Ulashanai

From FiranMUX

Overview

In the Bonduin Pantheon, Ulashanai is the Vulture who takes the undeserving dead to the land of Never. He is not, like the way the Firans treat Drik, reviled for being the deity who delivers doomed souls to the land of Never, rather, he is carefully revered, although not really worshipped. No one, of course, wants someone's soul to go to the land of Never, but they realize that bad people do not warrant protection by Doya, and as such, are proper to go to Ulashanai. His priests and priestesses are usually middle-aged women and men, and they attend all funerals and the death bed rites, offering prayers that Ulashanai will not find the soul acceptable. They feel that by not shunning this powerful and not too pleasant god, then he will not feel slighted and will claim fewer souls that may have strayed from the path one time too many before redeeming themselves. It is often thought that Ithadu fights with Ulashanai for the souls of warriors, and Doya for the souls of those who gave their life guarding.

Ulashanai is the Firan equivalent of Drik.

Order

The priesthood of Ulashanai is usually made of up middle aged to older woman and men, who become priests late in life after worshipping Doya or Srenna. It is quite common for Ulashanai priests to have their entire families killed or enslaved by the Shamibelians and they devote their lives to the priesthood in an attempt to make sure their relatives' souls remain safe from Ulashanai. It is also often that they lost faith in Doya to guard them, or in Ithadu to go forth and protect them. They still believe in both Goddesses, but look now to Ulashanai as the final step in what happens to them and to their people. If Ulashanai can be pleased by their prayers to him, he will not take the souls of the Bonduin people to the land of Never. It is a debate whether or not the priests of Ulashanai go to the land of never when they die and many claim that they do not, that Doya takes them in for guarding the souls of the living. Unlike the orders of Doya and Ithadu, the order of Ulashanai is very ritualized and has very little variation in it. Those in this order usually wear ritual robes of grey and black, with a small vulture feature worked into a brooch that indicates hierarchical rank.

Worship

Not surprisingly, Ulashanai has little in the way of worshippers and his priesthood mostly attends to deaths and funerals, and work towards, oddly enough, making sure Ulashanai doesn't claim as many souls as he either rightfully should, or may want to. People do offer a word to Ulashanai on occasion, when seeing something horrible or speaking about someone cruel - or speaking about the Shamibelians. Phrases such as, 'Ulashanai has a claim on him', or 'Ulashanai take you!' are both curses meaning that the person is evil, bad and/or unworthy and that they are on the path to the land of Never. Often, if a phrase like that is used to someone, it is such a shock, that the person in question often undergoes a severe personality change, if only for a short while, in an attempt to redeem themselves.