Choose a god, kneel at their shrine and pray. Every prayer you finish counts toward your Priest skill, and now and then your god answers with a blessing.
How religion works
A character holds one god at a time and may only pray at that god's shrines (eight faiths need none: seven of the older faiths, and Ithelia). Praying is a short test of devotion: you kneel, and in each of three verses you speak the line that belongs to your god's prayer. A finished prayer counts toward your Priest skill. It only rarely earns a blessing.
/deity opens it.The prayer panel
Walk up to a shrine of your god and use it. You kneel, and the prayer panel opens with the shrine's name and a reminder of what your god holds. Each of the three verses offers three lines: one belongs to your prayer, and the others come from the prayers of gods of another kind, such as a Prince's words in a prayer to a Divine. Click the line that belongs, or press 1, 2 or 3. A wrong line falters and you choose again. The prayer bears two wrong lines, and a third ends it. You have two minutes for the whole prayer, so there is no need to hurry. Press Stand up or Escape to rise early.
The shrines of Molag Bal, Hircine, Arkay and Stendarr keep a rite as well as a prayer, so using one of them first opens a shrine panel with two choices: Pray or Perform the Rite. A follower of that shrine's god also finds an offering box there (see Offerings below). Whatever you cannot do there, the panel tells you why. Molag Bal and Hircine give their curses; Arkay and Stendarr lift them for a filled black soul gem. A rite always shows what it can cost before anything happens. Fail the rite at Hircine's or Molag Bal's shrine and neither shrine will give you its rite for a day; come through Hircine's Great Hunt unmarked and his rite waits a day too. Praying there is not affected. These waits count for all your characters, not just the one who ran the rite. The Supernatural Guide has the rest.
Rest between prayers
Once a prayer is finished, that shrine will not hear you again for an hour. Your god's other shrines will. A prayer that slips away, or that you rise from after choosing a line, rests the shrine for five minutes. Rising before you choose your first line costs nothing.
Blessings
Every finished prayer rolls for your god's blessing. The odds and how long the blessing lasts depend on your Priest tier. When your god answers, the message tells you what the blessing does and for how many hours. You carry one blessing at a time. It ends when its hours run out, when a new blessing replaces it or when you turn to another god. If you die while blessed, the blessing comes back a few seconds after you stand up.
| Who prays | Chance of a blessing | Blessing lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Anyone without the Priest skill | 2% | 8 hours |
| Priest, Novice | 5% | 8 hours |
| Priest, Apprentice | 10% | 8 hours |
| Priest, Adept | 15% | 12 hours |
| Priest, Expert | 20% | 16 hours |
| Priest, Master | 30% | 24 hours |
The faiths that need no shrine (seven of the older faiths, and Ithelia) answer half as often and for half as long: 1% for anyone, 2.5% to 15% for a Priest, for 4 to 12 hours.
Every blessing shows under Active Effects for as long as it lasts. That includes the blessings the server keeps itself, which have no spell of their own: Sanguine, Hermaeus Mora, the Hist, the Ancestors, the Yokudan Gods and Ithelia. Clavicus Vile is the one god who still gives no blessing.
The blessings that quicken health, magicka or stamina (Akatosh, Meridia, Hircine, the Hist, the Yokudan Gods, the Worm Cult and Ithelia) are kept up by the server itself, so the faster regeneration really counts.
Curing the fever
Of all prayers, only one finished at a shrine of the Divines (Auri-El and Talos among them) breaks the fever that comes before vampirism or lycanthropy. A prayer to a Daedric Prince (Ithelia too) or to one of the older faiths does not, and neither does a prayer away from a shrine. If you carry the fever, the shrine warns you first: pray again within a minute to go on. Besides prayer, a Cure Disease potion still cures it. The Supernatural Guide has the fever in full.
Offerings
Use your god's shrine, then within two minutes type /offer <gold> to leave an
offering of 5 to 1,000 gold (a faith that needs no shrine takes one anywhere). Touching the shrine
opens the prayer panel; close it with Escape before you choose a line and it costs nothing. At the
four shrines that open a shrine panel first (Molag Bal, Hircine, Arkay and Stendarr), a follower of
that god can skip the typing: the panel has an offering box, so enter 5 to 1,000 gold and
press Offer.
Half the gold is consumed as the offering itself, and half goes to the treasury of the town it is made in, for the temple's upkeep. For the next hour your god listens more closely: your next prayer's chance of a blessing grows with the offering, up to double at 100 gold, and that prayer spends it.
Choosing your god
Choosing a god is the last step of making your character. Your first choice is free and
needs no shrine, or press Not yet and type /deity when you are ready.
From then on, the Deity tab of your journal (F3, or /deity) is where you
look up and change your god. It lists every god and faith under The Divines, The Daedric
Princes and Other faiths, with what each rules, its boon, its shrines in Bruma and what
the law says, and it marks the outlawed faiths Unlawful.
You may change faith once every seven days, counted from your last choice, from the
Deity tab and wherever you stand. Turning to another god takes away any blessing you carry. (You can
also turn by hand: use the new god's shrine and type /deity <name> there.)
The staff can reset your faith if something has gone wrong with it. That clears your god, the seven-day wait, any blessing, offering and shrine waits, and you choose again as if for the first time.
Most Daedric Princes, the Dragon Cult and the Worm Cult are proscribed in the Empire too, though Malacath, Azura and Meridia are tolerated. You are reminded of the law the first time you kneel at a forbidden shrine. For these faiths nothing more happens: nobody stops you.
The Divines
The Princes
Sixteen Daedric Princes may be worshipped here, Mehrunes Dagon among them, whose Great Gate once opened outside Bruma. Jyggalag has no cult in this age. Of these sixteen, only Malacath, Azura and Meridia are lawful in the Empire. One more Prince, Ithelia, has no shrine: she is prayed to anywhere, so she stands with the other faiths below, and the Deity tab does not mark her Unlawful.
The older faiths
Not every people kneels to the Divines or bargains with the Princes. Eight older faiths are open to
anyone, and so is Ithelia, a Daedric Prince whose very name was lost (last in the list).
Seven of the older faiths and Ithelia need no shrine: kneel wherever you are and type
/pray to open the prayer panel. The same three verses, the same Priest credit, one rest of
an hour between prayers wherever you kneel. Because they can be prayed to anywhere, their
blessings come half as often and last half as long as a shrine god's. The
Deep Serpents are prayed to at their own shrine, the Serpent Stone, and answer as often
and as long as any shrine god. Each older faith's boon is its people's own gift, and the Dragon Cult and
the Worm Cult are outlawed in the Empire.
Where to pray
Every Divine has shrines in Bruma county, and the Cathedral of St Martin in Bruma holds most of them. Talos is the exception: his shrines stand out in the county, not in the cathedral. Auri-El has a shrine of his own in the county, and his faithful may also pray at any shrine of Akatosh.
The Princes' shrines lie in the wilds of the county. Meridia's statue stands near
Namira's shrine in Bruma's hills and now shows a prayer prompt; standing beside it and typing
/pray works too, and /deity Meridia straight after takes her as your god if
you are free to turn.
The Deep Serpents are prayed to at the Serpent Stone on the lake shore north-east of
Bruma. The other older faiths and Ithelia need no shrine. The Deity tab tells you how many shrines each god has
in Bruma. Every god on the list has somewhere you can pray, even while the server is
held to Bruma.
The temple orders
The Great Faiths are the players' own order of the Eight Divines, and they keep the Cathedral of St Martin in Bruma. Their ranks run from Novice through Acolyte, Knight, Priest, Knight-Captain and Prior to High Priest. At the Cathedral's Scholars' Ledger members buy Restoration and Alteration tomes, by rank as the colleges' members do, and its Priests and above teach those spells to the order's members there. Schools of Magic has the tomes and the teaching.
The Imperial Cult, the Empire's own worship of the Divines, is a faction too. Its chapel, tome shop and teaching come later.
Each order counts as your one guild, and its faithful cannot also serve a Daedric cult. The Holds & Factions Guide has the faction limits. Anyone, in an order or not, can change their prepared spells inside the Cathedral, as in a college.
Sermons
A follower of one of the Divines with Priest at Expert or higher may preach at a temple pulpit. In Bruma the pulpit stands in the Cathedral of St Martin. Anyone may listen, whatever their god, and the sermon counts toward their Priest skill.
| A sermon of | What a listener gains |
|---|---|
| Your own Priest rank | A full share |
| One rank above yours | Seven tenths of a share |
| Novice, for an Apprentice | Half a share |
| Anything else | Nothing, so you cannot sign up |
The sermon's spell
When the preacher ends the sermon, every listener who stayed and gained is offered the sermon's spell, as at a college class: Learn or Decline, for three minutes. The usual rules hold. You need the Priest skill at a rank that allows the spell, and the spell must be within the rank you could be taught: Apprentice for anyone, Expert for a Priest or higher of the Great Faiths, or a Senior rank or above in a college. The sermon costs its preacher one tome of the spell, or their tome purchase, once for the whole sermon, spent when the first listener accepts. A preacher with neither cannot hand the spell out.