Church of Bastonia

The Church of Bastonia is the official state religion (and only sanctioned religious observation) in the Kingdom of Bastonia, centered on the worship of the Almighty and her retinue of "Great Saints" - the majority of the Bastonian Pantheon. While arguably polytheistic, the Church of Bastonia's theological doctrine considers itself monotheistic due to differences in worship and practice as directed to the Almighty and the saints, which is discussed in further detail below. Formally, the church can trace its creation back to the institution of Lukas of Whiterock as the King of Bastonia by divine fiat, and the events leading up to the Battle of the First Wall at the advent of the Annals of Bastonia. The Church positions The Almighty as a savior deity, freeing humanity from the yoke of the Enemy and positions itself as her voice on Ahren. Owing to its intertwined nature with the Bastonian Crown, the Church has outsize political influence, perhaps the greatest of any organized religious community on Wisteria, especially within Bastonia itself.

Theology and Doctrine

The Rubrics and the Twelvefold Edict

While each of the Great Saints have their own holy texts, the principal doctrine of the church is based upon The Rubrics, the holy text said to have been dictated to Sylvester of Zeemarch, which has since become the foundational document of the entire church, and it is this text which takes primacy over all others in Church doctrinal debate, and with which even laypeople are expected to be passingly familiar.

In addition to the Rubrics themselves, there is one passage of the work known as the Twelvefold Edict which is foundational to both canon law and secular law within Bastonia and the summarized central moral code of Church life. Children in Bastonia are taught the edict early on and Bastonians are expected to be able to recite "the twelve" by memory.

The Rubrics

The rubrics take the form of a narrative tale of the years before, during, and immediately after the Battle of the First Wall, but should not be taken as a literal transcription of History - for that, we have the Annals. Instead, the tales of the lives of the earliest Saints and those who died before, during, and after the Battle of the First Wall are the foundation of a tapestry of parables and fables designed to help deliver the appropriate mental attitudes into the faithful - but this leaves them subject to interpretation.

Clerical Interpretation

Clerical understanding of the Rubrics is constantly evolving, because the key flaw of parables is that they have the koan-like property of being subject to interpretation through the inherently biased lens of whoever is contemplating them. In general, the Rubrics are seen as showing the foundation of just and upright lives for all persons. Of course, the church also views passages relating to the establishment of the saints as a general justification for the existence and practices of the entire church, while much of church doctrine is evolutions of Rubrical interpretations rather than being spelled out directly in the rubrics themselves.

Common Lay Conception

Your average layperson in Bastonia does not have their own copy of the Rubrics, and relies on understanding them through a combination of their own memory as they are read to them throughout the liturgical year, and their agreement or disagreement with sermons then given on the same text by their pastors. Many Laypeople then take their interpretations of the text as gospel, so to speak, and this can lead to conflicts when differing interpretations intersect.

The Twelvefold Edict

The Twelvefold Edict is a well-known passage of the Rubrics, which even laypeople are expected to have memorized by adulthood. It gives a guideline on how to live a moral and upstanding life.

The Twelve Edicts Are:

1. The Almighty is the Most High, From Whom All Righteousness Springs
2. Speak not the True Name of the Almighty
3. Remember thy history and serve it well
4. Maintain the Observation of the Breach
5. Your First Fealty is Family
6. Do Not Kill Unjustly
7. Do Not Take That Which Is Not Given
8. Speak Truth, or Speak Not
9. Envy Becomes Greed, Greed Makes Enemies
10. Maintain the Sanctity of Each Other
11. Maintain the Sanctity of These Lands To Which I Have Brought You
12. Maintain the Sanctity of the Mind

Violating these Edicts constitutes sinful behavior in the eyes of the church (with the last three being especially "extensive" in terms of what causes a violation). There is a pastoral ceremony known as Reconciliation that deals with

Clerical Interpretation

Unsurprisingly, these simple and poetic instructions can be bent a surprisingly broad latitude, but in general, the Clergy should be thought of as having gotten the edicts more right than wrong. The understanding of Church Leadership surrounding the Edicts is that they should be seen as guidelines, each with an extenuating circumstance, and even without, that the Almighty's merciful nature recognizes the inherent imperfections of mankind, and that forgiveness is possible for any transgression through her direct intercession. Indeed, facilitating these ceremonies of forgiveness eats up quite a bit of Pastoral time.

The Church, as a rule, makes the 10th, 11th, and 12th edicts especially important in their own doctrines, along with the 3rd and 4th, as all serve church functions to an exceptional degree. These doctrines are the basis of many church organs' existence, including the laws against the pursuit of other religions within the Kingdom of Bastonia and church positions as captains of academia.

Common Lay Conception

Laypeople tend to view this list much less flexibly than Clerics, and consider the edicts closer to laws than guidelines, which is an attitude that the Church itself has perhaps cultivated over the years. However, they also tend to have much more generous interpretations of them, which can be both good or ill: a poor noble or royal might over-stretch the bounds of "Unjustly" in the 6th Edict to facilitate tyranny or deliberately misinterpret the 11th Edict to morally justify a colonial war, but some laypeople also interpret the 5th and 10th broadly enough to support incredible strength of community and work of charity within their immediate circles.

Worship and Veneration

Under church doctrine, only the Almighty is giving the full devotion of worship, and the Great Saints and lesser saints are instead simply "venerated", based on the best interpretations of the First Edict. This means, in some sense, that Faith is transferred between congregation and the Almighty much moreso than the Great Saints, though this is not necessarily clear to the mortals engaging in her worship.

The justification for the practice of the veneration of saints, especially the Great Saints mentioned directly in the Rubrics, comes from the miraculous nature of the lives of those saints and their own great Faith in the Almighty. The general belief is that the Great Saints and lesser saints all obtain their power through the Almighty having "sanctified" them, and that they are thus favoured by her. Veneration of the Saints could therefore be thought of as one part predecessor-worship and one part seeking an intercessory power to take your side.

Clerical Interpretation

Clerics teach the doctrine above, less the portion dealing with the transference of Faith. In the Clerical and lay-religious view, the Almighty is the captain of all divinity and the Great Saints are more or less just an additional level of church hierarchy above mere mortals. Indeed, this is true to such an extent that some clergy make no veneration of the saints at all, and many others venerate only the saints the situation calls for, or perhaps the Saints ascribed to their holy order.

Common Lay Conception

Laity often tend to get this doctrine almost completely backward, which is why the Great Saints get enough Faith to be considered fully divine in the first place. All Laity acknowledge the primacy of the Almighty, of course, and worship her accordingly. But individual laypeople who do get involved with Saint Veneration do so so frequently as to constitute a worshipful practice all on its own; very often, this comes in the form of frequent and devout veneration of the Great Saint associated with their trade or homeland.

Common Ceremonies

The church is full of common ceremonies, most of which are laid out in a document known as the Order of Heaven. These ceremonies all have very precise formulae for their observance and while many (especially the order of the breach) change throughout what is known as the "Liturgical Year", the general form would be the same at every observance.

As a point of interest, the Liturgical Year is a system within the church for dividing up lay instruction to fully cover the Rubrics over the run of a single year, beginning and ending on the Day of Expiation each year.

Pastoral Observations

There are a number of frequent observations that each parish observes, the most important of which are the Observance of the Breach and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Most such observations impose a cost - postulated as a tithe or voluntary donation - on the observant laity, which can be waved at the officiant's discretion.

Observance of the Breach

The Observance of the Breach is the cornerstone of religious observance within Bastonia, and these weekly services are generally not to be missed for any reason other than grave illness or death in transit, with some exceptions. During these ceremonies, the whole community is called together to the parish chapel, church, or cathedral by the peel of alarm bells. A ritual symbolic reenactment of a portion of the Battle of the Last Wall is conducted, in which the pastor travels the rows of the congregants and marks their brow with an anointment paste that leaves a gray mark, and then recites the Twelve Edicts before giving a reading (or electing an officer to give the reading) and then themselves delivering a sermon based upon that reading. While heavily abstracted, these rites are based upon the events of the breach during the Battle of the First Wall, and the similarities between liturgical instrumentation and martial instrumentation are not an accident.

Only those who have not violated the edicts without having obtained the sacrament of Reconciliation in some way may (either the personal or communal form) may be so marked. In cases where the congregant cannot be appropriately marked, they may still observe the service, but bow their head at the passing of the Pastor to signal their unfitness. No judgement is intended to be passed in such a case. This Marking is, however, deeply important to the Bastonian sense of communal identity as it specifically calls to mind the admonition that all Bastonians serve in the Army of Heaven. Those who have not had the Sacrament of Foundation are also exempt and failure to mark themselves out for this reason is effectively considered a blasphemy, due to the (largely symbolic and frankly often unintended) implications of treachery.

Personal and Communal Reconciliation

Like many religions with a conception of sin, the Church of Bastonia also required a concept of forgiveness, to be found formally in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which takes two forms, of which Personal Reconciliation is by far the most common.

Personal Reconciliation is a version of the Sacrament which should be seen as the most common, available at any time from any pastor, and even conducted between members of the clergy. Such reconciliation requires the confession of the sins with which one is concerned to the cleric (almost always a pastor), who will then assign an act of restorative penance to the parishioner. For sins against the Almighty, this might be a prayerful observation, for sins against others, this might be confession, repayment, or even submission to judicial process, and for sins against the self this would take the form deemed most appropriate by the pastor in question as being "actually helpful" to the congregant. Thereafter, the pastor places a conditional blessing upon the congregant that they shall be forgiven once they have completed the quest on which they have been set.

Communal Reconciliation is a special ceremony observed only twice a year, on the Feast of the Triumph and the Day of Expiation, in which the Observance of the Breach is proceeded by a public rendition of the same blessing. This is done so that on the two holiest days of the Liturgical Year, no congregant may refuse Marking during the Observance, and therefore all may be called up in defense of the First Wall.

Foundation Days

A significant observance in the life of every Bastonian, usually only remembered by them dimly and through the proxy of having witnessed this observance for others, is the Sacrament of Foundation. On or after the 10th birthday, a ceremony will be held at an appropriate location and attended by the family of the newly-minted congregant, during which they are treated almost as a knight. They must kneel before the seat of the Pastor or Bishop officiating the ceremony and recite, from memory, the Twelve Edicts, then adequately echo a call-and-response in which they agree to pledge their lives to upholding these ideals and to the "Defense of the First Wall". To mark the achievement, they are dusted heavily in fine sand or ash (to symbolize mortar dust, which is sometimes also used if available), which they are obliged to remain covered with for the remainder of the day.

Usually, even in poorer households, this event is followed up with as grand a party as can be managed, and generally marks the end of the innocence of childhood and the beginning of the (often longer than anyone involved would like) transition to full adulthood.

Institution Ceremonies

The Religious Orders of the Church of Bastonia are organizations of "lay religious" who live a strictly regimented lifestyle focused on religious observance, but who are not themselves (usually) priestly members of the church (that is, they are not clergy). These orders' permanent members none the less undergo a special sacrament considered the equivalent of marriage or the vowtaking of holy orders, which are collectively known as "institution ceremonies". These institution ceremonies are specific to each order as they are developed allegorically around their founding Great Saint, but must usually be conducted by a Bishop or Abbot and are often proceeded by a year or more of intensive training and education within the order, known as a "Novitiate", during which time the individual in question is considered a Novice (in the Sylvestrite order, "Acolyte").

The most universal observation within these Institution ceremonies is to swear to uphold the holy text of their order's founding Saint, which usually involves submitting to a number of rules that do not apply to laypeople. Almost always, this includes vows of poverty and chastity.

Vowtaking of the Holy Orders

The Vowtaking of the Holy Orders is the ceremony through which a layman, seminarian, or lay religious becomes "fully a priest", and must be conducted by a Bishop or an Archbishop with the appropriate authority. The Ceremony is extremely peculiar, with secular scholarship suggesting that some of the practices (like the prostration of the postulant) mirroring rituals seen in pre-funerary ablutions, suggesting "rebirth" as a possible theme for the priesthood, though this is not actually doctrinally mentioned anywhere.

During the ceremony, the postulant swears a number of individual vows, each forswearing a certain set of behaviours. They rededicate themselves to upholding the Twelve Edicts, but also to the observance of pastoral duty and of fealty to the Almighty more directly. The investiture ceremony that follows these vows mimics the investiture ceremonies of Barons, which is appropriate given that many Pastors command the same political or geographical authority that a Baron otherwise might, at least on church lands.

To undertake Vowtaking is to give up forever the prospect of marriage, the concept of inheritances (both those bequeathed to the postulant and those they might otherwise have bequeathed to their kin), and the prospect of holding any secular office, however minor. You are, thereafter, one of the holy people of the cloth. The Vowtaking also does not liberate you from any additional restrictions if you also belong to a religious order. It does not, however, on its own, bind you to a life of chastity per se; however, see marriage and divorce, below, for illumination of attitudes on sexual liberty.

Marriage, Family-Building and Divorce

Unsurprisingly, Marriage is extremely common in every social class of Bastonian Society, and the laws of the Kingdom require clerical intervention in establishing such a marriage - that is to say, there is no legal marriage outside of the Sacrament of Marrage.

Setting aside any relevant secular laws, a marriage requires the approval of the relevant pastor for the *senior* of the two persons to be married (and only monogamous marriages are considered practicable under canon law) to approve of conducting the marriage. No consideration of the sex or gender of those to be married is made. Such marriages are for life, and the Sacrament itself is conducted through a special ceremony (sometimes appended to an Observance of the Breach, but often not except in especially pious or especially militant families) during which self-written vows are exchanged between both spouses, and each confers the other a small gift of jewelry (traditionally a ring of wood). Thereafter, with a blessing conferred by the officiating priest, the marriage is considered joined and inviolable. It has become a breach of trust for either partner to engage in romantic or sexual activity outside of marriage and especially sinful (not that it wasn't already) for either to abuse the other.

A peculiarity of religious thinking in Bastonia has created the situation in which it is not considered inherently sinful for two or more individuals to engage in consensual "marital" activities outside of the sacrament of marriage (unless, as stated above, they happen to be married to 'someone else' at the time), but that it is considered a breach of the 10th Edict 'specifically' to induce a pregnancy in anyone other than your spouse - by cross interpretation of the 7th Edict, this is almost always seen as the fault of the male partner in such a situation. A common remedy at reconciliation for this situation is either the preparation of an alchemical abortificant or the marriage of the parents; whichever of the two best satisfies the safety and happiness of the couple and best fits the situation. Please carefully mind the explicit avoidance of the mention of sex or gender in the above paragraph apart from the mechanics of pregnancy as it is relevant to Bastonian attitudes about sexual and romantic activity overall.

A marriage can be dissolved through an additional sacrament, known as the sacrament of divorce. This can be done trivially at any time prior to the birth of the first child in the married family; thereafter, it can only be granted by a bishop on the consideration of the situation, and usually only on the grounds of adultery or abuse perpetrated by either partner. In either case, divorce marks both parties as "fundamentally blameless" through reconciliation, permitting either partner to remarry on the far side of the ceremony. That being said, the Sacrament of divorce is not the same thing as civil divorce, which can lead to much lengthier processes as the safety, economy, and logistics of the divorce are sorted out. In most cases, this process is too expensive for most Bastonians to afford and there are a great many "broken" marriages in Bastonia as a result.

Funerary Rites

Unsurprisingly, the Bastonians have developed a rich funerary practice to honour their dead. Dead are granted an honour guard, usually of their immediate family, from the time of the discovery of their death until their burial. This honour guard both serve as minor officiants in the ceremonies associated with funerals (such as the washing of the body and the preparation of its shroud) and as Pallbearers during the funeral rite itself.

Bastonians favour shrouded (or shroud-in-casket) burials into the ground wherever possible, with graves usually being dug to a depth of six feet. However, given the terrain in Bastonia, it is especially common in the North and in Estmarch to build burial mounds or cairns of loose earth or stone over the body instead.

The Funeral Rite itself is often appended to the end of an Observance of the Breach, and sometimes this combined ceremony is referred to colloquially as "the last watch" as a result. During the rite special prayers are said to "blamelessly reconcile" the dead without the usual requirement of restorative penance. The dead are then taken to a place of interment and further prayers are offered to the Almighty.

State Ceremonies

The church is, unsurprisingly, heavily involved in state ceremonies, such as the investiture of new occupants to existing Baronies, Counties, and Duchies, and of course the Archbishop of Whiterock is an explicit requirement as the officiant of the coronation of a Bastonian Monarch. In addition, special state religious observations of all kinds are made to mark victories, console the public after defeats, soothe regional tensions, or mark the procession of the wheels of state. Many laity never directly observe many of these ceremonies given the social classes expected to attend.

Holy Days

The thirteen month calendar of the Bastonians differes from the Rophalin Calendar almost exclusively in terms of the dates of festivals. Two of these are outright Holy Days in the church, and a number of others are so called "Feast Days", thought of as especially holy to particular saints. While not all universally marked, if you include the lesser saints, it is almost impossible to find a day on the calendar without a religious observance of some kind.

Day of Expiation

The Day of Expiation is a pious holiday celebrated by apology and abasement before any and all you had wronged in the year before, and the swearing of various oaths or vows to improve in the year to come. It overlaps in its observation with the turning of the year, marked on the same day that the Atarlie mark the Festival of the Turning Wheel. It is the common practice after the Observation of the Breach on this day to attend a family or community feast and stay up late, conversing and marking both the high and low points of the year while sharing your resolutions for self-betterment for the incoming year and inspiring one another to keep them up.

Festival of the Triumph

Marked on the first day of astronomical summer, the Festival of the Triumph is the single holiest day of the liturgical year. This festival marks the anniversary of the pivotal moment of the Battle of the First Wall, thereby commemorating the defeat of the Enemy and the liberation of mankind from his oppression and misrule. The usual observance is an early-morning Observance of the Breach, during which the whole community is roused by the sounds of horns and drums, prior to a re-enactment (often quite humble) or skirmish by any available parties to simulate the battle itself. As congregants reach their place of worship they are dusted with ash in memory of their Foundation Days, and a Communal Reconcilliation is made prior to the actual ceremonies of the Observance of the Breach. Thereafter, the remainder of the day is given over to festive activities to which imagination is the only limit; feasting, singing and other performances being common, but in communities that can support them whole tournaments or other competitions may even break out.

There is a longstanding tradition of the current Monarch of Bostonian participating personally in an arranged joust with their heir-apparent, the Duke of Bastonia, as the opening tilt of an extended three-day tournament in Whiterock which begins on the Festival of the Triumph every year - at least when there is not a sede vacante. These tilts are usually extremely heavily choreographed and arranged in advance, with both participants receiving heavy preliminary training from professional men-at-arms, in order to assure the safety of both.

Feast Days

Feast days are themselves considered holy, but their observance is much, much less universal than the other two Holy Days listed above. Usually, a feast day is only marked by the congregants of a lay religious community dedicated to the teachings of the Great or lesser saint in question, and maybe (for non-cloistered communities) congregants of special piety from the community they serve. Laypeople who feel an especial spiritual closeness to a particular Great Saint may make minor observances such as the (paid) lighting of a votive, an extra tithe, or especially prayerful contemplation on the day in question.

Cosmological Considerations

Unsurprisingly, the religion of the Church (and the Church itself) makes a few snap judgements on cosmological reality.

Creation of the Universe, and of Mankind

The church de-emphasizes the understanding that the Enemy created Mankind, and will even deny it outright when the idea gains currency in a local population. The focal teaching itself was that, in the same way the Enemy "twisted" an existing species to create Man, the Almighty made man "complete" through her intercession, and that before her, there were no True Men.

While it's not evident in the rubrics, many laypeople go so far as to believe that the Almighty's intercession created Ahren itself. This is a common belief outside of those versed in cosmology, such as Ars Magica practitioners, who understand that reality is a little more complex than that. That said, despite having been founded in part by one of the Great Saints directly, San Sylvester, the Church and the schools of Ars Magica frequently clash over these questions.

End of the World

The Church teaches of an impending battle known as the Battle of the Last Wall in which the Enemy will finally bypass the Bastion of Heaven and re-invade Ahren from his lands in Hell. The church is deliberately vague about the actual outcome of the battle but teaches that mankind will at this time be fully "taken up" into the Army of Heaven and thereafter dwell with the Almighty, while all those who do not side with her will be dragged by the battle into the fires of Hell. Both the literalness of this interpretation of a tale from the Ruberics and the exact timing of this event are a subject of some debate.

Hierarchy

Laypersons, Lay Religious, and Clergy

The Bastonian Church chiefly categorizes individuals into three main categories with respect to their status within the church:

• The laity, a congregation of lay persons, which are all those who are in worshipful observance of the principles of the Church and to whom the other two groups have a duty of care. De jure, this is considered to be all persons living in Bastonian lands who are not overtly worshipful outside of church practice, and includes most of every social class as a result.
• The lay religious, being those who are members explicitly of religious orders within the Church and have joined such an organization through the appropriate Institution Ceremony. Such individuals live their lives within the rules of their order, which can often be even more restrictive than those of the clergy. Never the less, the lay religious are the larger of the two subsets of individuals, and make up the bulk of those encountered in religious settings within the Kingdom of Bastonia. A further discussion on these Religious Orders is included below.
• The Clergy are those who have observed the Vowtaking of Holy Orders and therefore have pastoral or clerical duties of care. They are formally the priesthood of the church and tend to be styled accordingly and highly regarded within their communities. The involvement of the clergy is fully necessary in the lives of both the laity and the lay religious and supporting the livelihood and work of the Clergy is a major function of the economic elements of church life.

Titles and Styles of Address

While the Laity must seek elsewhere for titles and styles, both the Lay Religious and the Clergy are afforded deference, and the titles and styles that go with that deference, as a result of the worshipful conduct of the Kingdom of Bastonia.

Lay Religious are generally considered socially junior to their clerical counterparts, but have a hierarchy within themselves. The "rank and file" of the lay religious will have a title such as Brother, Sister, or Friar, depending to some extent on their preference and social role and to other extents on the typical behaviour of their order. Especially senior members of such a community, such as the leader of a cloistered community that doesn't have a priest within its own order, will append the title "Superior" to denote their status, or outward replace their title with "Prior" (again depending on the order); in some cases, such people may then go on to take Holy Orders and be styled "Abbot" instead. An especially junior member of the community who has not yet been through their institution ceremony may instead be titled "Novice" (or, in the Sylvestrite order specifically, Acolyte)

Clerical titles are much more clean cut. Junior members of the clerical class who have yet to actually undergo the Vowtaking of Holy Orders are typically titled as "Initiates", or, if studying accordingly, as "Semenarians". They may have additional roles within ceremony that lend a title - for example such a student who frequently performs the reading during pastoral ceremonies would be known as the Lector. However, after the Vowtaking of Holy Orders, there is a clear progression of title, style, and social status:

• Pastors, styled "Father", "Mother", or "Pastor" as is their preference, are the junior class of "fully priestly" clergy. They universally have a parish for which they are responsible, which is roughly equivalent to a very minor Barony, and they are often afforded deference that would be reserved for a Baron as a result. In cities, this could be simply the area of one borough of the city, or even a subordinate position within that burough (the logistics of large congregations complicate otherwise clear-cut systems). In rural areas, a Pastor might be the only cleric in the entire village and the sole church official for a day or more's ride.
• Bishops, styled "Bishop" or "Your Grace" as is relevant to the class of those addressing them, are effectively church Counts. A bishop is the chief religious officer of a single brick and mortar church, known as a Cathedral (simply because it is the house of a bishop's seat), but also the senior religious official for an entire geographical area, known as their Bishopric. Bishops carry additional responsibilities beyond those of their Pastoral peers (such as the investiture of Pastors, counts, and barons into their respective positions), and are also socially equivalent to Abbots in precedence. Bishops have an additional similarity to Counts in that they exact direct authority under Pastors within their geographical region.
• Archbishops, styled by their social lessers as "Your Eminence", could then be thought of as the Dukes of the Church, though there are more Archbishops than Dukes, and as a rule even the most senior of them, the Archbishop of Whiterock, comes just after the most junior duke (the Duke of Sudmarch) in official precedence. However, unlike Dukes, whose wealth and influence largely comes from their subordinate counts, an Archbishop does not exact fealty from subordinate Bishops; instead, like Bishops, they have authority over all Pastors in their region. While the distinction between Archbishops and Bishops is largely one of the prestige of the bishoprics (with all the Archbishops holding Bishoprics in major metropolitan areas), there is another important distinction in that only these "Arch-Bishoprics" are considered Collegiate Bishophrics, meaning only the Archbishops make up the "cameral" arm of the Church General. Additionally, while any Archbishop could create a bishop (or serve liturgically in place of a bishop), only the Archbishop of Whiterock can name an Archbishop. It is the common practice as well that when the Archbishop of Whiterock is alive (that is, when the position is not vacant), any clerical creation to bishop or archbishop is done with their explicit consent.

Promotion among these ranks is from above, and often as much about playing the game of social and political influence well as much as it is about doctrinal purity or earnestness of faith. The vast majority of clergy never climb above the rank of Pastor, and church history is full of examples of clergy refusing promotion in favour of staying with their congregation.

Organization

Bishopric of Whiterock

The Bishopric of Whiterock confers upon the Archbishop who occupies it the primacy of the Church of Bastonia. Consisting entirely of Whiterock, the capital of the Kingdom, and its immediate surrounds, the Bishopric is the headquarters of both the Collegiate Bishoprics and the Church General, home to the finest seminaries in the Kingdom, and, of course, contains most of the major organs of the state itself.

The position of Archbishop of Whiterock is conferred for the life of the Archbishop in question shortly (ideally, anyway) after the death of the previous title-holder by an assembly of the Archbishops of the Collegiate Bishoprics, who confer the title upon an individual by means of a majority vote; almost always one of their own number. This Archbishop alone has the power to create bishops into Bishoprics that would confer the authority of an Archbishop, and alone has the divine responsibility of the investiture of a monarch of Bastonia.

For this reason the Archbishop of Whiterock is rarely outside of the city they call home and alone among clergymen has an entire Chivalric Order dedicated to their protection - the Worshipful Order of the Highest Bailey.

The Church General

An institution of the church which remains extremely important is the Church General, which is the overall umbrella organization of church offices and institutions not directly involved in pastoral care. Chiefly, these organizations run institutions of higher learning or administrative offices within the church itself, such as the Court of Cannon Law, the Seminary Inquest, and the Greater Chaplaincy.

Collegiate Bishoprics

Another major institution of the Church General are the Collegiate Bishoprics, which are the Bishoprics held by those who are titular Archbishops. These Bishoprics are known as the Collegiate Bishoprics because they form up the College of Bishops, an advisory and legislative organization that meets a few times a year in Whiterun to establish church policy for the intervening season as advisors to the Archbishop of Whiterock, who serves as the college president. This council together establishes matters that touch on secular policy such as tithing, limits on the taxation properties of abbey and monastery bishoprics, compensation of clerics, and the establishment and reorganization of parishes, bishoprics, and even Collegiate Bishoprics.

The senior member of the council by age; the "Archbishop pro Temporae" will serve as the president of the College in a situation where the Archbishop of Whiterock cannot; usually, only when the church is in a period of sede vacante after the death of an Archbishop of Whiterock. In this situation, the college has congregated outside of its usual time to elect a new Archbishop of Whiterock. The Archbishop pro Temporae is out of the running for this position and so acts as the moderator for the proceedings, the exact process of which are laid out in Cannon Law.

Bishoprics, Abbeys, and Monasteries

The fundamental working unit of the Church is the Bishopric, which is best understood as a Church "county" made up of smaller parishes. A Bishop in their bishopric has remarkable lattitude to create and defrock priests, especially pastors, at their discretion, and may, with certain limits, even "split" parishes they control into multiple smaller parishes, though making this permanent requires College approval. In addition to the funds tithed by their own congregation, a bishopric receives a portion of all tithes donated to all parishes under its control, which has resulted in the generally greater opulence of most cathedrals over other kinds of local place of worship. There are, however, two special cases which function a bit like Bishoprics in terms of the primacy of their officeholders, but which may function differently, and require distinction.

An Abbey is a commonplace religious institution, equivalent in many respects to a bishopric, with two important constraints: it is made up almost entirely of lay religious, and it always is subordinate to the relevant local bishopric, though it is exempt from re-tithing to that bishopric. An Abbey, lead by an abbot (or, sometimes, an abbess), functions entirely differently from an ordinary religious institution, however. The physical abbey grounds are a place of residence, worship, and industry for an entire religious community, as well as serving a duty to "honor the holiness of the traveller", usually with spare lodging and simple food. Abbeys also function in a manner similar to baronal estates, controlling large tracts of land outside their own walls, which are typically given over to tenant farmers or sharecroppers, and on which they can raise taxes and rents in a manner similar to secular counts. The College of Bishops places limits on these latter powers, and most such Abbeys operate under charters that admonish them to keep their "burden" on the populace around them as low as possible.

Monasteries are another special case, much like an abbey, with two notable exceptions: they do not have the power to tax their tenants (as they do not have any tenants on their extraneous lands), and they are usually run by Cloistered orders, meaning they are not accessible to the general public. Monasteries are a not-unpopular form of religious institution for the lay religious to join, and though cloistered formally, they are often attended by an in-between community called postulants that are not part of the cloistered order and who interface between them and the surrounding local laity, if any. In these cases, the monastery in question often has a trade in religious goods to support itself, or is supported by its own farming and hunting efforts.

Religious Orders

The Religious Orders of the Church of Bastonia are organizations of "lay religious" who live a strictly regimented lifestyle focused on religious observance, but who are not themselves (usually) priestly members of the church (that is, they are not clergy). These orders are almost always subordinate abbeys or monasteries in the service of one of the orders founded by a Great Saint. Some overlap broadly with Chivalric Orders, and others are wholly religious.

Pastoral Institutions

The church runs a variety of pastoral institutions, the most universal of which is, of course, the Parish system. The local parish is very much at the center of Bastonian life, featuring heavily in rites of passage as well as day to day life.

However, other lesser-known Pastoral initiatives include the Office Imprimatur and the Greater Chaplaincy, both of which have obvious pastoral implications.

Political and Economic Influence

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the universal support the church enjoys within the Kingdom of Bastonia, the church has a large amount of political and economic influence. In general, clergy are not necessarily forsworn from economic enterprise, as long as they make no effort to lay personal claim over the wealth they generate (that is, as long as they run their enterprise in the name of the church), and indeed many goods are considered best obtained from religious institutions. What's more, the deep involvement of the church within the state (given the focus on Rule by Divine Right) allows for some true omnipresence and even a degree of immunity to secular authority.

Investiture of the Bastonian Monarch

As has been mentioned several times above, the Archbishop of Whiterock is responsible for the installation of the Bastonian Monarch, or at least for officially coronating them to the position, which confers the Divine Right of Kings. As a result, the Archbishop of Whiterock also enjoys some marked immunity from the usual chaos of an interregnum, as the winning side would almost always prefer to keep the Archbishop on side.

This responsibility, and the corresponding close trust between the Archbishop and the new monarch, almost always results in the Archbishop of Whiterun serving on the privy council. It also is the reason that the Worshipful Order of the West Bailey is under the Archbishop's personal command.

Congregation for the Purity of Religious Doctrine

A member-institution of the Church General, the Congregation for the Purity of Religious Doctrine is an Inquisitorial and advisory institution responsible to both the Office Imprimatur and the Crown with observing the state of Bastonian scholarship and public opinion and making appropriate adjustments thereto through "necessary pastoral means". This almost always is purely rhetorical, but at times the Congregation for the Purity of Religious Doctrine has had to declare witch trials or lead in the pacification of "doctrinal rebellions".

This congregation often permanently employs suitable members of the adventuring class for such efforts. The principal ire is focused on rooting out surviving pockets of the Church of the One, which seems to be a war that springs eternal.

Influence on Chivalric Orders

Most Bastonian Chivalric Orders are in fact a form of religious order, though much more loosely so than the Religious Orders of the Church of Bastonia. Instead of being founded on a single doctrinal document, they are instead chartered by the Bastonian Crown. That being said, the Church very much maintains a hand in them, as almost all the Chivalric orders have a patron Great Saint, and more than a few have the Almighty herself as a patron.

Priests who serve in such orders dispense with the title Pastor and replace with with Chaplain. A bishop who serves as chaplain might instead be titled Chaplain-General of the chivalric order to which they are attached.

Influence on Noble Houses

In like manner to the Bastonian Monarch, the noble houses of Bastonia turn to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Bastonian Church to officiate their investitures, though their realpolitikal power comes above them, trickling down from the Monarch themselves. These coronation and investiture ceremonies help confer legitimacy in a pious populace.

The junior children of Bastonian nobility very frequently join the church if the prospect of inheritance does not look promising, and they are not of the bent to be pawns for the game of state or go off to adventure for their own prospects. Semenaries are institutions of learning full of such students.

Industrial Connections

While not central to church life, the existence of the Abbey and Monastery systems means that the Church is fundamentally an economic player, or at least a player in industry. Abbey farmland often makes up a sizeable amount of the food available in a region, both to its own members and to those in the surrounding villages. What's more, abbeys almost always have a specialty trade for which they are known, be that carpentry, brewing, baking, bookbinding, weaving, or any of a number of other trades.

Monasteries, too, provide an important function in academia, preparing copies of important documents. They also serve heavily in church life by producing religious goods, such as vestiments, objects of worship, and consumable components used in religious ceremonies, like the pigments for the Observation of the Breach.

Views on Other Religions

Unsurprisingly for a state religion, the Church of Bastonia considers itself to be the one true church. What this means for other religions, however, does have some nuance.

Church of the One

The Church of the One and the Church of Bastonia are bitter enemies, dating all the way back to the founding of Bastonia and the liberation of the human race from general slavery under the Enemy. Both sides would happily eradicate the other if possible, but history has dealt the Church of Bastonia the generally higher hand. Where a person can be proven to be a worshipful follower of the Church of the One, they are often condemned to death as the charge is considered tantamount to treason.

State Venerations of the Atarlie Empire

Perhaps due to the reliance on the Empire as a trading partner, or a general preference to avoid conflict with the only comparable military power on the continent of Wisteria, the state religion of the Atarlie Empire is somewhat tolerated by the Church of Bastonia, with a few caveats. Its open practice is actually still forbidden in Bastonia (under the same law that outlaws all other churches), but Church officials and secular authority are inclined to "look the other way", at least in cases where the practitioners in question are elven officials. This tolerance is purely pragmatic; doctrinally this is a heresy nearly as great as that of the Church of the One, because the elves have a divinely-promoted emperor through Rophalin Imperator which is seen as a direct contest to the Almighty having instituted the Bastonian crown.

The rare elven immigrants to Bastonia know to keep their observations of the imperial cult at home.

Dwarven Ancestor Worship

While seen as a heresy, Dwarven Ancestor Worship is equally tolerated due to a fundamental misunderstanding by the Church of the Dwarven Pantheon which the dwarves have been happy to leave uncorrected, so long as those dwarves are either not living in Bastonia or are regularly attending services in their local parish. In such cases, the veneration of the Dwarven Pantheon is seen as just that - ancestral veneration - akin to Saintly Veneration but still none the less a mild heresy, treatable through Reconcilliation.

This is chiefly different from the Atarlie case because the Dwarves do not have a conception of divine right of kings.

Religions of the Lordless Lands

Bastonian scholarship does not make much study of the Lordless Lands - even the name confers some willful ignorance - and the Church rides right alongside the state of the scholarship. The religion of the Orcish Nation and the Confederacy of Sages is rarely distinguished, as both are seen by "civilized" Bastonians to be part of a strange and aberrant cultic tradition of animist spirit-worship at best and outright consortion with agents of the Enemy at worse. These religious tensions are in part responsible for the war between the newly-created Duchy of Sudmarch and the Orcish Nation toward the end of the 16th century ASM.

Religions of the Shimmering Shore

Cultural interchange between the Shimmering Shore and Bastonia was fairly limited in spite of frequent trade, in part due to church-organized limitations on the freedom of movement of Merchants outside of port cities, which were largely economically protectionist. That said, the Church does have some understanding of many of the individual gods of the shimmering shore and holds most in contempt.

The sole exception is the Awakened One. While viewed as fundamentally flawed, it is actually legal to practice both the practices of the Awakened One and the Church of Bastonia so long as they do not conflict with each other (or, where they are seen to conflict, the Church wins out). That said, his teachings are still largely restricted to those who are hearing them fourth-and-fifth hand, and the practice of his veneration is not a common one.

This is because that like San Lukas, the Awakened One was originally a mortal man subjugated by the Enemy who transcended that subjugation, becoming something like a Great Saint (according to the Church) in the process. He and his followers are therefore seen as something of uneasy potential allies for the last war, which some believe began with the Great Collapse.