L'église universelle

The church has a complex relationship with the Empire.   The church is actually one of the principalities that forms the Empire. The leader of this principality has a dual relationship reporting both to the Emperor Charles I as a holding, but also to Pope Augustinius as the head of the church.   In addition, the individual churches that exist throughout the territories are considered soveriegn territory of the church principality. As such the churches themselves and the people that support them are not subject to control by the liege's of these other principalities. This creates a significant conflict as they do not pay taxes to the local liege, nor are they subject to his rules and restrictions. Conflicts often escalate to the Emperor's staff.

Monotheism in Zihæt

The Persopoulos Faith paved the way from the polytheistic traditions of the Younger Races, to the concept of a single primary creator diety, and his opposition by an Adversary. This concept was further developed into a monotheistic culture, with the Adversary being demoted from a god to simply a powerful being or set of beings.  

Human repression

The Voulgaropoulos Tribe was ultimately driven from the Dragonshome Islands. The Voulgaropoulos tribe was exiled from the Dragonshome Islands in 3711, after first refusing to join the newly formed city-state of Íliopólis, and several later raids sacking the city for bounty and female Slaves.   After their migration to the Northern Continent and Eastern Continent, the tribe splintered. Those that relocated to the regions of Burgandy and Avignon began to develop a human-centric view of the world and developed the narrative that their exile was due to the jealousy and discrimination of the lesser races on Zihæt.   Subsequent preachers built upon this message and created a culture where they believe they are the righteous, persecuted by the unclean and unholy. The concept of a struggle to cleanse the face of Zihæt from the threat of these lesser creatures began to develop amongst the more hardline in the church.  

Apocalyptic Prophet and the Holy Empire

A prophet appears in approximately 4000, picking up the apocalyptic themes present from the Persopoulos Faith. During this time, he combines the message of the righteous being persecuted with the claims of a cosmic struggle in which their god, Dieu will be victorious and place them at the head of the world order. What began as a splinter sect rapidly becomes the dominant theology within the religion.   Concurrent with this, this prophet bestows the ability to perform "miracles" similar to the magic of native beings on his primary followers, and upon the leaders of the Voulgaropoulos Tribe. The leader of the tribe then begins to unify the disparate Voulgaropoulos tribes of the nothern continent and proclaims a Holy Empire.   This holy empire used a combination of coercive strength, a strong narrative of struggle, and the visible miracles granted by the prophet to quickly unify the tribes into principalities, and also created the formal structures of the L'église universelle (or the church).  

Early Church

With the conversion of large groups of people, the church began to localize its approach to preaching and adoption. Many of the local polytheistic and animist traditions are coopted into the theology of the church.   These local evangelists and early converts to the formal church often took the message of persecution and the apocalyptic promise of a kingdom to come and extended it to martyrdom. By being unafraid to die for their God, they set examples for the new communities and helped to drive the spread throughout the western portions of the northern continent.  

Church and State

The evolving military empire used the mission and message of the church to help unify the multiple principalities formed in the regions of Burgandy and Avignon.   Similarly, once these newly formed principalities took up the L'église universelle as the formal religion of their domains, spread of the religion increased.  

Development of written doctrine.

Approximatley 100 years after the disappearance of the prophet, the church began putting the teachings down into written form. The church became the primary means of disseminating these written accounts to the principalities and down through the villages. As part of this, the church indirectly became responsible for the education of the princes, their retainers and eventually the commoners.  

Forced assimilation of original monotheists

Eventually, as the more hardline members of the church became more dominant, there was a blacklash against the church and a growing desire to return to the simpler lives. This led to a rediscovery of the animistic religions and some polytheistic traditions of The Northern Peoples.   Unwilling to see their loss of power, first the church and then the empire proclaimed this to be the work of the Adversary. They then authorized an inquisition to identify and root out this heresy, the most common being lapsed converts and political dissidents.

The Knights of Humanité are the military force of the church's principality. While ostensibly reporting to the Emperor as part of the Empire's military force, in practice the Pope Augustinius exerts more direct control over their training, mission and deployment.

Sexual Immorality / Promiscuity

• "Dieu will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."
• "Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body."

Used to impose standards on behaviour.