Editing Star-Bound Alliances (section)

==== Jericho’s Research ====

* Jericho looks for a generalist overview of the Velkie religion. Not hard, since we’re in a temple of one of the Velkie gods. The temple of the Farmer, who, when mortal, was named Chunnavak. The Farmer, along with the other Velkie, a few hundred years ago came into a world that was in chaos. The tides of magic were crazed, and people prayed to the Breezewarren Gods but got no answer. The four Velkie gods went on a quest to bring peace to the Skybound Lands – The Builder, The Farmer, The Lamplighter, and The Queen.
* Jericho notices as he goes through these religious texts that each has a more humanoid aspect, and they don’t seem to fit with the other naming conventions (The Builder was Steelhead Baz, The Lamplighter was Zedka, The Queen was Vesilica).

* The Velkie calmed the winds of the Skybound Lands, leading to an era of prosperity. THe Farmer preached the necessity to look to the future, to plant and reap what you sow. Hard work and dedication, but also, acknowledge the beauty of nature and take in all that the Skybound Lands has. The people of the Tillages very much follow the Farmer’s teachings.
* The Queen was the leader of the Velkie on their quest to quell the winds, and after they rose to Godhood, she’s the one who oversaw most of the Skybound Lands. There were a few lands she could never get under control, mostly the land of shadow, but she’s the principle of authority, hierarchy, and the need to take care of the people. She’s still considered the leader of the Velkie. She’s order amongst the swirling winds, a very motherly figure.
* The Lamplighter was the youngest of the Velkie gods, only 14 years of age when the journey started, and 26 when they reached ascension. They represent the need for light, and everything that light can help provide. Community, the ability to see the path ahead, clarity, and finding order in the darkness and chaos in the clouds that had settled over the Tillages and the Skybound Lands. She’s a god that many travelers pray to, and responsible for the Lamplighter Temples.
* The Builder, Steelhead Baz, doesn’t have many sermons, priests, or followers. ''Everyone'' is supposed to be like him. He put his head down and built, maintaining the weapons of the Velkie gods, but also maintaining the temples and the lands when they were immortal like now. An individual of few words, a stoic figure in the history of the Skybound Lands, prayed to almost every day by artisans and builders in the Tillages. He’s thought to have built for himself a set of armor that made him literally untouchable, though it was scattered and lost during the Ascension.
* The Velkie supposedly reside in the sky, the clouds, looking down on the mortals. When you die, it seems like the inhabitants believe you return to the wind, becoming one with nature again. If you’re particularly evil, you’re recycled and fall to the ground as rain. Your spirit is seeded into the ground, where eventually you find another host body and begin life anew.
* Their origins are a mystery. They might’ve been angels of the Breezeborn gods, but it seems like that’s more of an initial draft, as many Velkie worshippers today don’t believe in the Breezeborn gods. They believe the world was created by chance, and the winds of magic brought together souls, life, and people, but the Velkie are the ones that now tend to the lands.
* Some say the Velkie were born in the Tillages, and that’s why the Tillagers worship them so fervently. Others believe they were born in the Capital, in the kingdom, and were learned people. Seeing suffering in the kingdoms, they decided to go out and help all those in the Skybound Lands.
* In one story Jericho finds, in an old book hidden off to the side and brought to him by Piero, the Velkie appeared from below, falling upward. As they fell up, they hit water, and were about to drown when a mysterious woman helped pull them up. There were dark forces, the forces that threatened to bring the Skybound Lands down with endless depths, but the Velkie fought up, and breached the surface of a beautiful lake. They received a beautiful boon from the woman in the lake, given to the Queen.
* The story branches off from there. Each of the Velkie found a boon amongst the Forest over Yonder. The Lamplighter found a torch that would always be lit if you asked for it to light, the Builder found a hammer that could bend any metal to his will, and the Farmer found a waterskin that could make you cool, calm, and collected when you drank from it. With these four mythical items, and the help of the woman of the lake, they went off to help the Skybound Lands. This seems to have happened somewhere between 6–800 years ago.
* Generally, it seems like in terms of worshippers, the religious hierarchy is the Breezeborn → the Velkie → Gunther (very far behind).