Religion

The Swimmers, as a rule, don't worship any sort of deity but revere the forces of nature. This is a practice their new human neighbors adopted not long after arriving on Atharia. This, of course, didn't stop the vaen from continuing to practice their beliefs, nor did it stop those humans who felt strongly about a particular deity from their worship.

As time passed, conflicts erupted over which sect had more dominance over the others. These were minor nuisances compared to the Lunalis Imperium, a new religion that sprang up. It insisted that it was the One True Way, that its goddess was the only one that was real. All the people of Atharia had to convert to its ways or die.

Naturally, the other religions laughed in their faces. Naturally, the Imperium retaliated by wiping out a small fishing village. It escaped no one's attention that this particular village had a large group of people who worshipped Br'ant, the fisher god.

What followed was a five-year-long bloody civil war between the Imperium and the rest of Atharia. When the dust settled, what remained of its higher ranking members were arrested pending trial. Three of them committed suicide rather than face trial. The rest were sentenced to life in prison. The man who started it all was never found.

The devastation left by the war was immense. Everyone knew someone affected by it. Entire cities were destroyed, massive amounts of people left homeless and jobless. Food rationing was a matter of course. The leaders of each city-state debated for weeks on how to deal with the aftermath. They came to the decision to outright ban any religious practice beyond that practiced by the Swimmers. Too much strife and bloodshed had come in the name of religion. If humans couldn't agree on one way to worship by themselves, the law would do it for them.

There was public outcry at the decree, though not as much as there would have been had the war not just ended.