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The So-Called Eighth Faith

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BySuraia Silverbell

Cause and Consequence

“No god weighs the scales. We tip them ourselves.” — Attributed to an unnamed “Eighth” thinker

Overview

Across the Xaverion Islands, people speak of seven gods: the four New Faiths, the three Old Gods, and—whispered in taverns and back rooms—the so-called “eighth faith”: Cause and Consequence.

Strictly speaking, its adherents do not believe in gods at all. For this reason, priests of the New Faiths insist it cannot be a “faith” in any true sense. Still, the name has stuck, and Cause and Consequence has become the common label for those who deny divine will altogether.

Core Belief: Cause and Consequence

Followers of the “eighth faith” hold that:

  • There are no gods anymore, or if there ever were, they no longer act in the world.

  • Everything that happens is the result of cause and consequence—chains of action and reaction, choice and result.

  • The future is not fixed by prophecy or divine plan, but ever changing with every decision made by mortals.

In their view, miracles are simply the outcome of unknown causes; blessings and curses are coincidences, magic, or the work of other mortals—not the hands of distant deities.

View of the New Faiths

The harshest division between this “eighth faith” and the rest of the islands lies in how they explain the rise of the New Gods.

According to their own writings and rumours about them, many “Eighth” adherents believe that:

  • The New Faiths are the product of cause and consequence, not divine intervention.

  • A group of powerful mortals once gathered and invented these religions, shaping them around their personal beliefs and ideals.

  • They then claimed that new gods had appeared with a promise to end the Age of Darkness, unite the races and stop the terrible wars.

Because people desperately wanted the Age of Darkness to end, they argue, the islands were only too willing to believe:

  • Old Faiths were abandoned,

  • the New Faiths were embraced,

  • and the resulting unity and effort against Ghor and its horrors appeared to prove the “miracle” true.

To a follower of Cause and Consequence, the New Faiths are not lies about salvation—they are simply human-made tools that happened to work.

Place in Society

The “eighth faith” has no temples, no recognised priesthood, and no formal calendar of holy days. Its ideas travel in:

  • arguments over ale,

  • quiet debates in study rooms,

  • and the resigned mutterings of those who have lost all trust in gods.

The Church of the New Faiths condemns such thinking as dangerous unbelief, and insists that without divine guidance the world would fall once more into chaos. Officially, followers of Cause and Consequence are treated as heretics or fools, depending on who is speaking.

Even so, the name “eighth faith” has become a convenient way to speak about them—half insult, half grim joke.

Common Themes and Sayings

Though they follow no liturgy, certain ideas recur in stories about adherents of Cause and Consequence:

  • Responsibility – If there are no gods to blame or praise, then mortals are responsible for what happens.

  • Skepticism – Claims of visions, omens, or divine commands are treated with suspicion; the first question is always “Who benefits?”

  • Choice – Every decision is a fork in the road, changing the shape of what comes next.

Tavern talk attributes phrases like these to “Eighth” thinkers:

  • “If a miracle happens, look for the hands that arranged it.”

  • “The gods did not end the Darkness; people did.”

  • “Every war, every peace, every law—someone chose it.”

Whether or not those who are quoted ever existed, the attitude is clear: the world turns on choices, not on prayers.

Relationship to Other Faiths

  • Old Faiths (Quintra, Denday, Ghor)
    Cause-and-Consequence adherents regard tales of the Old Gods as mythic history or allegory at best. The banishment of gods to sun and moons is, to them, simply an old way of explaining natural forces and disasters.

  • Eonil and Nature Worship
    Where Ee’dornil see Eonil as the living world-spirit, the “eighth faith” tends to treat nature as vast but unguided: powerful, beautiful, dangerous—but not intentional.

  • New Faiths (Thoron, Myalanna, Envylon, Ysandra)
    Here their disagreement is sharpest. The Church calls them godless and ungrateful. They, in turn, see the New Faiths as successful inventions—religions that arose from need and politics, then hardened into unquestioned truth.

In the Present Fifth Era

Openly declaring oneself a follower of the “eighth faith” is risky under the watchful eyes of the Church. Most who share these views do so quietly, if at all.

Still, wherever people:

  • question why the gods are silent,

  • look at wars and wonder who truly chose them,

  • or watch the calendar turn and think only of cause and consequence—

the so-called Eighth Faith lives on, not in temples, but in the doubts and decisions of those who no longer expect the gods to answer.

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