...typo

ANYWAYS UH MONSTERS

spiritual beliefs are hard to pin down in roon because a certain amount of it is actually real

like. gods are a thing. though they're more along the lines of pokemon legendaries than any other divine things, they're just really powerful entities with unique abilities

they're also not immortal, apparently, they just have one-at-a-time syndrome or something

....dragon gods are complicated

also earth races have totally different metaphysical concerns than monsters

ondorus knows for a face that when he dies his soul will go to the forest of beginnings and...do whatever it is souls do there

*fact

spirits of the earth that exist in everything and make natural processes happen are also fact

they are also powered by emotions

so all in all, ondorus' "religious beliefs" are kind of...well, they're based in reality for him, but what we would consider expressions of "religious belief" -

he pays respects to a vague concept of "spirits of the earth", in a casual passive way

there's tinges of animistic mindsets to how he thinks about...the world in general

he's as not-superstitious as someone from his world can get, but he makes passing references to reincarnation as a cultural thing, in the same way that we say things like "bless you" or "damn you to hell"

he doesn't believe in worship of gods but he readily accepts that they exist and he feels that it's appropriate to be respectful of them and attentive to their needs

since in his view, a god exists to generally better the world, so helping a god is by extension...sort of a paying it forward thing

oh lord tl;dr HIPPIE JRPG ALL MYTHOLOGY IS TRUE

i can't wait to get into the pile of roon beliefs that is rf4, where a god is just hanging out in everyone's backyard and at least one character is some kind of earth-warrior-priest-guardian

i periodically have to go back and wrap my head around the fact that ondorus is actually some kind of weird wild otherworldly spirit that will never 100% die

....dang, now i want these kinds of things to come up in rp somewhere

not the easy things like spirits and souls

the weirder things like earth spirits and holy places

....he needs to check out the ilex shrine or properly have a look at the burned tower or something

(legendary pokemon really are a lot like the roon concept of dragon god sort of things....)

(......i still don't know what's up with the anime catholicism that some of the games have going on, though)

(sighs)

the dragons being gods orn ot

(MONSTERS DON'T NEED TO CARE ABOUT THAT SHIT I'M EASY MODE)

this puzzles me still

they are it's just sort of...

okay so grimoires (the dragons) can ascend and become divine creatures

and they become one of the four kinds of dragon gods

or they take on the image and name of a dragon god?

the four dragon gods created the world by rebuilding it after the legendary golem spread chaos and destruction and they fought it and sealed it under the sea

the powers of the dragon gods are vague like everything in roon and it seems to vary based on how old they are

rf3 things and rf4 things imply that they can mess with memories and powers

they can influence earth spirits and do powerful magic

and their mere existence indicates that the land is flourishing

because they require a lot of rune energy to stay around

they're gods in an animistic sense but not so much a church sense

....there are dragon priests, though.

though they seem to be less priests and more "dragons' personal attendants/morality pets/errand boys/magic doctors"

i care partially because raven presumably believes in these tihngs and partially because knowing what 'god' means would help a WHOLE LOT in knowing what 'step down from god' means

ahaha yeah....

considering that sharance doesn't have a church and it's a travelers' waypoint kind of place, i would guess that their general concept of religious stuff is

sort of a mishmash of various casual things with an underlying "the earth gives us everything" core

occasionally mentioning God as some kind of greater will without quite understanding what it really means

talking about seeing someone in the next life

that ambient knowledge of norad's four dragon gods that everyone seems to have but not in full

....once rf4 comes out you can canon-update her to knowing a bit more about ventuswill buuuuuut

"gods" are a totally different concept than "God" though, if that filters into sharance somehow

"oh by the way guys god lives under the lake"

in that they're not like....an all-governing will, they're more like servants of the spirit of the earth

one god, rather

dragon-gods implies so much more divinity in my head. You know, like...like zeus or someone. that kind of divinity.

but no, they like flowers and cake.

like how aquaticus' whole motivation in rf3 was that the land would die unless he did something, and that was his highest priority

elder dragons is the official term i guess but they're sometimes referred to as gods too

they're gods because they're Bigger and More Powerful than everything else. basically.

also pancakes pancakes are wonderful

i feel like i might be totally off the mark here but it's sort of based on a shinto idea of a god?

like that thing you just said, that "oh by the way guys god lives under the lake", that makes a bajillion times more sense if i imagine it coming out of the mouth of a miyazaki character

that's the sense that i get from the dragon gods in roon

i guess that's natural because write what you know, so jrpgs are full of that kind of thing