Interspecies Worship

Elves, dwarves, and orcs revere their own creator gods. Val, Ord, and Kul respectively. Humans, uniquely, worship many gods. The difference between the Innumerable Younger Gods of the humans and the Elder Gods who created the other speaking peoples is not well understood.

Dwarves mostly venerate dwarf heroes, humans mostly worship human saints, and so on... But this is just a side effect of the fact that members of the same ancestry share the same culture and language and self-assemble along those lines. Any sufficiently large city, regardless of which species founded it, has churches and temples to gods of many species because cities attract people of many different species.

Each culture's pantheon reflects the mores and folkways of the people who live there. In far northern Vanigar, villains in folktales often gain their power by tricking others through clever wordplay. Riddles. Though they are villains, they are clever, and this earns them some respect even from their enemies. So the Vanigar pantheon includes Holkatya, a trickster god.

Whereas Vasloria has no folk tradition of trickster figures, and so has no trickster god. Instead, villains in Vaslorian folktales tend to be people who seek quick ways to power in order to avoid honest work. So Vasloria has the dark god Cyrvis who teaches that magic can subvert fate and make you master of not only your destiny, but also the world. This also reveals the common Vaslorian's attitude toward magic.

The gods of each pantheon tell you what the people of that region value, and what they fear, disapprove of, or distrust. The Vaslorian pantheon is wholly different from the pantheon of Vanigar which is different from the pantheon of Rioja. The gods and saints can hear their worshippers anywhere in the timescape and even small cities can have temples to distant gods of other peoples and regions. All it takes is one dedicated conduit to establish a church of their saint or hero in some distant land.

For instance, the High City of Dalrath, a small barony in northern Aendrim, has a temple to Sektahre the Boatman, a saint of Khemhara, a distant desert region. The people of Dalrath do not find this strange. The priestess of Sektahre does all the same things any native curate would do: perform rituals, heal the sick, and otherwise tend to the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the locals without asking much in return. Some people may be suspicious of a stranger peddling their religion far from home, but yet more people consider the presence of such a priestess a sign that their city must be very important indeed.

Because of all these gods and saints, religion in Orden is a very à la carte affair. There are human heroes in the elf pantheon. There are dwarf saints in many human pantheons. Elder or younger, the gods do not care much about their followers' biology. If you devote your life to the teachings of a god and do good works in their name, you can expect to be rewarded regardless of your ancestry. And, though the Age of Saints is long past, most folk believe it is still possible for a mortal to ascend to sainthood or herodom, even in this late age.

Lastly, though rulers across the land instinctively believe the gods are paying more attention to them because they are queens or dukes or the heads of a powerful wizard order or guild... there is no evidence of this. As far as theologists can tell, the gods seem to view every soul as equally worthy. Many of the tales of saints and heroes feature characters of enormous divine power battling over the soul of a normal person with no station or power or inheritance.

As much as it annoys the great and the good, the gods view all mortals as equals.