The Thonian Church, 1004 AC
by RylethDM Background
I have a strong dislike for polytheistic fantasy. I have many reasons for this which are too complex to go into at the moment, but I wanted to move Mystara away from this IMC. Mystara seems to be uniquely suited to this, since it doesn’t even have gods, and the original Immortals set didn’t even mention the Immortals as being worshiped.
Therefore, I set out to remove Immortal worship from Mystara, without changing too much established lore. The solution I came up with was to demote them from deities to patrons. I grew up with the Moldvay red and blue books, and I always loved how they portray the struggle between Law and Chaos as universal and all-encompassing. So, I decided to return to that model. The Immortals become the great masterminds behind the war, with both sides striving to overturn the other and reshape the world without them.
Alignment and Cosmic Morality
The Immortals of the Spheres of Life are the archons of Law. They are responsible for coordinating the efforts of all the beings of Law in the eternal fight against the Sphere of Death. Since there are so few of them, it is not really possible for them to fight their battles directly, even with their immense power. Therefore, they recruit mortals to their service, sharing their power in exchange for service. Mortals understand that their Immortal patrons are not gods, but merely powerful lords, similar to their mortal kings and princes, but in a larger, cosmic sense. The common man honors the Immortals as the protectors of his home, the ones who keep evil at bay and allow civilization to thrive, the weather to remain calm, and life to go on normally. The symbol of Law is the Sword of Lhomarr, a white cross on a black background.
Clerics are those who choose to forego more immediate concerns, such as farming or working a trade, for a place on that cosmic battleground. Clerical orders are formed of those followers of the Immortals who desire to join the war and aid the Immortals in their efforts. They pray to their patrons, acting as the eyes and ears of their orders, and are granted a small part of the power of the Immortals as spells that they use to further the goals of the order.
Against the Spheres of Life and Law is the Sphere of Death/Entropy and Chaos. The forces of Chaos are led by the Immortals of Entropy. Chaos seeks the opposite of Law: it wants to tear down civilization, break codes of conduct, destroy relationships, and ultimately place the self above all else. The followers of Chaos are primarily the despotic and kraterocratic humanoid races, as well as the other evil monsters who do not form civilizations and simply live for their own pleasures, including chromatic dragons, lycanthropes, and other solitary hunters. They also include those humans who live lives of selfishness, such as thieves, swindlers, and politicians, though many of them are unaware that their alignment is truly Chaotic, instead believing themselves to be neutral. The idea of neutrality is a lie, created by Chaotic thinkers to deceive people into forsaking Law. There can be no neutral: every intelligent being seeks either the good of the world, or the good of the self. The symbol of Chaos is the Eye of Arik, a red eye on an black background.
Chaos needs no formal servants, as its followers spread chaos and destruction everywhere they go naturally; such is the nature of Death. However, for those who truly wish to serve the cause of destruction and malice, the path of the dark cleric is available. Though the idea is stolen from the Immortals of Law, the concept is no less sound or powerful, and clerics of Death use the same spells as clerics of life, though they use reversed forms instead where possible.
The Thonian High Church
With information taken from James Mishler’s Blackmoor timeline and Geoff Gander’s Lhomarr, both of which were very inspiring and helpful to me in this endeavor.
In the age of Blackmoor, the population of the Immortals was still relatively small, as the Immortals had not yet begun sponsoring candidates on a wide scale. There were no individual Immortal clerical orders, but instead, the Thonian High Church served as the interface between the Mortal and Immortal worlds. The Immortals communicated with the church leadership, who in turn coordinated their mortal followers, and this system achieved such deeds as the extermination of beastmen on Skothar and the First Beastmen Crusade of 3480 BC, which sought to do the same in Brun.
The Thonian Church was born in the very early days of the Thonian Republic, around 5000 BC. Prior to that, the Immortals paid little attention to mankind, and when they did, tended to raise up prophets and seers on a case by case basis to serve their interests. When humans gathered in large enough numbers to found an empire though, the Immortals began to take notice and established more formal relations. Clerics in these days did not receive spells from the Immortals, and had no specific Immortal patrons. The only members of the Church with spells were the Paladins, oath-bound warriors who drew power directly from the Spheres of Power and served only Law.
This was not the first time the Immortals had parlayed with mankind, however. Thousands of years prior to the founding of Thonia, the Empire of Lhomarr has risen and fallen in its great war with the black city of Y’hog. The Immortals had much more direct contact with Lhomarr, sometimes even manifesting in the Prime Plane to aid in their battles and counter the Servitors of the Outer Beings fielded by the Carnifex. From them, the Lhomarrians learned much of the lore of the Outer Beings, as well as strategies and powers to counter them.
This was the last time that the Immortals would sit around the campfire with humanity, though, as with the destruction of Lhomarr and Y’hog, the Immortals vowed to cease their interference with the mortal world, believing (incorrectly) that the last remaining vestiges of Outer Being worship and knowledge had been lost, a position which they still hold to this day. They believe that the best way to keep the Outer Beings imprisoned is for them to be forgotten, reasoning that no one can free them if no one knows about them. As they did with Nithia many millennia later, they sought to remove all knowledge of them from the world, and very nearly succeeded. They believe this strategy to be working, as their great Enemy has not resurfaced to openly challenge them ever since that day in 7020 BC, when the greatest assembly of Immortals and Exalted seen in the world since the days of the Greater Carnifex marched on the island of Y’hegg-T’uhath and pronounced their judgement. Since that day, the Immortals have not deemed it necessary to interfere with the lives of mortals, and cooperation between the Immortals of Life and Death that led to the creation of the city of Pandius and the Immortal Prime Directive have enforced that position to this day.
But unknown to the Immortals, their teachings had not been entirely lost. Lhomarr from its earliest days had been a society of seafarers, and when the land sunk beneath the waves, not every Lhomarrian vessel was docked in its harbors. Among the survivors was a small portion of the Lhomarrian military, who eventually found their way to Skothar and integrated into Thonia. Seeking guidance from the Immortals, a group of them were transported to the Hollow World and integrated into Selhomarr. Seeing this, the other survivors vowed to keep their true nature secret, and reveal nothing about their true heritage, lest the Immortals stifle the precious knowledge they carried. They foresaw that a day would come when they Immortals were proven wrong, and their ancient foe resurfaced, and they laid up all their lore against that day. Returning to Bellisaria and the Esterhold Peninsula, they were driven out by the Tanagoro, settling in the Thonian Marches, where they intermarried with the native Neathar tribes which would eventually go on to found the Republic of Thonia.
The exiles knew they would not survive as a people due to their numbers, and they wisely chose to open their ranks to outsiders. To those who showed wisdom and strength, they opened their ranks, and in this way, even though the blood of Lhomarr was diluted and absorbed into the population of the region, the lore and legends of those times survived. Naming themselves the Sword of Lhomarr, they became a secret society of warrior-scholars, who hunted down Outer worship wherever it could be found. Much was lost in those days, as the organization struggled to survive among the warring tribes of the plains.
But with the organization of the Thonian High Church, members of the Sword of Lhomarr saw an opportunity. The patriarch of the church, a far-seeing man named Allek the Establisher, secretly integrated the Sword of Lhomarr into the Church as an underground order of theologians who would guide the Church and preserve the secret lore under the very noses of the Immortals.
The Great Schism
Around 3400 BC, the Thonian High Church began to be led by Thonian noblemen who had been corrupted by the influence of the Serpentine Empire and lapsed into decadence over the following century. As a result, in 3330, following the Blackmoorian invasion of Thonia, the Sword of Lhomarr acted on a large scale for the first time in its history. They used their influence and the power of another of their members, King Uther VII of Blackmoor, to bring a new church out of the decay of the old, the Reformed Thonian Church. In doing so, they also changed the parameters of their relationship with the Immortals, creating the first clerical order: the Church of Blackmoor. The Immortals were still not granting spells to their clerics at this point, but the rising population and complexity of Blackmoorian life made it easier for clerics to devote themselves to one particular patron instead of the whole. The Church of Blackmoor existed alongside the Reformed Thonian Church, and clerics could choose to serve a particular Immortal of Blackmoor, or Law directly in the larger Church. The Thonian High Church also adopted this practice, but integrated it directly into their structure and did away with the pure clerics of Life.
When the Great Rain of Fire happened, Blackmoor and Thonia were both obliterated, nullifying the meaning of the Church of Blackmoor and the Thonian High Church. In the aftermath of the cataclysm, the Immortals formed their own orders, granting spells to help them survive in the harsh nuclear wasteland. It was around this time that the Immortals began to sponsor candidates with much more intentionality, as there had been too few of them to stop the cataclysm from happening.
The Present
The Reformed Thonian Church survived in New Blackmoor, the present day Known World, though it was all but eradicated from Taymora when that land still existed. The Sword of Lhomarr survived, too, though even more was lost in the cataclysm. It has survived up to the present day, existing alongside modern clerical orders and national churches, serving as a generic Church of Law which honors all the Immortals, but serves none. It works alongside the other churches, lending aid and support in the service of Law. During the Wrath of the Immortals, the RTC served a mostly humanitarian role, as none of the Immortal factions had control over it.
Beneath it all, the Sword of Lhomarr lies, waiting for the day long awaited when Outer worship would stir once more, remaining ever vigilant. Their paladins travel the world, seeking out and destroying it wherever it gains a foothold, though they are very few in number. Recently, Outer worship has been on the rise throughout the Known World for reasons unknown, and the paladins are preparing for it, recruiting new members as quickly as possible. The Sword of Lhomarr has only a few dozen members in the Known World in total, and recruitment is very slow, as they walk the delicate balance between providing enough information to attract interest, while avoiding spreading too much information and causing panic, or worse, attracting Immortal attention. (They are right to be concerned—the official stance of the Immortals is that Outer worship is gone, and the best way to keep them contained forever is to make sure no one knows about them. This plan is failing miserably, but the cults have become experts at hiding over the millennia.)
At the present time of my campaign, at the beginning of 1005 AC, one paladin, Sir Ellis the Strong, has been dispatched to the hidden kingdom of Haven to investigate rumors that one of the ruby Eyes of Arik, thought long lost, had been discovered there. The events of B3 have begun, and my party is on its way to investigate.
What the Sword of Lhomarr Knows
After 7000 years, the vast majority of the ancient lore has been lost. The order has two copies of The Precepts of Akh’All, and one of The Lore and Legends of Y’hog. These volumes were both assembled without the guidance of the order, and discovered after the fact. They served to correct and complete many of the fragmented legends that had been passed down over the years, and the legends helped to corroborate and testify to the accuracy of the modern books. Together, they encompass the majority of what the order knows.
One of the primary weapons retained by the Order are the two spells they have preserved from the time of Lhomarr: Identify Servitor and Nullify Outer Power. These two spells more than any others have given the Sword of Lhomarr the advantage over their foes, and forced many cults to the fringes of society. The paladins work secretly, disguising themselves as adventurers and mercenaries, and are therefore very difficult to track and identify—but their unerring ability to see through their enemies’ disguises has allowed them to keep the upper hand in most cases. Recently though, they have been finding that the ever-increasing numbers of the cultists, combined with their own lack of numbers, has been resulting in more and more corruption and Outer influence throughout the Known World and beyond. With the world on the edge of war, the highest ranking members are worried that if the Outer Beings are involved, (which, IMC, they are) then their order may have become too small to do anything about it.
Future Plans
My campaign is currently 6 days from the start of 1005 AC. Alphatia will declare war on Glantri in a few months, and then the Wrath of the Immortals has truly begun. However, my plan is to twist this story quite a bit. Rather than simply a squabble between Rad and Ixion, my plan is for the party (aided by Rheddrian) to slowly discover the sinister power that has been goading the Immortals for centuries, building up nationalistic tendencies and breaking down the cohesive cooperation between the powers of Law that held them for so long.
The other great victory that Chaos has achieved is to have had Entropy accepted into the social circles of the Immortals. They’ve spread the lie that is stated as fact in the Wrath handbook, that the other spheres need Entropy to stay in balance, (true IRL in a physical sense but not cosmologically here) and as a result the Immortals of Life simply tolerate the Immortals of Death, viewing them as troublemakers but equals. A few of the older Immortals, Ixion, Terra, Khoronus, etc, still remember the wars in the young Multiverse between Life and Death, but it has been a very long time and they have become absorbed in the dramatic and entertaining lives of mortals. They have not forgotten about the threat the Outer Beings pose, but they do believe that they have been mostly successful in removing them from the knowledge of the world and successfully safeguarded their prison forever.
They could not be more wrong though. Not only have Outer cults proliferated in secret, the Immortals of Death (especially Thanatos and Hel) have been deliberately lulling them into complacency for millennia. They do not want the Outer Beings to return, but they do want to destroy Life and cause another Inversion of the Spheres to transition to a multiverse ruled by Death.
My plan is that eventually, the PCs will discover concrete proof that the Outer Beings are influencing the Immortals, and then the war will change to one between the Immortals of Life and Law against the Immortals of Death and Chaos, and the Outer Beings. Ixion will realize that more Immortals is a good thing, regardless of where they come from, and Rad will realize that his true duty is to protect Existence from the Outer Beings, and most of the Immortals will unite against the Outer Beings. Then there will be a big interplanar war which I don’t have any plans for yet.
P.S.
Sorry if something here doesn't make a lot of sense, I'm really tired and my proofreading brain isn't firing on all cylinders.