Insomnia is great isn't it? Oh well it means I get to be creative. I've long held that despite mostly being sun-worshippers there were a few holdouts who worshipped the moon, but this evening I decided to jot down the more prominent thoughts. While much less refined I plan on touching up the details of this particular deviant-theology at some point, I just need some focus, and a little inspiration.

Document pasted below for people who cannot open Openoffice.Org file formats.

A Lesser Light

For as long as far back as time began, the Aurish people have been a philosophical culture, one inherently predisposed to spirituality, gods and worship. It is a natural inclination of theirs so ingrained that children raised in secular cultures will invent the concept of spirits that govern the natural process of the world on their own without any influence from society. Within this all but inevitable outcome, one thing has reigned supreme in their spirituality, a concept so universal every child acknowledges it at some point, even in the modern era after the 'gods have died,' and the concept of a spirit is foreign, they still find the time to make analogies and wise sayings based on the concept. This simple concept, is Light.
Chief among Light is that of the Sun, named Aurora by ancient Aurish shamans in an age long gone. The sun itself represents life, from birth at dawn to a ripe age across the day, then to sunset and death but with pleasant memory. After its setting and the darkness takes hold of the world in mourning, another, smaller light, just as powerful comes over the horizon. This, is the lesser light. The Moon.
Luna as she is named, is the name given by the Aurish Shamans to the moon, the light to govern the night. Universally understood as the symbol of the afterlife, perceived as such by being a small, but bright light (life) surrounded by darkness (death). While most Aurish were that of Solar allignment, a few formed the Lunar Church, an alignment of an endearing group of individuals.
While they could be called Death Priests as an insult and not be innacurate with the labeling, Lunar Priests recognized that after death is a night eternal, and spent their time meditating, studying, and worshiping the moon, believing that like the moon, the Afterlife was an island of life in a sea of death. Where the sun was the source of all light and life, the Moon was the reflection of those who embraced light's principles and persisted after their life had faded. The concept in short was that those who sought the well being of others before themselves, their health, their happiness, and lived cooperative, generous and kind lives, would be welcomed into the afterlife where they would retain identity and memory and live eternally in a world without corruption or darkness like the current, one where light reigned supreme, and everything considered to be of the dark, pain, death, deception, calamity, would forever be removed. As most Aurish were of the more cheerful sort by philosophical guidance and natural inclination, most did not directly follow the Lunar church even if they agreed with its concept. Where the Solar alignment celibrates life of the current world, the Lunar Church quietly, and kindly seeks to guide those reaching their twilight years to finding peace, making amends, and being ready for the voyage to pass thru the sea of death without getting lost in it.
After the cataclysm that nearly destroyed Aurish civilization, the Lunar Church was devastated both in members and in theology. While their base belief remained true they were forced to reckon with the fact many innocents had perished, and that abuse of light had consequences far beyond denial of an eternal paradise. Some of the Lunar church sought to find a way to cure the Shades of their etheral forms and madness, whether by giving them true death that they may pass on, or restoring them from corruption. While the latter never succeeded, the former did, finding that the soul of a shade was linked to their catalyst, the organ of the body which channeled magic. The lunar church discovered that destroying a shade's catalyst severed their last physical connection, and with a great flash of light would finally die and be at peace. Viewed as a mercy, the Lunar Church kept this as a secret for fear of being considered some renegade, shadowy organization of assassins due to their militant training to 'pacify' shades.
The Lunar Church however differed from the post-cataclysm solar alignment in one way, being that they did not adhere to the taboo on light magics. Sometimes Lunar disciples and priests would go among the solar tribes as roaming healers with an uncanny knack for restoring individuals beyond the power of herbal medicines. Some tribes welcomed the traveling healer caravans, some rejected them. But after the magical collapse, the Lunar Church, like the solar alignment lost all capacity to wield magic when the mana field of the planet shut down, never to flow again. With this being a relatively recent event however, descendants of Lunar Church members in the modern era still possess functioning Catalyst organs, and when transferred to Eventide, the sister planet of the Auroran star system, regained use of magical powers. As a result many Aurish inhabitants of Eventide are typically of Lunar alignment and still practice magic, albiet in reduced capacity from a partial atrophy of their magical connection due to their home-world loosing it's mana field. They live alongside Stormcallers, Llungs, and Northern Wyverns who all practice magic in a similar fashion, making it a world of mystics. Aurellian scientists theorize there may be other planets with mana fields, and to this end encourage the study and practice of magic on Eventide to better understand its nature, and be prepared to send colonists of magical aptitude to strange new worlds where their supernatural abilities would be a boon to settling otherwise treacherous worlds.
At the moment there are no named characters of Lunar Alignment.