Sects

Sects is the word I’m using for the “gray area” of churches… something I’m going to be relying on in the Xaeyruudh campaign both to introduce variety and also to keep the players guessing.

The idea is that there can be variations in interpretation of key ideas in each church, and this can result in schisms (like the Protestants splitting from the mainstream church of their day, if you want a real-world example) but it can also be smaller in scale.  It doesn’t have to result in a church splitting into two churches.  Sometimes it can’t go that way, because the mainstream church would hunt you down and exterminate you before you could gather enough support to defend yourself.  So you spread your own ideas, as much as your self-preservation instinct allows for, and keep your heretical ideas under wraps when your superiors are listening.  If your instincts are good enough, and if your ideas are appealing enough, then you have yourself a sect.

To keep things relatively simple, I’m organizing them by alignment.  I recognize the possibility that there could be 14 CG churches of Anhur, but that would be kinda crazy and I don’t want to be crazy.  So all CG “churches” venerating one God-King are considered one sect of that God-King.  CG churches of another God-King are a sect of that God-King.  Each alignment gets its own sect.  Potentially.

The head of each pantheon (Horus-Re and Gilgeam) can theoretically have a sect for each alignment.  In practice, the church of Horus-Re only has six sects and the church of Gilgeam really only has one.  To limit the crazyness of having up to nine churches for each God-King, only the head of each pantheon gets that kind of diversity.

The other central God-Kings – Anhur, Isis, Nephthys, Osiris, and Thoth – get a sect for each alignment within two steps of their own.  Anhur is CG, for instance, so his church can have up to six sects: CG, CN, CE, NG, N, LG.  Once again, this is just a theoretical max; sects tend to combine and ally with each other.

The remaining mainstream God-Kings – Bast, Geb, Hathor, Nut, Shu, and Tefnut – are limited to one alignment “step”.  Hathor is LG; her church has up to three sects… LG, LN, and NG.

The other God-Kings – and churches of foreign deities trying to get established in the Old Empires – don’t get sects, with the exception of Set.  Set is sorta like the head of his own subpantheon (which contains only himself) so he gets a loophole.  But it’s mostly academic because most of Set’s followers join his church because they like what he stands for.

The result of this “graying” is a bewildering array of possibilities… like CE followers of Anhur and CG followers of Set.  This is by design.  It creates a framework for unexpected interactions… roleplaying opportunities!

The Ancient Might of Horus-Re

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

The Xaeyruudh Campaign

The Ancient Might is a sect within the church of Horus-Re which seeks to shape Mulhorand into an empire with a closer resemblance to Imaskar.

To this end, they seek artifacts of Imaskar (to remind all of the God-Kings of their past glory) and anything which will help them gain the upper hand against the “enemies of Mulhorand” – which includes, in their mind, anyone who doesn’t agree with the entirety of their agenda.

In spite of their frustration with the conservative regime, they have not assassinated any Pharaohs… which is more than the mainstream church can say.

Of all the sects in the church of Horus-Re, the Ancient Might is most focused on Re. From their perspective, the empire started sliding into decline as soon as Horus succeeded and became Horus-Re.

Source

  • The Ancient Might was created for the Xaeyruudh campaign

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