The Church of the Holy Covenant

The Holy Covenantal Church is highly polycentric due to the nature of it's Temples. While the Gods are worshiped together by most of the laity, and any temple will contain within it shrines to each of the eight Gods, each God is represented individually by their own clergy and numerous organizations beneath them. Above all of this and constraining together the various sects of the faith stands the Covenantal Collegium, which holds ultimate authority over all other branches of the faith and their temples. Each of the Eight Faiths designates a single Hierophant to represent their God and their temple among the Collegium. The Hierophants and their deputies hold sway over all matters concerning the church, its canon and the organizations which fall underneath the umbrella of the faith and can enact binding law to effect every aspect of the faith. In its extreme the College of Hierophants even possesses the ability to excommunicate Religious Orders and Temples which are seen to have betrayed the faith. However significant legislation is a relative rarity, in practice the College meets only in times of crisis or great need. The Hierophants and their respective faiths and clergy are mostly left to their own affairs intermingling and cooperating, though occasional interfaith rivalry and division does occur.   The Pontifex At the top of this organization stands the supreme authority of all spiritual matters and chief representative of mortalkind to New Gods for what is essentially the entire civilized world of Tenembria. The Pontifex is elected from among the eight Hierophants to serve a 20 year term. Though it is often a lifetime appoint for some (particularly humans). The Pontifex is expected to represent each of the eight faiths with equal respect and dignity, and to honour all eight of the Gods. The Pontifex thus has an extremely important spiritual and ceremonial role, in temporal matters the Pontifex also holds the tie-breaking vote and veto towards all the policies and decrees of the Collegium and the Church at large.   Hierophants To be a hierophant is to be the guardian of the sacred and proclaimer of divine truths, in practice it is the highest position of authority for each respective faith of the Holy Covenantal Church. Their role is largely ceremonial and the carry an extreme burden often traveling constantly throughout the civilized world attending to their faithful and bolstering their respective religious organizations. Hierophants are appointed to their position in a two step process, having been elected by the Church's Highest Ecclessiarchs and Exarchs, they are then to be appointed by unanimous decision of the College of Hierophants including the Pontifex. Commonly though the Hierophants provide their own successors in the form of their Suffragans, their immediate deputies and assistants whom are typically seen as the Hierophants-in-waiting. In particular the Ecclesiarchal Suffragan over the Militant Suffragan is often seen as the preferred candidate as they are seen as more spiritually minded and better suited for the largely ceremonial role.   The Suffragans The immediate deputies to the Hierophant, each Hierophant have two Suffragans whom each has their own separate and distinct duties as the administrative heads of the Ecclesiarchy or the acting representative of the Faith to the Church-Militant respectively. They are both extraordinarily prestigious positions for the higher clergy and come with extraordinarily wide-reaching powers within their respective faith branches. In particular, the Suffragan Militant is understood to be the civil leader of all the Militant Orders of their Respective Sect and liaison to their faith militant's own Lord-Marshalls who occupy a similar, and equivalent position within the hierarchy of the church militant.

The impact of the Covenantal Church on the culture of Tenembria is simply without rival both in the immediate and historical. Perhaps the most immediate contribution is in the New Arumnic Tongue, a deliberate construction of the Church in the aftermath of the fall of the First Empire to simplify Old Arumnic so that it could be taught effectively throughout the world. New Arumnic today is often simply referred to as "the Common tongue" or "Church Tongue" and is the lingua franca for the entire civilized world.

In Ages Past, the Priest-Kings of the Old Gods ruled over mortalkind, as they had for millennia. In the beginning, the Old Gods and their Priests were benevolent, they freed mortalkind from the Immortal Giants, their creators, who ruled over them as Gods jealously hoarding their worship from the Old Gods who had given mortalkind their anima, their souls and raised them from the lowly servants they once were. The Priest-Kings were the people's liberators, empowered by the Gods to combat the Immortal Giants and their servants casting them down and giving rise to the first mortal civilizations. Overtime however corruption grew among the Priest-Kings, who sought even greater and more terrible powers through acts of despicable cruelty, Worse still these acts of evil did not just empower the Priests but through their profane and darker sacrifices, they gave a thirst to the Old Gods. A thirst that soon became unquenchable except by blood.   For three millennia the Priest-Kings and their ilk ruled over mortal-kind with iron fists, given power by Gods with an insatiable thirst for sacrificial blood and depraved worship. Until in the final years of the Priestreign, something happened. Voices appeared like whispers from the shadows to the ears of the people, those who dissented against the cruelty of the Old Ways and hated the depravities of the Old Gods and their servants. Suffering as we were beneath the lash of tyranny from our own creators, the New Gods adopted the dispossessed, the slave, the rebels, the runaways of the Old Order. Until with growing power and confidence, they empowered great heroes the First Saints of the Holy Church to rise up and overthrow the Priest-Kings, beginning the long age of the Priestfall and the rise of the Arumnian Empire from the ashes of its dark tyranny.   Corineir and St. Aristar Elantris The first of the New Gods to act was Corineir, who spoke to Aristar Elantris. St. Aristar was the human son of the Priest-King Eganthir, who controlled Eltharasor one of the most powerful city-states of the Arumnian Basin. Groomed from a young age to succeed his father, Aristar nonetheless deeply resented the evil and depraved actions of the Old Gods Priesthood. In particular, Aristar rejected the violent and inhumane blood sacrifices his father performed to appease the Old Gods. His father would not allow his son to be seen as weak and unfit to carry on his lineage, and so arranged for him to sacrifice a young maiden to the God Hrusor in the early morning. Aristar prayed fervently out to no god in particular for an escape and was answered. Corineir whispered promises of aid, and the power to end his father's tyranny in exchange for his devotion. Aristar though was skeptical and wise beyond his years, he demanded to know the God whom spoke to him would put an end to evil rather than simply change its master. To St. Aristar, Corineir gave the First Covenant;
"That no blood that you shall spill in my name will fill my cup, our covenant shall be that of familial love and contingent only upon your faithful and righteous service.
In this moment, St. Aristar was marvelled, and pledged himself to the service of Corineir, whom spoke again saying:
"In the moment of sacrifice, show mercy and I will grant you the power that you might end your father's tyranny."

According to the Gods, there are five observable realms of the universe and a further two that are beyond even their sight.   Amijara The Highest Realm of all existence is known as Amijara or simply “The Beyond”, the Gods themselves speak little of what lies in the Beyond. Only that the souls of the dead are drawn there, and the pure essence of magic and life seems to flow out from it down into all other realms. Debate between scholars speculate that Amijara might be a heavenly realm of bliss, others believe it is more like a threshing wheel which reduces souls to pure magic and releases it back down. Whatever Amijara is, it lies beyond the ken even of the Gods and those whom have gone there do not return.   The Celestir The Realm of the Gods; the High Heavens, Celestir is the Realm of all celestial beings. Though many see the Celestir as the realm of the highest positive magics of creation, of virtuous energy and emotions, in practice this is more complicated. Where the line between vice and virtue are often defined by their excess. As love and lust are not opposites but rather one is the unbridled extreme of the former. As rage is the excess of righteous fury. As light in it's excess burns and blinds. Such that it was in the old days when the Old Gods ruled the Celestir, and allowed freely both the energies of virtue and vice to sustain them. With the arrival of the New Gods and the foundation of the Holy Covenant, the Celestir now attracts solely the positive energy of virtue because the Gods actively prohibit their excesses both among their heavenly and mortal servants and even among themselves.   Functionally this means that the Celestir cannot contain vice and sin, the act of sinning at least so far as the Gods are concerned, causes the soul to drift out from the realm and back towards the Mundir.   The Aether and Umbaris In her Illuminations through St. Airrie the Scribe, Illunae revealed her understanding of the two magical planes which most closely intersect with the mortal realm. These she called the Aether and Umbaris, they exist in a constant state of instability as pockets of raw positive and negative magic which form minute pocket dimensions.   The Mundas The Mortal Realm, sitting at the confluence of positive and negative magic, it is the realm where all life as we know it begins, except seemingly for the Gods themselves. The mortal realm is to followers of the Covenantal Faith a battleground, between the forces of Good and Evil. It is also the wellspring of life. What begins here becomes eternal.   The Infernir The Domain of the Archfiends.   The Abyss The Abyss also known as the Darkness Below, a Realm beyond the knowledge of the New Gods, whether it even exists is uncertain. For naught comes from it, and it is only whispered of by the denizens of the infernal. Still scholars of the faith speculate, if the Old Gods did not die, where must they have gone when they were slain? To this the only answer seems to have been this realm.

The Covenant of the Gods and the Adopted   1. As the Gods have taken you from the hands of tyranny and evil, you shall honour your Gods who have adopted and you and delivered you from the hands of the Old Gods, you shall honour them as you honour your own fathers and mothers and they shall love you as a mother and father loves their own
2. As the Gods have delivered you from the enemy you shall not partake in the worship of the Enemy, the Old Gods, even unto threat of death you shall resist them. Forever is the enmity of the Gods Old and New. Forever shall you cast out their followers and suffer them not to dwell amongst you.
3. As the Gods shall love you as children, you shall love one another as sisters and brothers, as bosom friends, as husbands to wives as wives to husbands. Let no quarrel divide you, nor hatred grow between you. As you are loved, so y ou shall love. Those that honour this command first honour their Adopted Gods foremost.
4. As the Gods care for you, took you from the hand of peril and broke your bonds, so you shall care for one another. Let none among you starve while another feasts, let none force the other into bondage and cruelty, take no brother or sister beneath the lash. Nor even those who serve the enemy. Let no slave be held in chains among you.
5. As the Gods have adopted you, taken you from the house of cruelty and the lash of the enemy, so to shall you take in those who suffer, child or slave, man or woman, of all races, all kin, the child of one is the child of the other, and as the Gods have not let you be orphans to your creators, let no child among you live as an orphan,
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The religious practices of the Holy Covenantal Church are highly varied between the worship of the various Gods, each temple of each of the Gods and even each race and even nation worship the Gods and venerate the Holy Saints in different ways.