Just putting up a few things I have lying around :)

The great contest

Almost all nations have some memory of the fall of Nemesis. Though it was eighteen thousand years ago, the days of darkness, years of winter and the sight of a vast halo of dust kicked up from the dark side of the moon by an even larger fragment of the comet remain in stories of dead sun gods and the moon as a creature with wings. The latter is responsible for figures like Chiki, the pet bird of the Etrusean goddess of death, and Jia, the Chiran moth spirit that hatched from the moon to spin a new sun from her silk.

Old Aludran pagan beliefs describe three figures who remain part of the modern faith; the trickster goddess Fiora, the hunt goddess Alysa, and the hated figure known only as It, the author of suffering. While Fiora and Alysa are respectively shown as a black Siamese wearing the diamond-patterned dress of a fortune teller and a huge Bengal cat as strong as any ten beasts wearing a traditional hunter's garb (often changed to a military uniform in modern depictions), It is only ever shown as a black rectangle or a stylised old Aludran glyph.

It is said that for an eternity, sly Fiora had admired noble and strong Alysa, but it was not in the goddess of deception's nature to openly state her feelings. Instead, she challenged the hunt goddess to a contest; if she could prove herself the greater hunter, Alysa would agree to be her bride.

It desired Alysa too, for whatever reason; Aludrans do not assign reasoning to It, treating the accursed creature as always inexplicable. When It heard of the contest, It also challenged her.

Alysa took her turn first, and took many with her great spear. Second came Fiora, the cunning goddess proving a match for Alysa and taking one more animal through her trickery. But when it came the turn of It, the creature did not hunt, instead inflicting a cruel curse on all living things, that they would suffer and die*, and presented itself as the victor. In fury, Alysa hurled her spear into It, the body falling to the mortal world and spreading darkness and the chill of winter across it. Fiora and Alysa taught their daughters, the ancestors of the Imperial family, their skills of trickery and hunting that they would survive.

Aludran religion is not dualistic because It is already dead, only the creature's influence lingering in the mortal world. Those who die having lived well will dream peaceful dreams until It's influence has finally left the world and the goddesses raise them to live again in a world without suffering; those who live poorly may either cease to exist or suffer a period of nightmares before being reborn for another chance to live righteously.

The Queen's Lance

The Queen's Lance is an ancient relic of the House of Alud said to have been given to the family's founder Circe dio Alud by the goddess Alysa.

While the Queen's Lance itself has long been lost, its description matches the Basram relic known as Tauberg's Spear; both are believed to be flipper bones from a gigantic Kraken.

The artifact is actually correctly called the Queen Lance. Its modern name is a mistranslation; in Etrusea, the story is always said to be about the "Queen's Lance." Prior to the Battle of Laurent Abyss, an Air Destroyer named Queen Lance had been constructed in Etrusea, but was given the mistranslated name. This was the subject of some controversy at the time, with questions as to whether it should be accepted and a series of very quaint news articles saying it was the greatest challenge the alliance between Aludra and Etrusea would ever face.

Queen's Lance had been accepted by Aludra by the time of the Battle of Laurent Abyss and served extensively during the Reformation War. She shot down the only Linthan Air Destroyer, Nitra, when the latter attempted to engage the Perkunas during the Battle of Oaken Mill, part of the Janek Offensive, and by the end of the war had been so heavily featured in Aludran propaganda that schoolchildren were referring to the original artifact as the Queen's Lance too. The fact that Queen's Lance was Etrusean fell out of the history books for almost half a century, since it was not politically convenient.

Today insisting on the "correct" name is thought of as nitpicking. A good way to puzzle Aludran children is to ask them which queen it belonged to, since Aludra has never had a queen.

The Seal of Unity

The Seal of Unity is one of several sealing-stamps of the House of Alud. The original was used by Mari dio Alud to seal the treaty that established the modern state of Aludra, but it disappeared in Fiol's time.

The Seal was made from an ingot of red iron; this is high-quality iron contaminated with cadmium selinide, fragments of the iron core of Nemesis. It was once thought to be a divine metal; forging it was certain death, but the steel made from it was superior to any other. To work it was thought to be an honour, the crowning glory of a smith's life.

A new Seal had been made from the same ingot of red iron as the original, but recovering the first Seal was something the Alud had always desired. The fate of the original Seal was discovered the same day the Empress explained why the Imperial family knew every one they'd been given before was a fake and declared it was obviously gone.

It turned out that the stamp of the Sul family was made from the Seal of Unity, and they eventually pieced together the story of how in the world this had happened since the Sul family included the Empress' most beloved wife.

Stamps made with the Seal became fainter and fainter right up until it disappeared, and so it is believed it was sent to be re-cast. The sealmaker it was given to was a crew member on one of the ships sunk in the Battle of Laurent Abyss and left no instructions to her family, believing she would soon return. With all the confusion and Shri's abdication it was temporarily forgotten, and since Fiol did not declare war on Linthe it was not needed. By the time the Alud realised it was gone they had the problem that nobody outside the Royal Household knew what they were even looking for, and the paperwork on where it was had been lost in a minor fire in the Imperial Archive.

Fiol just ignored it and signed documents because she felt it proved she was literate, but her daughter wanted to use a seal and so had a new one made and offered her own weight in platinum to anyone who bought them the real one. By that point the dull-looking old seal had been melted down and used to make a stamp of authority for the Sul, a fairly minor noble family. The Alud didn't let it be known that the Seal was made from a fragment of Nemesis because they knew they could detect fakes more easily that way.

Gina sen Sul, later Gina dio Alud, was very proud when it was found her family's seal was part of the comet, and she was well-loved enough that no suspicion fell on her when she told the Empress. The youngest daughter of the Sul family, Gina was a gentle, sweet and shy grey Persian who loved cooking and birds, the exact opposite of a criminal mastermind.

*Before this, creatures died but did not suffer, and did not die unless something killed them. Aludrans are obligate carnivores and do not believe there was a time before they could eat. Particularly in modern imaginings when the Aludran pantheon includes Etrusea's beloved death goddess Fair Lady Rei, It is regarded exclusively as the author of suffering and disease.