Crisillyir is ruled by the hierarchs of the Clergy, the religion that freed the nation from demonic rule a millennium ago. Today, Crisillyir is a rich land, its fields bountiful, its coffers full of colonial gold. Centuries of divine rituals have turned its great cities into beacons of enlightenment and magical research, though this prosperity seems to attract attention from supernatural threats. Elaborate aqueducts feed water from the snowcapped Enfantes Mountains throughout the nation; it is said that each column in the aqueduct system is engraved with one chapter from the Clergy’s holy book, acting as a massive ward against the ancient evil that still lurks in the land.
In Crisillyir, the power of the church is supreme, but not un-questioned. While the grand summoners conjure forth tortured specters from the Bleak Gate to cow their flocks into piety, collegial arcanists debate conceptions of the cosmos that do not match church dogma. Fat merchant lords pay lip service to the faith, sell weapons and ritual components to eladrin assassins, then purchase indulgences to absolve themselves. And though the inquisitive halo-bearing geneu credetos (‘spirits of belief,’ or more commonly ‘godhands’) are tasked with guarding the nation against unholy, fey, and undead influences, criminal organizations nevertheless manage to smuggle in contraband and use resurrections to extort even the dead.
Cities
The capital city Alais Primos is dominated by massive temples, sepulchers, and libraries, some so large they straddle the canals that run through the city. Massive and enchanted walls once surround-ed it, holding back the eladrin armies, and while the city has long since expanded beyond their boundaries, their magic still defends the heart of the city. Since the Clergy views the godless tieflings of Danor as apostates, industry, and technology are forbidden in Alais Primos. Confiscated items are ritually disposed of in a fiery rift of Enzyo Mons in the nearby mountains, symbolically casting back the tools of evil.
The island city of Sid Minos is the site of the nation’s greatest naval yards and its military academies, which train paladins and war priests to hunt unnatural beasts, as well as fight foreign armies. Tunnels and dungeons riddle the rocky island beneath the city, and undead horrors occasionally emerge from these dark lands, but their source is unknown. Because the hierarchs view Sid Minos as already somewhat tainted, they allow technology onto the island. Off the shore lies the Isle of Odiem, home to the Crypta Hereti-carum, where the Clergy stores the vilest cursed beasts and objects that they cannot simply destroy.
An isthmus connects Crisillyir and Elfaivar, and the city of Vendrice has grown fat from taxing trade through its gates, including the Avery Coast Railroad that terminates here. A grand arched bridge that once spanned the channel between the two nations was destroyed during the Second Victory, but Danor is funding its re-pair, hoping to extend the railroad so it can feed through the city and into Elfaivar.
Colonies to the East
After the eladrin empire fell in the Second Victory, Crisillyir and the other conquering nations established garrisons within the col-lapsing eladrin nation and divided the land into several colonies. Despite the great wealth these colonies provide, they are a thorn in Crisillyir’s side; intermittent rebellions and acts of terrorism target the colonial governors and their allies in the homeland. At least once a decade, a spree of assassinations strikes, shaking the complacency of the nobility, and frightening the common folk.
The largest colonial city is Santi Simone, over the ruins of Elfaivar’s original capital Bharata. In an uncharacteristically sym-pathetic move, the Clergy built a giant memorial to the countless dead eladrin women, interring their bodies in tombs carved into a massive rock that sits along the city’s river.
The Clergy
According to the church’s holy text, one thousand years ago a human fisherman named Triegenes from what today is Danor discovered the secret of divinity while lost in a storm at sea. He returned and preached about the divine spark within all mortals, and how by constantly challenging oneself, a person can become like a god. He inspired followers to fight beside him, and together they toppled tyrants, slew legendary monsters, and eventually established a new nation, based upon a hierarchy of divinity, where rank and reward were based solely on merit.
After his kingdom was established, Triegenes undertook the greatest challenge left in the mortal world: to defeat the Demonocracy that oppressed the lands to the east. He confronted the abyssal lords who had taken residence on this world, sacrificed himself to banish them forever, and then left his mortal shell and ascended to godhood.
The Clergy believe in many gods, with no pinnacle godhead, but they preach foremost the teachings of Triegenes, that every man has greatness within him, and he merely needs to be challenged to awaken his potential. And while a thousand years have burdened this original message with a complex celestial bureaucracy, vaguely-interpreted visions of a multiverse of planes, and a strong emphasis on the superior potential of humans above all other races, the simple dogma that anyone can improve their lives, and that indeed this is the main purpose of life, holds strong appeal. The Clergy is now the most widespread faith in Lanjyr.
The Family
One of the few chinks in the strong face the Clergy presents is a criminal organization known as the Family. Most people only know of them in rumors and hearsay, but it is said that they are behind most of the crime on both sides of the Avery Sea.
Where they have taken root, crime becomes civilized. The Family seems to respect loyalty and avoids doing violence to innocents, though when they move into a new city they viciously cut out the current criminal element and institute a more refined form of corruption and lawlessness.
More History
The Second Victory ended with a legendary battle just outside the walls of Alais Primos, where legions of Clergy-blessed warriors faced an army led by the goddess Srasama herself. After hours of battle, Srasama was felled by a thousand cuts, and fire exploded from her body. The warriors nearest to her were annihilated, but those who survived and were close enough to see the death of a god were marked by the experience.
Many of these veterans settled in the lands liberated by the eladrin army’s retreat. In the years that followed, whenever one of them died, open flames would flicker for miles around, and some-where within three days’ travel the man or woman would be reborn in the wilderness. No longer quite human, these reincarnated souls took the name deva, from an eladrin word for deity.
When a deva reincarnates, he recalls language, culture, and enough knowledge to make his way in the world, but usually pos-sesses only vague recollections of his previous life. Acquaintances are unfamiliar, and expert skills like magic, craftsmanship, or swordplay fade, but usually the deva quickly slips into the same ba-sic role he held before death.
Where devas are rare, one that dies is usually found quickly after reincarnation, and after a period of acclimation, he will manage to continue as if nothing had happened at all. In Crisillyir, though, devas are common enough that they seldom manage to return to their previous lives. In either case, devas still fear death because it means an end to all they are. While a reincarnated deva might be able to continue the same mission, he’ll never recreate the emotions and memories that made him unique.
Many devas find a place in the Clergy, where through special training they can act as vessels for invoked celestial beings. Such angelic visitations never last long, and occasionally result in the death of the vessel, so they are only used in situations where the priesthood feels inadequate to answer questions of guilt or opine on matters of morality.
In a similar way, on certain bleak holy days, the priests of the Clergy will reach through the veil into the Bleak Gate and capture uneasy spirits, which they parade in front of crowds of worshippers. Compelled by magic, these undead specters wail about the sins they committed in life that left their souls trapped in ‘Purgatory.’ The priests then offer absolution and destroy the unholy beings.
Comments