Religion of Lestaria
Religion in the Lestaria Empire is a topic rich with history, yet has decreased in prominence to the point where it is rare to find someone who is devout, and even rarer still to find a sizable community of people who belong to one religion.
There are two main bodies of religions: religions centered around the existence of Gods, and religions centered around gods. The latter are much more popular than the former, and have been since the creation of gods began, though there are a sizable number of people who continue to keep scripture and religion alive for their Gods.
Organizations centered around gods lack spirituality beyond some basic concepts of partnership and more grounded in respect and equal exchange. The employees record the history of the god, and support their activities in exchange for grace and favor. Sometimes, gods have even bestowed some power onto their allies, such as with the gods of Time and Spirits. Although some consider it akin to religion, really, it is more like the employees are assistants of the gods and will record their existence in the passage of time, with those that receive special powers being exceptions to the norms: the most popular example being the Mallin family. They've received the secrets to seeing into the future, though the use of that power is rife with controversy.
Religions centered around Gods, on the other hand, are much more abstract, spiritual, ritual-based, and built on a history and a belief in a higher being. This higher being varies, but this is the general summary of elements that differs the religions of Gods from the organizations of gods. Some examples of the major religions surrounding Gods are those that worship the Gods of Pure Light, and the Gods of Pure Shadow. These two branches of religion believe there are Gods that represent either Light or Shadow respectively, in their purest form, and that they use their power to shape the world and oversee its growth as they see fit. While some believe that both live in co-existence, many who believe these Gods exist usually only believe in the existence of either Pure Light or Pure Shadow being the building blocks of the world, which is often a source of conflict.
Another major religion is one that believes there is a being that brought the gift of nature named Liia that sparked life-- they often believe strongly in living a life without waste, relying on the planet’s natural gifts to sustain themselves over relying on technology and modern cities. The last major religion focuses on a God named Arxis, who represents life, but in a different sense from Liia, in which the life she represents is that of the essence of what keeps us alive. It is said that she gifted the heart and blood to the first living being, therefore crafting the soul that ties into one's very life. She is the one that gives the heart the strength to beat for years and years, and treasures life and creativity, along with the beauty that comes with culture and history. So the legend goes, anyway. Out of the main four religions, this is the least popular, though it has gained a small boost of popularity in recent years.
Gods
Gods are different from gods. The distinction is in the capital letter, although the concept of Gods is something that is much more buried in spirituality than what is concrete knowledge. Even in a world brimming with magical potential, Gods remain something rooted in religion, and no proof exists of a God.
Some say there is one God responsible for all of existence, while others claim multiple. Regardless, the general story remains the same, of beings capable of shaping existence to their will.
Damnation and Upliftance
As casual, disconnected polytheism has dominated the vocabulary of the average Lestarian citizen, there were two concepts that came into vogue with early research on the Soul Web, yet faded away in all but the dirtiest mouths: Damnation and Upliftance. The idea went that, people who were shunned and disrespected by the gods suffered from not only the negative opinion of said god, but from the 'weight' of the god's soul power when compared to an average mortal.
A concept that utterly failed to fit into what we understand now about modern soul connections and Soul Web theory, but it originated as a somewhat superstitious idea that mostly died out after ~1000. In a sense though, it was the fear that, if all souls were connected, that a god held disproportional power over the souls of those around them. If they truly wanted to, even, they (in theory) could cut souls off from their connections with others, removing memories of that person, or even making others want to avoid them. This was the idea of 'damnation'.
The opposite, upliftance, works in the opposite way: people respected by the gods influenced others in the soul web to like, remember and respect that person too. Though these ideas are now regarded as false, they still left an effect on vernacular and were credited as the reason why many Societies dedicated to gods started (though the relationships quickly became transactional over faith-based).