Church of the One

"It is always possible the records are incomplete."

- Proverb of the Azurejays, Scholar-Knights of San Sylvester

This article is incomplete and will require additional work.

The Church of the One, sometimes more enigmatically referred to as the Church of Truth or the First Truth, is the common name for the loosely organized followers of The Enemy and the "redemptive" saints San Meteo and San Verus, by way of analogy to the Church of Bastonia. This name is chiefly used by two sorts of people: those wishing to cast aspersion on their enemies by associating them with Bastonia's most forbidden religious organizations, or members of those organizations. While the name calls to mind a sprawling religious organization bordering on being a state itself, like the Church of Bastonia, by all accounts since the Battle of the First Wall the Church of the One has been a scattered organization at best, and an outright myth at its worst.

This article will deal with the Church of the One as it historically existed, and as scattered pockets of surviving "true believers" practice its original edicts and faiths. Bear in mind that within Bastonia not all labelled as followers of the Church of the One are such persons, and even those who claim their membership in it may be lone heretics seeking to recreate the church, thinking it lost.

Theology and Doctrine

The License

The License is a collection of teachings laying out moral truisms through parable and historical allegory. The license, when recorded in Bastonian Vulgate, often comprises as many as half a dozen volumes, and are usually published alongside several more volumes of commentary, including profane commentaries on the Almighty's divine liturgy, the Rubrics. In such collections some emphasis is usually placed on perverting the message of the Rubrics and thereby converting followers of the Almighty secretly to the fold of the Enemy.

Adherents to the License often make appeals to their own moral authority and to precedent; the profane texts being much older than the Rubrics. Doctrinal direction borders on the Machiavellian, stressing the importance of both the right exercise of authority and the right submission to higher authority. There is also a refutation of the more common understandings of Heaven and Hell, inverting the usual Bastonian tropes by imagining the former as a place of bland, blind slavedom to the Almighty and her Traitors, at least in the latter commentaries. Indeed, Hell itself is misleadingly described in terms that make it seem vibrant and palatial, and frame "the inheritors of the Truth" as its eventual masters.

The Twilight Almanac and Litany of Heaven

Two other holy texts frequently referenced by this church include the Twilight Almanac and Litany of Heaven. Both texts have uses in sorcery and divination, and both occasionally appear in grey-market trade, usually slipped into compilation-volumes of alchemical texts or appended or prepended to blank-bound grimoires for the use of wizards. In and of themselves the texts are relatively harmless, but taken together with the appropriate lens they do expand upon the inverted mythologies presented through the License and even give ritual formulae for various old practices of the Church of the One. Highly censored versions of the texts are often given Imprimatur and official permission to be printed; such an abridged version of the Litany of Heaven is likely to be found in the spellbook or library of any self-respecting Bastonian wizard.

San Elijah the Ungraced

San Elijah is one of three so-called "Redemptive Saints", albiet one who occupies as shadowed a place in the liturgies of the Church of the One as he does in the Church of Bastonia. According to the common hagiographies, he was a man of low birth, born as a contemporary to Lukas of Whiterock, who served as a soldier in the hosts of the enemy before and during the Battle of the First Wall. Up until this time, he gained some reputation as a loyal and reliable soldier, and captained a unit of mercenaries, which is what attracted the Enemy's attention and lead to him being elevated as a Saint. However, during the episode of the Breach, at the moment of San Lukas's own elevation, Elijah was inspired by the sight of the knight plunging into the breach and turned his company against their allies.

Rituals directed to San Elijah call him to forget his treacheries and tempt him back to the righteous loyalty he previously exhibited, or goad him into inspiring warfare, which is seen as always suiting the Enemy's purposes.

San Meteo the Untrusting

San Meteo is known as "the Untrusting", but is also seen by this church as the last remaining loyal saint, though that loyalty is limited, as he is also seen to be motivated largely by the Enemy's continuing beneficence. He is said to have struck a deal with the enemy that resulted in the Breech during the battle of the first wall - if Elijah was a loyalist of the Enemy who turned traitor during the dawn of Bastonia, then Meteo is the opposite.

Rituals directed to Meteo are entirely dedicated to dealmaking. A sacrifice or offering is always a component, and the objective is always a specific outcome. He is a god-saint of Bargains, and his personal church is nearly as large as the Church of the One itself. His godhood is sometimes seen as a threat to the Enemy's primacy and some rituals surrounding him are intended to keep him docile and in service of the greater truth.

San Verus the Mad

San Verus is sometimes called the Failed Saint. He was elevated to sainthood by the Enemy during the construction of Whiterock and the leadup to the Battle of the First Wall, but was promptly driven mad by his power. He was briefly the prince of Baghar, a city he lost immediately upon receiving it, as the Enemy had to drive him out of the city to prevent him from destroying it.

The Church of the One discourages his direct worship but acknowledges his reality and occasionally uses him as an object-lesson in the importance of obedience. It is a matter of church dogma that San Verus's current imprisonment in the Bosom of Creation at Pandemonium was the Enemy's means of disposing of him.

The Enemy

The Enemy is the principal diety of the Church of the One, and is presumably the "one" to which the title refers. It is a matter of Church Doctrine that in the time between the reign of the Builders of Baghar and the Men of Baghar, the Enemy came to Ahren and found the stock of men in lands far to the south. He granted them the light of the mind currently associated with humans and other races of mortals and brought them to Wisteria (and presumably, other lands) to serve him. This version of events is reflected in the teachings of the Awakened One and even acknowledged by the Church of Bastonia, though it is discouraged to discuss these events except in passing.

The Enemy is therefore seen as a primordial diety similar to The Almighty, and by church doctrine is the true lord of hell - a fact often disputed by the Princes of Hell but few mortals are in a position to ask about these matters. Church doctrine is actually not to deny the power of the Almighty but to deny the righteousness of her claims to authority. The Enemy is therefore usually referred to as "The One", and the epithet "usurper" is used for The Almighty, who is seen as a traitor-god come to sow division. The Awakened One, a mortal man who ascended to godhood on his own virtues, is seen in a similar way.