Saint Sidgwick of Wilderlund

Born to an elvish father and an Auregniac peasant mother, Sidgwick was a curly-haired half-elf raised as a child-oblate of the Heimiran house of Joy's Rest at the western edge of the Wilderlund. He was a bubbly, laughing child, and the older brothers knew that the grace of Heimir was upon him from a very early age.

Sidgwick displayed a number of minor miracles in his youth, once healing the leg of one of the house's dray-beasts, a donkey called Immanuelus by touch—a clear sign of divine favor. The beast followed him ever after, and became useless as a pack animal for the monastery, preferring to sit outside of Sidgwick's cell as the growing brother read deeply of the philosophy of the ancients.

When he reached his majority, Sidgwick spoke with Abbot Aleharding and they determined that the best course was for Sidgwick to put his inclinations into action. "You will never be able to spread so much happiness here, secluded in our retreat, as you will if you go out into the world." And so Sidgwick chose a destination, and a goal: the old abandoned monastic house of Monkshome, beyond the Aelfwater Lake, at the very fringes of civilized lands.

On his journey there, he met with the nascent Swords of Stock, then calling themselves Fenrus' Very Best, an adventuring company out of the little town of Stock in the shadow of Tyreth Castle. He traveled with them, testing his youthful exuberance against goblins, orcs, and other monstrous creatures. Sadly, his journey was cut short by his death, while exploring the Tomb of General Tullius Antoninus near at hand to Tyreth.

Sidgwick's passing has been mourned at Joy's Rest, and Abbot Aleharding ordered him canonized in the following year. The other nearby abbots agreed, and once the ruins of Monkshome were restored, they were consecrated in his honor.

Though his death is very recent, already shrines venerating him as a servant of Heimir can be found springing up in the north of Craftsman's Reach, where he brought joy and delight. Indeed, Monkshome has been rechristened Saint Sidgwick's, and has been preparing a brew based on Sidgwick's own, which is certain to become a regional favorite.

Fantastic Religion: Akem, the Silent One

AKEM

(the Grim-faced, the Grinner, the Ishtrian Death, the Absolute, the Watcher, the Master of the Keys, the Lord of the Seven Gates, the Silent One, Lord of the Underworld)

Greater God, TN

Portfolio: Death, the afterlife, spirits

Aliases: Akanian, Kemr

Domain Name: The City of the Dead, Nullä

Superior: None

Allies: Haeron

Foes: Avauna, Galos, Tharos

Symbol: An archway, a sickle and hourglass

Worshiper Alignment: Any

Akem (AH-kem) is the god of death and the underworld. He is known for his strongly lawful leanings, but his role places him as the fulcrum of life and death and for this he must be balanced and even-handed. He is widely feared, as his presence heralds death and the otherworld has many strong taboos associated with it. However, he does not choose who perishes, merely guiding them to the Underworld and making certain that they have residence there until they can be judged by their appropriate gods.

In human literature and imagery, Akem appears to be a tall thin man with waist-length silver hair who wears black robes and a black hooded cloak. At his belt he carries a sickle and an hourglass, two signs (in addition to the Akemite arch) which are closely associated with him.

Akem is not a yielding god; the dictates against raising the dead are extremely strong, to the point where Akemites believe those returned from the Underworld to be abomination against him, and will do their utmost to destroy any such “returned men.”

The Silent Lord is as complex as Gods come. He appears to have been unknown or little-worshipped in the north by men until the Sixth Age when Khewedi soldiers brought their beliefs with them. It was not until the priest Rashid ibn-Ahmed-an-gazi converted several important noblemen in the region of Miles during the mid-Eighth Age that his worship prospered. Since then his church has fractured into three temples, each of which is powerful in a different geographical region. The Rite of Endings (also known as the Northern Rite) holds sway in the North from Gadrada, the Khewedi Right in that land, and the Southern Rite in Hadash and Ishtria.

The Seven Hells and their attendant gates are guarded by him, and they comprise his entire domain. The Seven Hells are divided into realms, the lowermost of which is his primary concern; there, one will find (according to Akemite scripture) Abdju, the City of the Dead, which he rules. From his position there, he is master over the fate of the souls of the dead as they journey to their respective rewards and punishments.

The Church (the Northern Rite)

Clergy: Specialty priests

Clergy’s Alignment: Any neutral

Turn Undead: Special

Command Undead: Special

The Northern Rite of Akem was founded in the early Eighth Age at the hill of Gadrada, now known as the Necropolitan Temple. It gained traction after the coming of Rashid ibn-Ahmed-an-gazi and the conversion of several major noble families near Miles. It now stands astride the north as an important element of all societies. Akemites, once few and far between in the north, now serve as the guides and mentors on matters of the otherworldly. The presence of Akemite priests in the countryside to act as mediators between the living and the dead as well as to help burn the deceased has become an accepted fact of life.

The church is run from the Necropolitan Temple where the priest known as the Pale Hierophant resides; he is the master of all Akemite rites and temples, and consults with the Silent Council on all matters of canon. However, there are few lines of communication between the Council and the temples abroad; they are often left to fend for themselves, particularly the Journeying Priests. However, when summons to Synod or promulgations of Holy Writ are made from Gadrada, they are always recognized.

Temple structure is varied; some temples operate as monasteries, housing men and women who have sworn Holy Orders. These have Abbots and the other attending necessities of monastic order as first espoused by Basilorius’ Rule of Worship. More traditional Akemite temples are generally divided into a Whispered Council and a priesthood, attended by a lay brotherhood that serves the temple grounds. Most common of all are Akemite hermits, wanderers, and journeymen who either dwell in caves or move from place to place seeking work burning or interring the dead.

Rule of Worship temples, also known as Akemite monasteries, have a single Abbot or Abbess who runs the day to day affairs of the temple, serves as the chief spiritual advisor, and makes report every five years to the Necropolitan Temple and the Pale Hierophant by means of messengers and journeymen.

Monasteries are also provided with Whispered Councils, these comprising the eldest members of the Order.

Dogma: The structure of Akemite beliefs is straightforward; there is a natural order, and a law to all things, and Akem enforces that natural order and that law. Death is his primary concern, and the proper treatment of the dead and the salvation of the spirit is his realm. That means that Akemites are often very troubled by improper treatment of the dead, and will take extreme steps to ensure that the soul of the deceased is preserved so it may meet its appropriate judgment.

Thus, an Akemite will never stand for the defiling of a corpse, nor will they permit even enemies to go unburned or unburied, whatever custom is required. To an Akemite, the destruction of a soul by the improper care of the physical body is either a hideous tragedy for the good or a grievous injustice for the evil who would otherwise suffer in the afterlife.

Akemites are also strongly opposed to the use of necromantic magic to fashion false souls—the reanimation of the dead, the snatching of the dead from the World Below, all of these things cause great ire and consternation in Akemite priests and the Faithful.

Day-to-Day Activities: Akemites generally live in quiet contemplation or journeying, spending little time speaking, and much dwelling on the mysteries of the Order. They maintain the houses of worship, and also treat with the bodies of all the dead in the region; they are paid for the expert services as psychopomps and officiators of funeral rites.

Holy Days/Important Ceremonies: The Long Night in winter is the holiest day of the year for Akemites, and only Akemites do not have a superstition about walking abroad on that day.

Affiliated Orders: There are three types of Akemite orders in the North—the Monastic Order, following the Rule, the temple order, and the journeying order. Journeymen and women may be assigned to a home temple or monastery, but generally sever that link eventually. There is also the Southern Rite, which has its heart in the heat-baked desert of Khewed, but which is too different from the Northern Rite to be covered here.

Priestly Vestments: Priests of Akem uniformly wear black robes and cord belts. Very mighty abbots may have finer clothes, but only the Pale Hierophant and his direct servants generally wear embellishments. The Pale Hierophant can be singled out by his cope of ghostly-white fungal-spun cloth, a high circlet of bone, and a long staff bearing the Sign of the Gate carved from solid jet.

Adventuring Garb: Akemites will wear any arms and armor they can lay their hands on, but typically prefer gray and black tones. They generally adorn such arms and armor with their holy signs (the Gate, the Key, the sickle, the hourglass). Akemites are also often derogatorily referred to as “smokemongers” or “ash priests” due, in part, to the fact that they burn the dead, but also because of the smoke- or ash-colored clothes they prefer.

Journeying Priest of Akem

(Specialty Priest, Northern Rite)

REQUIREMENTS: Wisdom 9

PRIME REQ: Wisdom

ALIGNMENT: Any neutral

WEAPONS: Staff, mace, flail, sickle, scythe, khopesh

MAJOR SPHERES: All, Combat, Divination, Guardian, Necromantic, Travelers

MINOR SPHERES: Healing, Plant, Protection

MAGICAL ITEMS: Any that do not grant regeneration or the power to raise the dead in any way.

REQ. PROFS: Religion (Northern Rite)

BONUS PROFS: Reading/writing (any)

Clerics of Akem can sense the presence of the Returned, who violated the tenets of Akem’s law. They do not need to concentrate to do this; they simply know, when looking at someone, if they have been brought back from the dead. This ability is not comprehensive; there are many ways to stymie the Lord of the Dead, and the more powerful the returned one is, the more likely they will know a way to circumvent or deflect the Akemite gaze.

At 1^st level, clerics of Akem destroy any undead they successfully turn; these creatures are blasted to ash by the fury of the Lord of the Underworld. In addition, they radiate an aura of control and authority—this aura may be enhanced by the Silent One once per day for every two levels of experience obtained by the priest; when this occurs, creatures within 15’ act as though they are under the effects of the 4th level wizard spell fear.

At 3rd level, the Journeying Priest may reasonably expect succor from anyone in the countryside as long as he has not angered them, their gods, or their lords (and even in some of these circumstances, aid may still be offered). At this point the priest is officially a Journeyman or Journeywoman of the Silent One.

At 5th level, the Priest is granted a very high resistance to death magic; they receive a +4 bonus on all saves vs. death magic.

At 7th level, the Priest may choose to cow undead and force them into his service until he is finished with them (at which point he must destroy them). In effect, the Priest may choose whether to Destroy Undead or Command Undead with any turning roll made.

At 10th level, the Priest Turns or Commands undead as though he were two levels higher.

At 15th level, the Silent One grants the priest the ability to cast the 9th level wizard spell, Power Word: Kill once per day for every 5 levels of experience the cleric has obtained. The priest is also immune to negative energy in all its forms—particularly level draining.

Akem's Gentle Repose

Akem's Gentle Repose
Level 1
(death, guardian)
abjuration

Sometimes, a Journeyman may be in a situation when he cannot give fallen comrades funerary rites. To make taking their bodies back to a temple more bearable, he may temporarily sacrifice a first-level spell slot to keep a body from corruption.

This spell slot may not be used until either he abandons the corpse or returns it to the temple and begins funeral preparations. He must escort the corpse for this effect to remain in place.

While Akem's Gentle Repose is in effect, time is halted for a corpse and it does not rot. If it has already started to rot, any corruption is halted, though the body is not restored nor is any damage repaired.

Spells from the 10th Age: Raya's Rose

Raya's Rose -- level 2, priest spell
(Enchantment/Charm, Illusion)

Sphere: Charm
Range: 10 yds.
Duration: 1d4 rds.
Area of Effect: 60 ft. Radius
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 2
Save: Neg.

When a priest casts this spell, it creates an illusion of a gigantic, glowing rose, beautiful and filigreed. The rose slowly, over the course of 1d4 combat rounds (15-60 seconds) opens, revealing a beautiful figure within it's heart. This figure appears to be the epitome of form and beauty to all those who observe it, and the magic of the initial spell is such that those who look on the rose will be enchanted into watching the flower slowly unfold.

Enemies of the priest who are within 60 feet of the rose must save vs. spell, or they are mesmerized for the entire period of the rose's unfolding, plus an additional 1d4 rounds while they hallucinate and stare into its heart. Those who are mesmerized cannot act, except to gawk at the unearthly beauty of the thing before them—they cannot speak, cast spells, or use magic. Any mesmerized enemy who is attacked or otherwise takes damage is freed from the enchantment, though they may accidentally see it again and be enthralled anew: for each round they remain within the 60 foot radius, they must save again or be re-enchanted and fall still.

Any enemies with 4 levels or hit dice, or with a 16 Wisdom or higher, are immune to the effects of the spell.

The material component is a handful of rose petals.

Reading and the Notice Board

I've witnessed this become a fantasy trope since I was younger. I'm not sure why its blossomed the way it has, but the first time I noticed it was in the Forgotten Realms boxed set. There's a notice board in downtown Shadowvale where the locals place advertisements for need and adventure. Now, the Forgotten Realms is a fantasy setting and it postulates the widespread literacy of its inhabitants. However, this has unthinkingly developed into an almost automatic trope: everyone in fantasy settings is generally presumed to be literate. Why is this?

The most likely reason is that this is the way our world works and fantasy is inherently parasitic, where undifferentiated drawing on the real world that we experience every day. I don't know if it grew out of the Forgotten Realms use, but I've seen it now spreading across media. It made an appearance in Dragon Age, and has recently been added through a mod to Skyrim. I don't understand this (unless its just laziness in attempting to fashion a realistic regime, or lack of desire to do so), but I think I can take it as an opportunity to launch into a discussion on literacy in the Middle Ages and, in a broader sense, in fantasy as a whole.

Literacy was common amongst the upper class of the Roman Republic and Empire; indeed, writing and the written word was key to the ability of the Empire to persist over the time that it did. Administration was undertaken by an entire class of functionaries in the later empire, much of whose existence was taken up with magisterial duties that required the ability to read and write. However, the superstructure to support this kind of learning (primarily the rhetors and grammaticians who traveled from family to family teaching their children) collapsed and so did the learning.

The art of reading and writing was not one that was commonly known after the collapse of the Roman educational system. Male nobles commonly were not literate, though there's a caveat there that has to do with the administrative systems of Charlemagne's short-lived empire. The most common literates were priests and women.

Clerics often acted as secretarii to nobility, reading and writing for them. Indeed, this may be where the Song of Ice and Fire maester comes from. Almost all manors and keeps would posses at least one confessor or chaplain for their lord who may or may not have doubled as the village priest. This cleric generally wrote and read for the lord. It was also possible, as the middle ages wore on, to find secular clerics (canons, mostly) who would fulfill these tasks.

Bishops, monks, abbots, canons, deacons, these types of figures would commonly be trained in the Latin tradition. For everyone else, writing was unnecessary, extraneous, and something that would likely be scorned. Who has time to ruin their eyes in the dark rooms of a monastery or the glum grimness of an incense-perfumed church when they need to be training to fight and win on the field of battle? Yes, the wisdom of the ages lies in books, but books were rare and hard to come by.

This brings up another interesting side-effect of the generally illiterate culture (or perhaps a precipitator), and that is the lack of reading material. The most well-read men of the middle ages traveled from place to place or requested, in no uncertain terms, copies of books be sent to them. Books were fabulously expensive, requiring the killing of numerous animals to produce, as well as hours and hours of preparation for material and further laborious man-hours in copying out.

It is strange, then, to imagine medieval peasants wandering up to notice boards and leaving their pleas for adventurers. Adventurers, unless they were formerly priests, would be unlikely to have the knowledge to read such pleas (and the farmers would be unlike to have the knowledge to write them). Of course, this all changes as the middle ages wears on toward the pre-modern era, but most fantasy settings take place before (or without) the invention of the printing press.

Once again, I'm certain there will be angry folk who sneer and remark "This is fantasy, not history," but if your fantasy is no deeper than a bunch things you thought were cool all welded together without any thought, logic, or consideration behind them, perhaps you'd be better off remarking "this is trash, not history." So certainly, reject the literacy/illiteracy debate, but reject it in an informed manner. If people are literate, why are they literate? How? How does this affect the rest of society?

Or just do whatever you were going to do anyway, I suppose. It's not like I can stop you.

Memne Theo

Memne theo is a Greek phrase that was the core of a lot of Byzantine monastic thought for a while. It means literally, the "memory of God." However (at least according to my source, Mary J Carruthers --not speaking a lick of Greek myself, I'm not in any place to argue with her) memne means much more than memory as we know it in this case. It is a sort of semi-religious experience, the deep knowledge of something.

I've been thinking about how to adapt memne theo into something that can be used in the 10th Age. My current notion is that those priests who have a divine connection and can make use of sacred magic (a small minority of all priests) are accessing something similar to the monastic idea of memne theo. Thus, the actual term for preparing priestly magic can be something like "divine memory," or the "memory of the gods."

The Priestly Experience

I've had some problems with clerics, religion, and priesthoods in D&D, and a variation of this problem has irritated me since I started playing the game. The question, and I've yet to see this really answered in an official product, is why don't clerics and their use of healing magic affect the world in a greater way? I've come to answer this in a number of ways myself; there are a series of small answers that add up to, what I think, is a real solution.

Stating the question broadly: In a world where healing magic is available, why isn't the social structure different from what we know of the middle ages? The implicit assumption is that the widespread use of healing would extend the lifespan of everyone in the setting, not just the adventurers. Why should a king ever be assassinated if the local high priest can resurrect him? These questions of social stability plague my mind, since the very way in which human beings interact with one another or conceive of social position would inevitably change.

My answers are multifarious, as I've stated above. The confluence of the following setting-assumptions keeps healing magic from overwhelming the established social order:

• Not all priests have the ability to commune with their gods. (This may stand to revision now that I've read the 1e rules in the DMG describing the low level clerical spells, namely 1-2, being empowered by the rituals learned by priests... though, the more I think about it the more I think I will simply say that those rituals are only learned by those novices who show aptitude and desire to take on the additional sacred duties) This means that of the many priests in a locale, only some will have a class.
• The gods are jealous and strict with magic, reserving its use for those who pledge themselves to one cult exclusively, which is a small segment of the population.
• The law of the pantheon, as enforced by its beneficent autarch, prevents gods from becoming flagrantly involved in the lives of mortals except through the official and approved channels of the clergy.
• Powerful magic is difficult to access, and takes a real toll on the priest and the god. Thus, it is not waved around and applied everywhere it could be.
• Resurrection is against the code of the Gods, and must be cleared with Akem the Gatekeeper, who is notoriously cranky and rarely lets anyone return to the Middle World. As the Papyrus of Anki states: "The Gates of Death are closed."

So, these facts restrict the massive use of healing magic that would break down a lot of normal assumptions about life, living, and society. Kings who are assassinated cannot be returned to life because their souls are jealously guarded by Akem, who sends them on to their proper rewards but almost never returns them to the world above.

Between the dictates of Haeron, the chief god of the mannish pantheon, there is to be no bestowing of spontaneous miracles and priests are to be rewarded for their devotion. This is one reason why dedicated priests cannot access high level magic as soon as it would benefit their patron; the other is that their minds are physically unready for that level of power, and were a god to dump it onto them it may very well annihilate them in an orgasm of glorious light and energy.

But what about the High Priests of the faiths? Can they attain this station even if they're of low level? It would suggest a failure to align oneself properly with the Godhead as well as the inability to channel the most potent forces of the god. However, the appointment to high offices of faith is generally a political matter at least as much as it is a religious one. Could a reformer with little practical experience in enacting miracles hold that office?

It seems to me that there must be a way for non-classed priests to gain experience through service to the temple. However, it also seems that yes, non-casting priests should be able to hold high office, though it may not be the solution that deity would desire. After all, isn't it worth having a prime servant who can manage and save your temple, even if he can't manifest potent miracles? This relies, of course, on the assumption that the priest must be mentally and physically capable of achieving the higher ranks of magic before they are unlocked to him. If this precept were false, any god could grant any spell to any one at any time (but doesn't because of various reason). This would mean that the leader of any faith would be a de-facto level 15 mythos priest in addition to any other class he might have.

I reject this as a matter of both worldbuilding as well as class sense. I don't want a level 12 fighter who is also an ordained priest to be elected to be High Lawkeeper and suddenly rocket up to the powers of a level 15 Peaceward. Which means, then, that I don't want any god to grant any spells to anyone, so I'll keep the dictate stating that priests must grow into the use of powerful divine magic or it will eat them alive from the inside.

Still, doesn't it make a kind of sense that classed priests can gain experience by going about mundane jobs in the temple? The other option (that classed priests can only gain xp by killing people and/or fulfilling their dogma with magic) would limit high level priests to adventuring to get to their rank. I can't imagine that ever level 3 or level 6 priest had to go out and kill monsters (or fight in a war, or something of that nature) to gain access to his magic. Therefore, it must be true that they can garner xp in some way other than by exercising their powers on the road.

Even as I typed that I think I may have found an equitable solution that doesn't bend any rules and doesn't add any ones. Priests receive 200xp (by the 2e DMG guidelines) for casting spells that "further their dogma." One would assume that casting these spells for the service of their temple would count as doing this in the pursuit of the god's dogma—thus, any time a priest were to cast a spell for his temple, he would receive 200xp. After all, shouldn't the ability to cast higher level priestly spells be predicated on the use and exercise of the very "muscles" (in this case the flexing of the things which allow the priest to contact the divinity at all)?

Of course, I might supplement this with experience for NPCs from meditation and deep study of the holy mysteries. After all, it takes gads of experience for a mythos priest to reach level 15—for the sake of the argument and because I'm at work, let's say 45,000xp which would necessitate a lifetime casting of 225 spells all of which directly furthered the work of the god. Granted that a sedentary priest might cast, say, 1 spell a month and perhaps half of those would actually count, that leaves an average of 37.5 years before they reached level 15...

Actually, that's not all that bad. Jigger the numbers a little, and there might be something to that.

He's beyond my magic!

Healing magic is a touchy subject. Divine magic of any kind, really, can be touchy because its use strongly affects the setting. For example, if healing is easily available why don't priests of all the gods simply extend the lifespans of people who would have otherwise died? Essentially, the question of free healing for those who need it invariably comes up. Why don't the gods make sure that everyone gets the healing they need?

The answer to this question is multifaceted and, at least in the 10th Age, I've had to give it a lot of thought. Today, we're going to discuss just one of the ways in which the miracles of the gods are stymied or otherwise prevented from being panacea for the poor sap who gets his arm crushed by a falling piece of masonry. There are other ways that I limit this as well (socially, within the community of gods, and by the rigorous training needed to become a divine conduit) but this one is the most commonly applied.

Adventurers as Insiders

Last week I wrote about adventurers as outsiders and why they are almost always slotted into that category. Today we're going to talk about ways that you can avoid this and integrate your adventurers so deeply into the society of your setting that they aren't really adventurers (in the classical sense) at all anymore.

The easiest way to begin the process of tying a character into their society is through the use of backstory. I know that I have railed against too-complex backstories hundreds, if not thousands, of times before but in this case the story can serve an integral purpose. Every link created in the character's past is one that can be used to anchor them to a certain social construct. Perhaps we should look at some good examples? Here they are then!

Nobility. The most obvious of the anchoring-points in a backstory, being a member of landed nobility is a perfect way to integrate your character into society. Even second and third sons would generally have some expectations placed on their shoulders (but not too much, enough that they could detach and transform into the classic "outsider" adventurers). If you have a character who is a noble that either stands to inherit a sizable estate or has already inherited it, this will certainly give you inexorable ties to the land, the people, and the social structures of the region.

There's also a huge number of pre-built conflicts that come with being a noble. You have the politics of other houses, the royal politics of your king or overlord, and the dangers to the entire kingdom which you can become involved in.