Religious Orders

 

The Communion of the Celestial Host

A polytheistic church that recognizes the divinity of Vehira, Azane, Azimzilit, and all the Celestials and practices their teachings.

The Church of the Blessed Union

A polytheistic religion that recognizes the divinity of all the Celestials, but sets Vehira and Azane above the rest, and focuses on their teachings. Fragmented into three different churches in the late Fourth Epoch

The Vehiran Ministries

A monotheistic religion that recognizes Vehira as the supreme creator, holding Azane as a pseudo immortal consort, and the other Celestials as lesser holy beings, but not as gods. Emerged in the late Fourth Epoch.

The Circle of Azane

The Circle of Azane is a monothestic religion that holds Azane to be the singular, supreme creator, and casts the other Celestials and Infernals - including Vehira - as lesser divinities. While the Circle of Azane is the largest Azanist religion on Tear, with followers across all of Golanicja and Odovic, as well as in Obersch and Marcosta, they remain one of the smaller and least influential religions in the world.

Fundamentalist Azanist doctrine denies the existance of Vehira as a deity, with some radical sects even denying the existence of the planet, but since the early Imperial Era the moderate core of the Circle of Azane has accepted Vehira as a minor deity alongside the other Celestials and Infernals and largely sets the question of whether there is a planet Vehira aside as a matter of secular import.

In the late 14th and early 15th century, a shift in epsitomological trends in central Golanicja led to a sharp rise in Azanist fundamentalist perspectives, and the Circle of Azane - alongside the Astrological Society of Dumi - began to gain power and influence, particularly around the Hidden Sea region.

The Church of Ax’m Zilotl

A monotheistic religion that adopts Ax’m Zilotl, an Ancient Gnomic incarnation of Azimzilit, as the one true creator, holding Vehira and Azane to be false gods, and holding the belief that the Siblings and the Versai are not ten entities, but five, known as the Five Sublimes. Emerged in the late Fourth Epoch.

The Disciples of Lisaea

The Disciples of Lisaea are an entirely benevolent organization of priests and physicians dedicated to healing, to the establishment of hospitals, and the treatment of the wounded, ill and infirm. They operate as a religious order, headed by the Copi Patrien (or Copa Matriona) who is their most senior Priest or Priestess. Beneath the head of the organization is a Council of a several dozen Mas Patriens and Masa Matrionas who each oversee operations in a specific region of the world. Individual congregations of Disciples number anywhere from a dozen members to several hundred, and their day to day tasks - such as the operation of a hospital or service attached to an army in the field, are overseen by Patriens or Matrionas.

The primary mission of the Disciples is the construction, management and operation of hospitals for the treatment of injury, disease and illness, and for education in ethics and the healing arts. The vast majority of Disciples work as nurses in these hospitals, using their magical and medical training to heal.

Outside of the hospital context, the Disciples will engage with, and attach themselves to, military and paramilitary organizations and militia. Under such arrangements, they seek to provide ‘politically neutral’ medical services to the wounded. In some cases they have been called upon to negotiate truces or ceasefires, though this is often frowned upon by the leaders of the organization, who advocate true neutrality when serving in proximity to military actions.

The Disciples swear an oath of non-violence, and refuse to carry or use weapons - even in self-defence. Disciples on the battlefield will wear a white tunic emblazoned with a pale blue sheaf of wheat (the symbol of Lisaea) to identify themselves as non-combatants. A Disciple who violates their oath of non-violence will be immediately cast out of the order. Most organized armies and militias consider the act of impersonating a Disciple of Lisaea (such as by disguise) to be an act of treason, punishable by death.

In 799, many members of the Disciples broke away from the Disciples to form the Order of Golmongarion.

The Order of Golmongarion

The Order of Golmongarion began as an offshoot of the Order of Lisaea, who questioned that organization’s central tenet of non-violence; first as it pertained to conflicts with the undead, and later, more broadly.

The Order was founded in 799, when Lord Grigor Orsum of Port Cevic, who had gained considerable power and influence defending Jumira from the threats of the expansionist Kingdom of Tulosz, was discovered to be a Vampire by members of the Disciples of Lisaea. The leadership of the Disciples refused to confront Lord Orsum and his thrall, but many within the Order felt that their oaths of non-violence should not apply to the undead. This internal conflict fractured the organization, and under the leadership of Patrien Kamron Zakari, a splinter group organized themselves under the banner of Golmongarion, declaring that the natural cycle of life and death was as sacred or more so than life itself, and that the undead were therefore an abomination. Patrien Zakari and his followers armed themselves and turned against Lord Orsum in a surprise attack, capturing him and binding him in silver chains until the sun rose and incinerated him. Patrien Zakari was slain in the fighting, and the leaders of the newly founded Order declared him to be a Saint.

The Order of Golmongarion evolved quickly from a breakaway sect of the Disciples of Lisaea into a militaristic order of religious warriors dedicated specifically to hunting down and destroying the undead and to persecuting those who would practice necromancy; including the erasure of accumulated magical knowledge related to its practice. Like the Disciples of Lisaea, the Order of Golmongarion is led by their own Copi Patrien (or Copa Matriona), and the Table of Saints are the Mas Patriens and Masa Matrionas who sit at the highest level of the organization. Most of the these are Knights, Priests and Priestesses, and they are legitimately devoted to attempting to literally destroy the Infernal Mol-Imit. It is unknown if such a thing is even possible, but they have spent centuries trying.

At several times in recorded history the Order of Golmongarion massed together to fight the undead on a significant scale. Aside from their inaugural triumph over the Vampire Lord Grigor Osum and his thrall and minions, the Order also brought an end to the zombie plague of Sudden Hill in the year 1013. Later, the necromancers who attempted to raise an undead army from the Bog of Grey Moss, south of Bovcevin in 1127 were also stopped - in this case, with the Order of Golmongarion eliciting confessions (under torture, admittedly) from some of the captive necromancers who admitted they were members of the Cult of Mol-Imit. These confessions were reframed and rewritten as ‘The 11 Heresies’ and used to justify subsequent, more aggressive purges.

The Order of Golmongarion is sometimes overzealous in their persecutions, and have on a few occasions accused (and tried, convicted and executed) priests and healers for supposed necromantic crimes. While many powerful people quite rightly fear them, their real victories and their effectiveness in keeping the undead at bay, are hard to refute.

The Servants of Obrum

The Servants of Obrum, often styled regionally as ul Obrumescu, il Obrumano, al Obrumi, etc, are a loose, global organization of Obrumists who hold Obrum the Builder to be the 'most important' deity. They are often referred to as the Monks of Obrum, and they are an ascetic, utilitatrian order, who devote themselves to hard physical labour as the path to a moral life and to social justice. They take no position on the existence of importance of Vehira, seeing the question as not relevant to their work, and therefore avoiding entirely the question of whether they are Azanist or Vehirist. In most places around the world they get along fine with larger religions that hold either view, and most cities and city states welcome them because they perform an enormous amount of labour for public benefit in exchange for virtually nothing.

The Servants of Obrum are an ancient order who trace their origins to the region of southern Golanicja between the Shining Mountains and the Southwall Ridge where they lived and worshipped in a dozen different monasteries situated around the idyllic system of rivers, lakes and waterways between Providoviya and Miga. Prior to the construction of the Passage of Miga and the founding of the city of Obrum's Landing, crossing this system of waterways from the King's Sea to the Hidden Sea involved some eighty portages. Given the distances and difficulties involved, this would not have been feasible for crews of early sailing ships, but the Servants of Obrum made it their mission to do the work for centuries. With the monks helping, entire ships and their cargos could be pulled upriver, hauled overland or portaged between Miga and Providovija in a approximately a month.

As this method of transport became more and more important, different groups began working with the Servants of Obrum to determine how to make the process easier and faster. The secular Guild of Obrum was formed from groups of wealthy merchants, ship builders, engineers and former sailors familiar with the route and its challenges, and together with the free labour of the Servants of Obrum, the Passage of Miga was constructed step-by-step over a couple of hundred years.

While the Guild of Obrum went on to become one of the most powerful industrial guilds in the world, largely due to the wealth generated by the Passage of Miga which the Servants of Obrum asked for none of, the Servants themselves have continued their good works around the world.

The Sublime Choir

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