Mahanism
Mahanism is the dominant faith of the world depicted in City of Last Chances, the established religious landscape within which all other spiritual traditions in the setting exist as competitors or relics. The faith is defined in the text primarily by what it did rather than what it teaches: it expanded until it had filled every remaining space in the religious sphere, and it did so while actively speaking against the rival faiths it displaced. No other religion in the book is described with comparable institutional reach or aggressiveness, making Mahanism the default spiritual ground against which the novel's more marginal cults, local gods, and folk practices are implicitly measured.
Its arc across the single volume in which it appears is essentially that of established context. It is named once, in the opening chapter, as part of the broad sketch of the setting's spiritual ecology; it generates no plot, is not held or contested by any named character, and receives no further doctrinal, institutional, or narrative treatment. Its significance to the series is therefore structural rather than personal: it marks the boundaries of the sacred in this world and tells the reader, in a single brushstroke, that the religious field has already been conquered by one power before the story begins.
The Practice
What It Is
Mahanism is a religion. The text describes it as having expanded to "fill all the available faith," a phrasing that presents the religious landscape as a finite space that Mahanism occupied exhaustively and deliberately. Beyond its own expansion, the faith is characterised by active opposition to other religions: it "spoke against" them, a verb that implies sustained institutional effort rather than incidental disagreement. No specific doctrine, rite, scripture, priesthood, or deity of Mahanism is named or described in the book. The reader is given the faith's competitive posture and its result, but not its contents.
Who Holds It
The text identifies Mahanism as the "dominant faith" of the setting, which places it at the centre of the religious life of the general population rather than in the hands of a sect or minority. No further detail is provided about who within that population practises it, how it is transmitted, whether there is a clergy or hierarchy, or where the boundary of adherence falls. The single descriptor "dominant" is the entirety of the sociological information the book supplies.
How It Is Regarded
The text gives Mahanism's regard for other faiths in pointed terms: it "actively spoke against" them, and its expansion "filled all the available faith," language that frames rival religions as territories conquered or voices silenced. Other faiths are acknowledged to exist in the setting - the very act of speaking against them implies their continued presence - but Mahanism's institutional posture toward them is one of sustained opposition rather than coexistence. How other peoples or powers in turn regard Mahanism is not addressed; the text records only the faith's own outward-facing conduct.
History
City of Last Chances
Mahanism is identified as the dominant faith of the setting, described as a religion that expanded to "fill all the available faith" and that actively spoke against other religions - ch 1. No further details of its doctrines, practices, hierarchy, or institutional structure are given in this book.
Notable Quotes
- "fill all the available faith" - City of Last Chances, ch 1
Tags
- religion · #dominant-faith · #religious-suppression