Do any humans, Banu, Xi'an or Tevarin, just take your pick, still practice a religion?
TL;DRYes, religion and spirituality exist among the alien civilizations; the Xi'an practice Litova, centered on understanding time and actions across time, which also ties into meditative states and endurance racing.
Yeah, absolutely. We've put a lot of thought into developing the spirituality of the different alien civilizations. It's my thought that it's difficult to have a civilization without some kind of concept of spirituality or some kind of interest in exploring mysteries, which I think is part of what religion is all about, just exploring and understanding things that you don't understand. But the Xi'an have a really complex code of ethics slash spiritual-ish religion called Litova that's dedicated to the understanding of time, which ties into the understanding of actions across time. Because they live so long, they have firsthand experience about how any tiny decision that you make can have a ripple effect that you haven't foreseen across years. So Litova partially developed out of that, which developed out of the civil war that they had when they accidentally destroyed their planet. Oops. I mean, it's still there. You can't live on it. It's not safe. So one cornerstone of Litova is actions across time, and the other is the exploration of time as a concept. Oh, they also, I think we do this in humans too, the ability to meditate to the point where it feels like time is slowing down, but for them it's a more solid thing. So if they meditate enough, they experience time at a much more different rate than us. So something that sounds like it's really fast to us, to them, when they're in that state, would sound like it's happening very slowly. Hence why Xi'an opera takes so long.
Maybe talk about the Xi'an endurance racing, where it also kind of tied into this meditative state.
Yeah, I think, Cherie, you're the expert on the Cali-Cola or something, exactly the pronunciation for it. But the idea being that it was an endurance, kind of extreme Le Mans-type race where they're traveling great distances for long periods of time, and the best racers are able to enter the state Cherie was just talking about, as a way to slow down their body functions and be able to travel longer without taking breaks and stuff like that. I know it should be up on the RSI site. There is a portfolio specifically on that race that talks about it and kind of the origins of it, which again ties into all that. So among the Xi'an, being a racer who can do this, who can find that state, makes you revered within the culture. So it ties in with that also.
It would be the Koe Koya.