Makoryn
God of Tyrrany and Vengeance
- Domains: Tyranny, Vengeance
- Channel Divinity Feats: Power of Amaunator, Bane's Instructive Stratagem, Tiamat's Bitter Vengeance, Righteous Rage of Tempus
Also called The King-in-Iron, Father of Tyrants, the Iron Lord. Among the drow of the Underdark, he is worshipped as a great and terrible spider goddess whose name must not be profaned by speaking it aloud.
- Depiction: Makoryn is most often depicted as a tall, lordly figure, clad in leathern robes set with rivets and clasps made of cold, dully grey iron. His garments are set here and there with dark, blood-red garnets, and he wears a mask-crown made of tall, sharp edges, with only pure void staring out of the eyeholes in the mask. He wields a long-handled mace crafted of cunningly interwoven iron shards, similar in design to his mask-crown.
- Godly Domain: Makoryn is the god of tyranny, imprisonment, punishment, and torture. His powers and those of his servants are concerned with concepts of misused authority, fear, intimidation and the lust for power.
- Origins: The sun goddess Khoro crafted Makoryn when she seized up the ever-transforming essence of the primordial Vabrosyn, and imprisoned it in iron and leather restraints which she imbued with divinity and fashioned into the King-in-Iron. He imprisons the eternally transforming and growing flesh-elemental Vabrosyn by slicing away all of his changes and growths, keeping him stagnant and in one shape forever by virtue of containment.
Makorynite Orthodoxy of Liminal
The Makorynite Orthodoxy began in the great city of Liminal, an outgrowth of its proximity to the Eternal Hells themselves, thanks to the imbricate nature of that city, which provides access to the very domains of the Talion gods. For the most part, most Makorynite temples in Rinhony belong to the Orthodoxy.
Theology
The orthodox theology of the core Makorynite faith holds that tyranny and vengeance are sins. It is the duty of the faithful to be watchful for signs of those afflictions, both in themselves and others. Power is the great temptation, and must be a tool for an ends, rather than the ends themselves. The sinful will be cast into the Hellshards in the afterlife, to suffer at the hands of Makoryn's iron devils.
It is the duty of the priesthood to work against tyrants and those who would subvert or pervert justice to their own ends. Though this sounds very benevolent, the fact is there is something in the Makorynite faith which thrives on suffering and pain. The faithful who are dispatched to deal with tyrants and the wicked do so with terrible brutality, often making the suffering of their targets long-lasting and very public, as a warning to others.
Makorynite doctrine embraces the concept of Proper Authority, teaching its adherents that only the gods are worthy to wield power for power's sake. Mortals are meant to defer such power to the gods, and should limit their own exercises of power during their lifetimes to whatever is needful to accomplish their aims without self-aggrandizement. The holy know that effectiveness, not glory, is the order of the day. The Makorynite faith is fairly popular with the downtrodden and poor because of this philosophy, and less popular among those with temporal power, as one might imagine.
The Makorynite priesthood also teaches that imprisonment is a holy endeavor. It is the very purpose of the Talion gods, and Makorynites often criticize the priesthoods of other Talion gods for not taking that duty more seriously. The Makorynite faith teaches that pain is purification, and that suffering leads to enlightenment, as well. For this reason it tends to have an ascetic thread running through much of its practices.
Rituals & Observances
Among other things, Makorynite temples are always constructed to include dungeons, or at least a basic gaol. The priesthood makes it very clear to the powers that be that their services as gaolers may be invoked at any time, and many rulers do take advantage of those services, rather than bothering with their own dungeons or jails.
The Makorynite Orthodoxy maintains an ever-growing body of written lore called the Hierophantine Codex. These are the accumulated writings of the sect's Iron Heirophants over the years, regarded as holy writ due to the time the Iron Hierophants spend in communion with Makoryn and his favored servants in the Talion Court. It takes two generations of Hierophants after a given Iron Hierophant dies for his writings to be considered part of the Codex canon.
Orthodox Makorynite observances are held weekly at temples. These observances usually involve ritual prostrations and admissions of powerlessness before the altar of Makoryn, as well as sermons focusing on passages from the Hierophantine Codex. Because the Codex is not generally available to the masses, it is often the only time worshippers hear the Codex's contents. Outside of these weekly services, Makorynites may come to the temple for one-on-one time with a priest, referred to as cognizance, in which they admit their own sins of power, reveal the misuse of power by others in their lives and accept sacraments of labor, usually by helping to clean and feed prisoners of the temple. Those who are found guilty of great sins are encouraged to surrender themselves to holy solitude, in which they are imprisoned for a short time in the temple's dungeons as penance.
There are two great Makorynite festivals: the Prostrative Assembly and the Feast of Chastisement. The Prostrative Assembly is a three-day gathering in which those participating undertake to prove their abhorrence of the power in their lives: employers let their employees work unsupervised, parents relax their discipline, debtors forgive debts, and the high and mighty perform service for the lowly. The traditional opening to the Assembly involves the mostly highly positioned individual in the settlement making a bare-footed pilgrimage from their place of power, wearing sack cloth, to the altar of Makoryn and prostrating themselves before it. Not all nobles or lords agree to such a display, however; the rank of the one who actually performs the role of The Pilgrim is usually a mark of a given temple's influence with the local culture.
The Feast of Chastisement, on the other hand, is a week-long affair in which the faithful tend to their daily duties while wearing shackles. They spend the day light hours fasting and drinking only water, but as the sun sets, they converge on the temple for increasingly lavish fast-breaking feasts as the festival passes. The first day is simple bread and salt, but the meals become more and more impressive, until the faithful are nearly eating like kings. Those who manage to make it all the way through are welcomed to this spread with glad tidings. This feast speaks to the Makorynite doctrine that says great suffering and service in life will bring rewards to the faithful and freedom from Makoryn's afterlife.
Titles & Orders
The patriarch of the Makorynite faith is called the Iron Hierophant, who is clad in dark black leather robes, with a great crown of jagged iron, inset with garnets. The Iron Hierophant always considers the Iron Gaol in Liminal's Hellsward to be his home temple, and an entire section of that mighty temple is set aside for his use alone. Despite this, he is rarely in residence, spending much of his time in the Talion Court of Makoryn.
Beneath the Iron Hierophant is the Iron Collegium, an elite order of potent high priests of Makoryn. The great burden of keeping the church as a body operating lies with the Iron Collegium. They are given "dominions" over which they are responsible, either geographic territories or conceptual areas of interest to the church.
Beneath the Iron Collegium are the individual high priests of temples, called the Atera. This title is derived from an old term that means "one who subjugates," and refers to the priest's duty to subjugate the desire for power out of his congregation. Beneath the Atera are the ordained priests of the church, and the lay clergy who are not ordained but act in service to the faith.
The Makorynite Orthodoxy maintains several orders within its structure. The largest of their knightly orders is the Brotherhood of the Scepter, known for their brutal fighting style with maces and their ability to invoke terrible pain in their foes.
The Almanni Inquisition
The Almanni Inquisition is a branch of the Almanni Theocracy, a single religious structure that incorporates worship of all the gods both Empyrean and Talion, fitting their respective priesthoods into administrative and functional roles within the Theocracy.
The Inquisition pursues heresy and investigates impious activities in the nation of Almanni. Their agents are empowered to demand that anyone in the nation answer their questions (though an individual's rank in society can require a higher-rank inquisitor to ask those questions). To say that an inquisitor is a feared figure in the nation of Almanni is a dramatic understatement - they arguably wield more power than any other priesthood in Almanni, save perhaps that priesthood of Aevo himself (and even that is only because the Lord Theocrat, who rules the Theocracy, is always a high priest of Aevo).
The Almanni Inquisition, as a Makorynite sect, has nothing to do with the Liminal Orthodoxy of the church. Indeed, inquisitors are persecuted as heretics by the church of Makoryn outside of Almanni, and non-inquisition Makorynites take their lives into their own hands by entering Almanni.
Theology
Like all of the sects of the Theocracy, the Inquisition believes that outside sects have defiled the original intent of the gods. Just as the gods work closely together in the fulfillment of their divine duties, so should their priesthoods. The outlander tradition of setting up multiple, often conflicting religious structures for each god is blasphemy - only the Theocracy's organizational mode for all the priesthoods to work together is proper and sacred.
Within the Theocracy, Makorynites focus less on the imprisonment aspects of their god's theology, and much more on his role as a tormentor and torturer. Inquisition Makorynites believe that the primordial Vabrosyn isn't just imprisoned in the Hellshards - he is actively being tortured for primordial secrets to be handed over to the gods. To this end, Makorynites understand their role is to seek out those with secrets and discover them.
Rituals & Observances
Like all the gods worshipped in the Theocracy, Makoryn is given a slew of feast days in which the Theocracy focuses lavish praise and worship on the Iron Lord's gifts to the world. Such rituals are attended but not performed by Makorynite priests. Like many priesthoods in the Theocracy, the churches of Makoryn have priests but no congregants, since technically no single god has congregants.
The priesthood of the Inquisition has extensive rites and rituals for its priests on a personal basis, including their most sacred Rite of Discernment (as they refer to torture sessions), rites of cleansing after the Rite of Discernment, and ascetic rituals intended to strengthen and empower the priests as they carry out their missions.
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The Sudmunari Sect
A relatively minor sect of practice within the faith of Makoryn, the Sudmunari Sect is based out of Sudmunar, one of the Holandi Cit-States in the southern reaches of Rinhony. The tradition is only about sixty years old, making it one of the youngest of the Makorynite sects, but it is a vibrant and growing one. The Orthodoxy of Liminal has expressed concern over the Sudmunari theology, but has not yet spoken out against the growing sect.
Theology
The Sudmunari teach that only the faithful of Makoryn can truly discern tyranny. They spring from the Liminal Orthodoxy, so they do hold tyranny to be sinful. Rather than seeking it out and destroying it, as the Liminal Orthodoxy would have, the Sudmunari maintain that the surest method of destroying those who would wield undue power over others is to themselves seize up the reins of power and use them righteously. The Sudmunari preach a theology of acquisition and conquer, a philosophy the sect put into practice sixty years ago in the Holandi city-state of Sudmunar.
Rituals & Observances
The Sudmunari hold to most of the rituals of the Orthodox sect. Their Prostrative Assembly is a five-day long festival, however, and always begins with the High Watcher making a pilgrimage from a shrine outside the city where the first High Watcher first received his vision that led him to raise a holy crusade that led to the seizure of Sudmunar's throne by the Makorynite church.
In addition to the rites of the Orthodoxy, the Sudmunari also celebrate the Feast of the Liberation, recognizing the day the High Watcher's army achieved victory over the old line of Sudmunari kings.
Titles & Orders
The head of the sect is called the High Watcher, and he currently serves as priest-king of the Sudmunar city-state. While he pays ritual and liturgical fealty to the Iron Hierophant in Liminal, everyone in the faith is aware that it is a technical obeisance at best.
The High Watcher maintains a small council called the Chained Ones, high priests of the faith who tend to various needs of the sect. At current, there are two Chained Ones, one in charge of running the Makorynite temples under the Sudmunari banner, and the other whose responsibility is visiting other Makorynite temples near Sudmunar and convincing them to turn to the sect's practices. Other than this, the Sudmunari hold to the Liminal Orthodoxy's rankings; indeed, technically the Chained Ones hold the rank of Atera in the Orthodoxy, and the High Watcher is part of the Iron Collegium.
The Sudmunari maintain a single knightly order associated with their sect, the Order of Iron and Bone, a gathering of knights and paladins sworn to defend the city of Sudmunar and the person of the High Watcher.
Other Sects
- The Iron Fist Heresy: Considered wicked and deviant by most mainstream sects of Makoryn's church, the Iron Fist Heresy teaches that the Iron Lord's example is to be followed: the seizure of power and exercise of dominating others is a true Makorynite's first responsibility. Heretics can be found in all of the main sects, and they believe that this heresy was originally the true teachings of Makoryn before the other churches banded together to destroy that true theology and its order of warlord-priests.
The Hellshards (Domain)
A loud, clanging realm of eternal noise and a thousand-thousand sharp iron edges, the Hellshards were crafted to eternally cut at the flesh of the primordial Vabrosyn, a great web of eternally-reshaping flesh and sinew. Those who abused their power over others, or threw over justice in favor of vengeance are banished here, to be painfully tormented and hunted by the iron devils of Makoryn.
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