Church of the Almighty

The Church of the Almighty is the foremost religious entity in Amarus, and by far the most well-organized and codified faith in all of Rhodenia; in fact, it is referred to in the vernacular simply as "the Church" and its followers "the Faithful." It is centered mostly around the worship of a female deity known simply as "The Almighty," described as a goddess of light and love, peace and stability. The Church is headed by a single priestess known as the Matredeu, who is selected upon the death of the former Matredeu by a council of one-hundred priests; she is understood to have a direct connection to the Almighty, and the Matredeu-elect must perform a feat of seven miracles before the council to be anointed as leader of the Church. Below her is an intricate networks of priests and clergymen and women that maintain the various organizations of the Church.

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Its teachings are codified in the Vulgatru, an ancient collection of manuscripts, scrolls, and writings said by the Church to come from the Almighty’s original few acolytes. The Vulgatru details the importance of seven key virtues: humility, temperance, diligence, charity, piety, patience, and kindness. Conversely, the Vulgatru is also filled with fables and parables that teach what a lack of each virtue can bring. If one lives a virtuous life, the Vulgatru teaches, after death, one's soul will rest with the Almighty in an eternal state of bliss and love. Sinners and heretics are simply reincarnated, according to the Church, and offered limitless chances to become one with the Almighty. The teachings of the Almighty also emphasize the natural order of the world, with the magical and arcane beyond the reach of mortal humans, lending her followers a skeptical view of magic. This emphasis on a natural order has also led to a strict feudal system in Vllaistrae, in which one's lot is determined by their birthright; it has, however, provided a millennium of peace and prosperity for all in Rhodenia. Beyond divinely commanded morality, the Vulgatru also offers one of the few glimpses - albeit vague and hazy - into Rhodenia’s past, the age of wizard-kings and the clash between the Faithful and ancient sorcerers. Though it is ancient, its teachings are so valued by the Church and the general populace that it is by far the most printed and most read book in the world.

Only the Matredeu and high ranking priests and priestesses know the true history of the Church, but it is understood to have begun when the Almighty made herself present in the world during the reign of the wizard-kings. The first followers of the Almighty - a group of seven women known as the Acolytes - were quick to spread the gospel delivered to them by the deity, and garnered support from many in Amarus. The wizard-kings, rightfully observing a threat to their power, made sure that the Faithful were the most persecuted group of the time; however, making martyrs of the Faithful only attracted more attention to the blossoming religion. Despite the steady growth of the new faith, it nonetheless remained the cause of the lower castes until the Almighty found converts in the House of Pelletier - the rulers of the city-state of Sairis. Although the Pelletiers were themselves part of the wizard-kings of Rhodenia, theirs was among the lesser realms, and the royal family hoped that by adopting the new faith, they might gain favor in the eyes of its goddess. Thus in Sairis did the decentralized priesthood become the Church of the Almighty. Their faith now reinforced as a formalized religion, the priests and crusaders of the Church set out to bring low the wizard-kings and free Rhodenia from the grip of sorcerous magic. The final passage in the Vulgatru alludes to a battle between the Almighty and Enkai, in which the Almighty banished Enkai to a prison-like realm at the cost of her own manifestation in the physical world. The Church claims this feat demonstrates the Almighty’s unyielding love for humanity: she sacrificed her own physical form to save humanity from what she saw as evil.

The Church is an extremely important geo-political institution. Although its influence is limited in Esoa, it holds a great deal of sway in Amarus - particularly within Vllaistrae, headed from its autonomous island of Donadea. As Sairis grew from a city state into an empire, it was the teachings of the church that served to unite the disparate peoples into a cohesive nation. Although imperial identity now serves to bond one to another within the Empire, without the social glue provided by the Church, this unity would have proven far more elusive. Over the course of the centuries, the Church and Crown have developed a highly symbiotic relationship with each other. By law, all citizens of Vllaistrae are required to pay 10% of their yearly income to the Church; in turn, the Church operates its own schools, shelters, and hospitals, providing a wide variety of social services for the state. Consequently, citizens of Vllaistrae are often more familiar with the hierarchy of the Church than that of the Crown, particularly as one grows further distant from the capital. While the Church lacks the legal authority of the state, it nonetheless effectively upholds and executes established laws in many of the far-reaching provinces of the Empire. The line between the Church and Crown is so blurred in these places that religious authority is often indistinguishable from imperial authority.

Although the Church is for the most part a benevolent institution, it nonetheless maintains a small standing army known as "the Blades of the Goddess." While the Church prefers to spread its message through ministry and deeds, the Blades are responsible for rooting out heretics - those who continue to worship Enkai; furthermore, the Blades also serve as a police force in Donadea - the island city-state governed by the Church - and can often be found upholding order in the hinterlands of Vllaistrae. The Church is also home to archives of ancient tomes, many of which were seized from the collections of the wizard-kings long ago. The Church's archives are much larger than the library of the Sairis College of Magic, and hold secrets long-lost to Rhodenia, and the College frequently petitions the Crown to compel the Church to release these tomes for academic study - a request, the Crown has informed the College innumerable times - it is powerless to grant. The Church is very suspicious of sorcerous magic, and the College itself is indirectly subject to the Church’s scrutiny; the Church leans heavily upon the Crown to regulate the use of magic, and only those trained by the Sairis College of Magic - the sole institution in Vllaistrae to have the Church’s blessing to practice the arcane arts - may wield it.