The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (96 page)

Appendix: Clerics: Priests, Monks, Nuns and Holy Warriors

The term "cleric" is used to describe members of a religious order who serve a god. Specifically, these are members who have taken vows and are bound to a deity, as opposed to those who are simply worshipers or members of lay associations.

The most widely known clerics are a deity's priests; however, most religions have other more secular members who are also pledged to the deity. These members may have different skill sets, functions and may or may not be mana wielders. Those who are mana wielders channel mana in the same way as priests; the primary difference is that they typically don't conduct worship rituals and collect mana from worshipers.

Listed below are the most common clerical types. The exact names may vary from religion to religion, and not all religions have all positions; some may have more.

Priests:
Priests are the principal agents of the deities on Astlan. They conduct worship and collect offerings of mana, animus and money from worshipers. They also provide healing, religious instruction, mentoring, care and other services as required.

Monks:
Monks are typically male members of the religion who have taken vows of loyalty and are linked to the deity; they are not, however, typically illuminaries. Illuminaries are people who collect and funnel mana and animus upstream to a deity. Monks are often craftsmen for the church. They can be clerks, scholars, sages, and in some religions, warriors.

Nuns:
Nuns are typically female members of the religion who have taken vows of loyalty and are linked to the deity. Like monks, they are not typically illuminaries. In many religions, nuns perform healing and caretaking roles at the instruction of the priests. Like monks, they may also be craftsmen, clerks, scholars and sages, and again like monks, warriors in some religions.

Holy Warriors:
Holy warriors are military units of churches. Not all churches have armies, but if they do, this is how they are typically classified. Vows and linkage to the deity depend on religion and level. In some cases, no particular vow is needed and the soldiers are simply in the employ of the church, although typically they are also worshipers. Higher-rank soldiers typically have greater devotion and have vows and linkages, and are thus true clerics as well as soldiers.

Holy Knights
:
Holy Knights are knights who may or may not be of noble birth. Holy Knights are formally invested by a high-ranking member of the priesthood (typically higher than a priest). Depending on the knight, the religion and their rank, knights may or may not channel mana from the deity. If they do, their rituals and chants are generally of a martial nature for either offensive or defensive purposes when fighting the enemies of the church.

[Chapter 81]

Appendix: The Church of Tiernon

The Church of Tiernon is the official representative organization of the Etonian god Tiernon. It is based in Justicia in New Eton. The church's highest authority is the high pontificate, who resides at the Supreme Temple in Justicia. The current high pontificate is Thaddeus Barolos. The high pontificate is assisted by High Chamberlain Mericas and both his own and the high chamberlain’s staff of functionaries.

The arch-diocese is the council of eight arch-diocates, each of whom are designated with full responsibility for a region of Astlan. They are the church's highest authority in their domain. The arch-diocese is also the body from which a new high pontificate is selected upon the death of the previous high pontificate.

In addition to the formal priesthood, the Church of Tiernon has three other organizations:

The Brothers of Tiernon
are monks who provide administrative and personal services to the priesthood. They also operate monasteries that provide instruction and training both to other clerics and to worshipers. These monasteries also provide hostel services to clerics of Tiernon in their travels, and produce goods and services for use within the church.

The Sisters of Tiernon
are nuns who specialize primarily in education, particularly that of children, healing, counseling and shelter for worshipers, as well as providing crafts and services for the church.

The Rod of Tiernon
is probably the best-known organ of Tiernon in Astlan outside of the priesthood. In some regions, it is more well known, and often confused with, the priesthood. The Rod is the military arm of the church and is responsible for the safety and security of all church members and property. They are also the front line in exploration and conversion for the church. The often work closely with the Rangers of Torean and the Seafarers of Namora to expand the reach of all Etonian religions.

Below is a table listing the major ranks within the Church of Tiernon and the names, domains and seats of power for the senior members of the religion.

[Chapter 81]

Appendix: Greater Demon vs. Knight Rampant of Tiernon; Freehold

DISCLAIMER:

"This ballcast is the exclusive property of and is copyrighted by The Sovereign State of Oorstemoth in all known planes of existence: those of Men, Gods, and Elements as well as the Astral Plane, all Ethereal Realms and the Abyss. It is for the private use of our authorized audience only. Any other use of this ballcast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the battle without Oorstemoth’s written consent is prohibited."

A short (adult human-size) demon rises to its full height and moves into a fighting stance. “At least this time I’ll be able to put up a fight,” he answers bravely to a question posed by the Knight Rampant, Talarius.

“I don’t think it will be that much of a fight; I’ve taken your measure once before, demon,” Talarius responds very seriously.

“Well, then,” a voice booms down from above as a demon identical to the one on the ground, but easily twice as large, comes in for a landing between the knight and the smaller demon. “How about fighting an adult? Man to man, rather than slaughtering children for sport?”

Talarius steps back in surprise and shock as the twelve-foot tall demon lands. The entire circle of priests steps back, giving them more room, the priests behind the front row getting shoved violently back.

“What lies are you spewing, demon?” Talarius asks the greater demon.

“First, I thought you were a holy man, sworn to goodness? You sounded a bit smug and egotistical talking to the
[garbled]
. You know what they say: Pride goeth before the fall? Vanity is the root of all evil? And so on.”

One can see the knight’s eyes twitch within his helmet; the demon has hit a nerve.

“Second, [
garbled]
is just a child. I don’t think it’s very honorable for a great and glorious knight to go around killing children for sport, do you?”

“That is no child, it’s a demon,” Talarius tells the greater demon sternly, “and removing evil from this world is not a sport, it’s a duty. A solemn duty.”

The greater demon shakes his head as if in exasperation. “What, you think demons don’t have children? You’ve seen his human form. That is what he really looks like; that is who he really is. And you killed him, in your own tent, for no reason other than he’d been flying overhead the night before.”

“Lies, lies! He came with you through a portal to take over the world!” A high priest pushes his way forward to yell at the greater demon.

The greater demon looks with pity at the priest. “Verigas, you were meddling where you shouldn’t have been. I needed a doorway to get my human charges back to Astlan; you simply provided that gateway. No one harmed you. We even arranged for you to escape. If we meant you harm, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“Liar! All demons lie. You seek to confuse us with your lies!” Verigas shouted.

“You are as crazy as those damn wizards, blinded by your own paranoia and fear. You can’t even see the truth when it’s presented to you because you are too wrapped up in silly superstitions and prejudices,” the greater demon retorts.

“Enough chatter, demon!” Talarius shouts. “You simply seek to delay us so that your compatriots can destroy us!”

“Destroy you?” The giant demon waves his arms around. “We—my compatriots as you call them and I—aren’t the ones who were lying in ambush outside the city waiting for us to be driven out against our will where you could begin slaughtering us!” He raises his arms above his head in frustration. “You have seriously got to be kidding me. It is you who seek to destroy us; we are simply trying to get out of Freehold, thanks to a spell cast by wizards. The only people getting killed are demons! Look around!” He waves his arms more vigorously.

“Your words are ever so cunning. Greater demons are ‘greater’ not just for their size but for their cunning and deceptiveness.”

“Dude,” the demon says, “—and I say that in most laid back way I can—you are seriously tripping! I don’t have to be cunning or deceptive; you guys are falling all over yourselves with your own paranoia and self-deceptions.”

“Why do you prevaricate? Let’s have this out,” Talarius demands.

The demon sighs. “So you want to fight me?” The knight tilts his head in agreement. “Very well: here’s the deal. We fight, just you and me, no one else. If you win, you guys get to continue on with what you were doing before I arrived. If I win, you and the Rod stop attacking the demons and let them go their own way in peace. Agreed?”

Talarius’s eyes narrow in calculation for a moment and then he finally nods and says, “Agreed.”

The greater demon nods and gestures for everyone to step back. The priests surrounding them do so, as do the three demons standing behind him. The demon looks around the circle as if judging whether or not they can be trusted to keep their word. He blinks staring at the surrounding army, almost as if puzzled and distracted by something.

Swooshhh-thud!
“Agghhh!” the demon roars as Talarius’s sword rips into his side. The demon looks down at his side, where there is a huge gash and blood oozing out. He shakes his head and flashes to flame, suddenly re-forming without the wound. One can hear a few gasps from the crowd as the demon easily heals itself.

The demon turns his attention back to the knight just as his sword comes slashing towards him. The demon blocks it with his hand and curses as the blade bites deeply into his hand. He turns his hand to flame and then re-forms it.

The knight is winding up for another huge slash, so the demon quickly spins and gives the knight a standing back kick in the gut at full strength, grimacing on impact.

The knight goes flying backwards, smashing to the ground on his buttocks. He springs back up like a gymnast, almost as if he wasn’t covered head to toe in heavy metal.

Talarius advances, this time with shield ready to deflect a kick. The demon changes fighting stances. The knight’s left side is protected by the shield while the right hand holds the sword. As the knight moves in, raising his arm to slash, the demon moves quickly to the knight’s right side and performs a whirling back kick to the knight’s right flank, roaring loudly. A brilliant flash of red light strikes the knight along with the demon’s hoof.

Talarius goes flying forward and to the left, off balance, taken by surprise. His sword coincidentally slashes the demon’s forearm, slicing deeply, but the demon flash-heals it almost without a thought. The knight regains his balance quickly, clearly breathing harder.

The knight moves in again, whirls and slides down low under the demon’s legs, twisting somehow to bring his very pointy spiked boot right up into the demon’s monstrously oversized testicles. The demon howls in agony; his tail slashes down like a razor, raking with a nasty shriek across the knight’s armor.

As the sharp spade squeals across the armor, lightning coruscates over the surface of the armor, released from the demon’s tail spade. The demon completes his action, pulling away from the knight and crouching, protecting his testicles. In doing so, his tail leaves the knight and the electricity stopped.

“That was rather a low blow, knight!” the demon growls at Talarius.

“It pays to protect the family jewels, fiend!” Talarius glares back at him.

The knight moves in for another slice; the demon blocks with his arm and tries a forward kick. The blade slams tightly into his forearm, lodging in the bone. The demon’s kick bounces off the knight’s shield.

The demon flashes to fire, releasing the sword, and starts a new spinning back kick between sword and shield while in fire mode, solidifying as his foot slides through the opening.
Wham!
The knight goes flying backwards, shield and sword spreading wide. The demon seizes the moment; scrambling forward and using his wings, he pounces on the knight with a hard, open-handed punch to the solar plexus, clearly intending his claws to gouge through the armor. Again, that huge screeching noise as the demon’s claws slide and scrape along the armor!

The knight struggles to curl himself together and eject the demon. The demon, whose left hand is drawn back, brings it forward in an open-handed thrust at the shoulder joint of the knight, a region protected only by chain mail.

This time the demon strikes home, hard. His nails cannot quite seem to pierce the chainmail, but the blunt force causes a cracking noise and a screech from Talarius. The knight’s sword flashes through the air, slicing through the demon’s wing. The demon screams in anger and pain and flashes to flame.

During the few seconds it takes to do that, the knight dives through the demon’s flame form and regains his feet. Once solid, the demon starts to rise and Talarius takes the opportunity to slice the demon’s tail off. It falls flat on the ground, twitching. The demon flashes to flame again and then back.

While this has been happening, the priests of Tiernon have begun chanting in unison, and a gold circle forms around the greater demon and, in fact, the entire area of combat.

The demon begins repositioning itself as Talarius removes his hand from his shoulder, where he apparently had been using a healing ritual to fix his most recent wounds.

The knight gets back into fighting position, as does the demon. The knight thrusts forward suddenly; however, the demon was prepared and side steps, grabbing the knight’s sword arm with both hands and lifting. The knight is over six feet tall, but the demon nearly twelve, so in many ways it is like an adult battling a child. The demon lifts the knight up and over his own shoulder, spinning and then slamming the knight as hard as he can into the ground.

The knight had managed to slash the demon’s side deeply with his sword during this, and his shield had smashed the demon’s head, but the knight seems to have gotten the worst of the deal.

The knight is on the ground, winded and wounded. For some odd reason, the demon steps back and waits for the knight to slowly climb to his feet. As the knight stands, one can hear him chanting something and suddenly golden light washes over the knight. Now his armor seems to glow more brightly, and he stands straighter.

The knight tilts his head forward, glaring at the demon in anger. He shouts something in a strange language and charges, point first. The demon steps aside, apparently intending to repeat his last maneuver, but suddenly the knight stops, spins and seems to shimmer. His blade whisks around, seeming to turn to pure light and extending beyond its normal reach to slice through both the demon’s thighs!  The demon screams as it crashes to the ground, its bat-like wings fluttering frantically but unable to catch him before he falls. He bursts into flame again and swats the knight hard with his flaming hand. Talarius ducks, but is still grazed by the fire.

The demon assumes a fighting stance and begins fist-punching the air, pointing at Talarius. As his hand reaches out, blasts of fire leap from the demon’s fist to strike the knight. The knight deflects the blasts with his shield. The demon rises into the air and fires straight down; still the knight deflects the blasts. Fireballs ricochet into the surrounding priests to loud howls of pain, and the priest quickly begin patting the flames out on their compatriots.

The demon moves in closer and the knight slashes at him. The sword moves through the flames slowly and jerkily and the demon roars in pain, clearly surprised that the knight can wound him.

The demon lands and suddenly launches a solid, continuous blast of flame at the knight, as if unleashing a portal to the Plane of Fire. Instead of raising his shield to defend, the knight simply brings his sword forward, clasping it with both hands, the shield hanging unused on his left forearm.

The flames are being parted by the sword; parted and swept aside like water before the bow of a ship. The blasts are redirected to the surrounding crowd, scorching several before they are able to raise magic shields to protect themselves.

Suddenly the demon’s flame turned a mixture of white with blue streaks of lightning. The knight shuddered under the new assault and began mouthing some ritual. The cold fire began to close in on the knight. The demon’s body was now cold fire with blasts of lightning from it. However, there is a steady seepage of flame from the demon to the ring surrounding the combat. It appears that the priests are siphoning off the demon’s energy.

The demon suddenly seems to realize what is happening and becomes even angrier, but it does him no good, for suddenly archers of the Rod begin shooting magical arrows at him. As each arrow strikes the demon, a burst of golden yellow light, like a tiny star, appears for a few seconds.

The demon’s flames begin to flicker. Suddenly the torrent of cold fire and electricity ceases as the icy demon leaps spinning into the air, materializing as he lands behind the knight. Immediately he grabs the knight’s legs and jerks them out from under him, pulling the knight upside down as the demon stands. The demon handles the knight as if he were but a rag doll, smashing him face first into the ground. He then pulls the knight’s legs apart and kicks him right in the crotch—payback from before.

The demon picks the knight up and smashes him into the ground again, the knight twisting feverishly to escape the demon’s grasp. The demon lifts and smashes the knight into the ground yet again, then he drives the edge of his hoof in between the knight’s thigh plates and calf plates until a crunching sound is heard. The demon pulls back, twisting and lifting the knight, bringing him up and over his own shoulders and head, and then smashing the knight down on his back.