Nation Name: The Kingdom of God
Race: Mostly human
History: The founding of the Kingdom of God predates written record, and as such, historians often dispute the facts of the state's origin. Be that as it may, the Church teachings, (accepted as the official record by its citizens), are unambiguous on the matter. According to the Church, the Kingdom of God was founded 3,362 years ago, in what would afterwards always be referenced as Year 0.
Those days, the Church records explain, were of a dark and sinful time, when a wretched and selfish people harmed, robbed, and extorted each other without concern or remorse, even and just as they were themselves enslaved and extorted under the heel of a nobility who had long ceased to even believe in their God, let alone to abide by His teachings. Instead they turned to worshiping idols and false spirits - and when God sent the dragon-spawn from across the seas to punish and unite them, the weak and foolish of the land simply surrendered to conquest, and soon took to worshiping the dragons instead, and forever shamed the world of men with their disloyalty. Such is the nature of the faithless heart.
Soon after, (the records are not clear on how long), came the time when only one sinless man remained living in the world, a monk who had devoted then half a lifetime to work and teaching and prayer. As the sinless man rose in the dawn of that day, in the solitude of his home, and prayed, he was answered with a vision, a voice, and a crown of flames that hovered before him, bright as day and light as air. And the voice said:
You are the best of my faithful, and the last of your kind,
And only you can save my people, who have rejected me.
For I am the voice in their minds that cries out
At their avarice and their cruelty
And they have silenced me long ago,
So that my Kingdom is without rule or order.
Not a kingdom of thousands
But a thousand kingdoms of one,
And defenseless.
So that when the terrible Dragon found their shores,
Their bodies were felled by fire and sword,
Their minds by fear and sorcery enslaved.
Now to the North a great Evil rises, the second of three.
An abomination, lifeless, that feeds on life
A shadow that devours the light, from beyond the campfire,
And having feasted, grows larger
Until it moves to devour the flame.
Too late will the just, the strong-hearted move to stop it
For again the faithless will fight it none,
And many will take up its cause.
For they are blind with greed, senseless with fear
And will not recognize the evil, even as they become it.
The wicked shall have overrun the world,
And the righteous will chafe under their boots.
Swiftly then shall the third great evil arise, in a faithless world.
A heedless power that cares for nothing at all, and nothing its mark.
Not an ordinary darkness, but one born from the death of light
When there is nothing left to cast a shadow.
This I have said to you, the last of my faithful
That you may know of your people's peril.
Take up my Crown if you would save them,
And tell the Righteous of my Word.
Henceforth you will have no name,
No friends, no family, no equals.
Henceforth you will be only my message to this world,
The words of my decree, the Voice of God.
(The Word of God Book 1, chapters 1.1-1.3.)
Afterward, Church histories say, the sinless man donned the Crown of Light, became the first Voice of God, and began what is now known to the Church as the First Crusade. With his preaching, prophecy, and prayer he swayed only the most powerless at first, the down-trodden selfless and abused, then the decent and well-meaning, then repenters and converts. Wherever he went he knew things and did things that no man should have been able to, for the knowledge and power of God were His to grant His messenger, and this drew only unease and hostility from the powerful at first. Three times assassins were sent for him, but he could not be killed - birds flew into arrows and knocked them aside before they could strike him, poison was taken and passed without effect, and though the last one stabbed over a dozen times with his dagger, it always stuck in a rib and left only a shallow cut behind, healed over in a matter of days. There were no more attempts after that, and eventually, though most clung to their newfound and silent gods, he had some allies among the powerful as well. One, a Magister and former general, even grew to be among the Most Faithful.
The Church's official history claims that the Voice of God had a small army by the time the demons came to Galadon, though the precious few histories that have been recovered from that time do not deign to mention it. A tide of wood and stone and steel and little else, an army of life-sized puppets bound to twisted, tortured souls, the demons overran the realms of man with a fury, and even though the false nobles that had always decried the Voice of God as a heretic and charlatan before still did not acknowledge the truth of his prophecy, he was among the many that were called to for help as they suffered defeat after crushing defeat in the fields. If he and his God were really true, some claimed, they ought be able to turn the tide and repel these invaders.
Church authorities do not dispute that the faith and righteousness of the Army of God at that time would have made it a valuable force, akin with the paladins of the Kingdom today, though the paladins have all the arms and armor and lifetime of training that those men did not. The Voice of God, however, foresaw that the only way to stop the demon threat for good was to cut it off at its source. With God's blessing to protect his army from the cold and hunger of the march, he led them north around enemy lines and to the far coast, where he had them build rough canoes and row out into the unknown, to find the island where there now sits the Kingdom of God. They fought their way from the beachheads to the center of the island. There, he destroyed the source of the vile magic that spawned the demons, purging the island of its evil. He deferred to God the victory, and declared that the island was now hallowed ground, that the sinful may no longer tread there.
The demon invasion was ended permanently, but not without cost. While the Army of God was away, the Galadonians had in their desperation taken to using the demon's own magic against them, binding their own souls to material shells in a way that the Church considers identical to the demons'. Meanwhile, at the center of the island was raised The Spire, a single tower of marble hundreds of feet tall that stretches to a point in the sky, and around it the church hierarchy was formed. A new Kingdom was declared, a Lord Bishop was chosen to follow when the Voice of God passed, and the Kingdom of God went through the first of many centuries of peace and construction, eventually reaching out to assign Bishops and clergy to accepting jurisdictions in old Eximia. Since vanquishing the demons, the Army of God has only once been called to war, nearly two thousand years after its founding, when the Lord Bishop of the time declared himself the Voice of God and called forth the Second Crusade, which ended in the "pacification" of the orc tribes to Eximia's south.
The Kingdom of God currently acknowledges Luscar I Vasa as the rightful Eximian Emperor, and is militarily guaranteed by the same.
Government: The Church of God, also known (mostly to outsiders) as The Church of the Fiery Crown. The Church breaks its composition down into three factions: God, the Clergy, and the Inquisition.
God, the supreme authority, is considered by Church theologians to play an active part in its administration. This is believed to generally manifest itself by influencing the actions of its leaders – with the effect that they behave more in accordance with His will, and to the greater benefit of all – or sometimes directly, by speaking through the Lord Bishop, whose orders therefore become supreme and infallible for such time.
The Clergy, made up of men who at some time or other volunteered to be trained for the office and swore their lives in devotion to God, is seen as His political arm in this world. Any man of fifteen years, having reached adulthood, may take the Oath of Service and so be assigned by the Church to training either for the priesthood, or for the Inquisition, according to his strengths. Historically, such applicants have mostly been residents of Eden, though the number of foreign applicants sent there to study has been steadily increasing over time, and in recent years has actually begun to out-number the natives.
The Church’s operation in each sovereign nation in the known world is overseen by a bishop, with the Bishop of Eden being appointed by council among them and each of their successors appointed, from among the priesthood, by the Bishop of Eden. One may note that although each diocese holds a different number of the faithful, the size of the appointed congregation is not strongly linked with the prestige of each position. Intolerant and totalitarian nations such as the East Oberland Empire, for example, though holding only a small, underground sect of devotees, call for an exceptionally bold and crafty leader, one who can work to spread the Church’s teachings among an exceptionally narrow-minded population, while nonetheless still outmaneuvering and avoiding persecution from their fanatically xenophobic governance. As such, any man holding such a post is highly regarded, as is the office itself.
The priests, the fundamental units of the clergy, are tasked with overseeing each actual gathering of the faithful, to see that the proper teachings and practices of the Church are properly observed. In some places, they serve as little more than well-respected beggars, who share their knowledge of the Faith and are (or may sometimes be) generously given donations in return. In others, generally among especially devoted congregations, they also serve as community leaders and magistrates, resolving disputes and overseeing development among their congregation (even when this is not officially within their legal authority, as it is in Eden). Priests within a diocese are instructed by the bishop as to what sort of role they should fill, according to his management and understanding of the local political environment.
The Inquisition is, for want of a better term, the military arm of the Church. While the function of the Clergy is to serve God by converting the wicked and strengthening the faithful, the Inquisition serves instead by eliminating evil. The Inquisition consists of three basic roles: the Exorcists, which answer directly to the clergy on equal standing with the priests; and the Monks and Saints, which collectively form the Army of God and answer only to Him, (ultimately), and the Lord Bishop (directly). The Inquisition, unlike the clergy, is not restricted by sex, and does not often interact with the general population.
The most basic unit of the Inquisition is the monk, (or nun, for females,) which is generally the destination of those devoted who have neither the exceptional intelligence to be assigned to the clergy nor the extraordinary martial prowess to have been promoted to the Saints. Nevertheless, they are far from incapable: After two years of training in fundamental monastic doctrine, a monk is armed and armored with the finest magically-enhanced Eximian steel available for purchase in bulk, and begins life in the monastery. There, monks are expected to wear their arms and armor at all times – eating, sleeping, praying – for all activities except bathing, which is done communally every morning. There are approximately four and a half thousand monks in total, spread over twenty-four active monasteries. Additionally, at any time the Kingdom of God hosts anywhere from a dozen to over a hundred foreign warriors employed in temporary service in the monasteries, either as a sign of devotion or a means of serving some penance. Such temporary volunteers are known as “Templars” and, as a valuable source of recent combat experience to the never-deployed Inquisition forces, are frequently placed in training and leadership positions for the duration of their service.
Since the order accepts men as well as women, the daily communal bathing serves a dual purpose as a test of resolve in challenging the requisite oath of celibacy; to ensure success, each unit of monks is kept under the kind of observation generally considered excessive even for the most infamous political prisoners in less-devout societies. New trainees are not physically punished for signs of… interest… but such surrender to natural process is regarded as weakness in the doctrine, and shame tactics are regularly employed until an initiate learns to control such impulses during his or her waking hours, often with the help of targeted “counseling.”
This process is additionally aided by the practice of addressing a male monk by the title of “Brother,” and a female as “Sister.” This practice itself imposes an inherent taboo on perverse thinking regarding one that the monk is trained to think of as a sibling, (or that any other individual is compelled to refer to as such), and also justifies further measures to be taken on the part of the Church: As with other, more literal cases of incest, any nun found to be pregnant following initiation, along with any of her known or confessed illegitimate lovers, is thrown into the Sacred Fires that burn at the center of the island to be “cleansed.”
Fortunately, the combination of piety, tradition, and applied deterrence employed in these institutions makes such cases so rare as to be virtually nonexistent. A typical day in a monastery follows the morning bath at dawn with armament, then the breaking of the nightly fast, and an hour of silent prayer. Morning prayer is followed by melee practice with blunted weapons until midday, with the monks split into two even units to alternate attack and defense against the other side as a group, and this by the midday meal and another hour of prayer. The monks are then divided by combat role – cavalry in one group, archers in another, and so forth – and spend the remainder in the day in either military drill or combat practice (swordsmanship for the infantry, horsemanship for the cavalry, marksmanship for the archers, and so forth). Sunset brings the evening meal and another hour of prayer, after which the monks are allowed to sleep away the remainder of the night on the dubious comfort of the hardwood shelves in their barracks, with the inner padding of their armor serving as the only allowed comfort.
The other part of the Army of God is the Saints, which, though distinguished from the Monks by authority and title, is arguably simply an extension of that order. Numbering at about four hundred in total, each of the Saints originally began their career in the monastery, and the vows and obligations of that lifestyle still apply to them. Nevertheless, the Saints themselves are all housed and trained in the grounds about the Spire, with the exception of a particularly experienced few who serve to command and train several monasteries about the island. They are also considered to be above the Monks in hierarchy, having been selected for elevation from among the very most elite of that order for their strength of will and natural fighting ability, and are differently equipped in their armament. While a Saint keeps the armor given him or her by the monastery to wear, their weapon of choice is replaced by a brightsteel weapon of choice for their right arm, and a flat, rectangular brightsteel mirror shield for the left. Notching along each edge of the shield allows them to be fit together in formation, side-by-side and at inward right angles top-to-bottom, allowing two rows of Saints to form nearly seamless cover from above and ahead if necessary. The Saints (and, by extension the Monks), are commanded by the Crusader, whose office is filled under the authority of the Council of Bishops. The current Crusader is Tuo-Hakta, a fearsome, battle-scarred orc and convert whose unanimous endorsement by the Council remains controversial among the monastic order even in these modern, enlightened, accepting times.
Whereas the Monks consist of such sworn servants of God as had not met the intellectual requirements for the clergy or the martial qualifications of the Saints, the Exorcists are made up of a particularly elite few that begin by showing great promise in both. The Exorcists, for their part, are undoubtedly the most elite units of the Inquisition, if not generally the best respected. They form the only branch of the Inquisition that remains active at all times, regardless of when a Crusade is called, and the only one that may be called directly to action by the clergy. They are also the only branch to regularly utilize foreign schooling as part of the training process, and the only one that does not bind the membership to celibacy. (Since fornication is still actively discouraged, however, and the constant and deadly trials that characterize this lifestyle are not conducive to marriage, this is nonetheless a privilege that the exorcist rarely manages to enjoy.)
Exorcists are only chosen from among the youngest of devotees, after showing a great deal of promise in all areas of ability. Following selection, an exorcist must then confirm, of his or her own will and without outside coercion or pressure, that he or she agrees to begin this path – otherwise, the child is instead redirected to the clergy or the monastery, at his or her discretion.
The first few years of training as an exorcist are grueling both mentally and physically: During this time, the child sees no company but his/her trainers, enjoys no diversion except his/her studies, and discards all ties except the Church. The candidate emerges, generally entering their twenties, with will of iron, muscles like steel, reflexes like lightning and a mind like a vice. The candidate achieves expertise with knives, swords, axes, bows, spears, unarmed combat and (for its all-occasions usefulness) the quarter-staff, and becomes intimately familiar with the Church’s wealth of knowledge on countering such evil as demons, curses, malicious spirits and other unholy entities. It is also a well-kept secret that, as part of their mysterious curriculum, the Church itself deliberately trains these individuals with the particular subset of knowledge and physical skills, involving such matters as scaling different sorts of walls, the noise profile of various strides while wearing different types of footwear, and the engineering of different types of locks, that would in other circumstances make for a very efficient class of burglar.
Graduation from the Church curriculum has no set date for an exorcist, instead simply taking place once his or her tutors have decided that the candidate has begun to approach the theoretical limits of a gifted human individual’s physical and mental performance. Nonetheless, the common trend is that this occurs at about the time when the individual becomes (or nears becoming) fully-grown, at which point they are told that they are to make their way to the University at Tor to pass the requisite entrance exams and submit a provided fee waiver as soon as possible – the waiver, of course being exchangeable to the Church for the full cost of a semester’s tuition. Here is the first great test of a potential exorcist, as the fee waiver provided has an expiration date set for two years from the date of graduation. The Church neither provides nor allows any outside help in reaching the destination before this time, nor even any provisions or equipment save for the clothes on the candidate’s back – after all, it would be frivolous to invest so heavily in the education of an agent without first being sure they were worthy of it on their own merit.
Many candidates die trying to cross the ocean and reach the mainland on their handmade boats, many others killed by bandits or hostile governments or wild animals after landing there. Once having reached the University too late, the candidate’s only options are to give up on the path that they’d sacrificed the last great portion of their life to pursuing, or to return to the Spire for a renewed waiver and begin the journey anew. Most choose the latter. A few seek work as criminals or mercenaries instead, shaming the Church and the order which they had failed to aspire to. The rest either reassign to the monastery, or give up on the use of their hard-learned skills and enter civilian life instead, settling for common happiness over hard-won excellence and never looking back again.
For the candidates that succeed at this first major trial, command is transferred to a training-grounds in Tor where prospective exorcists will eat, sleep, train, study, and report their progress to. Aspiring exorcists at the university, funded by the Church, are assigned to essentially one of two paths of study: If magical aptitude is discovered, upon testing, then the candidate will be directed to the study and practice of basic, non-somatic spell casting, while regularly training on Church grounds to apply this knowledge to active combat. If no magical aptitude is discovered, on the other hand, then the candidate will be directed towards further mechanical and chemical study, and so practice the crafting of various devices and concoctions that may often prove useful in the fight against evil.
From here, a candidate graduates to a full exorcist one of three ways. First, and most commonly the student reaches a level of competence sufficient for the board in Tor to declare him or her fit for practical tutelage. At this point the candidate will be assigned to the instruction of an active exorcist. The candidate is to accompany and aid said exorcist, to the best of his or her ability, until such time as the exorcist declares the candidate to be fit for independent deployment.
Secondly, the candidate may be assigned to such tutelage under an active agent, and then complete one of said agent’s assignments after he or she perishes in the act of carrying it out. This is understood to automatically graduate the candidate to the rank of full exorcist, whereas failing to complete that same assignment will simply result in being assigned to train under another such agent.
Finally, the student may study and train at the university for an especially long time, so that the local administration deems the candidate worthy to be sent on an exorcism alone. Though first-time exorcists are never given especially prolific or dangerous cases to resolve, it is not uncommon for inexperienced agents to be killed on such a mission.
Like other branches of the Inquisition, the Exorcists ultimately hold God as their primary authority, and so can and will refuse to accept any assignments from the clergy that are clearly in contradiction with His teachings – banishing a powerful demon is seen as in accordance with the will of God, where assassinating a powerful nobleman is not. Because of this, and because clear-cut cases of pure evil in need of elimination are so generally uncommon in the world, there are only thirty-six active exorcists scattered around the world today, thirty-two of which are working with apprentices.
Society/Culture: Heavily overlapped with "the Church," and, therefore, with "government." Boys and girls born on the island are raised with the full understanding that this is hallowed ground, and no place for the sinful to tread. This alone is not sufficient to eliminate sinful and discordant behavior, of course, but it makes a very good start. Though the nature of people is such that there will always be exceptionally greedy, selfish, or simply rebellious personalities in any sufficiently large population, the motivation for actual crime (with the exception, of course, of fornication and other vices outlawed on the island,) is small.
Distribution of the Edener's staple foods of bread and fish is controlled by the church, and the supply is plentiful - a household, or even individual, has access to effectively as much food and water as they care to ask for. (Because of the short effective storage life of these foodstuffs, as well as their generally bland-if-acceptable flavor, and not least because of the social stigma associated with the appearance of gluttony on the island, a citizen will not generally request a more than healthy amount.) The surplus of each day, generally plentiful, is packaged for preservation and shipped to Eximia for distribution among the poor of the faith abroad.
In addition to sustenance, it is also the Church that provides medical services, as well as housing and land for newly-wed couples... though when the last living inhabitant of a household dies, these revert back to the Church instead of passing on to their immediate family. Money, in fact, is of little use in the Kingdom of God, (except for trading in exchange for others' allotments of luxuries like salt, spices, alcohol, pipe-weed, or tobacco), as a means of acquiring the real wealth, which is power, that it is often confused with. Add in the very high chance that any theft or crime one commits will be discovered, with the usual sentence being a various length of time in (paid) service on one of the Kingdom's fishing ships until the convicted are deemed sufficiently penitent to be allowed foot on the island again, and it's plain to see why the rate of crime in the Kingdom of God is so extraordinarily low.
Imports/Exports: The primary imports of the Kingdom of God are steel, knowledge, and the donations of the faithful. The primary exports are faith, fish, grain, and the occasional trinket of brightsteel.
