Bearers of the Book

The Bearers of the Book are a relatively social and non-violent sect of the Children that wish to encourage the spread of wizardry and to encourage wizards to venerate Geryemoria.
The Bearers of the Book also wish to win over the general populace. They hope to steer the general populace over to worshipping Greymoria by showing them the benefits wizardry can provide to society.
Their kinder gentler approach to advancing Greymoria's goals has caused some other Children to brand them as heretics, cowards, or traitors. Despite all the opposition from other Children faction, the Bearers of the Book are the fastest growest subsect within the Children.

Public Agenda

Their official agenda is to encourage the spread of wizardry, especially classical hermetic wizardry. They also want to encourage wizards and mages of all stripes to worship Greymoria regularly, but they don't push this agenda very aggressively.
Their unofficial, but hardly secret agenda is to steer more of the general population towards Greymoria worship using carrots in lieu of sticks.

History

Every since Greymoria gave mortalkind wizardry as her Gift, there are have been large number of Children who sought to encourage the spread of wizardry.
There were many such groups throughout the Second Age, but none of them managed to survive the Second Unmaking and those that did mostly assimilated themselves within the newly emerging tribe of dark elves who try to minimize the differences between different origins of mages.
Outside of Kahdisteria, the various independent Children among the Second Age survivors and emerging humans had to recreate new religious traditions from scratch.
During the Red Era, various pro-wizard Children factions rose and fell. Over time, Third Age wizards gradually moved in a secular direction with more and more them studying and teaching their craft with little or no contact with the Greymoria priests and priestesses.
Most of the pro-wizard Children factions died out by the dawn of the Feudal Era, but a few of the various pro-wizard Children that were part of the coalition that defeated Vladimir the Conqueror gathered together and agreed on a set of shared conventions that eventually became the basis of the Bearers of the Book (though they only adopted the name "Bearers of the Book" fairly recently).

Territories

The Bearers of the Book have footholds in the Nonagons of Fumaya, much of Umera, and a few of the smaller kingdoms in Penarchia.
They have toeholds in Khemarok, Mooringsland, Kantoc, and some of the outlying colonies of the Elven Empire.

Foreign Relations

The Bearers of the Book will take any opportunity to ingratiate themselves to the local rulers of whatever land they are in, but their options are limited in this arena.
Generally speaking, the Bearers of the Book try to reach out to the lower classes by providing magical services and entertainments for free or at steep discounts. They also make peaceful overatures to the various priesthoods of the local Nonagons.

In general, most mainstream Children often shun the use of public nonagon temples and prefer to do their real business in secret temples. This means that most public Greymoria have been in essence, yielded to the Bearers of the Book and their sympathizers who make up the public face of the Children in most areas where Greymoria worship is not officially restricted.

Symbol of the Nine (with artist's permission) by Pendrake

If Greymoria worship is legally curtailed by the local rulers, there is very little the Bearers of the Book can try to do about it.

Mythology & Lore

The Bearers of the Book derive their name from a legendary book that supposedly Greymoria used to bestow wizardry to mortalkind in the Second Age.
A few have gone looking for this ancient book, but most claim this book is an apocriyphal metaphor. Of course the Bearers of the Book like to use book icons in their decorations and they of course like collecting libraries of actual books, magic or otherwise.

Stereotypes

Advocates: Fools that ultimately undermind our long term goals, fortunately they don't often last long, so we rarely have to deal with them.
Bridge Builders: Fools, idealistic but fools nonetheless. A knife is not evil, unless it's wielder is evil. The same is true with undead creatures. I understand this, but we are at least a thousand years away from the general populace accepting this.
Custodians of Kismet Heritage: The few Custodians that have managed to avoid being co-opted by Swynfaredia still serve Greymoria's ends, in their own limited way.
Kahdisterian Children: Maybe they have have helped steer the dark elves into properly worshipping the Dark Mother, but in the process, they have managed to turn an entire continent of humans against Her.
Swynfaredian Children: Heretics and cowards. At best, sorcerers are equal to wizards. But even then, sorcery, like all magic, ultimately comes from Greymoria, not dragon blood. Draconic heritage is a tool Greymoria can wield, but draconic sorcerers are not superior to any other type of mage.
Thaumaturge Covenant: It takes Greymoria far less of her personal energy to empower a wizard than it does to empower a warlock. If our long-term goals succeed, Greymoria will no longer need any warlocks, or at least not as many. In the meantime, witches and warlocks still serve Greymoria in their own way, so I will not hinder them.
Children of Spite: Their petty antics undermine our efforts, all of Greymoria's Children look bad.
Independent Children: Be polite with them. Many do not trust us, but if we set a good example, more independents may join us.

Maylar's Testers: We have some common cause with the Herders of Men, but the others are our foes. The Herders are not really our friends either since they disdain us for being "scroll heads".
Mera's Tenders: We have to thread a difficult needle. We must not antagonize them or our long-term goals will be undone as the Tender's many allies turn against us. We must not appear to be too friendly with them either or all the independent Children will turn on us.
Korus' Stewards: They give us a fair shake, and they have good access to reagents.
Nami's Rovers: They are open minded at least and don't shun us as a knee-jerk reaction, but I'm not sure what they can provide for us apart from an occasional cask of wine.
Khemra's Keepers: They don't like or trust us, but if you invoke Compact, they will treat us fairly. Sometimes we can find common ground over our shared goal of spreading literacy, since the spread of literacy makes it easier to spread wizardry.
Zarthus' Lanterns: Whenever anything goes wrong, they will try to blame us, and despite how much like they brag about being great investigators into the darkness, they rarely wait for evidence before jumping to conclusions.
Hallisan's Guardians: They sneer and jipe at us, but they won't take physical action against us as long as we don't violate local local maleficium laws.
Phidas' Masks: If they are being nice, it is because they want something, and they will stop being nice the second they get whatever it is.

Type

Religious, Other

Parent Organization

Children

Deities

• Greymoria