Church of Ubtao

The Church of Ubtao was the organization formed around the worship of Ubtao, the Creator of Chult and the Father of the Dinosaurs. His church consisted mainly of jungle druids, mazewalkers, and shamans.

Clergy
Most members of the Ubtaoan clergy were men and women of the Tabaxi tribe. Unlike most other churches of Faerûn, the Church of Ubtao did not have any clerics. The worshipers and clergy of the Creator of Chult received little guidance from their deity, and in return, Ubtao demanded no formal worship. Not all clans or settlements had representatives of all three sects among them, and occasionally, the sects could not coexist peacefully. However, such conflicts were rare. The difference in opinions between the three in bigger communities meant that the clan was ready to split into smaller units dedicated to one aspect of Ubtao or another.

Mazewalkers directly worshiped Ubtao, and most of them resided in the city of Mezro and were the closest thing to traditional clerics. Mazewalkers – the specialty priests of Ubtao, provided spiritual guidance and welfare of the flocks and tried to prepare the faithful for the challenges of the maze of life and reaching the final reward. They acted as teachers in the Ubtaoan communities, sharing pearls of wisdom and knowledge of Chult with people of all ages. Mazewalkers also offered advice and aid in figuring out the flock's life decisions, marriages, and other important daily matters. They represented and enforced the law and served as judges and mediators. Mazewalkers were passionate in their duties and beliefs, focusing on the end of their journey and the final reward. Despite being teachers, they tended to focus on hope rather than act.

Jungle druids focused their worship and activities around the veneration of the jungle itself, its essence – part of Ubtao. They taught the Chultans to fit in as best as possible into the web of life in the jungle. Most of the jungle druids took on the roles of clan healers. Outside this, they also collected and taught knowledge of plants, animals, dinosaurs, and their behavior. Jungle druids were skilled animal trainers and handled wild and domesticated animals.

Spiritlords – the shamans, worshiped numerous jungle spirits, spirits of the dead, and animal spirits, all too, part of Ubtao. They believed that these numerous spirits controlled all aspects of life and focused on their appeasement. Most spiritlords lived outside the city of Mezro and sought to ensure a safe passage for their clan through the spirit-infested world. Their goal was to ensure the community did not offend ancestors or elemental spirits through sacrifices and religious rites. They also could negotiate with spirits offering service in exchange for boons and aid. Spiritlords were usually similar to adepts found in other areas of Faerûn.

Mazewalkers and jungle druids rarely came to a conflict, while spiritlord and mazewalkers often disagreed with each other about the worship, sometimes violently so. Despite that, most Tabaxi combined the beliefs and practices of all three sects in their everyday life.

The Spearbearers of Ubtao was the older members, which made it their duty to protect the world from Dendar the Night Serpent. Their goal was to give Ubtao the necessary strength to defeat the Night Serpent when she finally came to eat the sun. Towards that end, they conducted a large number of rituals, many of which involved sentient sacrifices.

Dogma
The Church taught its followers that Ubtao was the creator of Chult and the jungles were a test for the faithful, a physical representation of the maze of life through which the Ubtaoans traveled until reaching the afterlife at Ubtao's side. The maze was the focus of the faith, and it represents the life's journey his worshipers took upon. Each Tabaxi child was taught the rudiments of their personal maze, and as the child aged, the maze was expanded with the aid of elders and teachers. Throughout their lives, Ubtaoans drew and redrew their personal mazes, memorizing their unique patterns. Many learned the image well and absentmindedly tranced their shapes in sand or other surfaces in conversations or while idling. After they died, Ubtaoans appeared in front of their deity and were tasked with drawing a maze unique for each individual. Those who succeeded were taken to Ubtao's realm into the afterlife, while those who failed were returned to Chult as wandering ghosts or ravenous ghouls.

Vestments
Mazewalkers were adorned in tobes, light robes necessary in Chult's humid climate. They favored ritual body painting in preparation and during religious ceremonies. These intricate maze designs were applied to their faces, around the eyes, and to the wood-carved tabards. Spiritlords exposed more skin wearing nothing but loincloths, with rare exemptions wearing decorative overskirts made of animal tails. They wore jewelry made of animal and dinosaur parts and covered their faces with ironwood-carved masks. Jungle druids preferred mundane clothing of their tribes, decorated with imagery of jungle beats. They could be recognized by small ivory, gem-carved, golden, or silver amulets in the shape of a circular maze – the holy symbols of Ubtao.

Adventuring members of all three sects wore clothes and armor and used weapons common among the Tabaxi tribes of Chult. They carried yklwa spears and hardwood kerrie clubs almost never seen outside Chult, while among more common weapons, they used handaxes, daggers, short swords, scimitars, longbows, and hunting spears. Tanking members of the Church were clad in dinosaur hide breastplates, helmets of the same material, and hlang shields.

Holy Objects

 * Mazewalker chalice, a golden chalice that affected any creature that did not venerate Ubtao. Those who looked at the maze that decorated its surface were driven mad. The effects of the madness were similar to those of the feeblemind spell.

Abilities
Jungle druids were masters of the jungle. They possessed the knowledge and proficiencies needed to survive and thrive in wild Chult. They could navigate thick growth with relative ease, leaving no trails behind. They tended to learn exotic languages of the jungle and swamp inhabitants such as aarakocra, aldani, bullywug, dwarven, goblin, lizardfolk, locathah, muckdweller, sahuagin, troglodyte, and yuan-ti languages. Those of higher skill and status gained the ability to shapechange into a non-giant reptile, a dinosaur, a bird, or a mammal from the Chultan jungles three times per day.

Mazewalkers were almost all exclusively human members of the Tabaxi tribe, despite the fact that there were no religious restrictions from members of other species taking on the role. The reason for this was simple – Tabaxi humans were the most common humanoids in Chult. Those who were accepted into the mazewalkers of Ubtao gained the ability to never get lost in Chult and cast the analyze balance spell once per day. As mazewalkers grew in status and experience, they became unaffected by the maze spell as well as could not be confused. Further down the road, they gained the ability to mind read, memory read, and addition spells each once per day. The strongest of the mazewalkers could cast genius or fire purges spells once a day, later – find the path or call dinosaur spell daily, and lastly, the spell of mind tracker daily.

Spiritlords, similarly to mazewalkers, were mostly human Tabaxi. They specialized in brewing quaffs and potions using substances of the Chultan jungle. Each of the spirit lords carved a unique mask they used in the ritual of communication with their spirit adviser. The mask became home to a minor spirit of the dead or of an animal that bonded with a spiritlord. If for any reason, the mask left possession of its owner, it destroyed itself after ten days of separation, allowing the spiritlord to carve a new mask and attach the spirit once again.

Magic
The clergy of Ubtao were granted several unique spells by their deity. These spells were: spirit mask, free will, and call dinosaurs.

Holy Days and Rituals
The worshipers of Ubtao had a huge number of rituals, holy days, and customs that venerated the many spirits of the jungle and individual ancestors or celebrated a hunt or life events. These rituals took place around makeshift shrines that were simple rocks and were treated as such outside the ritualistic use.

History
Worship of Ubtao dated back to the creation of the jungles of Chult. When he molded the land, Ubtao realized that he had invested too much of his divinity into the essence of the jungles. To remedy the distance created by stretching his being too thin, Ubtao created aspects to be worshiped by the humans – Tabaxi Chultans, numerous land and nature spirits, as well as the jungle itself.

Ubtao took on the avatar shape of a tyrannosaurus during the Time of Troubles in the. After he returned to the planes, Ubtao became more involved in the dealings within his Church and his mortal worshipers. This led to the dramatic expansion of his clergy and worshipers.

Notable Affiliations
A group of seven unaging champions of Ubtao formed the protector of the faith and the city of Mezro. These men and women were chosen by their deity and were granted lives unaffected by sickness as well as a special gift each. When one of these barae perished in battle, a new champion was selected from the worshipers of Ubtao and tasked with venturing to the heart of the Temple of Ubtao in Mezro. Those who passed the deity's test were ordered to the secrecy of the process, while those who failed were taken to the afterlife.

The Followers of the Skyserpent, or ruk'cho, was a beast cult that worshiped Ubtao through venerating couatls. According to one legend, couatls were the inspiration for Ubtao's creation of dinosaurs.

Notable Members of the Church of Ubtao

 * Mudgraw, a tortle druid of fort Ahoyhoy who guided expeditions to Omu, Shilku, and the Heart of Ubtao in the late 15 century DR.
 * Umoja, a jungle druid adventurer active in Samarach in the late 14 century DR.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * The Tortle Package
 * Tomb of Annihilation
 * Novels
 * The Ring of Winter &bull; Viper's Kiss &bull; Vanity's Brood
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
 * Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition &bull; Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford
 * Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition &bull; Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford
 * Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition &bull; Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford