The oath faith of Luna's humans

The faith of Luna's humans centres on King Artorin, the Oathdrawer, the oath he swore at the stone, and the holy hill and its graves. Its tongue is Old Speak. Its sign is the Oathstone: the sword blade-down in the oath-stone.

Belief

• Humans revere Artorin as a holy figure. The Highlanders say Orun weighed his oath (Orun).
• Those who stayed after the Fall stayed for belief: they would not leave the holy hill and its graves (the Sufferance).
• Their faith and tongue were allowed until 0 AL, when the Creed lit the Spire over the oath-stone and made Old Speak treason.

The Oathstone (the faith's symbol)

• The human faith symbol of Luna is the Oathstone: Artorin's sword, blade-down in the oath-stone, seen in profile. It means "the oath that was drawn": the king was made by his word, not his blood. Under the Sufferance it also says the hill is still theirs, because the stone under the Spire was Artorin's first.
• Origin: the oath-age royal and knightly device, carved on the first temple tympana and on knights' tombs at Avelor's priory. After the Fall it became the people's grave sign. It needs no words, so it outlived the ban on Old Speak.
• Scales:
  • monument relief: temple tympana, Avelor, wayside shrines;
  • headstone relief or incised outline, above the inscription;
  • the folk scratch or amulet: a dome, one stroke into it and a filled lozenge on top.

The iron grave nail

• [Book 1 spoiler]At Oakren's grave "someone had left a single iron nail driven into the dirt. Oakren's mark." Fi rests her gauntlet on the nail.
• The grave custom and the poor person's amulet. A human or dwarf under the Sufferance could not own a sword, so mourners drive an iron nail into the grave: a poor man's sword in the earth, the vow the dead kept. A nail on a cord is the cheapest amulet. In the human telling of Artorin's death, every grave nail is a little sword in the stone.

Inscriptions

• IVRO is the inscription on formal work. IVRATVS / REX IVRATVS bands appear on oath-age lintels.
• After 0 AL the Creed chiselled Old Speak out of the spaces it reused (Old Speak). The rough rectangular scar, "the blank", is read as a sign of its own.
• [Book 1 spoiler]Prisoners scratched the old words into the walls of the hole: folk scratching of forbidden signs is canon practice.

Defacements

• [After the books spoiler]The Creed's: on reused oath-age stone in Luna, the hilt is chiselled off and a small Eye sunburst is cut into the stone face: "the Spire over the stone", as Aiduin did at 0 AL.
• Crowbrook's: the godless exiles struck off the hilt (the god-king) but kept the stone (the oath and the witness law their courts descend from). It leaves a steel stub and a scar, and no sunburst (Crowbrook's Godless witness).

Where it is seen

• Human headstones, wayside shrines in the hinterland with a nail at the foot, the oath-age temples, and folk scratches on slum, Hearth and undercity walls.
• Never on elven graves: Luna's elves cremate (Elves).

See also: Heraldry of Luna.