[Heartland Valley] - Haephus

[The Religion]
Haephus, also known as the Icon of Death or The Rot, is a God of Death worshipped through the celebration of the dead and the wearing of bones, pelts, and other Remains of the fallen to protect themselves with the shroud, spirit, memory, and honor of those who have passed. Worshippers of Haephus often paint themselves with pigments made from crushed insects, crushed plantlife, and various types of clay or mud. Wearing pigments in this way honors the Sacrifice of those things that went in to make them and draws the Attention of Haephus to protect the Young and Strong.

The Equus who worship Haephus tend to ritualistically wear the Bones and Skulls of fallen Herdmates to carry on that Horse’s memory. Other bones are often times either buried or consumed by Shamans during Celestial Events (Full Moons, New Moons, Lunar Eclipses, Solar Eclipses) to Embody the Energy the bones would give to the ‘Terra’/the Earth. Likewise, during celestial events, the Worshippers of Haephus are known to consume the Meat of other animals to thank The Rot for her provisions. A Horse must be considered an ‘Adult’ to partake in the Consuming as it is seen as a ritual to preserve Youthful Energy and Vigor.


[History]
In The Cradle, Existence just after its creation, a Pantheon of smaller Gods and Goddesses were vying for their power and strengthening themselves with the creation, manipulation, and destruction of small Universes to hone their skills. Archos, known later in life as The Creator, was one of the strongest in this Pantheon. He was able to create sprawling Universes with a twist of his arm, breathe life into countless beings with a single huff. His powers were so far beyond that of any other God in the Pantheon that soon he split from The Cradle and would go on to create The All, the only Universe stong enough to survive on its own without collapsing due to the inexperience of its God.

The Creator at first was a benevolent being, creating the far-off stars, hanging the blue seas high in the skies and flooding the Terra with oceans and Rivers. The Creator soon filled The All with living beings of all shapes and sizes to do as they pleased, and The All was bountiful for them. It was a virtual Paradise, a place of no death. Anything the creatures of The All could want were found from the lands around them, provided to them by The Creator, and The All was Well.

With his Limitless Power, The Creator soon moved on from The All to create new, and splendid things, careless to those he left behind. The provisions he once gifted and provided to The All dwindled, and soon a heavy darkness fell upon them-- Suffering. Suffering had never existed within The All before, and soon its inhabitants began to fall into a perpetual illness and pain that was never ending. The Creator had forgotten, or had been unable, to grant the creatures of The All the gift of Death. In his aspiring to Create perpetually without collapse, The Creator overlooked the necessitation of an Ending to things, a balance. Millions of years of Suffering passed and The All became choked with the newborn of The Suffering. The terra was overrun with Creatures unable to eat, unable to die, unable to heal themselves of their sickness due to The Creator’s Oversight. The All became stagnant and clouded, an infected wound with no treatment, until Haephus happened upon The All beyond The Cradle.

Haephus observed the creatures of The All and saw their suffering. At the very sight, Haephus wept for these creatures, stuck in eternal agony due to the carelessness of The Creator and The All saw its first rains. The rains brought an end to the Heat, washing the filthy terra and bringing water to places of The All that had run dry Thousands of years prior. Even these rains could not sustain the writhing masses of Overgrowth on The All, and soon the rains were drank up and gone just as quickly as they’d been gifted.

Haephus, knowing that there was only one way to save The All, set about bringing an End to the perpetuate suffering: Haephus knew she must bring them Death so that they could flourish.

The Creator’s influence over The All was consuming in entirety. At every turn, Haephus was forced back out of The All due to Archos’ looming Influence. She was unable to penetrate his floating Oceans, unable to reach down to the Terra to help those creatures living on the surface. As she tried to find a weakness in the impregnable dome of The All, she came to one conclusion. If her Body could not pass into The All, perhaps her Spirit Could. It was a Sacrifice none on The All asked her to do and yet it was one Haephus was set upon fulfilling. The husk of her body would become the Moon, locked around The All beyond The Creator’s Ocean, and her Spirit would seep into the very soil of The All.

She brought with her the easing of pain. The creatures who had suffered for millions of years were able to lay down their Bones and join with her, to find peace in the embrace of her Spirit. Their fallen bodies fed the Strong and the Young, fed the terra and the soil, and soon new life sprang from them. The Sick found an end to their suffering through Heaphus, an embrace into her Domain and a guiding and nurturing hand to help their Spirits on their path to her. The tangles of plants, sun-choked and dry, found their release and their rot and wilted to feed the New. Haephus had fixed the true flaw in The Creator’s Design, she had brought a Balance to Life-- Death.