Cult of Petra

=Origins= The Cult of Petra was started as the Cult of the Screaming Blade until Petra Cavataio took it over and changed it to more of her liking. The Screaming Blade was created by a renegade Sith Lord named Paladius. He established his own cult on Nar Shaddaa and possessed one of Tulak Hord's artifacts during the resurgent Sith Empire during the Cold War. There he found countless downtrodden people who were easy to manipulate. Greatly benefitting from their zealous devotion, he established his own Cult. However it ended when Petra went to Nar Shaddaa for the artifact. She changed the minds that followed him and then faced off with him. After defeating him, she had the pleasure of killing him for sheer fun and moved onto the next planet. She did not ignore the cult. She let minions work to grow her cult. When she finally placed her focus back on the cult, she changed it to fit her will. Petra applied what she learned and multiple levels of bondage with added bonus mind control. Building her numbers, the desire to have it on its own world came about, a world that was absolutely void of anything but pure love, devotion, obedience, and more focus on her just made it easier for her to work for that goal.

Two hundred years later, Sognoterra was established as the home world for her cult. Draining all life and the force from the world, she had destroyed it all to remake it to her liking. The core served the grounds to build a city with a temple dedicated to the worship and home of Petra. As years moved on, the cult shifted more to the back ground as the businesses the cult ran moved forward. The cult served more a processing center for slaves. Indoctrination is what the slaves go through then sold in markets as a way of expanding the cult.

Recent History
With many things working smoothly, Petra moved the cult back to the front of her focus. First the criminal and legal businesses were consolidated under the administrator known as Elder of Scelus who had spent a career in running Cosa Nostra. For that, the organization was placed as “head corporation” with all others being subsidiaries to them. The Cult having businesses under them once again, they shifted focus on force using orders and governments.

Unification of the clans on Dathomir years before the shift for the Cult made it the first order to be integrated. As the changes were brought on, clans and clan mothers were removed. Clan strongholds were designated as towns and cities. Also clan mothers were made as priestesses with High Priestess being the active administrator over the order. The order became primary source of training force sensitive people with in the Cult. Even rancors were given citizenship as members in the cult.

Hapes Consortium was a little different but with force over the nobles and council members. It had the government changed but the cult integrated the worlds they controlled with government structure that Hapes had. The cult placed the Crowned Princess as the administrator. Petra placed rules and guidelines so the government runs smoothly and place the religion over it all.

=Culture=

Influenced Organizations
These are the groups that the Goddess controls and leads, each one having a Council of Perfection member handling the daily issues for the Goddess.

Streghe Arx
Lead by Segotium, it is a legal and criminal organization. On the legal side of the group, they are investment and banking group with buying up businesses like their subsidiary ship building, rancor selling, and mining. Like most criminal syndicates, they have their area of space and boundary. Yet they do blur the lines and work with in Hutt Space for an example. They make heavy use of the black and invisible markets, protection money, buying political officials, drug trafficking, espionage, piracy, and other highly obvious operations.

Witches of Dathomir
High Priestess leads the Priestess, Witches and Jai Warrior. Using the Book of Dathomir to teach them the ways of the force, they still care on with clans on Dathomir but away from the planet they identify themselves just simply as Priestess, Witches or Jai Warrior. The Cult makes sure all force users are sent to Dathomir for training. It is the standard for the cult since the Goddess is the one that unified clans on Dathomir and was the Superior Mother which she simply replace the title with her Cult’s title.

Hapes Consortium
Crown Princess was sent to Hapes to enforce the Goddess’s rule and start to learn the position whenever she becomes Queen Mother. Focus is to build up the people and planet like it was once had been. With the rebuilt Hapes Constortium, they are working legal means to trade and manufacturing for commerce with people around their sector. They are also work to upgrade and advance parts of the tech with in the other groups and the cult that need the attention.

Rituals
Each branch in the cult has rituals tailor to their process. Still they centered on the worship of the deity. For Streghe Arx, their rituals are placed as members in the criminal group move up from familiars, associates through men/ women of honor also known as made men/ women to captains. It even has one called Ritual of Devotion for non-blood relatives joining the higher ranking members. Hapes Consortium on the other hand only had one and it is just for members that join the council to advise the Crowned Princess. However, Witches of Dathomir is loaded with rituals. They are for progression through force training, weddings, naming, funerals, bonding with rancors, collaring slaves which many became standard in the cult. Below are the ones that became the standard across all parts of the cult.

Naming Ceremony - A naming ceremony of some type is common to most societies. It is a ceremony where a new born is introduced to his/her community as well as to the Force. It is an important ceremony for the family and friends that are involved even if it does not mean much to the infant at this point in time. It makes the newborn a real and concrete member of the community. It is very important socially, not to mention that it brings the infant to the attention of the powers that be, whatever he/she will call them later, during one of the most vulnerable times of their life.

Naming ceremonies are normally done no sooner than one week after birth (to allow for recovery of both baby and mother from the birth) and normally no longer than a couple of months after the birth (if more time passes the infant is already a part of the community and has probably already been called to the attention of the Force in some way so it becomes a rather moot point). The ceremony is best done at sunrise or at least in the morning and is best if done during a full or waxing moon.

New parents should invite family and friends that they feel will be close during the child’s life. A naming ceremony can be simple and non-Dathomir enough that those of other views of the Force should feel comfortable attending.

Notes:


 * This ritual was originally performed in plaza (Clans town square, whatever you want to call it), or any sacred space with clear quadrants will do.
 * The Clan Mother over sees and perform the ceremony.
 * The ritual can be adapted for a male child, a single parent, or parents of the same gender.
 * Elements (earth, wind, water and fire) are used to bless the child while using the cardinal directions (north, east, south and west) for each stage.

Wedding / Bonding Cermony - Marriage, or the closest thing the Cult get to it, is achieved through the "ritual of bonding". While the idea of a powerful and culturally superior woman attaching herself to one man for years when she could have as many as she wants at any time may see counter-intuitive to the ideals the Cult of Petra supports, none are immune to love. Every once in a while, a member finds a single male who seems to turn her into a babbling little girl again. Or, more commonly, she'll find a woman who does the same thing. This isn't to say lesbianism is more common for women in the Cult - some just have issues seeing men as worthy of deep enough feelings to realize love for a man. Most have no such problems with women.

The ritual of bonding has few of the limits the galaxy at large puts on the idea of "marriage". Partners of any gender (male/male bonding is mostly informal, since few members of appropriate rank would stoop low enough to join two slaves) can be bonded to each other in a formal, intimate sense. There is not an expectation of a single bond, though those women who find themselves the target of too much "true love" draw a bit of suspicion. Several women, however, keep multiple bonded slaves and one or two very intimate friends close to them.

Unlike many aspects of Cult's culture, the ritual itself differentiates little with gender variation. A man bonding himself to a woman enjoys (temporarily) a respect almost equal to that of his beloved. The ceremony is generally presided over by a priestess, and each location has their own traditions for what is said at these uniquely important occasions. The only uniform aspect is the end of the rite, during which each party gives the other something to represent their bond. This is generally a small article of clothing to be worn at all times. Slaves normally hand-craft a bracelet, anklet, or charm necklace for their mistress and lover. Women can afford much higher-quality gifts, which tend to be magnificent jewelry for other free people or expensive collars for slaves.

There is a quirk in the Cult's mindset about marriage and slavery. For a moment, a man becomes an equal. For a lifetime, he becomes "more than a slave" while retaining his official, legal status. And of course, the free Witch and her peers never look twice at how much time she's spending with her property, or how much devotion she seems to have to it.

Funerals - Each location/ planet pretty much do what fits in their ideals. For example, the Nightsisters like to mummify their dead and place them in cocoons that bath them in herbs and oils to slow their decay rate. Even in death, a nightsister still serves the clan as a zombie warrior. They are the only clan that uses their dead in that manner. Morte Clan has a massive mausoleum that houses a large crystal that been used to pull dead force users from their bodies and hold them. They are used like ghosts in a black mist. Mist is summoned to wash over a battle ground so there are ghost assassins.

Rest of the Witches does not preserve the body of the dead. The clans on the river or close to large bodies of water will place the dead in boats and burn them as they float away. Some might place armor and a few passions on to the boat. The Sarlacci clan feed the sarlacci creature near the stronghold their dead. The land lock clans burn their dead like the Singing Mountain Clan and Great Canyon Clan. One thing all clans have is the entire clan witness and be in the procession when the ceremony happens.

Note: Details of each clan funeral ceremony is on their wikia page.

Collaring Ceremony - On Dathomir, slavery is so common that the word "slave" is roughly as precise as the word "starship". That is to say, not terribly. Slaves run the gamut from basic working drones to breeding stock to personal assistants to skilled labor. Since they're such an intricate part of the Dathomiri lifestyle, slaves have a kind of culture of their own, though not even a fraction as well-developed as the rest of the world. Much of this culture centers around the collar.

The average slave does not recieve a collar immediately. He (the majority of Dathomiri slaves are male) has to prove his worth in labor, discipline, and conduct. Failure is punished harshly, and continued excellence is rewarded with the status of being collared. While collared, a slave enjoys the benifit of respect from fellow slaves, and is generally looked at with more consideration from freewomen. Of course, this collar can be taken away, and expressly is as a more radical punishment.

With the amount of importance slaves put on their collars (and the amount of attention their owners give them) it's not surprising that there are specific rituals dedicated expressly to the presentation of a slave's collar. The normal ritual is barely a handwave, perhaps a few words spoken by the woman presenting her slave with his collar and a some words of dedication, hollow or not, from the slave who's earned it. With more esteemed or important slaves, however, and those in softer, more people-oriented positions, rituals can get very elaborate.

An example of a slighty important social slave, most often a maid, would be the girl (female slaves are much more common out of the fields/breeding) kneeling naked with her head bowed for several minutes before her mistress walks in and recites carefully picked lines to emphasize her position, her duties, her importance...to which the girl gives equally careful responses. After the festivities, she's given a very personal bath by other slaves whlie her mistress tells her the symbolism of being cleaned before she touches her collar, her new life. When she feels the metal close around her neck and her mistress' lips on her forehead, the girl is given a better understanding of the importance of the entire ceremony.

Relics


=Beasts= Different creatures that the Cult uses or even have as members with the group.

Rancors
Dathomir Rancors are semi-sentient, caring creatures who mourned their family members when they died, and who passed on oral histories of the matriarchal herds into which these rancor organized in to. Their native way of life seems to have been very primitive, using their strength and size to hunt live prey across the planet's savannahs. A symbiosis of rancor sow and female rider seems to have played a major role in dictating the subsequent structure of Dathomiri society. According to the rancors' own traditions, the symbiosis began when a warrior-woman met and healed an injured female; by mounting the rancor's back, her sharper eyesight enabled it to hunt better prey during the day, so that it grew in size and status to become a mighty herd-mother.

Most of Dathomir's rancor population lived in symbiosis with the planet's Witches of Dathomir clans, being used as mounts, and learning to make and use armor and bladed weapons with their help. Rancors of a clan were marked to show clan ownership, but younger ones were not marked and could basically serve as undercover mounts, belonging to no clan. After the years of the New Republic, Tosh the herd leader of the Singing Mountain Clan's rancors, learned to read and write, and began to pass on this skill to other rancors in her group. Then it caught like wild fire to the other rancors herds with present day rancors able to read and write their own language, witches’ language and basic language.

The witches all hold their rancors in high standards and respect but this has not stop some from abusing and manipulate the rancors. Overall, the tone for witches and rancors is the creatures are sentient and spoken to as a person would to another person. They are become family members or best of friends. All tied closely together to better each other. When outsiders sneak in and dare to try to get a rancor for prize, it at times is viewed as an act of war towards the herd and witch clan. Only way of it end is each outsider involved is served as a fest for the herd.

Sarlaccs
=Roleplaying=

2012
Thou shalt have no other gods besides me (Petra and Mira)

Ma'dri of all Ma'dri

2013
Crimini e Culti

Triumphant Return

Novo Modo Deae

Novus Res Directio

Familia Tempa

Ships to Move Planets

Syndicate of the Rave

Umbra of Obscurum

2015
More Ships to Move Planets

The Unseen Path: Episode One

The Unseen Path: Episode Two

The Warrior's Path: Episode One (Takeover of Bogden)