(The) religion

So we have the lie. The lie was promulgated by a sect, a cult, a religious organization. This organization has since become an institution, a prosperous and powerful edifice which influences the life of almost everyone alive (in the area of the world that buys into the lie).

I'm wary of having this sect be monotheistic, or even worshipful of a jealous god who frowns on the worship of other gods, because those things turn this sect (in the medieval mileu) into a proxy for the Catholic church. This sect should be differentiated from Catholicism. To do that:

a) this sect will be devoted to a goddess.
b) this goddess will not be jealous.

Gods in general

Those two imply a few things. First of all, obviously there are other gods. These shouldn't be too uniform; that's a trap. It's not like there's a family and they all come from the mythic Originator in a neat line of succession. There are different and frequently contradictory stories about them and their exploits. Their "portfolios" tend to overlap in odd, frustrating ways, like the way that Aphrodite rules love and Hera rules marriage, or the way that there are five or six gods you can appeal to for victory in battle, or how there are gods you appeal to only in a very specific circumstance - during a marriage ceremony, for instance. Remember syncretism; Mercury = Odin for the ancient Romans. There should be a feeling of gods having different faces in different countries, and this should be somewhat confusing - but some gods really are unique to their culture (like Isis), which allows for the feeling that certain god is "foreign" as opposed to other "local" gods.

The Goddess and society

Gods were very important to social order in the ancient and medieval world. So let's talk about how religion fits into the social order of the city.

So this is one of the places in this world where the lie is most powerful. To me, that says that this place always worshipped our goddess. In some places, she was a minor figure or even a new one who suddenly gained prominence after the catastrophe, but here she was always powerful. The idea that occurred to me just now which I'm loving is that she's a goddess associated with wisdom and truth, especially the latter. There are a few reasons I'm really liking that idea:

• It means that her priests and acolytes would likely be the kind of people, people who respected information, that would come up with the lie in the first place.
• It lends itself towards this faith having the preoccupation with records, text, and criticism that I've been envisioning, as seen in the character of L.
  
• It fits with the idea of her having been an important but not central character in many places in the past, before the catastrophe.
• It lends a certain narrative grandeur -and a certain piquant flavor - to the idea of her having fought to end the catastrophe - truth vs. evil, light vs. darkness.
• It's just so damn Minitrue, right?
• It fits in thematically with the idea that people can have a more gnostic, personal relationship based on truth and understanding with this goddess than with other gods.
  

Ok, so, the Goddess has always been powerful and prominent in this part of the world, this culture group. That means that she was a civic institution, and the institution has only gotten stronger with time. That also means that her "portfolio" is extremely broad here, much broader than in other places. There are no doubt citywide festivals, huge temples, statues, as well as small shrines devoted to particular aspects and faces of the goddess. Here more than in other places she's woven into everyday life - which, no doubt, has the odd side effect of making her more mundane at the same time it makes you more important. In other places, she probably has a somewhat magical air. She has holy books and mysteries and acolytes in places where most gods just have a little shrine on the outskirts of town.

The Cult in detail

In the city, though, she's huge. Her statues are in the squares, everybody says a quick prayer to her at some point during a busy week, her name is on everybody's lips when they make oaths. That makes her prominent, but less mysterious. The average citizen thinks of her much more like a "regular" god, some distant authority that needs to be appeased. A greater segment of the population is devoted to her, however; there are acolytes, and initiates, and priests, people whose whole lives are devoted to the Goddess. There are lots of them.

This is rare in most places, and this is what really sets the Goddess apart in the "modern" (for lack of a batter term) day. Most temples and shrines have priests, a few individuals who serve the god. These people either take on the role of priest because they're wealthy (in the Greco-Roman tradition) or are publicly supported or live off of offerings given by supplicants. At the fringes, for the lesser or most local gods, there's an element of marketing involved: you need to attract enough supplicants to live off of the offerings. That opens up the idea - I don't want to make a decision about how common this is yet, but it's a notion - of charlatan priests who have no qualifications, basically con men. Anyway, temples have priests, and if they're big temples, more than one. Prosperous temples no doubt have employees, as well. People to clean up, people to make repairs, people to help the priest perform rituals. Sometimes these people are volunteers from the community, sometimes they're employed through funds made available for that purpose (sometimes maybe a combination of the two, like how juries were paid wages in Athens). And that's it. So ends the temple.

Not so the Goddess. Here in the city and in her other major centers, her temples are big organizations. Essentially, these are places that move away from the classical model into a medieval model of a holy institution. They're communities, not necessarily walled like monasteries but definitely insular, of people who do nothing but work for the Goddess (or at least, for her cult). There are scribes and copyists recording lore, both of the Goddess and of other cultures. There are doctors and healers who practice their arts on the behalf of the cult for the betterment of the community, and pass on their knowledge to the next generation. There are many priests with different vocations, some who do nothing but pray and perform the rituals, some who help the community. There are even soldiers - temple guards, effectively, people who do nothing but guard the holy places of the Goddess.

As holy warriors are wont, these guardians merit further exploration. But that is for another day.

Naturally, all of this activity involves lots of money coming in and out of the temples. Some amount comes, like the Catholic church, from the broader world. This amount is a significant amount of the temple's income, and it will probably be a sore spot elsewhere in the world. The rest is local; essentially, all of the (quite significant) offerings at the little temples and shrines in the city are pooled rather than going straight to the priest running the temple.

All of this money moving from place is what necessitates the guards, as well as the bureaucrats, administrators, and a very active leadership. The cult is an active organization in the world: it reaches out and tries to do good works, tries to benefit the community. It also preserves and spreads knowledge and learning, which is, y'know, good work and all. This is the power of the cult in the broader world. It's organized in a way that other faiths just aren't, because there are these big nerve centers where people write and think and count money and train doctors and lawyers and whatever else, and these nerve centers are talking to the little shrines in Bum Fuck, Middle of Nowhere. Even if I'm the priest of the Goddess in a city where she's not a big part of civic life, I probably know all the doctors in town because they come to use my library. I' m a good source of news, I'm a good source of information of all kinds. People come to me, and once they do I know them, and I can probably learn things from them as well. And over time, knowledge turns into power.

Plus, I'm doing this full-time. Whatever else I do with my life, if I'm a merchant or a prominent politician or whatever, if I'm the priest of the goddess, unlike the other faiths, it means that I Believe and I have Faith and I have a personal relationship with Her. Her, yeah, that's right, with a capital. I care more than the other guy.

The Goddess offers a gnostic experience that's not unique, but uncommon. There are other gods and goddesses with mysteries, but She has mysteries and priests with knowledge and power and connections, and She has the lie.

The Goddess' Mysteries

The mysteries are important. Level of initiation is important. So let's think about this a little.

At the lower levels are employees of the goddess. People who are involved, committed, whose life centers around the church but aren't spiritually enlightened yet. Acolytes, minor officials, the people who light candles and greet people in the temples and assist the scribes and sweep the floors and whatever. All those little people. Then there are initiates. They've been through the first level of the mysteries, which is a crazy experience but ultimately not much different from any mundane mystery initiation. Very intense, but it doesn't necessarily reshape your whole world view. The Goddess is theoretically present, and there's a sense of ecstasy and it gives you a lot to think about - but ultimately it's a ritual, however powerful, and you got through it and you go back to your old life. You learn the secret practices of the church. You learn the secret-handshaky kinds of things, and the ideas of knowledge becoming power and power doing good, all the stuff I talk about above, is made explicit (if explained in flowery, poetic language that prevents all initiates from being completely clear on it).

This is the "normal" level of initiation. Congregants, in the sense of people like the early Christians whose faith is a huge commitment and a big part of their life, are initiated at this level. Most of the "staff" at the "nerve centers" has this level of initiation. Most "priests" in the sense of those who perform rituals and pray and are visible to the public have this level.

The higher level is very rare. Only a few individuals go through it, the leaders at the "nerve centers" and a certain number of especially holy people who go out into the world. It involves having the lie made plain to you, the truth that a group of people who were very human sat around and concocted it and decided to spread it.

The other part involves a private and intensely personal encounter with the goddess. The question is, what happens in that encounter?

One possibility is that she isn't there. The whole thing is a god(dess hahahahahhahaha)damned lie, not just "the lie."

One possibility is that she's there, and she's pissed at hell. She can't believe her name is being corrupted in this horrible, horrible way.

One possibility is that she's there, and her position is more nuanced. Maybe she doesn't have a stance on "the church" or "the lie," maybe she has a stance on the initiate. Instructions, revelations, judgments, just for you and nobody else. I think I like that best.

Truth is personal.

Implications and incomplete ideas

To do:

• the Goddess' sect has some holy texts. Some are mysterious, some are not. A lot of them probably contradict. Let's work that out. THERE'S PROBABLY ONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE LIE.
  
• Let's draw a more complete picture of sacred life in the city. Specific rituals and festivals and other deities and practices and superstitions.
• Aspects of the goddess
• To do with the "culture groups" project, some other ways of looking at things - especially at the goddess.
  

The constitution of the city

The city is in the middle of a dukedom. The duke is the highest authority; there is no king to whom he answers. The dukedom is afflicted by subinfeudation. There are any number of local nobles with power and resources to rival the duke's - or at least, there have been. We pick up our story at the long-awaited culmination of the duke's efforts to take control of his fief, dealing one at a time with nobles who were more or less in open revolt. Specifically, we pick up on the eve of a battle which, if won, will force the last intransigent nobles to submit to the duke's authority.

The city has a charter from the duke, making it an independent political entity. It's still under his authority, but enjoys certain privileges: it's governed by its own laws and its own magistrates, and the duke can't (easily, legally) interfere with internal matters. The city does have to furnish the duke with tribute and military resources, but the requirements are fixed at a relatively low rate. This arrangement has worked out very much in the duke's favor as he worked to take control of his territory. The city very much prefers a strong duke, because the duke can be expected to abide by the charter; upstart lesser nobles have sometimes influence city politics illegally or extralegally, and even raided or besieged the city to force concessions or pocket loot. In addition, the city benefits most from contact with the outside world, as its economy is based on manufacture and trade. The rural fiefdoms benefit as well, of course, but not as much, and in ways that don't always benefit the local lords directly. In short, the city has been a staunch supporter of the duke during his military adventures against his rebellious vassals, and as the conflict ends the citizens are looking forward to increased order and prosperity.

City politics are complex. In fact, outsiders used to feudal simplicity frequently use the word "insane" or "unworkable." The government is composed of a web of magistracies and assemblies, each with extensive power within a specific portfolio, and relatively little oversight from other branches.

Firstly, there are three types of citizens: after the Roman model, let's think of them for the moment as Patricians (city fathers), Equestrians (knights), and Plebs (commons). They're all citizens, but they have very different rights, privileges and responsibilities. Patricians are extremely privileged in city law. All the most powerful magistracies are open to them. They enjoy all sorts of rights - by custom - regarding their persons and property. For instance, they may only ever be placed under house arrest, regardless of circumstances. They're likely to be granted trial very quickly, and their trial is very likely to be fair (since it's being arranged and observed by other patricians who would want their trial to be fair). They're traditionally addressed as "your honor." Patrician status is almost entirely hereditary; you have to be born or married into a Patrician family.

Patricians don't technically have a lot of formal obligations to the city. However, there is a strong tradition of service, and while a Patrician who doesn't live up to it won't face legal consequences, the other Patricians will do everything in their power to give that individual their comeuppance socially.

Probably the greatest power of the Patricians is automatic membership in the Patrician Assembly, which can veto any action of any other part of the city government by simple majority vote.

Equestrians are the "upper middle" class. The name may or may not be misleading; I'll need to make a decision about the relative scarcity of heavy cavalry in this setting. It may not make sense for their to be an entire class of city dweller below the Patricians who have the resources to outfit a horse. In any event, the idea is that Equestrians are people who have the resources necessary to personally contribute substantially towards the military defense of the city. They can outfit themselves as horsemen, or afford money for arms and armor and time for training to become elite infantry. As such, it's theoretically a property class, but not always. First, you have to apply to become Equestrian, which means that you can have wealthy Plebs who never bother; this is looked down upon, since it means that you refuse to take responsibility for defending the city. Second, you can be refused Equestrian status if you're a criminal or aren't deemed "honorable," which in some instances means that it boils down to politics. Third, Equestrians tend to look out for other Equestrians, so if your family is respectable enough, the authorities will tend to look the other way if you no longer meet the property qualifications, as long as you can keep appearances up. This can get very awkward all around when the Equestrians are actually called upon to take the field, and a lot of "fake Equestrians" invariably get exposed and ousted at those times. There is a committee in charge of overseeing Equestrian membership, and they're both a very powerful and very corrupt branch of the city government, very prone to playing favorites.

Equestrians aren't as privileged or deferred to as Patricians, but they're entitled to justice in courts administered by other Equestrians, and they can hold many of the magistracies, though none of the most powerful. They also, fittingly, have a great deal of influence over military matters. If the assembly of the Equestrians votes to with an overwhelming majority, they can veto an action of any magistrate - pending a vote by the Patrician Assembly to upheld the Equestrian veto.

Equestrians are usually addressed as "Sir" (for men) or Madam (for women).

Last are the plebs. The plebs are everybody else. There are prosperous plebs, there are accomplished plebs, there are honored plebs, but they're still plebs. A prominent pleb may socialize with an Equestrian or even, occasionally, a Patrician, but there will always be a feeling of condescension, however subtle. Plebs can hold only the most junior magistracies, usually in roles reporting directly to another magistrate. They enjoy certain legal protections as citizens: their property can't be seized without due process, for instance, and they can't be prevented from speaking or taking part in the Pleb's Assembly. The only justice they have access to is the justice of the magistrates, however, administered by Patricians. Any able-bodied individual is subject to conscription in the event of war.

The only political power of the plebeian class is the Pleb's Assembly. The Assembly can render judgment on certain types of legal cases involving only plebs, and it can issue a formal statement or appeal to any magistrate or to the other Assemblies. It also administers plebeian conscripts, though it has to take direction from the Equestrian Assembly and certain magistrates in that regard.

Plebs are usually addressed as "Mister" or "Ma'am." Not sure about that "Ma'am" since it's just a shortened form of "Madam," but it has the right feel.

Some magistracy ideas:

Consuls - had veto power, conducted policy under direction of Senate.
Praetor - conducted minor matters of state under direction of Senate. Power of judgment.
Quaestor - treasurer, effectively. Disbursed and oversaw use of public funds.
Aedile - infrastructure. Oversaw buildings and festivals.
Censor - public morality, finances, census.

A city - ?

I'm thinking about cities. Cities are great, eh?

The thing is that I love institutions. I love systems with moving parts that interact, offices with odd powers that can be exploited to different ends. Julius Caesar conquered Rome (in part) by taking by seeing opportunities in the powers of two offices: aedile, which made him responsible for public festivals, and pontifex maxiums, a priestly post which carried a grab bag of ritual and legal responsibilities and powers. He used the office of aedile to throw incredibly elaborate games and festivals, winning the love of the plebs. And it turned out the pontifex maximus had control of the calendar, a power with any number of political uses (oh, no, his term of office actually doesn't end till next week - sorry, we were due for a few leap days).

That's not important except that it's a good example of the kind of thing I mean. There are institutions with blurred borders, offices with odd powers, positions with unexpected influence. There are checks and balances, and every player in the game is trying to shift the balance their way.

I think I want the setting to be (principally) a city, and the characters to be involved in the governing institutions of that city.

What kind of place is this city? Well, that's still a little up in the air. It's independent, at least to a degree, and therefore something of a world unto itself. It's governed by institutions rather than laws or a tyrant, and therefore a bit chaotic. It's prosperous to a point, but over time it's been in decline. It has a past - a nasty one. It's been depopulated; there are empty houses on the edge of town.

I think the depopulation event is tied to the great lie, and to the prophecy.