The Path of Radiance is a major religious tradition on Avishraa, concentrated mainly in the brightness. A monotheistic religion, the Path is centered on worship of the light-giving goddess Lalidh, the Lamp of Creation; the veneration of light; and - at least traditionally - the importance of the heir of the Radiant House as the ultimate interpreter of Lalidh's will.

The Path of Radiance is the main religious competitor of the imperial_religion among the takmar of the Brightness. Internally, its faithful are split among three broad denominations - the lamp_of_the_heart, the true_light, and the great_illumination, the lattermost of which is possibly the only belief system actively shared by both takmar and xtauh.

The Path of Radiance holds that, at the beginning of days, there was an undefined Void, with its only point of reference being Lalidh, the Lamp of Creation, who sat in its center in eternal contemplation. There came a day when, in the outermost reaches of the Void and the furthest from Lalidh's light, the darkness came alive in jealousy and hunger, and fed and grew: Vom, the Primal Darkness.

Roused from Her contemplation, Lalidh fought back against Vom by taking Her light and containing it within various vessels that She hung in the sky. Among the many tiny lights that She scattered like seeds, there were two great lamps in their midst into which She placed the majority of Her light, one held in each paw: Habren, the passive, to soothe and aid, and Ferlen, the active, to burn and defend.

Between them, these lamps warded away Vom's influence, but, being cunning, it constantly sought ways in, requiring Lalidh's constant vigilance. Seeking to return to Her repose, She made a world and all the living things in it beneath the vessels, so that they would rejoice in the Light and keep the memory of Vom's danger alive. The mission of the Lightbearers - those following the Path of Radiance - is therefore to worship Lalidh and bring light to the dark, not only physically, but metaphorically.

This mission was originally known to all beings, but over time and generations, it was distorted and changed, its true nature forgotten. Amidst the Overturns racking the empire - their violence and disorder being one of Vom's more terrible manifestations - Lalidh briefly surfaced from Her contemplation to appoint the matriarchs of the Fifth House to return the Path of Radiance to the world. When they attempted to turn the Empire aside from its dark path, they were cast out, and, along with the righteous of the cerulean_tangle, went into exile in the Brightness. There, as the Radiant Queens, they presided over an all too brief golden age until the corruption of the old Empire spilled across the mountains and ended their rule.

The heirs of the Radiant Queens had lost their political rule, but not their moral authority, and they continue to lead the struggle against Vom's darkness - although there are now differing opinions about who, in fact, are their heirs, and how the struggle is framed.

When the Fifth House was stripped of its power following the Black Overturn in the late Storm Era, they and their supporters were permitted to live in exchange for departing the Heartlands. The Brightness proved to be a fortuitous choice from the perspectives of both sides. The Empire had long ago planted colonies in the river valleys crossing the desert, but the takma population there had remained sparse and was harried by the xtauh, and exercising Imperial rule across the Spine of Sirdanth had always been difficult and expensive. For the Empire, the loss of the region was easily excused in the turmoil of the Overturns, and economically insignificant. For the Fifth House, it was a relatively friendly refuge, especially since the far marches of the Empire had previously fallen under their remit; most assistance the colonists received from the Imperial government was through the officials of the Fifth House. The arrival of their benefactors, along with a wave of fresh immigrants, was greeted by the colonists with guarded enthusiasm, and it was with relatively little trouble that the region became a small independent queendom.

The Fifth House found, in consolidating their hold, that their new subjects had had their worldview strongly shaped by their interactions with the xtauh, most of whom worshiped a single, celestial goddess. While this notion had a few parallels with the Sixfold Eminence who had the place of prominence in the Imperial religion, the remainder of the Imperial pantheon had no equivalent at all. Faced with this religious difference, Torith, the head of the Fifth House, adopted an official ideology that was designed to appeal both to the colonists and to the followers who had arrived with them, most of them followers of the Imperial religion. She declared that it had been revealed to her that the celestial goddess and the Sixfold Eminence were one and the same, and that the One Goddess was manifest in the heavens and their light. She also declared herself the official interpreter of the Goddess' will, and that her rule was in the Goddess' name; she took the title of Radiant Queen.

Because few of the Imperial priesthood had been among the supporters of the Fifth, religiously authoritative challenges to this notion were few and far between. Both religious communities seemed content to accept it, so far as it went; other than the implication that there was a common truth, and common authority, to their traditions, little was demanded of them. Sufficient unity was established among the takmar of the new Queendom of Light Unobstructed that, despite the difficulties, the region remained stable while the Overturns played themselves out across the mountains.

However, the ideology appeared not to impress the xtauh who resided in areas within the queendom's nominal control. The idea that the Goddess was the same as some other goddess meant nothing to them, nor did the arrival of someone proclaiming so. The Goddess was the Goddess, but that had always been the case and would always be; why kowtow to some giant and pretend she'd brought them some deep truth rather than a fresh batch of interlopers? Frictions between takma and xtauh settlements not only remained, but increased, through Torith's reign, and increasingly spilled over into violence. It was partly in response to this that Torith's heirs gradually increased the prominence of local elements in their ideology. The name of the Goddess was proclaimed to be lalidh, derived from the xtauh name for Her; the placation of the lamnar was entirely abandoned; the other siathar were reduced to luminous spirits.

While most of these elements were also ignored by the xtauh, who remained a nuisance, they were welcomed by the descendants of the original colonists, who largely shared them in one form or another. On the other hand, this distancing from the Imperial religion increasingly annoyed the descendants of the Fifth House's supporters, who generally remained faithful to their practices. This fed into other differences between the two faith communities. The Imperial religion was increasingly identified with the elite and the wealthy, and those who left what was increasingly called the Path of Radiance for it were decried as seeking self-advancement, while the Path of Radiance was seen as gaudy, unrefined, and vulgar, with those leaving the Imperial religion for it bowing to the whims of the peasants and ignoring their true heritage. While these trends were not universal throughout the Queendom, they held true in enough places that they became a major factor in the region's history.

By the middle of the Steel Era, the Radiant Queens largely had the appreciation, if not the reverence, of the common people, but found it increasingly difficult to maintain the loyalty of the ruling classes, who continually requested a heavier emphasis on Imperial customs and practices, and closer ties with the Empire. As the Radiant Queens attempted to chart a middle course, disaster struck in the form of a plague that swept in from the south. The mounting death tolls resulted in Imperials and Lightbearers blaming each other for what was clearly a case of divine displeasure, and the Queendom of Light Unobstructed ultimately collapsed into civil war, with various settlements being claimed by Imperialist nobles or Lightbearer warlords. While their claims of authority continued to made on behalf of the Radiant Queens until the late Vigil Era, the Queens themselves proved unable to exercise any political control over their self-declared regents, and were ultimately reduced to an entirely spiritual and moral role, becoming known simply as Radiant Ones.

The Path of Radiance remained broadly stable for the early part of the Cloud Era, but began to decline after 20 Cloud or so, as Lightbearer towns bore the brunt of increasing xtauh raids. The process accelerated after 33 Cloud, when the Lightbearer stronghold of tinun was sacked and burned by the mostly Imperialist town of halga; the Radiant One Minalth had been visiting at the time, and was killed along with her daughters despite a fanatical defense by the townspeople.

While Halga was destroyed in retaliation by a Lightbringer coalition shortly thereafter, any further demonstrations of unity were cut short when five separate relatives stepped forward to claim her position as spiritual head of the Lightbringers. They each sought to distinguish themselves from the others in the eyes of the faithful by capitalizing on stark differences of opinion on the proper direction of the faith - how to slow the decline in believers, how to press their rivalry with the Imperialists, how to answer certain unanswered doctrinal questions. The factions that coalesced around each candidate became increasingly acrimonious, and ultimately went to war on each other from late 33 to mid 34 Cloud in what became known as the Burning Wrath. At the end of the war, one claimant had been captured and one killed, and their factions absorbed into the remaining three, who remained coldly excommunicated from each other.

By 40 Cloud, due to a series of gaffes and scandals by its leader, the faction called the foes_of_vom had disbanded, leaving only two: one became known as the Lamp of the Heart and the other as the True Light. Over the following cycles, the Lamp of the Heart developed a focus on meditation and good works, while the True Light maintained a strict hierarchy and a preoccupation with education, study, intellectual development, and extensive and elaborate theological speculation. However, the two denominations between them had a smaller and still-declining number of worshipers, which did not stabilize until the early 50s Cloud.

An influx of takma immigrants from the Cerulean Tangle in the 60s Cloud brought its own challenges. The speech and customs of the Brightness had diverged considerably from those to the south since Imperial times, and the same was true of the practices of the Imperial religion; therefore, although the newcomers were mostly Imperialist by a wide margin, they shared relatively little in common even with their native co-religionists, and their arrival was greeted with varying enthusiasm - at best muted, and at worst mistrustful. The Lightbringers, for their part, were divided even further by the new situation - many of them were distrustful of the newcomers, but others felt that they needed both material and spiritual aid. Those arriving were usually poor, often suffering from loss during their harrowing journey. Their societies and their gods, tainted by Vom's darkness, had abandoned them and caused them suffering; was it not the duty of the Lightbringers to undo the works of Vom? Therefore, often in the face of disapproval or even hostility from their neighbors, they sought to take the new immigrants in hand, give them much-needed help, and introduce them to Lalidh's light, and did so with sporadic aid from their priesthoods, members of both churches - most of them from the Lamp of the Heart, but with a substantial minority from the True Light - and often in the face of opposition from their compatriots.

The movement proved relatively successful, and gained converts not only among the new immigrants, but also among the more sympathetic Imperialist locals. For this, and for its humanitarian outlook, it received for a considerable amount of institutional goodwill. But this focus on outreach caused considerable unease among segments of the Lightbringer faithful who saw the newcomers both as economic competitors and as a corrupting influence, a view which began to harden, and to spread to the church hierarchies, as through the 60s and 70s Cloud the new generations of what had come to be called the great_illumination began to develop a philosophical undercurrent with increasingly alarming ideas.

For the Lamp of the Heart, the calling to do good works had transformed into a zeal that made the Illuminators blind to the dangers of Vom's influence - dangers that should be fought bravely, but cautiously, because it did not help the church to lose oneself or others to them. For the True Light, the Illuminators gave too little heed to the theological works of the church, or, for that matter, to the other words of the church - even those of the Radiant One or her Brights. And neither church was prepared for the intense universality of the Illuminators' mission, which called for the faithful to embrace and enlighten every being they could, whether they could appreciate it or not, including even the xtauh. The Radiant Ones eventually felt moved to rein in the Illuminators in the interests of maintaining unity with the more conservative elements of their churches; this, however, inflamed the situation yet further, and the movement found itself increasingly in opposition to the governing structures of both churches.

A final break occurred in 77 Cloud, when the Lightbringer religious figure Scintillating-Glory suggested that the Radiant Ones and their churches had strayed from the Light. When a mob urged on by church leaders took Scintillating-Glory into custody and beat her, her supporters rioted, freed her, and proclaimed themselves a separate church, the Great Illumination. The new church's stronghold was in the coastal regions of the eastern Brightness, but gained substantial followings elsewhere. In particular, they carried through their promise to open their arms to the xtauh, and in those cities controlled by matriarchs adhering to the Great Illumination, xtauh were not only welcomed as visitors, but proclaimed legal equals; this friendly attitude, the antihierarchical attitude of the church, and the religious similarities with some xtauh religions, caused the conversion of substantial numbers of xtauh, particularly escaped slaves.

Currently, all three churches of the Path of Light are experiencing a new renaissance, the growth of the Great Illumination spurring the other two to new dynamism, though the True Light has been slightly hampered by an unexpected interregnum in the office of Radiant One.

The various churches of the Path of Radiance are concentrated in the takma areas of settlement in the southern Brightness in south-central Sekhaa. While it is not the dominant religion there overall, there are a number of areas where it maintains local dominance; it is widely practiced and universally recognized. It also has a significant presence in the highland regions on either side of the spine_of_sirdanth.

Denominationally, there is a continuum of influence between the Great Illumination in the watersheds of the eastern Brightness - on the coast of the Windward Sea - and the Lamp of the Heart in the west and highlands. The True Light has a small core area of influence approximately between them, but most of its membership is scattered thinly throughout the territories of both the others.

The Great Illumination has also begun an aggressive proselytizing effort outside the homeland of the Path, and because the only ports in that part of the continent are in Illuminator hands, they have been in a unique position to have their missionaries carried abroad by Abethine ships. As a result, there are numerous Illuminator missions along the coasts of western Sekhaa, including a large and thriving one in distant Ǣdyihòzh.

There are three organizationally distinct churches that, taken together, count all but a handful of Lightbringers among their number. Each has its own article, but their basic differences are explained below:

The true_light is the smallest of the three by numbers. The church was founded by Sureth, whose heirs never tired of reminding the Lightbringer faithful that of all those who contested the office of Radiant One after the death of Minalth, she had the strongest genealogical claim. This, perhaps, has fed into the church's emphasis on authority.

The True Light is a hierarchical church, with many levels of organization and associated ranks and positions; one of its core teachings is respect for proper authority. The church has long had an intellectual bent, and its priesthood is known for its reliance on study and on the written word - both to read and to produce. Taken together, this gives the church something of a scholastic flavor, and even common worship services can bear a resemblance to a classroom lecture. What this approach lacks in emotional fervor it possibly makes up for in intellectual development; some of the best educations to be found in the Brightness are in True Light-run schools and seminaries.

The unexpected death in early 84 Cloud of the latest Radiant One of the True Light, Kiyedh Dark-Gleam-of-Obsidian, without living daughters or sisters, has lately thrown the church's hierarchy in turmoil. In a bid to avoid a repeat of the Burning Wrath, the Brights of the church accompanied the announcement of Gleam's death with a claim to the right to choose between the two likeliest heirs of her family. The resulting discussion has been ongoing for eight turns, with no particular end in sight, and many are starting to feel that the church is losing its way.

The lamp_of_the_heart is probably, by a small margin, the largest of the Lightbringer churches. It was founded by Shoth, a dynamic young cousin of Minalth who had maintained for some time that the then-current decline of the faith was due to insufficient engagement with the world; to spread the faith, she claimed, required that one's inner light had to be mirrored by one's exterior actions, or it meant nothing.

As a result, the Lamp of the Heart places a heavy emphasis on how one behaves, and encourages a strong work ethic and actions that benefit the community. It also, though it does not specifically advocate against intellectual study, holds that the True Light approach focuses far too much on it; understanding of the Light cannot be found in words, but in oneself. One must be able to see and feel the Light in oneself to know that it is there. Cultivating an immersion, a Zenlike state, in daily life is thought to aid this goal, and the Lampholder priests often speak with their flocks about their feelings during everyday experiences.

The current Radiant One of the Lamp of the Heart is the elderly Orstodh Dagger-Teeth.

The great_illumination is by far the newest of the churches. It is probably second in terms of numbers, but only barely, and it is still growing fast. While it originated as a broad movement within the existing churches over several generations, the founder of the church as an independent entity is widely held to be Varedh Scintillating-Glory. Born into a Lampholder family, she received her face-name from her unusual scales, which resembled diamonds in their ability to reflect and transmit light. By the time she was grown, her appearance and strong religious convictions caused some to view her as a messenger from Lalidh. Both this, and her increasing alignment with the Great Illumination movement, led to admonishments from the church; after increasing acrimony, she made a public sermon to an Illuminator crowd denying the authority of both Radiant Ones and their churches, calling on all those who would follow to join her on a new path. The sermon was interrupted by a Lampholder mob, which abducted and beat Scintillating-Glory before her followers rescued her. The new church fled and established itself on the east coast of Sekhaa, in the rich soils of the rivers, in which it has since become the dominant form of the Path of Radiance.

The Great Illumination is like the Lamp of the Heart in its emphasis on translating the Light into external action. But it could be said that where the Lampholders express their inner light through duty and service, the Illuminators express theirs through compassion and understanding. They belief that in creating the world and gifting Her Light to it, Lalidh performed a supreme act of love: love, life, and light are fundamentally linked, parts of the same whole. It was meant to be all-embracing, and the Iluminators, therefore, seek to be similarly all-embracing. The message of the Light must be brought to all capable of hearing it; the love of Lalidh for all beings must be shared by those who follow Her. Those settlements run according to Illuminator philosophies are unusually accepting of xtauh, and are possibly the only takma denomination of note to have attracted them as worshippers.

Scintillating-Glory is still alive. While she is viewed as the effective head of the church - the panchromat, as they refer to her - she sees her role as one of counselor and advisor rather than administrator or ruler, and accordingly church government is left in the hands of the church as a whole. She has no genealogical claim to be the Radiant One, and has indeed has made no claim on any other basis either; she has stated that the title has no further relevance, nor does she wish to recreate the old hierarchies.