Priesthoods, Part 3: Lesganagh

Lesganagh’s priesthood holds a different position in most realms. (I say most because in the human kingdom of Danastaer, the Lord of Sun and War’s church has been banned for the last thirty years.)

Lesganagh is the undisputed ruler of the gods, even though his wife and sister Eanaigh was born only a little later. (The gods aren’t really that concerned about incest, we don’t question it or them. ~K) He led the host of gods against Dragh’s horde, and this rank never changed. Thus, the Sunpriests or Warpriests hold a revered position in each community. Usually they work in tandem with Caretakers blessing the fields. Their blessings keep enough sunlight on the orchards and fields, allowing fruits and vegetables and grain to thrive. (Baeliath, the callous ruler of Dhaneygh to the east, even hired Sunpriests to supply ample sunshine for their vacation domiciles. Their offerings were much lower than usual, and the Lord of Sun and War sent the priest responsible for this slight on a quest of penance.)

(Penance and quests were thought to be a thing of the distant past, but apparently not quite. The ruler in question’s realm was cursed with darkness until the offending priest had completed the quest. This lesson was spread far and wide because for a decade the realm remained in twilight, with famine and disease becoming a major issue. Baeliath had to empty his treasury to prevent the worst. Dhaneygh’s fate was a lesson for every ruler, and even now, generations after the fact, Sunpriests and Librarians spread this tale as a warning to every ruler. The greedy priest’s quest? Seek out every poor farmer on the continent of Dhachainnh and aid them with coin and deed. When he was done, having spent all his ill gained coin and begging the god with each of his blessings to lift the curse, was he finally permitted to return home. ~P)

Lesganagh’s Temples

Every settlement has a gong, either hung in a small tower or a resplendent temple, which a Sunpriest sounds at sunrise, noon, and sunset. A landed Sunpriest is much like his Eanaighist counterpart, traveling the settlements and farmsteads to perform his or her duties. In towns and villages there are typically a handful of priests and, depending on the size, more than just one temple to the Lord of Sun and War.

But blessing fields for sunshine is only part of Lesganagh’s priesthoods duties. They also prepare people for war. This is done not by whipping up aggression, but by training villagers and townsfolk alike in the ways of war. (In Gathran they were training the Leghary for the first few months of their time as soldiers. ~K) Peace is no alien concept to them; the god spends most of his time away from the world, in solitude, which is akin to peace. But they know that no peace lasts, so they teach males and females to fight, and fight dirty, if must be.

The humans . . . well; I’m not sure what the humans do. Their ways differ from ours. After nine hundred years, they’re still stumbling to find their way. Granted, there are very few purely human realms, Chanastardh and Danastaer on Taogh being prime examples of such. And of those two, only Danastaer has banned the church of Lesganagh. The god doesn’t seem to mind – much – but there have been rumors of invasion to set things right. Several nations’ churches have voiced their ire at this slight against the Lord of Sun and War. We shall see what happens. (The god watches from afar, like all the gods. It seems that’s what the gods do most of the time, when they’re not granting blessings and such, watching the follies of us mortals. Then again, what else is there to do? We are entertaining. ~P)

The Warpriests do not lead armies, to go with the entertainment analogy mentioned elsewhere. They see to it “the actors know their roles, they do not write the plays.” (Good one! ~P) Many times before, philosophers have wondered if the priests’ training is cause for war, but they usually conclude that people are aggressive anyway, and greed and jealousy do their parts of pitting one side against the other. At least this way, those attacked have the means to defend themselves against the aggressors.

The Greeting of War Ceremony

From her very beginning, Gathran held Lesganagh in very high regard, and when the Gathrani retaliated against the Kalduuhni, they re-sanctified a shrine dedicated to the Lord of Sun and War atop the mountain in whose shadow the first Gathrani settlement had stood. The Gathrani warleader and nobles and the Sunpriests ascended to the temple, bringing offerings cherished by Lesganagh: gold, honey, and moon-shaped bread in honor of the Forgotten Sibling.

All through the night they scrubbed the shrine, repaired and polished its doors, and when Lesganagh’s golden orb rose in the east, they opened its single portal, allowing the light inside. It fell on the offerings and they vanished. The sign was clear: Victory Would Be Gathran’s. (The Kalduuhni sacrificed to the Lord of Sun and War as well. Their offerings were also accepted, so victory was not guaranteed. ~K) (It stands to reason the maxim never changed. If both opponents sacrifice to the god, any god, there will be no interference. It doesn’t matter whether it’s war or racing or haggling over turnips, if you’ve made the proper offerings, and your counterpart has done the same, it will be your wit or army against theirs. ~P) (Obviously, the Gathrani thought it a sign, and chose to reinterpret their victory as a sign. It’s the same everywhere, every time, with people interpreting things to fit their narrative. Elf, human, demon sunargh, it doesn’t matter. In the end we’re all fools. ~D)

With their victory attributed to the sunrise ritual on the mountain, the Gathrani built a new temple around the original shrine, which became the focal point of their ritual with which every war began. The temple gates are perfectly aligned on the east-west axis, with doors on either side. As with that initial ceremony, the priests and priestesses of Lesganagh throw open the doors on either side, welcoming the rising sun. And as with the original offerings, the central shrine holds gold, honey, and moon-shaped bread in honor of the Forgotten Sibling.

Maybe the Mages forgot about the ritual? Maybe, in their greed, they reduced the offering? Maybe they had grown too complacent? Who knows? In the tens of thousands of years Gathran ruled Taogh, routines might well have become tedious, or rituals might have been forgotten in the lull between wars.

The fact is, every society, every tribe has its own version of this ceremony. It’s doubtful that Lesganagh favored one side over the other if both made their offerings. Especially since the Zyrreni of Comhara did the same long before they came into contact with Taogh. (Aye, we’ve all done a kind of ceremony before war, although I must say the Gathrani did it in style. ~P)

When the war ended, no matter the outcome, the Sunpriest or Sunpriestess performed the Farewell to War ceremony, thus officially declaring peace.

Tribal raids never required such a ceremony. The raiders are blessed by the local Sunpriest or Sunpriestess, and that is that. It involves gold and honey, or honey wine, depending on the region. Some tribes even light fires that are extinguished upon the raiders’ return.

We can only guess what the sunargh did, if they did honor the gods at all.

And the humans of Taogh?

Since the Gathran’s demise at the end of the Wizard War, 1383 to 1386 K.C., a shift had taken place in the region north of the Woods of Gathran. Chanastardh, the only purely human realm, took advantage of the chaos after the Heir-War, they spread their influence south, east, and west, invading and annexing regions the elven tribes had little interest in or which were devoid of elven influence. Chanastardh also made client states of many independent regions. However, Chanastardhian influence stopped with the old Elven Road that runs east and west from Honas Graigh. Kalduuhn was too much for the bickering humans to take on, and since Royal House Kassor has been forming a power bloc of her own, the humans dared not to overstep their bounds. (Nice history lesson, but this is a scroll on Lesganaghist priests, and such. ~K)

Chanastardh, with her unique position of being outside any elven influence, developed a variant of the traditions spread by Gathran millennia earlier. While the original human settlers had all migrated north of the River Flannardh a century after the gods had seeded their race all over the world, it took the various families, clans, and tribes several centuries to form into something resembling countries, and even then they kept fighting each other for resources and land. The lands north of the Flannardh had been the territory of Chanassi, Targhanti and Yrenni, all tribes who had been conquered by Gathran, and eliminated for rebelling against their imperial overlord. Gathran literally cut all ties with the lands of those three tribes, declaring the region wrecked. (Wrecked in this case means as much as forsaken and destroyed. It was the perfect refuge for humans. ~K)

The new occupants of this region salvaged building materials from the long abandoned cities. (Gathran was all too eager to share architectural knowledge with those they conquered, and buildings constructed by Gathrani or Kalduuhni architects were meant to last millennia. ~K) They also scavenged the old temples, finding within treatises on rituals and priesthoods. Despite their obvious ignorance, they did not destroy the relics and symbols that had once adorned the houses of the gods. (Houses of the gods… an antiquated term, but there was a time elves believed the temples and shrines served the gods as domiciles. ~P)

Many of those scrolls were written in a rather antiquated dialect of Elvish, and the humans only spoke the modern tongue. Translations were botched, and suddenly the duties of Sunpriests and Sunpriestesses were split into the worship/ceremonial part and the training at arms part. They invented a new position for Lesganagh’s Church, that of Paladin, a master-at-arms and guardian of the temple. The concept spread all over the region, until Sunpriests from Ma’tallon were utterly stumped when their delegation to Herascor’s Lesganagh Temple was met by a group of Paladins.

Paladins are unique to human-influenced regions of Taogh, spreading from what would become Chanastardh all over the continent’s north. They teach weapons-craft to commoners and guard the Temples they’re assigned to. As far as we know they have received absolutely no gift from the Lord of Sun and War.

In the tens of thousands of years since our victory over the sunargh butchers, Dragh’s prison has not been guarded. Certainly, Gathran had assumed that position, but the fortress at the top of the plinth of Dragh’s Rest had not been occupied for dozens of generations. When Gathran vanished, and Chanastardh claimed Dargh, Janagast, and the northern parts of the Empire’s remains, the humans were utterly unaware of what that prehistoric fortress guarded.

Lesganagh, in his wisdom, appeared before devout worshippers and offered them a part of the Dragh’s new wardens. Those who chose to heed the call, once more than twenty-four in total, are the Chosen of Lesganagh. Their powers are . . . unusual. It has been said they can sacrifice themselves in an explosion of Potential, or that they can travel on beams of sunlight. How much of that is true we might never know. Suffice it to say that many legends have sprung up from their existence. If reports are to be believed, they don’t age. Breiamhbéan spies have observed these Chosen for years, and they haven’t changed one bit. And while quite promiscuous they also seem infertile. (Guess the gods didn’t want another wave of sunargh-like people running around. ~P)

See more on Priesthoods in Part 1 and Part 2.