It should be noted that the humans involved with the Sharrist cult range from denominations which have no religious aspects, to those which have very metaphysical beliefs that they can become sharrh physically, or be reborn as sharrh, by becoming more and more like the sharrh.
Adventists
Adventists expect humanity to return with superior weapons and defeat the sharrh and take Merovin into the human community by force. Adventists have an aggressive outlook and are often involved in forbidden technology and plots. They give their children tech-names or star names; or names like Hope or Retribution. By this can be seen their philosophy. Those of mystical inclination hope to hasten the day of Advent by prayers and believe in a God of retribution. They do in general believe in karma, but view karma as a collective karma of all Merovans, which must be purified to enable the Retribution. A subcult, the Immaterial Adventists, often known as the Preachers, believe that the Retribution will be more metaphysical and look for human life to improve only after humans have acquired virtue enough to atone for their past sins of greed and corruption. Another subcult, the Sword of God, trains its members in martial arts and devotes its energies to gaining temporal power, obliterating sharrist influence, and preparing for war, and in the belief that God will subject the world to a second Scouring before the Retribution, and will reward only those humans who join in obliterating the sharrh all the way back to their world of origin. From these two subcults various other cults depend, each differing in some point of dogma; but these are the two extremes of Adventist thought.
Many governments have laws restricting Adventists, but they are officially recognized in Soghon and Nev Hettek.
Revenantists
This religion believes in reincarnation, that Merovin is a testing-place for souls or a place of punishment (denominations differ on this point) and that by virtue it is possible to win rebirth higher up the scale of society on Merovin and ultimately to another human world, in a long progress of karma acquired and ties to Merovin diminished.
Revenantism is the most formal of Merovan religions, and the most widespread. It is the majority religion of Merovingen and Canbera.
It has elaborate rituals and ceremonies, particularly revolving around birth, death, and majority.
Church of God
This cult claims to follow the old human ways of worship based on revelation and documents rescued from the Scouring. They are mostly a Wold entity, but maintain a religious seat at Gothhead and are strong among the Falkenaers. They are divided into numerous denominations. Most believe in an afterlife of all species, sharrh as well as humans.
New Worlders
This cult is an offshoot of the Church of God, which maintains that true belief has been lost and that God must be reapproached and rediscovered without reference to documents or cult objects. The New Worlders have three denominations: the Scholiasts, who believe this approach should be intellectual; the Ecstatics, who seek revelation; and the Revisionists, who try to apply both theories. They are predominant in Megar.
Janes
Followers of Althea Jane Morgoth, generally polytheists who practice magic and healing rituals. Jane Morgoth was a farmer from the Upper Ligur who convinced a large following of her powers and led the Ligurian Riots until she was arrested and executed in 432. Her followers be lieve she became a spirit of two sorts: healing for believers and retribution for nonbelievers. This belief was encouraged by the deaths of three of her judges in the same year; and it is said that no member of the jury lived beyond the decade. Detractors claimed that this was due to assassination by members of the cult, and in three cases by heart failure which may have been attributable to harassment.
Janes are predominant in the rural Liger but not unknown in Suttani and the Isles of Fire.
The concept of time on Merovin is based on twenty-seventh-century practice, which looks back to military timekeeping of old Earth, all of which was modified by the exigencies of the Scouring.
The result is a twenty-four-hour clock and a twelvemonth year.
The months are (from a numerical origin modified by history and agricultural practice): Prime; Deuce; Planting; Greening; Quartin; Qinnte; Sexte; Septe; Harvest; Falling; Turning; Fallow.
The months have twenty eight days, excepting Fallow, which has twenty nine, There is also the Day of the Turn, which serves as an intercalary unit to trim up the irregularity of the year. This day may actually be more than one day in length; and is set by the Astronomer of Merovingen, decreed by the governor, and by all other governors. In practice however, it is well known in advance that such a decree will be made, so the event is virtually simultaneous despite the slow speed of communications, there being more than one Astronomer in the world. This Day is celebrated variously: Revenantists consider it a time of meditation; Adventists consider it a day without record, and no act without permanent consequence is forbidden: it is a carnival in Adventist cities. In Merovingen it is said among Adventists that the Angel sleeps on that one day; Revenantists call this heresy.
The weeks are a uniform seven days excepting the last week of Fallow, which has eight. The days of the week are Sunday; Monday; Tuesday; Wensday; Thursday; Friday; Satterday. The origins of the names are forgotten.
The days have twenty-four hours on the civic clock; but popularly (going back to the Scouring and the Restoration when time was reckoned without the benefit of precise clocks) the day consists approximately of hours between six or so in the morning and runs down to the eighteenth hour or so, until dark, after which a variety of regional time descriptions take over. A Merovingian speaking other than officially will describe the dark hours as Watches, of which there are six before the dawn—as, for instance, the top of the first watch is the beginning of full dark; the bottom of the fifth is a couple of hours before dawn; the bottom of the sixth is the first perception of sunrise.
The most universal holidays are 24 Harvest, which is the date on which the Scouring began, and 10 Prime, which is the generally accepted date of its ending. The 24th of Harvest is a day of mourning and sober reflection for all religions. The 10th of Prime is a day of celebration, sometimes of licentiousness. The 24th of Harvest is a particularly tense time for police in cities where there is a strong Adventist presence, as the melancholy as Merovans refer to it, may result in overindulgence, which in turn leads to hallucinations or to religiously-inspired and quite cold-blooded decisions on the part of groups or individuals to take direct action against real or imagined enemies. On one famous occasion a band of twenty Adventists from Soghon set out to destroy the sharrh ruins at Kevogi and fought their way through three companies of militia from Soghon and Merovingen who set out to stop them. They cost a hundred and fifty-two lives before the last of them was subdued. The sole survivor of the action was a twenty-two year old man named Tom Caney, wounded in the final assault and later hanged at Merovingen. The incident is generally referred to as the Faisal Rebellion, after its chief instigator.
Other holidays are pertinent to certain religious groups and are celebrated in certain locales but not in others; still others commemorate local events, such as the Festival of the Angel on 20th to 25th Fallow, in Merovingen, which unites a number of religious observances in a mutually agreed date. The general tenor of the festival is a purification and absolution in memory of divine intervention; but sects differ considerably in interpretation. The practice among almost all sects involves the giving of gifts and the mending of broken friendships and lapsed vows before the year's end: there is a belief in Merovingen that this festival is pre-Scouring; and that therefore it is the one festival which intervenes in the period between 24th Harvest and 10th Prime. There is even a legend that in the Det Valley, during the darkest day of the Winter, when sharrh were hunting humans up and down the valley, a band of starving humans decided to celebrate this ancient festival, and in a cave deep in the hills, with the attack going on in the valley, they gave each other gifts that became a miracle— since each of them had secreted things that, brought into the open, helped the whole company survive. The story is perhaps apocryphal; but the festival is observed by all sects and across sect lines throughout the Det Valley in some form; and the practice and the legend have been picked up by the Falkenaer, who devoutly insist that the site of the miracle was the Falkenaer Isles.