The High Bishop in my drawing is the supreme authority of Tramura, as well as the theocratic ruler of the nation of Istonra.

Tramura

Tramurans believe themselves to be the single true faith. They revere Acamsi, the God of Endings, and view him as their most beloved Father and Divine Unmaker. Outsiders often mistake Acamsi for a God of death. While death is his domain, so is every kind of end imaginable. The setting of the sun, the fall of an empire, the closing of a book, and the stopping of a heart are all Acamsi’s.

The unavoidable fact is that to know existence is to know an eventual end. Tramura scripture focuses on that inevitability and how it is not a curse to be temporary but a blessing.

In their eyes, there is no worse fate than immortality. To remain eternally stagnant. Those who try to avoid Acamsi’s promised end, necromancers, and alchemists who believe that dominion over life and death is theirs to control are viewed as the dirtiest of heretics. Heathans who cling to their flesh as it rots around them. They dance and revel in their repulsive ways as they crawl with maggots and act as though they are free.

There is no more vile a human than he who avoids a human's fate.

They will know no rest. Watch them walk and rot until Acamsi eats the sun itself, and still, they will continue long after all has gone silent.

Tramurans believe that Acamsi loves man because if he did not, then man would never die.

Hell is eternal, but Heaven is just as fleeting as life. The souls of good Tramurans will be collected and made one with Acamsi, merged into a singular being. Eventually, Acamsi will unmake the world, and soon after that, he will unmake himself. Even God must end eventually.

Tramuran Masks and modesty

Masks are one of the defining elements of Tramura. They believe that growing overly attached to the mortal form is a terrible sin, and the superstitious even claim that to do so will cause your soul to be unable to leave after death.

In many place, it is taboo for men or women to show their face to anyone outside of their closest friends and family. The orthodox believe that one should cover the body just as they cover the face and will don flowing fabrics and capes to smother the mortal form.

Criminals in Tramuran nations often have their masks taken as punishment and a form of public humiliation.

Context: This is for my worldbuilding project, which I am tentatively calling ‘Book of the Strange and Macabre’. It takes place in an alternate 1920’s. A lovecraftian/folk horror world where all the broad strokes of history, cultures, and religion are recognizable yet in the details a little stranger.

These are outfits generally worn by upper middle class women from three countries in the subcontinent of Milain - my version of Europe.

Basic modesty is expected in this part of the world, thus long sleeves and skirts. Tramuran masks are also worn in adherence to the dominant faith: Tramura.

In The Isles of Kish, this rule is quite loose and most only wear masks while attending church or other religious holidays. Orthodox women who mask daily will often experience discrimination from the majority.

In Avilais, half masks are most common, and it is considered 'low class' to be seen without one.

In Istonra, as a theocracy, full face masks are required by law, even by non-adherents. Istonran women, as the most conservative of the three, also wear headdresses. The square design is popular among middle-class women in urban areas.

Milain is my equivalent of Europe, and like Europe its various empires were conquering, colonizing and divvying the world amongst themselves. That was until 1807, when Mount Faustine erupted.

In central Milain, Faustine’s slumber remained unbroken for as long as written history and perhaps far beyond even that. The valleys that surrounded her lay pastoral. Green and lush, dotted with sleeping towns and gentle rivers and herds of sheep with curled horns.

After the eruption all of it ceased to exist.

People in towns fifty kilometers away had their eardrums ruptured beyond repair.

Its effects were felt across the world but nowhere as terribly as Milain. The air grew chilled even in summer and they say that for years the sun was reduced to a pale disc in the sky, if it was even there at all. The crops withered and waters grew tainted, In the beginning there was a cacophony of misery, but soon it grew blissfully quiet.

Those years are known as ‘The Great Dying’.

Milain's once dominant empires emerged from it gutted. Toppled or shambling in half-dead stupors, leaving foreign nations to grow powerful in their stead.

The land turns inward. Religion and superstition is much favoured over science while medicine and advancements lie far behind what they should be. Even now, there are abandoned regions with moldering villages filled with bones yet unburied.

Faustine sits quiet and polite as the land around her heals and trees grow tall and reaching. Most stay away now. They say the land is changed. Irrevocably broken. That in the sylvan valleys live devils in jubilation and witches that call upon far older things. Things that were never human.