THE MEMORY OF THE CITY
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Beliefs
Tshalléa and Taléa
The Foundation of Lilitic Metaphysics
As a religious culture evolves, it makes overtures (often) towards monotheism, and a binary interpretation of morality. This can be seen in action on Earth, in the Egyptian culture of Aten, and more famously the Abrahamic religions' displacement of Greco-Roman, Pagan, and Persian religions. The Ksreskézai made a move towards an attempt at a more enlightened view of the world, driven by their alchemist-sages' need for a satisfactory ontology, and arrived at a dualistic system of describing the universe: time and thought. This is coarsely analogous to humankind's own early stumblings with dualist notions of mind and matter, and while it does not technically preclude the older Oksinení religion of emotional spirits, it was a view of the world held by those who felt they knew better than their kin. This elitism eventually led to more trouble than it was worth, and the Ksreskézaian dualists were eventually purged for their radicalism. Their knowledge and beliefs lived on in the populations of oppressed Ksreskézaian worlds, however, where the wandering Lilitai later rediscovered the general idea.

To the Lilitai, consciousness is an immutable, special, irreducible property bestowed on sentient creatures by Tshalléa, who exists outside of time and is the only thing that can think, and the physical universe, an infinite volume of particles given direction and meaning by Taléa, a machine which imbues time on all things, which is controlled in turn by Tshalléa.

Tshalléa and Taléa are late-comers to the Lilitic pantheon, their actual manifestations having been borrowed from the Lyrisclensian goddesses Cogita and Chrona, with only moderate influence from the similar Oksinení dualist concepts. The Rotomemí had no serious utility for a universe-creating god, and the Ksreskézaian theory of universal creation did not extend past metaphysical questions of what emotional stressors could permit the creation of the magical technology, or of wormholes. As the Lilitai learned about the civilizations that the Ksreskézaians had formerly subjugated, and about the realities behind the Ksreskézaian technologies themselves, the old scientific curiosity became enough of a contributor to their mindset that they began looking for ways to reconcile physics with their belief systems. Once settled on Thet and in close contact with the Lyrisclensiae, they came up with the two separate but parallel agents: one of time (to move material things) and one of thought (to move ideas).

Taléa leads all forms of evolution. Tshalléa originally just seeded the universe and left Taléa to run it, in order to amuse herself, but eventually developed more of an interest in the habit of biological evolution to emulate her. She nudged it forward, and then, when physical simulation was no longer efficient enough, took on the task of simulating these minds more directly.

The Lilitai do not usually view the universe as many-worlds, but have no reason to believe that this is not the case.

Prayers are not made to either goddess; another, Ithovíha, answers requests for logical clarity.

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