 HeroQuest
Copyright © 2005 |
The
Penitential Solar Church of the Abjurers of Darkness
|
| Note! This is a fan contribution. The information may be contradicted by official material. |
Few digijelm are as reviled among their kin as the great troll, Zorg the Apostate, who for reasons unfathomable to his kind cast aside the chains of Darkness and the lies of the Harlot of Digijelm, and submitted to the Lord Yelm’s fiery embrace. He quested for the land his people most feared, the Sky Cave of the Bright Sun, and there threw himself before the Fire Tribe’s mercy. For his temerity and base nature he was scourged of his Darksense by the pure light of Antirius; yet the Heavenly Heart saw worth in the abjurer of Darkness, and the troll was born again, baptized in Light as Praise Yelm Zorg. He then strode the world as the Blind Prophet, an Antirian ascetic charged to take his ministry of Light to the children of Darkness.
Praise Yelm Zorg’s path was long and difficult, and his blistered skin was further scourged by the lead barbs of his race. Yet he persisted, and preached his ministry with a strength born of adversity and conviction. Many of his early converts were captives taken by the Empire, threatened with crucifixion lest they apostasise from their heresies and accept the Light of the Lord Yelm, but others came willingly to his mendicant banner. Dark trolls were generally too contumacious to convert, but several hands of great trolls showed greater wisdom. Thus the ranks of the Penitential Solar Church are dominated by uzdo, with an increasing number ‘altar enlo’ (in digijelmic parlance).
The Lord Yelm’s salvation does not come easily to the digijelm, who are blinded by the Darkness of their false myths. Their greatest sin is the inculcated and unnatural respect towards the Mothers of Digijelm, and the feminine in general, an affront to the Yelmic order. Every day they recite the Fifty-Six Cadences of Masculine Mastery, the prose of the Misogynea, and the Yelmic Litany of the Loins, to embrace their masculinity and learn the subservient and dutiful place of the feminine in Yelmic society. It is a painful process, and even the most fearsome great trolls break down in wracking sobs at such acts. Yet fear of excommunication from the Lord Yelm’s divine grace, to be thrown back into the pits of Darkness, drives them on.
Members of the Penitential Solar Church wear a white kilt, but are otherwise naked. Worshippers know that they are not yet worthy to bask in the Lord Yelm’s full glow, and thus cover their skin in a chalky paste: a gift of the Praise Yelm Zorg, which also protects the faithful from the harshest motes of the Lord Yelm’s radiance. However, the faithful scrape away areas of paste in the shape of Fire runes, which burn and blister with righteous pain. This is but one element of the practice that is the Ignification of the Dark Flesh, endured to better prepare the unworthy corporeal form for the Lord Yelm’s grace. Often, the faithful wear a curious apparatus of polished crystal mirrors, which serves to focus Solar rays on a given area of skin.
The newly baptized are seared with a symbolic, third Bright Eye on their foreheads, to see the world and the Lord Yelm’s majesty anew. This branding, by the holy fires of the Blessed Enverinus, brings great pain to a worshipper and manifests as a great, burning bloody welt. This process led one wit in the Imperial Court to describe the Church as the Third Eye Sore people. The trolls’ processions are accompanied by the clashing of great gongs, and loud joyous song. For though it affronts their delicate ears, a Yelmite is forthright and proud, and does not skulk in the shadows. One must shout the glories of the Lord Yelm, not whisper them! The Solar Penitential Church is famed for its bass-baritone choirs, and their polyphonic refrains, accompanied by much hand clapping and ignification, are stirring gatherings.
The liturgy of the Church is largely held in the scriptures of The Digijelmic Eunuch, Gospels of the Blind Prophet, transcribed onto tablets of gold from the sermons of the most penitentially reverend and given of succour Praise Yelm Zorg. The original gospels are held in the mirrored vaults of the Blessed Dome of Bright Reflection, the center of the Church in Raibanth, but lesser copies are distributed among all shrines. The Church follows the authority of its head, the Holy Patriarch, who as befits Yelmic custom is a religious autocrat. Beneath the Holy Patriarch are the Penitent-Priors, and then the Acolytes of Absolution, the Adepts of Penance, the newly consecrated Novices and finally the non-clerical Lay Communion. Clerics of equal rank to one’s self are referred to as ‘Brother’, those of higher and lower rank ‘Father’ and ‘Child’, respectively. All follow an ascetic life, as prescribed by Praise Yelm Zorg, the first Apostle of Antirius.
Currently the sect is led by the most penitentially reverend Praise Yelm Gror, Holy Patriarch of the Penitential Solar Church of the Abjurers of Darkness, Apostle of Antirius, Successor to the Blind Prophet, Lector of the Loins, Supreme Autocrat of all Congregations and Orders, &c., who succeeded to the ministry last year, upon the sad passing of The Sun Is My Salvation Tvar. Although the Penitential Solar Church generally scorns the Lunar Way, there are a growing number of adherents of the Church in the Empire that are becoming enraptured with a certain deity. In the last Enlightened Council of Penance (112,617 YS), the Church hierarchy reluctantly voted to include the mysteries of the Blessed Nysalor in canonical liturgy, to the disgust of many conservative leaders (not least of all Praise Yelm Gror, who was yet to rise to the position of Holy Patriarch). The alluring gospels of the Blessed that cursed the digijelm are beginning to take hold.
| Homelands: | Any troll
(typically near Dara Happa). |
| Abilities: | Clap, Dara Happan
Customs, Doctrine of the Penitential Solar Church, Sing, Speak Dara
Happan, Worship the Lord Yelm. Liturgists only—Venerate the Lord Yelm. |
| Virtues: | Conservative, Fear Darkness, Know Betters, Misogynistic, Penitent, Simple. |
| Scripture: | The Digijelmic Eunuch, Gospels of the
Blind Prophet Common Blessings—Bless
Congregation, Enshrine Yelmic Majesty, Harmonize Righteous Song, Mother
Knows Worst, Obey Holy Patriarch, Remember Fifty-Six Cadences of
Masculine Mastery, Renew Faith. Special
Blessings—Baptize Abjurer of Darkness, Bless Home, Bless
Ignification of the Dark Flesh, Bite The Foul Breast That Feeds You,
Bless Loins, Burn Away Sin, Consecrate Relic, Enhance Libido, Give
Corpse to the Lord Yelm, Lead Litany of the Loins, Lead Righteous Song,
Resist Darkness, Resist Feminine Command, Strength in Penitence. Curses—Curse
Glutton, Curse Jurant of Darkness, Curse My Enemy,
Curse Whisperer, Excommunicate Nonjuror, Shame Dark Harlot. |
| Great Secret: | Though it is rumoured that the most penitent troll can shrive himself completely of the Darkness rune that blots his essence, and is born again as an angel of Fire in Yelm’s celestial realm… this is apocryphal, and ultimately wrong. There is no great secret. |
| Orders: |
Other
organizations exist within the Church, typically of very limited
jurisdiction and dedicated to the eradication of a particular sin of
Darkness. These bodies are led by such clerics as Woe Ye Sinners Kdang,
Penitent-Prior of the Congregation of the Fasters for Absolution, which
seeks to disway the faithful from the vices of digijelmic gluttony.
Some are dedicated to individual ‘saints’ within the Church, but only
one saintly order of any note exists within the ecclesiastical
hierarchy: the Canonical Order of the Blessed Elmharshnik. |
| Other Side: | Penitents believe that, if they lead a Yelm-fearing, worthy life of subservience of the Lord Yelm, they will be taken into His arms, their Darkness eclipsed by the Light; those that recant or abjure the Light are condemned to Harlot of Digijelm. |
| Disadvantages: |
Worship
of the Lord Yelm is misapplied worship, as the Penitential Solar Church
seeks to propitiate a theistic entity through wizardry. |
The Blessed Elmharshnik
The Burning Blight on DarknessFormed by the honoured penitent Kill Them All And Let Yelm Decide Arng many years past, and dedicated to the militant conversion of the scions of Darkness, the Canonical Order of the Blessed Elmharshnik epitomizes the sacred zeal of its Erzanyestyan saint, who battled the digijelm during his imperium, 111,523 to 111,538 YS. Under the holy aegis of Righteous Wroth Zor, Penitent-General of the Elmharshnikine Order, its hundred orderlies and lay-worshippers form the militant branch of the Penitential Solar Church’s proselytizing crusade, also known as the Eye Sore Elleden. The Order comprises a single Hundred of great troll warriors, arrayed in tegimens and mauls of gold, led by the Penitent-General himself. They currently guard the holy shrines of the Lord Yelm, but also provide muscle to various building and renovation projects throughout the Dara Happan Tripolis, and act as bodyguards for many Yelmite nobles.
As of recent, the Order of the Blessed Elmharshnik has been stricken by controversy. A lowly adept, when copying the Elmexdros Roll to tablet form (to be better discerned by trolls), was shocked to learn that the Blessed Elmharshnik had in fact used the magics of women to defeat the forces of digijelm – anathema to the Penitential Solar Church. Kill Them All And Let Yelm Decide Arng (admittedly not the greatest of scholastic theologians) had thus been in great Error when he divined the Blessed Elmharshnik, Emperor of the World, as a fitting paragon for his militant order.
Many worshippers now call for the Order to be disbanded, and those that remain recusant degraded before the Lord Yelm. The Sun Is My Salvation Tvar had acted to diminish the growing rift in the Penitential Solar Church, and to some extent succeeded; but with his funerary embers still warm, and a fundamentalist new Holy Patriarch in his place, the threat of schism has returned with a vengeance. It is all that such clerics as Woe Ye Sinners Kdang and Thine Is Glory Mraz can do to prevent Praise Yelm Gror and Righteous Wroth Zor coming to blows. It is rumoured that the Apostle of Antirius may soon take the unprecedented step of declaring Righteous Wroth Zor a heretic. If he does, then the Penitent-General of the Elmharshnikine Order will have no recourse to but engage the Holy Patriarch in Theological Discourse*.
*Theological Discourse is a peculiar Penitential Solar Church custom, in which debates in liturgy and doctrine are resolved. Each disputer stands before the Lord Yelm, professes their faith, and proceeds to assault their opponent with a large golden maul, while loudly shouting their theological argument. The Lord Yelm guides the blows and words of the truly faithful, and thus strikes down the heretic. It is remarkably effective.
| Entry
Requirements: |
Open to any in the
Penitential Solar Church that show significant zeal for the conversion
of the denizens Darkness, should there be a vacancy in the Hundred. |
| Homelands: | Any troll (typically near Dara Happa). |
| Abilities: |
Eye
Sore Elleden Traditions, Hundred Tactics, Know the Blessed Elmharshnik,
Maul Fighting, Rule of the Blessed Elmharshnik. Liturgists only—Venerate the Blessed Elmharshnik. |
| Relationships: |
Elleden
of the Elmharshnikine Order and the Eye Sore Hundred. |
| Virtues: |
Hate
Darkness, Proud, Zeal for Light. |
| Scripture: |
Eye Sore Eye Conquered Common Blessings—Bless
Hundred, Reconsecrate Talismans.Special
Blessings—Bless Gold, Enhance Faith, Follow Orders,
Resist Fire, Resist Lead, Strength of Loin, Third Eye Vision.Curses—Burning
Blight, Crack Lead. |
| Formulary: |
 Ordernviru Monographs 56: Emperor
Elmharshnik’s Campaign in Naveria (By Their Darkness I Shall
Know Them, Defend Betters, Enflame Gold, Light Makes Might, Rally
Righteous Host, Sing Away Darkness, Sun-Burnished Panoply, Tireless
March) |
| Talismans: |
Elleden
wear large Fire rune medallions as talismans, wrought of gold. They are
very proud of their talismans, symbols of Yelmic masculine virtue, and
display them prominently. |
| Disadvantages: |
Worship
of the Blessed Elmharshnik is misapplied worship. |
