“Once in the Time of Unending Twilight, eleven great flying serpents circled the infinite sky. Their scales were formed of primordial vestiges of long-forgotten earths and celestial bodies, and their wings soared over the winds of dreams ancient and future, forever circling in an ancient, unceasing current. These 11 were the first and last moons and suns of a forever unliving and undying galaxies, occurring concurrently of each other in an unbroken cycle of entropy and ectropy. They were alpha and omega, both.
Yet an end and beginning is formless and forever disconnected without continuation between, and an observer to perceive that passage of time. The serpents could forever coil into and out of each other, begin and end again and again, yet so long as they were alone in this tedium of creation, divided between tail and head with no body between, they could not truly exist. And so, they deigned to be, and as a consequence, the world began.
They serpents coiled together to a single, wriggling ball. Their skin shed and their feathers molted constantly, again and again, scales and sweat forming land and seas, the gust blown by their flapping wings bringing sky and thought and dream into an ever revolving current surrounding the newly formed earth below. The atmosphere they had forged had a twofold purpose- from it, life began to spawn on the world formed below, animal and man both slowly emerging from the womb of the sea to breathe in the reality around them. However, the world beyond the life-giving atmosphere was still formless, shapeless, forever in flux between existence and non-existence. If any soul dared to venture beyond the skies, their essence would be dispersed into the howling chaos and creation of the endless birth and death of the eternal dark above.
The 11 winged snakes were proud of what they had created, yet they knew, so long as the space beyond the world was infinite, their creations could not continue to observe and revere them as the great creators they were. This planet would stagnate, would crumble, would fade back into the tedium of non-existence. And so, they turned to the endless sky above and soared through dream, leaving a promise to their first creation- that one day, when Infinity was made perceptible, they would return and Ascend the world past the veil that held them still, where the majesty they had formed could be observed until the slithering crawl of the end swallowed them all whole.
And so the 11 vanished into creation, and the world awaits it’s fated Ascension.”
- from the teachings of Mother Septimus
Followers are called Ascenders- derisively called “Ass-Enders” by those who aren’t part of the faith
Worship eleven creation serpents that will one day bring their world to the center stage and allow them the chance to perceive infinite creation
While in none of the original texts, the Ascenders have come to adopt in the Holy Canon that those who don’t follow the faith will die in a massive rapture event when the snakes return unless they recant the wicked turn of the world and submit to a more Luddite lifestyle
Nothing can ever be as brilliantly made as that which the Serpents themselves created- thus, technological and genetic advancements are seen as affronts to the 11 unless they are used to serve them
Church is divided into two branches- the Wings and the Fangs. The Wings branch practices theological study of the Serpent Sacraments. The Fangs Branch contains the vicious Slayers, fierce warriors that once spread the Virtue of the Serpent in a series of ultra-violent crusades
The Church is mainly consolidated to Aldorf, yet it has incredible sway over the government there, the current head of power merely a puppet of the church’s head
No preferential treatment to men or women, as both were created by the serpent, and therefore must be equally valuable