Singular God of his faith, intolerant of others
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A relatively recent faith, currently restricted to the central regions of the Erlyid Empire. In the year 420, a mysterious prophet appeared in Lanirkos and began preaching the faith of a god he would call only The One. His own name he never revealed, saying only that he was the voice. The cult was a simple and undemanding one, involving a basic respect for all forms of life, and an energy created by harmony between all living things. The only drawback was that the faith of The One precluded tolerance of the existence of any other gods. This was not popular with the Imperial authorities. Over the next few years, The Voice of The One was persecuted and hounded, though his followers some of them in high places managed to preserve him from major harm. Claims of miracles were alternately voiced and denied. Finally, in 453 Imperial, The Voice of The One died in Karsten and was immediately and publicly assumed into Heaven. The cult of The One has been growing ever since, although it has become more militant in the years since its first and only prophet lived and died.
The Church of the One has worshipers of all kinds and races, and the domains of Good, Healing, and Animal.
Since siezing control of the central province of the Empire, the heirachy of the One have waxed massively in power, exerting a strong but generally benevolent dictatorship over the population, and achieving some measure of control of very nearly every facet of life in their land. Generally, their rule is no better or worse than that of most secular governments, but in one aspect they are absolutely adamant; there is no true faith other than that in The One, and all other faiths are false idolatary and not to be tolerated. All citizens of Nhased must be members of the church in good standing; anyone holding any form of power or publicoffice above a certain level must be a member of the priesthood; the penalty for preaching a foreign faith anywhere in the land is branding and banishment for the first offence and death for the second. Visitors of different faiths are tolerated, though overt displays of their creed - public worship, open wearing of holy symbols, public use of clerical magic - will be punished severely.
The great mother-temple, the Cathedral of The One, is the largest religious structure ever created in Alair, and also the de facto capital of the Theocracy. There are several knightly orders which serve the Church, of which the most notable are Vokrid, Rogryn and Fimgalet. Knights of Rogryn are particularly noted for their unceasing vigilance along the fringes of the Desolation.
Everything changed in 1792 when the Voice of the One returned to Alair with the Word of the One.
Preaching at first at the very front line, he entered the holy city of Karsten and spoke to enraptured thousands in the great Cathederal of The One. The People of the One, he said, should not seek to conquer the infidel, only defend and protect themselves against his wiles and assaults. In a paroxysm of religious remorse, the commanders of the Light Ones pulled their forces back to Nhased's original borders and opened negotiations for an armistice.
It was this point that Cardinal Gilraid, Commissioner of the Designators of the True Faith, made the shocking claim that the newly-appeared prophet was not what he claimed to be, but an Imperial imtelligence agent. While the presentation of evidence and counter-evidence, witness and counter-witness lashed back and forth, the theological debate and accusations of heresy and blasphemy were more fiery by far. The monolithic Church of the One had never known internal disagreement on this scale, and the schism split the entire Theocracy into fragments, with adherents of each side scattered randomly across the country, each man examining his own faith to choose his side. After several bloody years of confusion the two factions established themselves into stronghold areas and settled into a protracted and savage civil war.The Gilraidists, the larger party, were hampered by fighting a war on two fronts, with both the Empire and with the Voicers. The latter were still guided by the Voice of the One, upon whose head the Gilraidists placed an astronomical price.
In 1850 the Voice of the One, desperate to end the sectarian war between the Voicers and Gilraidists, began a complex and powerful piece of ritual magic, the Ritual of Flaying. The spell was targeted on the largest concentration of Gilraidist troops, somewhere in the Brinnon region of Nhased. It took a year to complete and when released, inflicted unbelievable amounts of damage to both land and life. The effects were far in excess of what was intended; shockwaves rippled out from the original target for nearly two hundred miles, exterminating all life and reducing the countryside to a magically poisoned wasteland. Technically, this won the war for the Voicers, but their country was effectively destroyed. Over half the population of Nhased was killed in one day. Karsten and Lanirkos were both ruined and the Cathederal of the One, centre of their faith, was destroyed and inaccessible. The Voice was not seen again after the Flaying, and it is supposed that he was destroyed by his own apocalypse.
The damage of the Ritual of Flaying extended over the eastern border and engulfed most of the war zone between Nhased and the Erlyid Empire, destroying ninety percent of the fighting capability of both nations in one stroke.
As of 2100, the tiny remaining northern splinter of the Theocracy of Nhased clings to nationhood, still loyal to the missing Voice of the One. The fortress Vokrid, once home to an order of knights pledged to fight the desolation, has been expanded to become the last Nhasedan city. The centre of what was Nhased remains a wasteland, no longer poisoned but uninhabitable. Many kinds of the Curst have migrated from the remaining Desolation to the Nhased Waste.
The Gilraidist faction was effectively wiped out in the disaster.