Church, The: About the Church
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Meridian on the Church - April 24th, 2002
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Alright, as I hinted earlier, I finally have the time to dispense some religious Lore out to the Holy Church, one of my favorite factions. Gather 'round, good my Prelates and Crusaders, and listen well.
Intro - how to think like a Prelate
First off, consider that most (if not all) things in Shadowbane are hazy reflections/Zelaznian "shadows"/slight reworkings (or, as a cynic might say, thinly veiled rip-offs) of people/places/things/events/organizations in a wide variety of literary sources and the Real World. I often refer to characters as being "our X analogue," because of the role they play in the stories - Cambruin is our Arthur analogue, Archons are our angel analogues, Malog/Morloch is our Melkor/Morgoth, etc. There are differences, to be sure, but if you want to quickly grasp a thing and the "jist" of it, look to the sources from which they were derived (sources that you may already be familiar with) and you'll get a quick feel for them - enough to improvise your own details without fear of blatant contradiction.
I've given some other groups out there my sources for their factions, and now it's the Holy Church's turn. The Holy Church of the All-Father is based, pretty obviously, on the European Catholic Church, with bits pulled in from the dark ages, high middle ages, and the Church's decline with the rise of the European Colonial powers. To get a feel for how I envision the Church and its functionaries thinking, living, feeling, and working, look to the following for your inspiration:
* The Mission, one of the finest films ever made
* The Name of the Rose - the movie's good, but if you want to rock your very consciousness, read the book!
* A Canticle for Liebowitz - a very old science fiction novel (that spawned a pretty recent sequel)
* The Third Miracle - another absolutely terrific movie
Even if you're not planning to play a Prelate or Crusader, all of the above are admirable ways to increase your education as a human being.
So where am I going with all of this? Suffice to say that the Holy Church is a huge institution, ancient in its beginnings, that sees itself as having an independent existence from the temporal, worldly nations and empires that surround it. It tries its best to influence those empires (for their own good) and it is forced, by necessity, to dabble in worldly matters for its own support and survival. It has its own internal politics, with matters of doctrine or belief that can turn as heated and bitter as any noble house's succession crisis. The Church also has its internal orders. The Crusaders are the only one that's gotten any decent press yet, but I expect more will arise over time - they'd make admirable Disciplines.
The Church sees itself as the nourisher, custodian, and guide of all of the All-Father's children. It is the only institution that has endured from the Age before Time to the present day. The Church has changed, surely, but it has not died, and its core remains - as the Catholic Church did in our world, the Holy Church on Aerynth makes one of its primary duties the preservation of knowledge, civilization, and glories destroyed or lost in the long string of cataclysms that have plagued the world. All of its clergy believe, to one degree or another, that there IS a fundamental ordering to the Universe, that that order springs from the actions and will of the All-Father, and that that order is, despite how it may seem, good and proper.
They also believe that there is a definite morality: there IS a right and wrong way to do anything, and the right way is not necessarily born of self interest (in fact, I the two often fall at odds). The final bottom line is Faith: the belief that there IS an order and a higher good, even if you can't see it, and that YOU personally do not run the Universe. The All-Father runs it, without necessarily asking your opinion.
The Church does have daily religious services - masses and services. I expect them to run on the Medieval model: matins, prime, terse, etc. They also have holy sacraments: confession, absolution, confirmation, etc. Communion is so inherently Christian that I expect the Prelates have no Aerynthian counterpart to it (at least as regards the eating and drinking of sacred substance). There's bound to be some analogue, but it hasn't come to me yet. Maybe it will come to you.
As regards other religions, they range from the deluded and pagan (Druidism and Titan worship) to the downright dangerous (Ardan worship, Chaos worship, Morloch cults, and, of course, the Dragon). It's not that the practitioners of these other faiths don't have power, granted to them from a Divine source - it's rather that they don't walk the True Path. They run around in circles, and either keep their followers locked in a stagnant cycle of paganism or actually feed their souls to evil. The Church has done its best to absorb and co-opt paganism and stamp out Chaos worship. Its efforts on both fronts continue unabated. Don't think of the Holy Church as a wimpy, friendly body: it strives for unity, but only within the context of the eternal struggle with Darkness Chaos, and Evil. To save the souls of the innocent, almost any means and sacrifice are required. Just ask any Crusader.
The Origins of the Holy Church
Worship of the All-Father is common among all the first races, and the Holy Church of today has its roots in all of them.
The Elves, born of the All-Father, sang praises to Him early on, and many of his greatest deeds were commemorated in verse form by the first Elvish authors. The Sacred Staves gave accounts of the All-Father's first battles with Chaos, His journey to frozen Aerynth, His awakening of Braialla, His early quests and deeds, and His battle with the Dragon. The Elves tended to view the All-Father as the head of the Aerynthian pantheon rather than the Prime Mover of the Universe: in their eyes, Pandarrion (an Elvish word, by the way) is much more akin to Zeus or Odin (perhaps especially Wagner's Wotan) than the Hebrew Jehovah. There have always been a few Elves, however, who have been blessed with true Faith - as the Deathless Empire turned to blasphemy they fled underground, and after the Taming they formed the first true Holy Church, the Elvish Church.
The Centaurs, whose devotion to the All-Father has been matched through time only by Humanity, were taught to praise the All-Father by Kenaryn soon after their birth. They devised many rules and commandments (you can think of them almost as a less extensive and restrictive version of Talmudic Law), as well as commemorating all of the All-Father's lessons and teaching to them. These were kept alive in an oral tradition, and then compiled into great books when the Horse Lords learned the art of writing from the Elves.
The Dwarves were also taught the worship of the All-Father by their divine parent, and have clung to it since their creation. Their influence on the Holy Church has been pretty minimal, but they did soak up a lot from the other races before the War of the Stones, and have been quick to embrace the Holy Church in the days since the Turning.
As for Humanity, that's where things get interesting. There was some kind of Holy Church in Ardan (the realm, no the Titan), but with the exception of a few fragmentary records and some ruins, almost nothing is known of it today. The few documents and rituals that survived the Blood Curse hint that the iconography and core belief system of the Ardani Church was vastly different from anything that has followed since. One can only presume that personal, direct access to the All-Father (he did dwell in the Valley of Ardan for a time) and the Titans had a profound impact on its development.
To understand the modern Holy Church and the Book of Staves, you need to look at the flow of history, and how the religions of the various races have flowed together.
The Book of Staves (finally!)
Yeah, but what does all this have to do with the Book of Staves? Well, the Book of Staves was compiled at the Council of Wanford - think of it as the RL Council of Nicea. Just as in the real world, various items of doctrine and dogma were sorted through, evaluated, edited and polished, and finally compiled.
Humanity had a few scraps of Ardani lore plus its own Human Holy Church, which had been built primarily on the Holy Books of the Centaurs (who re-taught Humans to worship Pandarrion after the Long Servitude), but with much innovation and embellishment: the Human Church as it had existed in the Hidden Kingdom and pre-Scourge Ethyria was a vital, active body.
The Elves brought the original Sacred Staves (indeed, as the oldest documents they provided a backbone and a name), plus all of the dogma the Elvish Church had built over the course of 3,000 years. The Centaurs brought their Holy Books.
From this mass of belief, history, and fable they built the SB analogue of the Bible: the Book of Staves. The question of whether or not the All-Father actually created Aerynth was finally settled (He did: He didn't just find it), as was the origin of the Archons and the basis of the All-Father's will. Much that we might call "pagan" - worship of the Titans and Braialla as secondary gods, for instance, was slowly assimilated into the True Doctrine, so that the All-Father was elevated to his rightful place. Many old Elvish Prelates couldn't deal with the changes, and left the Church. Those that could accept the new Book stayed.
Over the fullness of time, the Holy Church (originally a fusion of Human, Centaur, and Elvish beliefs) began to transform into a primarily Human institution. This trend culminated in the Age of Kings, when Patriarch Formosus released and compiled a new Orthodox version of the Book of Staves, a document that placed Humanity above all the other Children of the World, and led to inquisitions against the Druids. The intolerance and fanaticism that would later bloom into the Temple of the Cleansing Flame took root there.
As is to be expected, the Orthodox (or Formosian) Book of Staves caused quite a furor - many Cardinals used all their political weight to force through its acceptance, and more than one Bishop and Archbishop chose to simply ignore it and go on preaching as they always had. The Partiarchy made it very clear, however, that these lapses would only be tolerated so long as the "old school" clergy kept quiet and didn't make any trouble. Indeed, with time, the pendulum looked to swing the other way: Nestor's refutation of Malorn and his new philosophy was a victory for the pre-Formosus view, and the resulting schism drew most of the Orthodox clergy away to join Malorn in founding his new Temple. Some have warned that ANY division of the Holy Church is a profoundly dangerous thing, but so far any efforts to reconcile the two diverging faiths have been fruitless.
The Future
Will Malorn's split lead to another internal reformation of the Holy Church and the re-adoption of the Original (Wanford )Book of Staves? Some are clamoring for it, while others, dismayed by Malorn's success in gaining converts, think that the Church might to well to take a more active, aggressive stance in the World. Patriarch Nestor is a notoriously cautious, indecisive leader. He'll serve for life - but since the Turning, nobody can say what that means exactly. It doesn't look like the man will step down, so what is there to do? Must the Church rewrite its canon, allowing for the impeachment of the Patriarch? That would only breed more politics and ambition among the upper ranks of the clergy, and it could seriously undermine the Holy Church's chain of command. Yet without such action, is the Church doomed to wither?
That's only one of the questions the Holy Church will face as SB goes live - it'll be your jobs, as movers, shakers and leaders of the Church community, to debate the issues and try to arrive at an answer.
May the Holy Saints, Blessed Archons, and the All-Father himself guide your deliberations.
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Meridian on the Church - part 2 - April 27th, 2002
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I'm glad my outpouring of Church Lore has so invigorated this community! This is the Holy Church I envision: an ancient, monolithic edifice struggling with its own inertia in a changed world, looking for the right course. I watched many interesting points made, and figured I'd take a minute out from an office weekend to clarify/elaborate/respond to some of my favorites.
Firstly, remember in your debating to try to think in terms of eternity, and that consequence can be a hard thing to chart. Indeed, in theology more than just about anyplace else, any argument can be turned on its head and made to prove its opposite. For instance: was Nestor wrong to pull back from Cambruin? It did seem to radicalize the more orthodox elements (particularly one Crusader Malorn), it robbed Cambruin of one potentially moderating influence at the end of a bitter war, and it did indeed kill the possibility that something might have gone differently at Kierhaven. But... imagine how much worse the Black Years after the Turning would have been if all (or even many) of the Crusaders had all been trapped on Kierhaven's fragment with the surviving Champions? Instead, they were in their commanderies where they belonged - and ready to help when the disaster came. How many more might have died into foul undeath but for Nestor's caution? All outcomes are not ours to see - that's one reason the hierarchy moves so slowly sometimes.
To the esteemed FoamyMugs, I will respond that I'm not sure what you mean when you demand provisions of me. I'll take your tone as a byproduct of your very Dwarvishness and not be offended. You seem to be implying that there aren't enough classes or disciplines for Dwarves. I'll be the first to agree with you. Yes, I've read the big "save the Dwarves" petition that went around (there was a point there where it was e-mailed to me on a regular basis). I hear you, but do bear in mind that this is the list of classes and disciplines (barring some amazing beta fluidity) we're going to ship with. SHIP with mind you. If I have my way, there will be ongoing content specifically aimed at races that are getting short shrift. Keep the faith. Until then, there are some solutions you can use to justify your RP. Do some Prelates and Crusaders take Thurin as their patron, calling his name perhaps more than the All-Father's? Sure, just as many non-dwarves see their guidance and calling as coming from a Saint or Archon. The All-Father is placed at the pinnacle of Heaven, but don't forget that the Holy Church offers an entire pantheon of Saints and Archons. In RL, not every prayer uttered by a Catholic is intended for Jesus or even God alone.
To the more salient points of your response - do the Dwarves trust the Holy Church? Not implicitly, but on the whole I'd say yes. Orthodoxy is definitely NOT their bag, and no, I wouldn't expect them to have much good to say about Malorn and his bunch either. If there has been a shift away from Formosian orthodoxy (and in some quarters that would seem reasonable) I expect the Dwarves would have a profound influence on that - I can see Thurin emerging from liturgical obscurity. The Roofless Ones never knew him that well, remember - but all of that can easily change.
Thurin is their creator and their ultimate loyalty is to him, but Dwarves do also venerate the All-Father. After all, Thurin taught them to (it was among their first lessons, if I recall). How many of Thurin's instructions have they not followed? Faith as I described it (the belief in a higher order, that sometimes you should just do as you're told, even if you can't see why): that's an amazingly Dwarvish frame of mind. They've fit right in since they've started coming into the body of the Holy Church.
Think on this, good dwarves: by studying the Lore (Dwarvish and otherwise), one might infer that just as the Dwarves are to Thurin, so Thurin is to the All-Father. Steadfast, faithful, devoted, and unhesitating in his loyalty. Thurin has never EVER failed to answer the All-Father's call. He forged Shadowbane to help his Master's children, and took a hit from it to save his Master's life. How can any Dwarf not venerate a being that Thurin holds in such high regard?
Besides, there are other approaches one might take as well. Even the most insular Dwarf surely realizes that the accidents and tragedies of history have left the Sons of Thurin at a great disadvantage when it comes to repairing the world. They need to know what broke it, and their knowledge of surface history is less than minimal. How then, can they learn to place the Turning in context and divine its cause? Why not turn to the oldest surviving organization in existence, one whose deity their own creator reveres. Even if a Dwarf's heart were not wholly with the Church, service to it does have its uses... As to politics, they likely find it dizzying and problematic - its annoying, but far short of offensive.
As for Thurin, and craft, and stone and war, rest assured - I want the Dwarves to be as rich as possible. In time it will come to pass. Finally, I'm lost as to your reference to the last Dwarf. Off the top of my head I don't know who you mean. But then, I've written an ungodly amount of lore, and sometimes details escape me. Could you refresh this Loremaster's recollections?
Now, on to some other points. As to Sen's question, there is indeed a Devil, and his name is Morloch - he's positively Luciferian: the devoted servant of the All-Father who, through pride, vanity, and grief, grew estranged from his master and finally decided that he could do things better. He sold his Master out to the pit of Chaos, and paid the price. Ever since his return to Aerynth his infamy has only grown.
But what about the times before the War of the Scourge? Ah... that's where you find the Dragon. He's mentioned, and feared, but not regarded as an immediate threat to anyone's life and soul. Remember of the three races that founded the Church (and the fourth that's come since) only one, the Elves, had any direct experience of him while he was awake. Even among them, only an incredibly miniscule number actually remember the calamity. The Dragon has faded over the ages - Chaos and Morloch are far more immediate dangers. Indeed, I expect that each iteration of the Book of Staves has broadened its treatment of the Fallen God while abbreviating the legend of the Dragon further and further. Of course, that's not to say that older documents don't still exist. The Holy Church has its share of apocrypha - gospels, treatises, histories, and holy accounts that didn't make it into the Book of Staves. They aren't taught in mass, but they are kept safe. You never know when ancient secrets might come in handy - that's what libraries and scriptoria are for!
Finally, in response to the PM I got about a player Patriarch, I can say only this: I really like the idea. It would certainly be a bold experiment, and whoever managed to win the role of the All-Father's mortal Representative on Aerynth would have to prove to me, the FCs and the Story Board that they're worthy of the job. That will likely take some time. But that's a good thing - after all, I expect getting Nestor out of the way could take a while...
Of course, any hot-headed guild leader who wants a shot at the title can simply declare themselves Patriarch. Don't expect Nestor to kiss your ring however, and you'd best be prepared for an accounting and reckoning. But if we had half a dozen people running around claiming to be Patriarch and denouncing all other Patriarchs as abominations, that'd be a pretty good simulation of some parts of Medieval history...
Keep the faith, clergy! I hope all of this helps!
