The Ghesite people have since time immemorial followed a semi-monotheistic, semi-pantheistic religion that preaches the existence of Sky-Mother Ejadrir, a divine entity that resides within the heavens, and which sets the universe into order through the use of innumerable servants that take the shape of the Clouds and Winds. The Mother is chief in their cosmology, being no less than the personification of the spiritually-charged Upper Sphere of the atmosphere's (and indeed the universe's) uppermost bounds, the reaches of which cover the world. However, Ghesite teachings hold, the Mother has taken an especial liking to their people, as they live free like Her beloved Winds, not remaining still in dwellings and homes but forever moving from place to place in a life energized rather than sedentary. The Mother, however, holds some degree of affectation for all things underneath the sky, and to this end she makes use of a number of servant-beings that exist as components of herself within the outer sphere. These beings, when sent into the Lower Sphere and the Earth to do the mother's bidding, are embodied in the clouds and the winds.

The former of the Mother's servants, the clouds, are held to be messenger-beings, creatures of spirit who enter into this world from outside it and skirt through the lower atmosphere- nearest to the philosophical "ground" of the Ghesite's cosmology- but who lack the strength to adopt more corporeal forms like the winds do. The clouds exist to speak to the people of Earth about the future and inform them of what is to come, primarily in the form of warnings about the weather, but also indicating more serious phenomena. For example, smoke is credited to a creation of the Mother warning creatures of the presence of fire and thus of danger or warmth in turn.

The latter, the winds, are more dominant within the cosmology of the Ghesites, as they are held to be the more powerful and more cohesive of the two. Indeed, while some messengers of the Mother can be ascribed with motive, they are ultimately vast trawling spirits with little independent will, whereas the winds are strong things that are so present within the lower sphere that their passing can rustle hair and grass or whip flames into a frenzy. The winds are messengers of the clouds, as well, blowing them along their course to the places they are meant to go, and dissipating them back into nothing when they have served their purpose. The winds are more permanent dwellers within the mortal coil, and indeed possess the strength not just in body but in will to have discernible aspects to their personalities, and of their existence. For example, the cardinal Winds of West and East are cold, biting, yet reasoned and warm, loving, yet quick to anger respectively, as the East Wind comes off of the sea and is humid, giving rise to life-bringing rain and destructive storms, while the West Wind comes down from the mountains and rarely brings with it nary but chill. The winds are the Mother's agents within the world, each with a set role and each with a unique means of filling it.

The role of humanity within this cosmology is an uncertain one. There is no specific afterlife allotted to the dead, as one's soul exists within one's body only as an animating force, and when one dies that soul is collected by the Flensing Wind, which "flays" the soul off of the body and carries it up to the outer sphere, where it is released into the spiritual ether. The escaping of gases from the body of a corpse is seen as this process in action. In certain cases, it is noted that souls who have made great impact on the world are aggregated together into new Winds, which then rejoin the lower sphere. If that is not the case, though, then the soulstuff floats back down to Earth to constitute new beings, and so while it is not necessarily reincarnation, it is still a "rebirth" of sorts. So, while humanity exists within the cosmology of the faith, and is part of the natural order, it is no more so than the mouse in the field is, as each are simply dust animated by soul, and the soul of each will leave their bodies upon death, to rejoin the cosmos and cycle through life once more, a reflection of the greater view of the Ghesites on both the immortality and impermanence of the universe, where nothing is new, yet nothing lasts, and one is only in motion for the length of its own short, blessed life. The clouds grow and fade away into the ether, man is born and dies, the prairie is eaten by grass fires and regrows, and even the mountains are ground to dust by the passage of time, only for new ones to rise in their place. Only the Mother and her Winds are eternal in this endless cycle of death and rebirth.

The central figure of the Ghesite faith is, as one might expect, the Sky-Mother Ejadrir, the Nurturing One. The Mother is in the simplest terms a matron-deity embodying the universe itself, but as should soon be made apparent She is... difficult to characterize, to say the least. She did not create the cosmos, for it has always existed, yet to some extent She is outside of it, as She is undying and not part of the cycle of death and rebirth, as are her Winds. But nonetheless She has forever been present in the universe, as She defines the Upper Sphere. Therefore, it can be assumed that the Mother simply is- that it is not the universe's nature to be impermanent, but the Lower Sphere's, and that the Mother's nature is closer to that of the Upper Sphere's. The Mother ensures the duality of the universe, reflecting the impermanence of reality as the embodiment of the unchanging realm of spirituality.

Yet, in a certain sense, the Mother exists as an individual and not as some metaphysical qualification, as Her actions are evident in the world. Clouds form, winds blow, all from her work and her motive force. And yet She is not these things- She is the one who commands them, but She does not constitute them. The winds are independent things with their own minds. Perhaps She is a sentient force, then? After all, the death of earthly beings sends vast "clouds" of spirit skyward,so is it not possible that the clouds are not the same, the residue of the "death" of spiritual things sent trawling downwards into the lower sphere by an unfathomably vast force coursing across the skies? Of course not- there is no death in the realm of spirit, after all, for it is eternal. Then there is only one thing that She must be- an incredibly powerful creature, capable of feats bridging the gap between eternity and impermanence, of twisting reality to Her own whims. But She did not create the world, so what can She be?

There is but one remaining answer to that statement: Ejadrir did not create the world, so She cannot be outside of it. The world has always existed. She is not taking advantage of some natural process to send Her gifts, and so must be defying nature to do so. But nothing within nature can defy its laws. However, something can be neither within or without of a system. It can be that system. Therefore, the Sky-Mother is the universe. Her nature as permanent means that she is naturally expressed within the Upper Sphere and its own, lasting realm, but she nonetheless inhabits the Lower Sphere equally, for She embodies both. She can send clouds past the boundary, and allow spirit-stuff through it, because She is that boundary. The Mother is not within or without, She simply is. And humanity and indeed all of life are simply fascinations within herself that she chooses to tolerate and even allow to thrive, solely out of her benevolence- or, perhaps, her apathy.

To some, a malevolent divine would be far less terrifying. Those some- say, the worshipers of the Berghi Cult of the Four- would be by Ghesites held to be weak, for they loathe and revile the despised portions of their pantheon. The Ghesites have but one to revere, but one to worship. Their Goddess is both loving and strong, and they have won her favor. There can be no greater victory.

The Winds of the Sky-Mother are, in a sense, the most straightforward of the Mother's servants. They are independent creatures, existing within the bounds of the lower sphere, who exist to fill certain roles in the ordering of the cosmos. They are also much more active forces, and are anthropomorphized with certain traits based on these roles, taking up the primary places in Ghesite myth. To compare the Winds to other mythologies, they fill the same role as river deities, demons holding court over a subjugated area, or other mythical creatures that are tied to aspects of their local geography. However, this does not change the fact that the Winds are nonetheless alien things to this world, and their nature, like all things spiritual, is that of the upper sphere, not the lower.

A non-exhaustive list of the Winds, with their roles and certain features of note, follows.

The Cardinal Winds, the first and chiefest category of winds, are the closest to "head gods" of the Ghesite "pantheon", as they play important roles in the ordering of the known world. There are, as one might expect from the name, four cardinal winds, the East Wind, West Wind, North Wind, and South Wind. The East Wind, or the Sea Wind, is the most active in Ghesite myth, characterized as a loving but fickle figure, thanks to the fact the encounters the Ghesites most often have with it are it blowing rains and storms from the eastern sea towards the plain, events that are as often destructive as they are life-bringing. Her opposite, the West or Mountain Wind, is characterized largely as the Sea Wind's double, thanks to the fact that the mountains' positioning often makes certain that the rains that come from the sea are confined to the plain and do not cross over them. Therefore, he is credited with being reasoned, calm, and lawful, and represents the maintenance of the Mother's order in the world. The North Wind, while lacking as much prominence as the West and East Winds, holds two immutable traits: a bringer of cold and a bringer of wealth, thanks to the fact that winter comes out of the North and, historically, the trading empires have brought their goods from the north. These empires have been in contact with the Ghesites for so long that their cardinal direction has been canonized as bearing one of their defining characteristics. The South Wind is not often mentioned, either, as it holds little role in everyday Ghesite life. Its most common characterization is as a destroyer, a bringer of drought, cursing winds, and bad omens.

The Storm Winds, the first of two broad classes of "group winds", or winds that lack singular defining personalities, includes within it large hosts of winds described as "helpers" or "soldiers" in turn, creatures of little power who work among the clouds and set them into the Mother's perfect order. The two main categories within the Storm Winds are the Shepherding Winds and the Striking Winds. The former, the Shepherding Winds, play the role of, well, shepherds, blowing the cloud-messengers from place to place at the Mother's will. The Shepherding Winds lack very much personification, given that they rarely affect the lives of Ghesites as much as their sheep do, and as such gain their describing characteristics from those sheep. For example, the bearers of cirrus clouds are energetic vanguards and riders, coming before great storms with words of warning, and so on. Thus, Shepherding Winds are often found in myths and stories as characters able to be shaped by the necessities of the tale, rather than defining it by their presence, as, say, the Ashen Wind does in the myth of Kauvighn. The Striking Winds, playing into Sky-Worship's theme of duality, are agents of change as compared to the Shepherding Winds and their maintenance of the cosmos, accompanying events such as the coming of thunderstorms and wreaking havoc, or coming down from the mountains as great gusts and breezes, bending even the strongest trees. Their role is much the same in mythology and the telling of tales as that of the Shepherding Winds, providing an opportunity for individual characters to appear without mandating they dominate the tale, though the personifications of Striking Winds are often more militant and hostile than those of Shepherding Winds.

The Celestial Winds, the second of the classes of "group winds", are perhaps the most esoteric winds, and the most removed from the Ghesites in everyday life. Their existence is, to use modern terminology, a hypothesis rather than a theory, as the roles they fill in the Ghesite cosmology are largely mechanical ones, and their existence even more so than other, more Earthly winds is solely to ensure that that cosmology continues its seamless operation. The most dominant of these "predicted" winds are the Lighting Winds, which are largely unknown aside for the fact that they must exist to sweep across the sky, light the fires of the stars, and blows the sun on its way across the sky. As such, they rarely appear in a direct role in mythology, and when they do only possess the common characterization of being aloof and ethereal in nature, with poets and tellers otherwise describing them based on their own personal interpretation of these mystical creatures' natures.

The Winds of Death are, thankfully, not as horrid as their names suggest. Rather, they are often subdued figures, and rarely portrayed in a negative light, reflecting the Ghesite view on death that it holds no morality but rather simply is. The chiefest of the Winds of Death is the Flensing Wind, mentioned prior to here as a "psychopomp". This term is not wholly accurate. The Flensing Wind's role is as the being that "flenses" and frees the soul from the body, which the Ghesites identify as the release of gas from corpses over time after they have passed on. Interestingly, this is the source of a taboo regarding the defiling of bodies among the Ghesites: If the lungs of a corpse remain intact and inflated, they are not to be disturbed until the Flensing Wind has taken its fill. Another Death-Wind is the Ashen Wind, characterized as a mourning woman and a guide coming after tragedy, and which is associated with the passing of fire and destruction. Its name is in reference to the falling of ash from the sky after a fire, likened to hot tears.

There does within Ghesite myth exist a sort of "demon"; it is, as they would say, a fault of free will. These "demons" are, in essence, wayward Winds representing evil within the cosmology. It is a matter of some contention among Ghesite thinkers whether or not these "demons" were intended creations within the Mother as a means of introducing something that must exist into creation, if they were a means of defining Her as not entirely benevolent, or if they were merely the product of an unintentional happenstance, the cavorting result of the East Wind's spiteful machinations. Their origins too are some cause of doctrinal friction, as detailed below, a number of myths telling the tale of their entrance into the Lower Sphere, what is known, however, is that in existence they are cruel, without any reasoning to the infliction of pain, and generous in the destruction they wreak- the metaphysical definition of undeserved wrong.

While the Winds may play an active, energetic role in Ghesite mythology, the Clouds hold far more important repercussions for the people of the plain, as they provide omens and divinations as to the future and what it might hold. These divinations at their most simple level are simply observations of reality as it is, as the Ghesites have learned over the centuries that, say, certain clouds indicate that rain or dry spells are in the future. These assessments are matters of meteorology. However, wrapped in mysticism as they are, this observation of the clouds has taken on a ritual aspect, and certain formations have taken on personifications and divine meanings in their own right, becoming spiritually important to the Ghesite faith.

As mentioned previously, the clouds are held to universally be divine spirits, sent by the Mother through the boundary between spheres to guide those of Her children willing to read the signs in the sky and to show favor or displeasure with them. Due to their nature as actual, tangible things, the Ghesites do not tend to interpret them as, say, "letters" or indeed as any form of concrete, constant script. Instead, they observe extant trends in cloud-formations, the shapes of large bunches of clouds, or in certain cases odd, repeating formations that might be indicative of some ill omen.

THE BELOW IS ALL WIP. IGNORE PLS. For own reference.

THE LAY OF KAUVIGHN

A tale discussing an everyman character, Kauvighn, "he who weeps", and his torment by demonic figures and corrupted Winds. In the myth he is separated from his band by a storm and he finds himself lost in the mountains to the west of the Basin. His steed is then stricken by an ulcer and killed by a mountain lion, which in turn maims him before inexplicably leaving him with a ruined leg, fleeing from "a foul scent on the wind". Upon tending to his wounds, he hobbles down the mountains to his band's range and the camp he knows waits for him only to find that the scent of death was coming from his camp, and that they have all been killed by marauders. He attempts to burn the corpses of his friends, but gives up, tears his clothes and dons sackcloth, laying on a mound of ash for days stricken by grief and beginning to starve. Soon, though, a storm comes out of the east. In the storm, he is driven mad by fear and finds that the mountain-lion has returned and is eating at the corpse of a friend he has yet to burn. Kauvighn kills it and delights at the prospect of eating a meal for the first time in days. The storm, though, has other prospects- a grassfire is struck up by thunder, and he is forced back to the mound of ash in the camp's center while all around him is consumed.

In the morning he awakes, covered in soot but unscathed, and begins once more to cry, wishing for death as he stares at the mountain lion's burnt corpse and wondering why he has not yet perished- or, for that matter, why he does not feel either hunger or thirst. His query is answered as a woman walks into the camp's ruins, her rough riding-clothes coated in dust and ash, but her veiled face somehow clean and unmarred. She wordlessly gathers ashes in an urn at her side, and then throws them over his prone form. Kauvighn is then stricken by the hunger, pain, and thirst previously absent. With a dry throat he asks her why she has cursed him so. Sweetly, she kneels next to him and reveals she is the Ashen Wind, and his torment has not gone unnoticed- his death, denied to him by demonic figures, will be soon given to him. When he asks why he as a faithful servant of Ejadri has been tormented so, she tells him that dominion over the earth is given to the earth's inhabitants, not to those of the upper sphere- injustice is to be fought by the righteous equal to the task, not by God. That is why she has come- it is her remit, given to her by the Mother, to come after fire and to cure the earth and its inhabitants. Fire is not evil, nor is death, she says to a dying Kauvighn, and as he expires on the ashen mound she closes his eyes and sprinkles a fistful of soot over his brow. His body crumbles into ash and she leaves, shedding a single tear on the dry earth for his passing.

The tale, as one might infer, is both a morality play and an explanation for why evil exists in the world- in a cosmos with no true morality, the capricious and cruel may act without punishment, as the East Wind's foul spawn do in their torturing of Kauvighn's band and of Kauvighn himself. However, it is also the obligation of those who consider themselves good in the world to fight against these injustices, as they cannot expect God to act for them- and thus the Ashen Wind came for Kauvighn, as she was empowered to cleanse away the evil spirits from his soul, and was thus obligated to do so as a being pure of heart. He died, yes, but in a very Ghesite way he was meant to die- evil cannot be undone, as no act may be undone in this world, but it was only just that he be absolved of further torment, and was thus sent into the upper sphere to be reincarnated into new bodies free of pain.