Hi Miki!

I’m not very familiar with modern Gnosticism, but the ancient Gnostics that I know of didn’t much resemble the Meraists.

The Church of St. Merai contains a lot of diverse groups with
differing doctrines, but three primary tenets are considered essential
to the faith:

1.) Eli as Iluvatar. Meraists believe that the god worshiped by
themselves and the Ecclesia is the same god that the old polytheistic
religion called Iluvatar, the Creator-god who had made the world and
then fallen silent. Meraists believe that the old faith was not a
“false religion”, merely one that awaited the fulfillment of its
revelation in Yahshua.

2.) Yahshua as the Avatar. Meraists worship Yahshua, the Onequion,
as the Avatar of Eli — the incarnation of the Creator-god’s essence in
physical form. (This is similar to the idea of the Emanation Body of a
buddha in Mahayana Buddhism.) They look at the litany of sacrifice
practiced by the ancient Lothanasi — “blood for blood, life for life,
one dies so many may live” — as a reflection and foreshadowing of
Yahshua’s ultimate act of compassion.

3.) Merai as the Prophet. Meraists believe that St. Merai, the
Starchild, was the last great Prophet sent by Eli, the one through whom
Eli pronounced judgment on the aedra and daedra lords, completed His
revelation, and united the two great sundered paths of faith. They see
the fact that her life mirrored Yahshua’s in many respects as a sign of
her blessed status, proof that Eli chose her to do His work. Most
Meraists believe that Eli chose a woman to be His Prophet in order to
remind mortals that His nature encompassed both the Masculine and the
Feminine, and that male and female were created equally in the image of
Iluvatar.

Meraists also pay varying degrees of reverence and homage to the
aedra and daedra lords, seeing them as moral teachers sent by Eli to
embody the great virtues and vices on a grand scale. When they set
themselves up as gods over humanity and refused to repent of their
hubris, Eli judged them and cast them to earth. Many Meraists believe
that the gods still have a place in Eli’s plan, and that they will one
day be restored to their former glory if they serve faithfully in their
roles as mankind’s guardians and teachers.

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Germanic and Slavic peoples are included among the broad category known as Kitchlanders (equivalent to Caucasians in our world). The Norse-analogue is the Northlanders, who are also descended from Kitchlande stock but who settled in far northern Galendor and diverged culturally and genetically from the other Kitchlander groups.

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A theriomorph who took on human form would accumulate "shifting stress", which they then have to pay back by spending an equivalent amount of time in full animal form. The body tries to alleviate shifting stress by going straight to animal form the next time the person shifts, but a talented theriomorph can resist this urge and put off the shift back for some time. This requires an act of will, though, and at least a little concentration (which grows the longer the person was in human form). They'll get fatigued faster, and eventually fall asleep and change involuntarily. Once the theriomorph shifts into full-morph form, they have to stay in that form until they pay back their shifting stress.

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I hope that answered your questions to your satisfaction, Miki. Welcome to the city!

Cheers,

Chris

Do you ever sleep, Chris?

FWIW my experience with Gnosticism, specificaly modern Gnostic Catholocism is that they believe that there is  a fundmantal and secret truth that can only be gained by advancement in the church.  If you have ever read the gospels of Thomas or Mary they both indicate that their chosen 'apostle' was given this ultimate truth to pass down to his/her followers. In addition they have a more balanced view of the divine than the RC.  There is a priest and a priestess in a Gnostic mass, otherwise it would be hard to tell it from an RC mass (content of creed notwithstanding of course - don't get me started on the Nicene council :)).

I may have more questions about North and Kitchlanders but since my answers may already be posted, i'll read the site first.  My impression from the podcast is that of all the countries they are the furthest from civilization (literally and figuratively).  Is that right?  Do/Did they have their own gods?

> Do you ever sleep, Chris?

It's been known to happen on occasion.

> FWIW my experience with Gnosticism, specificaly modern
> Gnostic
Catholocism is that they believe that there is  a
> fundmantal and secret
truth that can only be gained by
> advancement in the church.

Doesn't sound like they've changed their tune all that much in the last two thousand years, then. The Gnostics have been peddling that line about secret knowledge since Jesus's time, when they were more often associated with the Egyptian god Osiris. While I'm all in favor of an egalitarian priesthood, and I see a lot of sense in a balanced view of the masculine and the feminine of the Divine, I'm skeptical of any group that claims a secret monopoly on God's truth.

As for Northlanders and Kitchlanders: since a large chunk of Galendor is now under Imperial rule, the Northlanders are about as remote as, say, Alaskans in our world. Yes, their towns tend to be smaller and quieter, and they can sometimes be a bit suspicious of outsiders, but they're still part of the Empire and get the same entertainment and popular culture as everyone else with a TV set and a WorldNet connection.

"Kitchlanders" once referred only to people who were actually from the continent of Kitchlande, but has come to be a general term for anyone with pale skin who is distantly descended from Kitchlande stock, much like "Caucasian" in our world.  Kitchlanders are all over the place these days; they did very well in Galendor and occupy more than half its surface area, primarily in the West. Sathmorans and Northlanders are technically sub-types of Kitchlanders.

During the days when the Pantheon still ruled the Heavens and Hells, the same gods were worshiped throughout the world, though they had different names and different degrees of prominence in different places. There were monotheistic faiths that grew up here and there, which acknowledged only one god and denounced the Pantheon as usurpers. The Ecclesia was the most successful of these, and a number of vicious religious wars were fought between polytheistic Sathmore (which was backed by the Lothanasi) and monotheistic Pyralis (which had the support of the Ecclesia). The Meraist faith was an attempt to reconcile the cultural differences between the polytheists and the monotheists, which has met with varying degrees of success over the years.

Today there are a variety of monotheistic faiths, which call their one god by different names but generally credit him/her/it with the creation of the universe. Some people believe these are all the same god answering to different names; others, such as the Universalists, believe that they are all fragments of the original Creator-god's essence, each embodying a different aspect of its nature and each believing itself to be the one true god. The fallen Pantheon, though, is now well-known, and the deities themselves now openly acknowledge all of the names by which they have been called over the eons.