Order of the Penitent Eye
The Order of the Penitent Eye were a cult operating under the appearance of a mendicant and charitable religious order. The cult's earliest foundations predate the arrival of Markos Delmar to southern Acrad and it has undergone massive transformations over the centuries before solidifying into its role in the society of Tergaron. Initially existing as a pagan faith, the influence of Emanysian liturgical aesthetics and Corsovian culture caused the cult to develop into something bearing more resemblance to the Emanysian temple-orders than the barbarian seer cult that it began as.
Truth and Illusion
By 1000 SA 5, the Order had been for centuries a pillar of Tergaron's community and a held a place of prominence in the baroque Cathedral of Oculus the Beholder. Many members were blind monks and ascetics who collected alms for the poor and provided medicine to the sick. But their reputation for charitable works and mendicant pilgrimages was built upon generations of lies.Though their front was of a benevolent order of blind monks who assisted the downtrodden and could peer into the future and offer advice, in truth they were much more sinister. For generations, they had selected new members from among those most receptive to their message, often taking in and raising orphans to be members of the order. Their missions to aid the ill and impoverished were a smokescreen which allowed them to poison individuals over time to alchemically induce sickness or blindness. Then, they would take in the individual as a patient where they would be treated. While undergoing such treatment, the patient would also be exposed to rhetoric telling them that blindness is a gift given by Oculus to teach his chosen how to avoid being led astray by illusions and falsehoods. In time, such indoctrination said, Oculus would open the victim's true eyes and possibly grant gifts of foresight.
Downfall
The HODEOHs exposed the cult for what it was when they infiltrated the Cathedral of Oculus the Beholder, motivated by revenge for the murder of O'Conno, a blind halfling of their number who had been a "patient" of the order at one time. The group discovered the cult was hoarding divinatory artifacts, spying using scrying eye enchantments hidden in the minarets of the cathedral, and that Oculus, the god the cult worshiped, was in fact an aberrant idol. Having gathered the proof they needed to discredit and implicate the order in the blinding of O'Conno and hundreds of other people over the years, they turned to the Blue Dragon army to leverage some connections they had made early in their adventuring career to ensure the downfall of the cult. However, even knowing what O'Conno had warned them of the order with his dying breaths, they could not have foreseen all that they would find. Disturbed by all they had seen and endured, the HODEOHs nominally entered the service of the dragon hordes and departed to Lanan Ortheiad as envoys on behalf of the highlords.Visions of the Apocalypse
The cult secretly believed in an impending apocalyptic future. This future, they believed, could be averted by practicing the correct rituals and atonement in order to gain the clarity needed to accurately divine its causes. To this end, they perpetuated their fanaticism into new converts—those who had been successfully indoctrinated and had their eyes "opened to the truth"—and searched for artifacts to help them see the future. This was also the reason for their spying through the scrying spells as they watched for cryptic signs.
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