay. When Aodhán died, the sun became an ember carried beneath reality, and daylight now leaks through cracks in the celestial shell. The other gods inhabit distant stations along the Meridian, influencing the world through signs, dreams, weather, and rare incarnations rather than frequent miracles.

The religion has no universal priesthood. Instead, it is organized into twelve traditions called Stations, each centered on one deity and one interpretation of the Sundering. The Stations share a calendar of eclipses, solstices, funerals, and seasonal turnings, but their temples range from courts and lighthouses to hidden rooms, roadside shrines, rebel camps, and grave gardens. Priests are expected to study at least one opposing Station. The highest religious authorities are the Concordants, twelve rotating representatives who meet only when an eclipse threatens to become permanent.

The gods are distant powers whose signs appear through eclipses, altered weather, impossible dreams, prophetic animals, and rare miracles. Temples are independent and often disagree about the Sundering. Clerics, champions, and witches typically serve one deity, but pilgrimages commonly honor several. The dead sun makes divine magic feel conditional: miracles work, but every blessing carries the sense that something vast is watching from very far away.

The dead arrive at the Quiet Meridian, a horizonless expanse where the deceased sun god Aodhán still glimmers beneath the world. Each soul is drawn toward the deity whose values shaped it most strongly, though Sythrassa and Eimhir may intercept the faithless, while Vaskor offers the forgotten a second name. No god rules the dead completely; even the greatest must bargain with Aodhán’s lingering light.