Pater Ty Holan
Ty Holan was the Pater (High Priest) of Temple of Dendrah - Duntown from around 720 until his death in 749. He was succeeded in his role by Pater Nay Loth.
Holan is widely credited with revitalising the worship of Dendrah in Westlo. This, in turn, has led to a renewal of a sense of pride and of purpose among the humanfolk of the region.
In the space of a generation, Holan changed the public perception of his generation from an outdated and quaint source of folklore to the central pillar of meaning behind public events. Annual traditions such as Pony Night and the Dendrach Games may have always had their roots in Dendrah worship, but thanks to Holan's scholarship and fervour, the deity's presence has not been so strongly felt for centuries.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Ty Holan was born into a priestly family. His father was a cleric devoted to the elven wood-goddess Rillifane Rallathil and his mother was a Paladin of Dendrah. They lived in Algoods, in Duntown.
When he was still a child, Holan's mother was killed during an expedition to Hollymargret. Always devoted to his strong and beautiful mother, he gradually came to embrace her goddess, Dendrah, to the exclusion of all others. Gradually, this religious fervour overtook other relationships in his life, even that with his father, whom he began to despise for adhering to his foreign, imported religion.
He was similarly unimpressed with the established clergy at the Temple of Dendrah in Duntown. He viewed them as lazy and uninterested in the power and history of the Dendrach religion, and far too welcoming of non-believers and passive participation in rituals. As a teenager, his fervour was encouraged by the Temple's leadership, who perhaps believed the firebrand would mellow with age. He became an acolyte and, in his early twenties, was ordained a Holy of the Faith.
He spent the next ten years in service to the community and in studying the history of the Dendrah faith in the Academia, receiving an advanced degree from the University of Duntown. He became very popular in the community because of his tireless work on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged humans of Duntown, and his indefatigable lobbying of the political class.
If his peers and superiors in the Temple thought that age would dull his devotion, they were completely mistaken. By the time the Pater of the Temple passed away, Holan's devotion and reputation, his knowledge and faith in the religion, his popularity inside and outside the Temple were such that there was simply no other option than he for the leadership position.
Only once he became Pater, however, was Holan prepared to show how much contempt he had for the liberal and the ecumenist. He instituted the Old Ways, as he called them, a hearkening back to the religion of the first humanfolk of Westlo. The rituals were reinstituted, Enthusiasm was brought back after a century, and, while he did not openly declare Dendrah the One, True God, he advocated her worship as a kind of First Among Equals for all people in Westlo. It was under Holan that the Temple of Dendrah - Livey was refurbished and reopened, with Tan Peart instituted as the Holy there.
Holan died during a religious ceremony in a state of Enthusiasm brought on by a ritual drink. Pater Nay Loth immediately declared him a saint of the religion and paid tribute to him as 'the Great Restorer' of the Dendrach Faith in his first speech upon his succession to the Paterhood.
Social
Religious Views
Hardline and well-researched.
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