Church of the Icons

The exact origin of the Icon faith has been lost to time, but everyone knows that it was introduced to the Third Horizon by cultists and believers from the First Horizon. All but one of these cults, the Circle of Seekers, are dead today but their religious practices have been all but abandoned by the general population. Instead, the Church of the Icons has become the dominant religious faction. They have grown strong through collecting, canonizing and institutionalizing the wide, sprawling faith that has existed in the Horizon for centuries. During a live Bulletin broadcast in CC 49, the nine sacred rites were put in writing in the Icon City on Mira, where the Church originally grew into a faction to begin with, during the darkness of the Long Night after the end of the war. A ruling matriarch and patriarch, assisted by an assembly of clergy, head the new faction. Today, the Seekers, whose presence was also strong on Mira, have been marginalized, looked upon as wise ascetics and prophets rather than actual figures of power within the faction.

The key difference between the Church’s doctrine and the Iconic folklore is that the faction denies the duality of the Icons’ temperaments and vengefulness. Instead, the Church preaches that evil exists within humans themselves, and that it is released when the Dark between the Stars enters someone’s life.

The movement called the Church of the Icons is a faction both old and new, resting on a basis of ancient cults, but founded in the modern age, preaching the modern ways of the faith.