Blackvale
Structure
The Holy Interpreter
The Holy Interpreter is a position of utmost importance within the church and, if one follows the tenants of Farlithism, among the highest powers and responsibilities which continues to exist within the mortal realm. Trusted to relay and, as the title implies, interpret the will of Those Before, the Holy Interpreter retains near complete authority in determining and directing the actions of the church and the countries it now helms during their lifetimes. To disobey the will of the High Interpreter is to disobey the very creed of the spoken religious word and their orders are broken under fear of banishment, execution, or relegation to nothingness in the afterlife.
Each Interpreter is chosen via a communion of the Three Orders and Holy Scribe, wherein each of the figureheads will nominate a single aspirant for all members of the church to vote between. It is believed that, once chosen, the votes of the church and the people were guided by the hands of Those Before themselves. This newly instated Interpreter will serve until death, whereupon new aspirants will be chosen via the same process.
In the aftermath of the fall of the House of Lords during the great plagues, the Holy Interpreter serves as both head of the church and head of the semi-feudal state.
Haversham's current Interpreter is Martin Orvus, who has held the position for 37 years since his installation at the age of 28.
The Holy Scribe
While still considered a highly crucial role within both the church and the government, the Holy Scribe does not possess nearly so much direct power as the Interpreter. The primary purposes of the Scribe are to serve as the head of any legal processes which may require the attention of the official governing state and to keep and catalog all official religious scripts and decrees made across the ages.
Though not believed to directly relay the exact will of Those Before as the Interpreters are, Scribes are still entrusted with a tremendous amount of political and military sway as their time spent reading over and committing to memory the religious histories of ages past and present is assumed to let them infer the will of Those Before far better than any below their position. A Scribe's decree may be overruled by a congregation of the leaders of the Three Orders or by direct contradiction from the Interpreter himself, but otherwise must be obeyed to the letter.
Direct orders from this prestigious position are increasingly rare, as the Scribe is primarily concerned with ensuring that all members of the church are acting with in accordance to scripture.
The Three Orders
Central to the inner-workings of the church and the governance alike within Haversham are the Three Holy Orders. Though not ordained by Farlith himself in the same manner as the highest two positions, the Orders were nevertheless each formed with his ideals in mind and adherence to the trinity, and have become an inseparable piece of both the Farlithist religion and the states of Greater Haversham.
Each of the three Orders concerns itself with a different specialty and may function relatively of their own accord save for unique or demanding circumstances. This quasi-independence extends to matters of law and governance so long as there is no contradiction between the actions of the Orders and the spoken or written will of the Interpreter, Scribe, or religious scripture.
The Bishops
The first order, that of the bishops, is that most interacted with by members of the general public. Given a host of responsibilities including the maintenance of church grounds, the holding of sermons, and matters of general public health, the bishops are a greatly sub-divided and complex organization all their own.
The Deacons
Traditionally, the second order is considered to be scholarly in nature. The order of deacons originated in the intense interest which the Farlithist religion takes in alchemistry and were formed with the conceit of existing to further study and enlighten themselves, the other members of the clergy, and the general population as to matters of both the scientific and supernatural. This remains true to an extent, as Haversham's universities are more filled with deacons than its churches, but the second order has developed into a much more secretive one over time.
During the great plagues, the order of deacons was early-on tasked with the study of the ghoul fevers, the manner in which it spread, and the early signs of infection. As the plague worsened, they additionally became tasked with the declarations of both quarantine and execution among the greater population. Though their reputation as harbingers of death and disease has subsided over the years alongside the fevers and hunts, their naming as "vultures" remains a commonality.
During the hunts, the birdlike masks which conceal their faces bore a 'snout' filled with herbs and medicinal plants believed to ward off the fever and similar sicknesses. At present, they have simply been adopted as another part of their uniforms alongside their flowing black coats and robes. It is a commonly-held belief that this aspect of the uniform was adopted to keep the identities of deacons hidden as the trade of political information has become nearly as important to the order as the trade of the scientific, but the church's official stance is that the masks serve simply to honor the difficult role the second order served during the plagues and the many lives they ultimately saved.
The Vicars
The order of vicars was and still is intended for the purpose of peacekeeping, upholding the law, and defending the borders of cities and nation alike. Originally envisioned as little other than an elite sect of the nation's armies, the third order was crucial in Greater Haversham's conquest of territories west of the Acre and the establishment of the now-capitol city of Yherwich from the self-declared Zhkoorwa kingdom which had historically harassed the nearby nation.
The order's existence as "witch-hunters" and "ghoul-slayers" – both monikers now commonly used, among others, by Colnish citizens in reference to Farlithi vicars – would not be established until the reign of Holy Interpreter Hailey Woodsworth.
During the onset of the first great plague in 1417 and when the first of those who'd been afflicted with the plague began turning – lashing out at their families and devouring them in part or in whole – there existed no sects among the armies of Greater Haversham which knew how to properly combat the undead, and particularly not a sort so infectious and ravenous as the ghoul. In the first few years of what would later be known as the First Hunt, a not-insignificant portion of the men sent to clear the streets of undead ended up joining their ranks, signaling the need for more specialized tutelage. High Interpreter Woodsworth soonafter instructed the order to devise methods towards more properly executing those turned and had his scribe send letters to the University of Selby and Chaltaric Church of Pratan to accumulate more specialized knowledge with regards to the undead.
Despite the order making a name for itself during the hunts, they spent those years primarily subservient to the deacons, trailing behind their black-robed footsteps and carrying out the executions of those believed to have been in contact with the fever or burning towns to ashes if its denizens had fully succumbed. In modern times, now that the Hunts have ended and the plague has lessened from a threat against the kingdom to an inconvenience for fringe towns that settle too deep within the forests, the vicars serve two purposes. The first is to act as the deliverers of justice for the Church, and the second is to protect the populace from any so-named 'unnatural horrors' which may befall it; primarily the undead and those who practice black magics.
Vicars are assigned to their roles from childhood, spending most of their younger years training in various combat methods, practicing alchemical mixes first researched by the deacons, and studying the telltale signs of the creatures they most commonly hunt. The young age of their 'aspirants' is a practice considered immoral by many outside states but which continues strong within the reach of the Chuch. It's often suspected that many families may offer to induct their children into the numbers of the third order in the hopes of garnering favor from the higher-ups in the Church.
Vicars are given near-unrestricted access to firearms of all types provided the Church has the necessary funds, though are encouraged to only employ their use against the greatest of threats and keep them well away from the hands of non-clergymen.
Dukes and Lords
While ruled primarily by the church's theocratic decrees rather than a more standard monarchy under rule of an emperor or king, Haversham still firmly exists via a feudal society, albeit one more centralized than most...
History
The Split From Ardran
Originally arising as a sub-culture of the Ardranic peoples, the city of Colne – now located in East Haversham, outside of the original nation's borders and across the River Acre – traces its history far back into the first era and, during the advent of the second era, was one of the larger cities under the control of the Kingdom of Ardran. Serving as a bustling center of trade between the Ardranic peoples of Central Eletheros and the loosely-associated Quitónne tribes of the greater southern peninsula, the culture had drifted in subtle but formative ways by the time of the kingdom's decline in the era's fourth cycle (400).
By the year 527, Colne was enjoying a period of surprising growth and prosperity in contrast to the decay seen across the disunited cities of Ardran to the north, its own borders having slipped further south along the River Acre and along the shores of the Hagwaters Lake. Despite the danger posed by warring goblinoid factions east of the acre, Colnish influence spread wildly throughout the rivers flowing to and from the Hagwaters, connecting trade between the cities of Ardran and Daltonshire to its north and the Rydaean and Bornian city-states to the south.
Greater Haversham and Farlithism
Farlithism, the religion which now wholly dominates the Havershamish nations in culture and governance both, was first established in the year 789 by founder Hurst Farlið via his foundational religious text An Wætru. In stark contrast to the modern-day importance placed upon the teachings held within, the book went mostly unregarded at the time and did not gain a cultural foothold until over half a century later. The old tome had been kept within a library at the city of Havescire and gone relatively unnoticed until it came into the possession of Lord Cuthbert in 847. Having already been in a minor power-struggle for control over Greater Colne with the influences of Daehenic churches, the proper establishment of a more locally-originating religious institution assisted the Lord in maintaining political power.
Modern scholars often cast doubt upon whether Lord Cuthbert was dedicated to the religion for any reasons other than political power, but he is most often venerated as a kind of saint all the same for the massive role he played in the establishment of the Church of Farlith. During his reign over Greater Colne, Lord Cuthbert oversaw a massive shift in the political and cultural landscape as he attempted to greatly restructure his governance around the veneration of a trinity – a concept described many times as holy within On Burnan. Three cities were thus renamed and restructured in resemblance of what Farlith's writing considered to be the three immutable states of life as it can be seen through water: water in motion, water in ascendance, and water in stillness or peace. At the southern end of Greater Colne along the River Trevench, Attonshire was redubbed City of the River. Along the eastern mountain range and at the source of the Northern Forkford, Headwaters was redubbed City of the Sky. Finally, the capitol of Havescire was dubbed City of the Lake and, in signal of a new era, the city's name was adopted by the nation as a whole.
Lord Cuthbert's successor, Lord Putnam, himself oversaw further cooperation between his government and the Church his predecessor had gone to such lengths in establishing. Though the church and ruling power were still separate in name at the time, Lord Putnam set the precedent for the three orders which would become further entrenched in later years.
The Fevers and Hunts
1417, 1438, 1456
Farlithist Governance
1456
The Divide
1464
Military
The armies of Haversham have dwindled in recent years, as most of the duties formerly performed by its standing military have slowly been overtaken by the vicars and the nation has lacked any true threats posed by external forces for some time. Nevertheless, official guards are still recruited to patrol most of the nation's reasonably sized cities and a decent amount of men-at-arms are kept well equipped and trained to deter forms of petty crime that otherwise wouldn't be worth the expertise of a vicar's intervention.
Considering the relative peace which the nation has experienced over the past few decades, conscription within either of these two vocations has become a sought-out goal for many to the extent that the Church has been forced to issue official statements limiting the number of official guardsmen which may exist per the population of any given town or city so as to encourage the growth of other labor sectors.
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