Religion in the Undulating Burgundy Marches

Priest: "What do we say to the God of Beer?"
Worshipers: "Bring me another one!"
- Ritual Prayer to Qorn

"Beer for the Beer God!"
- A common toast

Faith in the Undulating Burgundy Marches is, as it turns out, a strange thing.

For the better part of human history, the Westerrealm has held to a pantheon of common gods. The people lived in awe of names such as Boccob, Incabulos, Ehlonna and Ralishaz. Temples were founded for these great and luminous beings all across the land. Over time, other faiths such as those of Kord, the Stormlord, and Istus, Lady of Our Fate, were introduced from foreign eastern nations. The large temples and organised religious organisations of the Westerrealm are each dedicated to one of these common and widespread deities.

For every common deity, however, the Westerrealm is home to a demigod upstart, forgotten godling, pretentious nature-spirit or free-roaming sentient concept. Some of these wayward divinities stay around long enough to gain a foothold in civilization and expand their body of worshipers. Others are discarded, fused as aspects with common deities or mutated into entirely new concepts.

Three of these divinities with a large presence in the Undulating Burgundy Marches are described here:


Qorn, the Beer God
A divinity of uncertain origin. Some say he is an outcast agricultural deity, washed up in the Marches and taken to nursing his woes over fine craft beer. Others claim Qorn is the collective guzzling mirth of taverngoers everywhere in the Westerrealm. A select sect holds the Beer God to have once been a mortal man, an adventurer, a hero even, whose mirth and whose sorrow were both so large that the ale he consumed took on magical qualities which propelled him to demigodhood. But that is surely false, heretical and unholy. Debates over Qorn's nature are always accompanied by large amounts of fermented drink, bawdy songs, jokes, and emotional arguments and last well past midnight. These theological discussions almost always end in a fistfight with an inconclusive outcome, after which the combatants will fall into each other's arms and proclaim eternal brotherhood. "Beer for the Beer God!" is then shouted.

Whatever Qorn's origin, no one can dispute his influence in the Undulating Burgundy Marches. The Commissioner of the King is a known adept of the God of Beer, as are many adventuring types undertaking doomed expeditions to Snow Mountain or the Out-of-Place Jungle. His cult at the Great Stained Glass-Domed Temple is one of the largest and the annual festival in his name, wherein supplicants dress up as various and sundry animals and personages for three days of alcoholic festivities, after which the Beer God will sulk and disappear for forty days, is the grandest in town.


Lady Death
The east has Nerull, the south has the Raven Queen, the Marches have Lady Death. As in every culture, the peoples of the northwestern Westerrealm, of which the Undulating Burgundy Marches are part, have an anthropomorphic conception of Death. In contrast to the reaper dreaded in the eastern lands, or the indifferent cold god of the south, Lady Death is a caring and merciful deity. Her embrace is warm and the release into her halls is, in the Wyld-infected, volatile areas of the Marches, sometimes considered a natural and accepted part of life. She is depicted as a robed, skull-faced woman but she can also appear as a beautiful female of the same species as the viewer.


The Dice Gods
Perhaps owing to the large influx of scallywags, outcasts, explorers and mercenaries into the Undulating Burgundy Marches, this godhead has increased in attention in recent years. These fickle gods of fate are said to be the masters of destiny of all, perhaps even guiding the Cosmic Flail Snail on its slithering path. Portrayed as seven polyhedral stones in the Great Stained Glass-Domed Temple, the Dice Gods are not actively worshiped or named, but as every soul knows their role in this great cosmic game, offerings are left at their altar all the same. Even priests dedicated to the great deities and other minor godlings know to offer some myrrh or incense to the mighty polyhedral set.

Except for the priests of Boccob. They don't care.