The development of Nummorrian religion

...as in "how I came up with it," not as in "how it developed on Nummorro over thousands/millions of years' time."  That would be an entirely different post, and not one that I've come up with enough history to actually write at this particular moment. XD

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Now on to the actual thing I wanted to write some stuff about... I had an odd realization while I was driving home from work tonight.  I remembered that way back in the elementary school days when I was first coming up with the planet Nummorro and the various species that populate it, I never actually came up with any Nummorrian religions -- even the "evil cult" style religions, like Rupoo cultists and such, were completely absent back then (even though I'd actually made up the Rupoo itself already, as of 5th grade... though originally it only existed as a placeholder for Queen Bridget due to the "ban" on Burijeoo -- still known as "Bridgetoids" at the time -- that was in place among some of my teachers during those later elementary school years. XD)  When asked about what religion the Numnums followed by one of the older kids in Boy Scouts (one of the not-awful older kids, to be specific), I basically just said that I didn't think they had one, and for a loooong time that was pretty much the beginning and end of my thoughts on the subject.

The realization? The reason why I never came up with Nummorrian religions back then was basically this: Back then, I was still a Christian.

...No, don't worry, this isn't going to turn into some post bashing on Christians, keep reading!  Anyway -- because I still believed there was one "true" religion (and all others must be false to some extent) back then, I had two options with Nummorro's religious beliefs.  Option #1 was making the Numnums and K'hyurbhis and Blurbys and so forth Christians too, and Option #2 was giving them their own "other" beliefs that would be, in my 10-year-old mind, incorrect.

Option #2 was out right away; I liked the Numnums and such too much to basically just send them all to Hell without so much as a second chance (because yeah, I actually believed in Hell back then, though since I hadn't really met many non-Christian people at the time I never really thought much about how messed-up it would be for people to end up punished eternally for just... not following a certain religion, not even actually doing anything legitimately bad.)

And even as a 10-year-old (and a Christian who had never even really questioned the beliefs he'd grown up with), some part of me realized that it would be really, really silly for a whole planet full of aliens with little-to-no connection to Earth to believe in an Earth religion.  Or more specifically, a human religion.  Remember that this was back in the day when Nummorro was populated by flying butts, Yuckow Foods were actually animated piles of cafeteria food, and Numnums had no legs -- but even to 10-year-old me, the idea of Nummorrian species following a human religion that they, logically, should have never heard of was sillier than all of those combined!  So that, of course, meant that both of my previously-mentioned options were crossed off the list.

So, as has become a recurring pattern for me, I went with an option that wasn't initially on the "list" at all: Option #3, not giving them a religion/belief system at all.  That avoided the silliness of the "Christian Numnums" option while also avoiding the awfulness of the "they have their own non-Christian beliefs and thus go to Hell" option.  By not following a "wrong" path (simply by virtue of not choosing any "path" at all, as far as religion goes), they would be spared from Hell.

...yeah, you can probably tell by now that I hadn't really thought about religion much at all when I was in elementary school (when I started thinking about it, of course, I rapidly started drifting away from first Christianity and shortly afterward the whole idea of organized religion), but really... who did think about that kind of thing much in elementary school? And I mean really think about it, not just asking one random question every now and then ("why aren't there dinosaurs in the Bible?") but unquestioningly accepting the answer your [insert religious leader's rank here] gave no matter how flimsy it was.

But yeah... that's most likely why Nummorro never had any religions during my elementary school years.  Things started to change beginning in high school, though.  In my crappy old RPG Maker 2000 game, The Story of Supernum, the Umpupu K'hyurbhi tribe made an appearance -- and rather than just the black-cloak-wearing, vaguely creepy guys they were originally, they had been converted into cultists who worshiped Dark Blubber.  Dark Blubber, by the way, was this awful character I came up with in the mid/late elementary school years whose whole point was basically to be the most absurdly overpowered recurring villain possible (I compared him to Dragonball Z characters during the high school years... putting him at a power level of one hundred billion during a time when I believed that nobody in all of DBZ ever got above one billion.)  Later on, when I finally ditched Dark Blubber, I switched them over to being Rupoo cultists instead.  But still, they were the first religious group to appear in any of my Nummorro-based things.

Various other "Cthulhu Cult style" groups followed the Umpupu, and eventually in the late 2000s I finally came up with the first few "good guy" religious groups.  Interestingly enough, this probably started during the time when I was at my most hostile toward real-life organized religion (2006-2007 or so.)  This was the time when I first began to come up with the starting ideas for the Blurby religion, which has continued to grow from there -- I could probably write a whole post on here about just that, and I probably will at some point.  I took the earlier (elementary school era) idea of Blurbys following a set of rules known as "the Tahttu" -- I think I may have spelled it "Tattu" early on and only later added the H? -- and expanded on that, adding a system of borderline ancestor-worship where they would build temples devoted to "Great Blurbys" who had accomplished something significant during their lifetime.  A little later still, I added the figure of Zaj Tanduo, the greatest of the Great Blurbys who had an even higher title (that being the "Zaj" in his name, which is of course not actually part of his name but just a title -- kinda like the "Christ" part when people say "Jesus Christ.")  By the time I started working on The K'hyurbhi Lands in late 2010 or early 2011, I had begun to expand even further and even came up with random details like what the inside of a Blurby temple was like (not heavily decorated at all unlike most human religions' temples or equivalent -- simple stone walls, dirt floors, just open holes with no windowpanes, some tables and a kitchen for feeding hungry travelers, maybe a few relevant items to the Great Blurby it's honoring hung on the walls, a single statue and usually just a small one.)

Around the same time, I began to sloooowly come up with details of an ancient K'hyurbhi religion, no longer believed in by the vast majority of the K'hyurbhis but still sort of influencing the Khurbyish language and other such things.  Kinda like how the Greek and Roman gods are to English -- we have days, months, and other words named after them, and some of their stories are still pretty well known, but few people actually believe they exist anymore or follow the religion that was built up around them back in the day.  After a while I even came up with the idea of one group that still does follow the old K'hyurbhi religion... sort of -- the Hamhu, being racist as all hell and believing K'hyurbhis are some sort of "superior beings," have twisted things around to support their view of things.  I've gradually built up more and more details on the K'hyurbhis' old religion (both original and Hamhu versions), but not quite enough to fill a "this is actually complete" post on here for it just yet I don't think.  Still, I'm getting there.  The most recent development was that some Numnums probably followed the old K'hyurbhi religion in the past -- probably not many Blurbys as they have their own religion that probably goes back at least as far as the K'hyurbhis' one (if not longer.)  But then again, considering the way the Blurby religion is as far as the God/gods question goes (it doesn't claim to have the answer to that question but leaves the possibility open), it's entirely possible that some oddball Blurby might follow the Blurbian religion but also believe in the K'hyurbhi gods (or some of them, at least) at the same time.