Paternalism

Paternalism is a single-faith religious family that emerged from the Northern regions of Eastern Elgenea, first in The Winterlands and more prominently in The Heartlands. Paternalism is a Dualistic religion with very little mythological elements associated with it, focused chiefly on the creation and the ethics of mankind.

Paternalism is named so based upon its two chief co-deities, the Spirit of the Mother, and the Spirit of the Father. The Spirit of the Mother is also often referred to as the "Lifebringer," or "Lifebreather," while the Spirit of the Father is usually referred to as the "Speaker," "Teacher," and occasionally in literature as the "Allfather," to which his counterpart is then referred to as the "Allmother."

Both spirits are treated as jointly responsible for the creation of the universe. The Mother is responsible for the birth of the physical realm and everything contained by it, including the process of time, which is referred to as "life" in the Old Chronicle. She then introduced living things to the world, which could make use of time by having the freedom to act. The Old Chronicle defines this as "Breathing life into existence, creating time itself..." then breathing "life into the things contained by existence, creating the first creatures."

Mankind was the Spirit of the Mother's favourite creature, but she loathed that it, nor any of her other creatures, were able to perceive the wonders of the world she'd built. So the Spirit of the Father bestowed the mind unto mankind so that they might appreciate the world and its creators. Thereafter, man became pious and inquisitive, but as they began to use their discoveries to fuel their desires for luxury, they neglected their creators and stopped their worships and rituals. The Spirit of the Mother then created winter, which would return every year to show mankind the barren world which would exist without intervention from its creator. She also then created a new man, unrelated to all others, and the father granted him infinite knowledge omnipresence, tasking him with the duty of judging the souls of mankind for their actions during their lives. This man became the Archangel Konrad, who is often referred to as the "Angel of Truth and Judgement."

The Samsonist religious group diverged from Paternalism when, in the early 1st century AS Samson the Great was born following centuries of Heartlander subjugation by the foreign Mokosh hordes. Samson went on to unite all the Heartlander tribes against the Mokosh, led them to independence, then mysteriously vanished. This led many to speculate that he had been a divine entity sent by the Paternal Spirits to liberate them and that once his duty had been accomplished he returned to heaven as the Son of the Gods.