Editing Ameth (section)

===The Faith of the 7 Gods===
The Faith is the thing holding the whole Ameth together. Despite the name is it relies very little on faith. When you can see the undead walking among you every day you don't really "question" the teachings of the Faith. This is a centralized organization, with mortal priests at the bottom, undead liches in the middle, and a powerful undead leader at the top. The leader of the Faith is changed every 10 years and he wears the golden mask representing the god of the decade he is ruling. No common citizen knows how the next leader is chosen, some tell that those are actually the original 7 gods that created Ameth. 

The Faith controls the whole population quite simply: if you pray hard enough, follow temple rules and give lot of gold in donations, after the death you can return as an immortal, able to enjoy the life again for all eternity. A lot of mysticism surrounds the Return, the soul being judged by the gods and only the worthy are allowed back, while the unworthy returns corrupted or don't return at all. In reality the eventual Return and its form is decided by the Faith undead bureaucrats. The main factor for the decision is if you would want to hang with this guy for the rest of eternity, a secondary factor is the loyalty to the faith and number of donations.

The leader and the powerful liches in the ranks of the Faith need human life force to sustain themselves and to use it in magical rituals. While the easiest way to collect it is to consume living human flesh a more subtle method is practiced in Ameth. Living citizens must go to Faith works for a year each 5 years. It is usually building a new pyramid. The formal excuse is that this work is too complicated to be given to undead workers. On the work magical devices steal life force and put it in batteries (you don’t want to know how those batteries are made). Workers get tired incredibly fast but most of the time doesn't mind as it elevates their chances of being resurrected after death and the pay is very good. Stealing life force with moderation rarely kills people.

The priests are very lax in their rules. They can close an eye even on things like a war between different pharaohs. It is fine if you slaughter the whole family of the rival ruler. But if you massacre his whole city the Faith leader gets angry. “Fuck! You killed a lot of my cattle!” This usually ends in a massive army of undead soldiers sent to kill the offending pharaoh. This led to rulers using small highly trained and specialized forces instead of large armies. Ancient Egyptian Spec.Ops!

And yes, the liches inside Faith ranks have access to a large undead armies ready to do their bidding. Usually killing rebellions and foreign invaders. But an inside fighting happens every century or so.