The Cult of the Cat

The Bronze Caliphate is a collection of diverse lands united under the religion of the Cult of the Cat. They venerate felines as avatars of the cat gods Arzee and Webod, who reside on the Isle of Cats and keep track of the outside world through the eyes and ears of cats across Hyracanum. Thus they know who to reward and who to punish, always favouring those who are kind to their kin. 

Arzee and Webod are most often symbolised as a black cat and a white cat chasing each other in a circle resembling the Yin and the Yang. They are themselves Chaotic Neutral, even though the Cult is organized more along the lines of Neutral Good. 

Every settlement, from the tiniest village to the largest city, has a resident priesthood and at least one temple, known as a House of Arzee and Webod, devoted to the Cult of the Cat where the community worships on a weekly basis. Such places are always a haven for felines and a dozen or more may be found slinking about like they own the place, which, in a sense, they do.  

Sacrifices to Arzee and Webod can be anything that satisfies their vanity or bloodlust. Some extreme cases even call for human sacrifices, with the devout gladly throwing themselves to tigers and lions. By and large, however, blood sacrifices tend to be rodents or fish given to housecats, whereas the priesthood prefers cash. 

Communities are expected to pay tithes to their local priest, who uses some of it to maintain their House of Arzee and Webod before passing the rest up the chain, ultimately to the caliph, and often with a little personal skimming along the way. 

Priests of the Cult of the Cat are often called “fat cats” behind their backs. 

For all its faults, it is a very egalitarian religion, accepting members of any race and making no concessions based on gender. In the Cult of the Cat, cash is king. The official Alignment is Neutral Good, but Arzee and Webod are Chaotic Neutral and will grant spells to anyone who satisfies their capricious vanity – and is kind to cats. 

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