No one was sure why they had picked this location. Some said it was because the ground was neutral, others said it was because there was some sort of spiritual energy left over by the makers. Personally Maverick was pretty sure they had picked this venue simply because it looked cool. If that was, indeed, the case, it was soemthing she could support .

The surface of the small moon was a geometrical landscape of smooth milky crystal grown in sharp angled patterns stretching on from horizon to horizon. When she walked her feet clattered against the crystal, a crystal which seemed to glow with its own strange light. The further she walked the more she could agree that the chosen venue had been a sound decision. They could have met anywhere, but there was something about this small exo moon that just felt right.

All around her, others trudged slowly forward making their way down into the small bason where a large natural amphitheater was waiting for them. The different delegations took their places on waiting seats and settled in to listen. Some had brought pillows with them, while other seemed fine with simply sitting on the crystal. Maverick kept to the back sitting where she could see everything happening down around her.

This was an unprecedented event.

The largest collection of religious leaders the galaxy had ever seen in one place .

Religious leaders don't gather often. IN fact, even on earth she had only ever seen three of them in the same room at the same time, but now there were hundreds, from different planets and different species, and if the leader could not come, they had at least sent someone in their place. Down at the base of the bowl, Sunny was surprised to find the cloaked figure of Naktan sitting quietly with his hands clasped in his lap.

She wasn't sure how he had gotten here but honestly, she wouldn't have been surprised if the Drev shaman had teleported himself using his mystical spiritual connection to the Ania or whatever. She recognized a few delegations of human religions, some men in opulent robes, and others in modest suits with garish ties likely purchased for them by family members. She recognized the leader of the Martian Church of the Divine Covenant , as well as the Kymopoleia delegation.

Their planet had a complicated situation. The people that lived there had just re instated belief in the Greek pantheon before everything went to shit, so their entire religion had been plowed over in one day only shortly after they had raised it back up.

But like most people do, they had simply adapted, The gods weren't literal beings, they were metaphorical representations of human archetypes or soemthing similar. In Maverick's opinion it was almost better that they have their religion struck down so early.

For the rest of them, things weren't so easy.

Thousands of years of religious tradition suddenly called into question by revelations from the Polaris archive. There were plenty of religions that had originally refused to accept what had been dug up in the Polaris archive, after all it could have been an elaborate hoax by members of the UNSC and GA, unfortunately that hox because harder and harder to disprove when someone on the Omen, no one was sure who, had leaked footage of revelation, and then Adam had returned with the Maker's ship.

Sure plenty of religions were still holding onto the hoax idea, but the vast majority had seen the footage of revelation and something had come over them .

Usually when people are confronted by something that questions their beliefs, they tend to dig in their heels and become more and more stubborn, and she almost would have expected it in this case too, but there was soemthing about that footage, about being able to see revelation in whatever form that had caused people pause.

It hadn't entirely caused the collapse of known religion, but it had caused a mass doctrinal shift. A lot of religions worked to find similarity between themselves and the Maker reality. Some religions had to stretch further than others to do it, but in the end they had all made it, ending in a bunch of religions that resembled each other even more so than they ever had.

Maverick had aways that that the typical monotheistic earth religions were basically all the same, but now they were almost indistinguishable.

Then you had Naktan and the Drev. Once upon a time their religion, which was a form of Animism, had suggested everything had an anima of some sort. To the Drev their planet was their god, so everything on that planet was alive with some sort of spirit.

So they had learned that really only makers have anima, but at least their creed of war could be kept how it was. The forever war between the void and the makers was enough to prove to the Drev right. Tesraki religious leaders were disappointed to learn that wealth could not be taken to the afterlife. Tesraki were similar in many ways to the Egyptians in that they believed life continued after death and that material gained in this life could be carried onto the next. High ranking Tesraki were often buried with those things that they believed would help them in the afterlife hence why economics was so important in their culture.

It was a religious thing.

Still life after death had proven correct, and the paradigm shift was turning Tesraki towards the acquisition of knowledge, which was the one piece of wealth that could be taken with you. It was interesting as it did align with a few of the earth religions who had believed the same for a long time.

Sitting next to her was Emperor Avez and Lord Celex both of which, she was surprised to find where very deeply religious men, in a way. Power itself was their religion, and t one point they had believed that the greater the power you held the greater standing you would have in the afterlife. Based on their religion, the two emperors would have become gods, their guards would have become spiritual warriors in service to the gods, and everyone else would fall into some lower pecking order.

Well

Now lord Celex was dead and he hadn't even seen revelation yet, so that was kind of awkward. Still, he had been able to flex his godlike powers on occasion. The lower classes of Celzex generally tended to follow whatever the emperor did. Lord Avex had made a few doctrinal changes which shifted the religion more towards the Drev view of glory in eternal war.

The Rundi had a few religious leaders, but they all generally revolved around the improvement of the self for participation in THIS life, which meant they didn't really have to change anything except maybe tack on something about life after death.

And still others came with their pantheons , and their creeds and what have you until the entire amphitheater was almost full up.

"Is this seat taken."

Maverick turned and paused surprised to find Zaran standing next to her. The old Burg was looking better than he had looked when Maverick last saw him, though it hadn't been in almost two years. He had been busy trying to rebuild the burg home world after the human invasion and the overthrow of their previous queen tyrant. It had been his task to act as surrogate king until the new queen was old enough to rule her own kingdom.

"Zaran, you're looking well." And that was indeed the case. The Burg were a species with a society not unlike that of a beehive. They had learned, rather late, that most of the burg they had seen around the galaxy, and all of the burg that had invaded earth, had been female. They were like the worker bees that you see in a beehive, and they worked to do the queen's bidding. The Males of the species are more decorative, soft, and originally only served as mates to the queen.

Overtime this had translated into burg males receiving softer jobs like artist, religious leader and so on, while the female workers built things and fought in war. This was all until the previous queen and locked all the males away and squashed the burg religion. While burg females tended to be ugly centipede looking bastards, the burg males were some sort of cross between a praying mantis and a butterfly. Zaran's wings were like stained glass, bright blue with veins of black running through them speckled here and there with vibrant orange.

He took his seat next to her.

"And how is the queen?"

"A real beauty." Zaran said, "She gained her wings merely a week ago." The queen was the ony female burg who could grow wings. The last time Maverick had seen a burg queen, soemthing ahd gone wrong and she had never grown out of her pupae form, making her a giant ugly maggot looking thing.

"That's good to hear, and you are here for?"

"Religious matters. Once she was old enough to take rule, I was put in place as our new religious leader. She felt that my talents as a leader would go to waste otherwise. And you?"

Maverick shrugged. She wasn't really sure, "I am here as the representative of arcadia."

"Does Arcadia have no formal religion?"

"Uh not really. The most practiced religion is the Drev Animism, but there is a slowly growing population of people who are calling themselves the Children of Revelation. Basically they are making a religion out of what we already know abut the makers and Revelation and everything else. Their goal is to prepare themselves for the forever war.

Zaran nodded, "Yes that does seem to be the trend these days.

"Do we know who will be speaking first."

Maverick nodded down to one of the human men in suits, "They will be doing opening remarks. They do a lot of large addresses back on earth, so they offered."

And it was, indeed a good opening. The man offered his condolences to all of them for their hard times, addressed every religion he could the best he could. The man had even learned a little of each language so he could speak to the delegations directly. He offered a moment for prayer and meditation, or simply a moment of silence.

"Today we come together in the largest gathering of the intergalactic religious community that has ever been seen. We have all been rocked by the Polaris documents and footage of our destination at Revelation. It is here and now that we offer some time for commentary. How best can we serve the people of our worlds in these times, where there is more certainty but also more fear."

He stepped back down for others to take his place.

There were a few religious leaders that discussed a changed afterlife and how the hope for peace and the loss of that idea had been hard on a lot of his people. It seemed as if the trials of life were not over and that they would continue into the afterlife against what they had originally assumed. Overhead a distant star streaked across the sky, but inside their life support bubble they were safe.

Others spoke on the death toll, thousands of humans and Tesraki choosing to take their own lives and return to the makers rather than stay another moment in a construct body.

A lot of pain had been caused by the Polaris revelation.

Wars had broken out on a few planets between those who believed the footage of revelation and the Polaris doctrine. Others admonished for peace saying that while they did not want to believe the new information , that footage of revelation was simply too much to ignore. The maker language, which some human religions had labeled as Adamic or, the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, had been another big blow to the collective religious community.

And no one even got the privilege of saying they were right.

Everyone was wrong

No one had the full truth.

Most religions had some or small snippets of the truth. Some had angels which they argued were representations of the Makers, though in many religions angels were never men. The monotheists thought they had something going for them with the involvement of the architect, but that was shot down when it was pointed out that there was also a more mysterious female archetype paired with the maker. The religions had the afterlife, but those who took their religious texts too seriously were disappointed to learn that science had the most accurate understanding of how the universe was created under the architect's hand.

It was all.

Complicated.

But Maverick was proud to say that this gathering was cordial if not somber. Everyone was still reeling, trying to regain their balance after a severe blow to a very important part of their lives. Religion had held a lot of them together and now they were being forced to reconcile a big part of their lives. She knew for a fact that many religious leaders had a lot of guilt regarding their teachings.

Had they led everyone astray.

But it was spoken best by a Finnari delegate as one of the last speakers.

"I have studied religion for my entire life, since my days as a save under the Gnar-lak and then during my days travel through the galaxy. I have lived with many denominations, read many religious texts. I have prayed on holy mountains and meditated in sacred caves. I have danced through the forest to commune with the spirits of the wild, and in all that time I have learned much. I understand like many of you that our lives have been thrown into turmoil, much of what we thought was wrong, much of what we fought for, and against each other for was wrong. It may seem pointless, an age of pain and lies led astray, but I am here to tell you that that is not the case.'

The amphitheater was silent many heads were bowed.

"In all of my time traveling and listening to the doctrine of the worlds, I have found two things that stand out as truths untarnished by these revelations....." The crowd waited, "Those things are self improvement, and love."

No one spoke.

"Love your neighbor as yourself, gain power, fight until you have mastered the forms, each religion focuses itself on self-improvement to be a good person who stands up for what is write and who protects the innocent. It encourages us to better ourselves either as fighters businessmen or as kind and caring people. That is the essence of belief. We must mold ourselves into people we would want to follow into the forever war. This life is all we have before what comes next, so we must use it to improve ourselves, to prepare ourselves for what is to come next."

It was a good speech.

There was come clapping, some cheering, a chorus of amen and bowed heads.

The response from each group was different but the thought was the same.

At least they had a direction