On the subject of religion and cults.
On a more personal note, yes, I'm going to have to pick one of the following religions to turn into a full fledged sub. And two, since I plan to pledge to the Divine Synod, I'll expand another of these religions there. I plan to stick around with Atheus for a while.
Okay then. Onward to religion. First, we are going to discuss the Barbarian religions. The Barbarians are typically polytheistic. Each tribe worships a particular god, who has a pair of things the god is the lord of. For example, a tribe of goblins may worship Elthiyanos, God of Storms and Spears. That tribe would have monuments towards Elthiyanos, and so on and so forth. Typically, a tribe's god reflects the tribe's culture in some way. The goblins worshiping Elthiyanos may prefer using spears in combat, or will use their racial abilities to make magic weapons that use storm-like magic as an ability. Multiple tribes can and will worship the same god, and some gods of different tribes can be god of the same thing. With the Elthiyanos example, say that a tribe of orcs lives nearby, and worships Grathka, God of Storms and Fear.
This hodgepodge of religions and different god worshipping does not lead to animosity, except in the second example, of two tribes worshipping gods that are god of the same thing. The goblins worshiping Elthiyanos and the orcs worshiping Grathka are probably going to get into a Holy War between the two sides, and will only end when one side converts to the other (or the two gods are merged into one god, that is lord of Storms, Spears, and Fear, but the Kill-Them-Until-They-Agree-With-Us is far, far more common).
The humans, on the other hand, have two main religions. The first is Trianarianism. This is the one I'll probably expand into a sub (NOTE: I just expanded this one. Link:
Trianarianism.) The basic tenets is that there are three main deities/ways of life. These three are Ambition, Altruism, and Honor. You pick a Way when you become 18 years of age. Switching Ways is allowed, but highly frowned upon, and may lead to being exiled or shamed out of whatever town or city you were living in.
The second religion of the humans is called Lunae. It is the middle ground betwen the human's Trinarianism and the barbarian's polytheism. It features a total of eight gods, each representing a phase of the moon and a characteristic of that phase. The eight would be new moon, waxing crescent, waxing half moon, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, waning half moon, and waning crescent. The moon a person is born under is believed to determine the type of person you are.
These three religions don't stay on their side of the border. You can see Trinarianistic barbarians, and polytheistic humans. However, Lunae is more common to be worshiped by all the races than the others.
A brief mention of cults should be put here. Cults, in both Atheus and real life, are not necessarily evil. They are simply new religious movements that are probably weird to the main religion in some way. For example, Christianity was a cult back when it first began. In Atheus, cults have and do start. They usually start in small, human villages- the barbarians are busy trying to survive to try and make up a new religion. Some of them are, yes, "evil," and do the whole Human and Animal Sacrifice to strange heathen demons with far too many tentacles (there needs to be someone for the PCs to kill), and some just think that everyone should get along and be nice to each other for a change.