Origin of Fudanejiy

Fudanejiy is a rapidly growing religion in the Confederated Metropolis of Gwij. The religion was founded by a woman named Heral Kifeera in C.Y. 93. Before becoming the founder of Fudanejiy, Heral was an artist and gallery owner dealing in Kilbet artwork in a quiet well-to-do neighbourhood in the district of Denoreya in Defom Prefecture. She led a very quiet, content existence with her husband and son. She lived well from her sales on her and others’ artwork from her gallery. Her husband was an executive in the Defom Prefectural Transportation Directorate. 

Heral was not a religious person but blindly followed the religious traditions of the Confederation-sanctioned religion of Bilik Gwij. Her and her family would go every third day to the local shrine of their local deities, which the faithful believed created their kind, making them unique from the other gods and their creations in the Bilik Gwij pantheon throughout the metropolis.

On the fateful day of her conversion, Heral was in Karkasum Bigaj, the super high rise government district of the Confederation, finalizing a large sale of a piece of artwork from her gallery to a high official in the government. She was descending from the pinnacle in one of the glass exterior elevators of the disorientingly high Confederation East Tower. Mid-way down, as she was looking below into the grey bustling heart of the megalopolis (it was a rare clear day and she had an opportunity to see the city from this high up), she had a type of epiphany. She never saw the megalopolis from this vantage point before and realized what an amazing “being” the city really was.  In her quiet less densely populated section of the city, she was unaware of how intricate and awesome the city had become over the past few hundred years. She stared the entire way down the tower in a trance watching the streets become clearer and the neighbouring towers slide by like water running down glass. 

She suddenly felt embarrassingly ignorant of her surroundings and wanted to really live and be a part of this amazing entity called Gwij.  After exiting the tower, Heral aimlessly wandered the city taking in all the stimuli that she could; sounds, smells, tastes, vibrations, colours, shapes, movements the whole grandness of her home that she never really lived in. She wandered for hours into sunset. After her city trance she realized she walked a rather large distance (she was actually in neighbouring Bik Prefecture south of where she started her trance) and could see the darkening pillar of the Confederation East Tower in the distance holding up the heavy roof of the heavens.  This walking aimlessly in an urban trance became known as “City Trance” or “Heral’s Walk”. It is now not uncommon to see Deva Monks and lay Fudaneijy followers walking around aimlessly but religiously taking in the surroundings. 

Heral eventually made it back to her home in Defom and told her husband about what she saw and realized. He brushed it off as being bedazzled by just the everyday actions of the Karkasum-Bigaj. He did not seem to care and did not indulge in her revelations. Heral felt like she had to do something; something to change her life but did not know what. All she knew was that she did not want to live in Denoreya anymore and wanted to live in the living soul of the city, near the towering buildings and the bustling of people making the city a city.

Fortunately her son, Kordin, understood what she was saying and supported her in her wish to live a different life. Kordin, at 21 years of age, was an active participant in the hyper-urban life of Gwij. He usually frequented bars and clubs in the more densely populated areas of Defom and Yohannus with their young hip crowds and undulated beats creating a synchronized frenzy of urban ritual.  Kordin and his long-time boyfriend were regulars at these symbols of young urban life and advised Heral to experience a club in the trendy quarters of Defom’s high rise districts along the Shirfa River.

Heral was amazed by the feeling she experienced in these spaces of lights, beats, and movements; just like her experience in her trance walk near Karkasum-Bigaj. She realized there was little difference between the two and concluded that these dance clubs were a super condensed version of the city as a whole. It was like people were worshipping the city by dancing to its life force. 

After several visits to the dance clubs of Defom and Yohannus, Heral started to believe that the city was actually a god. What else could have made all the other regional deities but the entire city as a whole – a super deity. The city was alive and breathing and letting us live in it; with it. She eventually gathered a following with the help of Kordon who was her first convert and the first “Beat Cleric” of Fudaneijy.  Most of her early following were made up of young gay men – the demographic of Gwijian citizens that frequented the dance clubs the most and, as Heral believed, were more in tune with the aliveness of the city.