Church of Ezra

Mythos

Ezra is a deity worshiped by members of the Church of Ezra. Also referred to as "Our Guardian in the Mists", Ezra is portrayed as a woman of grand stature but slim frame and black hair but pale skin. Her depictions portray her usual dress as long white robes, and she is usually shown carrying a longsword in one hand and an alabaster kite shield in the other. Her followers venerate her for her role in protection and healing of her people, though her followers recognize that she cannot save those who do not accept her in spirit. In imagery, Ezra's shield often carries the image of belladonna, a recognition of her healing aspect.

As one might expect, Ezra's true nature is a subject of contention among the different sects, congregations, and theologians of the Church. However, the general consensus among major traditions is that she was once a mortal woman, who offered up her life as sacrifice to the Mists in order to protect the people in the face of rampant evil in the world. Some people hold that, sometime prior to becoming one with the Mists, Ezra broke her shield into five pieces and spread them through the Dread Domains. One such piece is held as a relic in Lechberg in the Dread Domain of Borca.

Although evidence exists that her worship, or some facsimile thereof, may go back much earlier into the history of the Dread Domains, modern worship in known history did not come until Yakov Dilisnya experienced a seizure while riding on horseback in his native Borca.

History

The religion originated through the prophecies of one man, Yakov Dilisnya. At the age of 25 a horseback riding accident left him delirious for five days, at the end of which he recovered and penned the First Book of Ezra. Over the next few years he displayed increasingly miraculous powers but gained few followers until he convinced his young half-sister Camille Boritsi, née Dilisnya, to help finance the construction of the Great Cathedral of Levkarest. According to rumors, Yakov cemented Camille's cooperation by depicting the Church as an effective tool for social manipulation.

When his niece Ivana Boritsi enacted her vengeance against the entire Boritsi estate, Yakov was suffocated in the poisonous clouds and his death led to a schism in the church. Ivana’s fear of fanatic reprisal led to an ‘apology’ in the form of a statue of Yakov for the cathedral, but she privately demanded that the church avoid fomenting rebellion. The question as to whether the Church ought to accept demands from an earthly ruler – and their new Dark Lord – caused Felix Wachter to separate himself with a small group of like-minded faithful and flee to the Dread Domain of Mordent. There he penned the Second Book of Ezra. The controversy and split would later become known as the First Schism. The Rite of Revelation was later developed to handle future schisms by separating genuine divine revelations from mere heresy.

The rift between the two sects eventually healed, but when wandering anchorite Joan Secousse entered the Dread Domain of Dementlieu, another rift occurred, eventually leading to the Third Book of Ezra. Secousse had discovered The Mother of Tears Cathedral, an abandoned cathedral dedicated to Ezra that seemed to predate the prophecies of Yakov Dilisnya. Secousse penned the revelations she received from her study of the cathedral, and a new sect was born.

Years later, in the wake of the Grand Conjunction, an anchorite in the Dread Domain of Darkon named Teodorus Raines had a series of apocalyptic revelations about a “Time of Unparallelled Darkness”, and the desperate state of the faithful beset on all sides by the duplicitous Legions of the Night. Raines penned the Fourth Book of Ezra, passed the Rite of Revelation, and created the fourth sect.

Sects: Beliefs & Practices

There are four sects of the Church of Ezra, though some followers expect a final fifth. The four sects are referred to as the Home Faith in Borca, the Pure Hearts in Mordentshire (LG), the Erudites in Dementlieu (N), and the Zealots in Darkon (LE). Ezra's church is called upon to help and defend the diseased, the injured, and those in danger, though Ezra's prerogatives are interpreted differently by the four different sects.

Although proselytizing, the Home Faith tends to its flock while demarcating and excluding nonbelievers without too much concern for their fate. Within Borca, the faith represents a source of hope and succor for the oppressed lower classes, who flock to the Great Cathedral in droves every day. Most of the clergy in Borca could be considered Lawful Neutral, attempting to maintain a level of impartiality between the feuding noble houses. This extends back to the First Schism when their leadership was bribed and threatened to remain uninvolved in politics after the death of their founder. The Home Faith of Ezra is also popular in the Dread Domains of Richemulot and Invidia.

The Pure Hearts are arguably the most evangelical of the factions. The clerics of the Mordentish Sect are often considered Lawful Good and focus on promoting virtue in the faith’s name. They actively seek to convert as many souls to the worship of Ezra so that they may be spared the wrath of the Legions of the Night. However, trouble is brewing on the horizon. Spurred on by the apocalyptic visions of the humble Bailey Lacrese, a secret society called the Blessed Army of Ezra has formed within he Pure Hearts in preparation to fight what they believe is a fiendish corruption that has infiltrated the Darkon sect.

The Erudites hold a mystical understanding of their goddess. Most of the clerics of this sect are True Neutral, mostly partaking in the scholarly study of Ezra and studying the ancient relics found within the cathedral that predates the official history of their faith. They have no evangelical outreach but maintain popularity with the locals due to their sincere contemplation on the sorrows of the faithful. They also profit from manufacturing reproductions of intricately decorated relics and sacred texts.

The Zealots are an apocalyptic sect that is entirely focused on weeding out the Legions of Night that prey on the faithful of Ezra. Their clerics are mostly Lawful Evil, resorting to such extremist tactics as religious conversion through coercion and torturing suspected agents of the Legions of Night. They were in the process of rapid expansion across Darkon to overthrow the state religion of the Eternal Order. However, the Hour of Ascension caused the domain to become divided by swaths of consuming Mist, inadvertently consuming whole swaths of the Zealots. The Eternal Order has arisen anew under the leadership of Darcalus Rex and many of the Zealots have retreated to isolated pockets of the domain.

Worship services meet every five days at noon and contain both hymns and sermons. During these services, church goers are required to don white clothing. Beyond these generalizations, church procedures, rituals, and practices may vary from sect to sect and even from domain to domain. Worshipers from one sect are welcome to attend churches of another sect, but differences in church practices may unnerve said visiting worshipers.

Heresies

Several different ideas about Ezra considered heretical by her Church exist, both within and without her followers. Such heresies can be as simple as that she was a man. The House of the Sages area in Richemulot serves as a stomping ground and safe haven for heretics to the Church. These include the following:

• Danseurs Divin, or “Divine Dancers,” who espouse communion with the goddess through ritual reenactment of her life. They originated from the Dread Domain of Dementlieu.

• La Balise, or “the Avatar Heresy,” that believes the goddess has a mortal avatar that is lost in an eldritch forest and awaits the faithful to find her.

• The Échansons, or “the Cupbearers,” that believe that Ezra did not merge with the Mists but instead became mortal and bestowed the gift of divinity on all her followers. She then proceeded to produce children that created several lineages of protectors of mankind. The Cupbearers seek to discover these lineages and suspect the noble families of Richemulot are among these descendants of Ezra.

Outside of her faith, Ezra is seen by the Church of the Lawgiver, the strongest competitor to Ezra's church, to be the Lawgiver's concubine in Nova Vaasa. For their part, the Lawgiver's faithful in that land consider magic enacted in the name of another deity to be heretical. Ezra is purported by some historians to have been a servant of Hala and her Church prior to becoming a goddess, but this claim would be most likely be met with hostility by Ezra's faithful.

Type

Religious, Bishopric