The Twelve Points

The Twelve Points is a religious text employed by the Church of the Twelve. It outlines the central principles in which followers of the twelve deities should all comport themselves in accordance with (although devotees of specific deities may embrace further tenets). The text has a number of parabolic stories centered on the lives of the Gods which boil down to the twelve laws, known as points, set down by Aileron. These laws include the following;   I. Thou shall hold no laws higher than these. II. Thou shall not harm the goodfolk. III. Thou shall not take that which does not belong to you. IV. Thou shall not corrupt the truth. V. Thou shall abhor slavery and love freedom. VI. Thou shall never cease seeking new knowledge. VII. Thou shall not condemn for inborn nature. VIII. Thou shall not force others into love. IX. Thou shall not corrupt the natural order. X. Thou shall never shrink from doing justice and fighting evil. XI. Thou shall never do evil in the name of justice. XII. Thou shall seek to create joy for others, and in doing so find joy for thineself.   Beyond these laws, the Twelve Points as a text also features the story of creation, various saintly figures and scholars commentary on how to put these laws into practice is included in accordance with current orthodox church doctrine.

The Twelve Points is organized into a number of sections. In the first section, Emergence, the Twelve Points outlines the creation myth of the gods and the Twelve Divines structure of cosmology. It is exceedingly dense, and is frequently subject to revisions as scholars learn more about it, and therefore it rarely updated from the most generally accepted version of Kethenicaea's cosmology and divine history. Next, the book includes the Parables and Points, a series of apocryphal tales about the gods which all eventually conclude with one of the twelve points as morals and laws to abide by. Finally, the book concludes with Commentaries, a series of apocryphal tales about various heroes, saints, and the gods (occasionally altered based on church doctrine) on how to best embody the principles of the Twelve Points in life, and attempting to elaborate upon them.

The Twelve Points is a standalone text in its standard (orthodox) version, but different commentaries within different editions and versions of the Twelve Points are commonly referenced (assuming those other editions and authors remain in the Church's good standing), but the versions which are used to create reproductions are carefully regulated by Church authorities from their official libraries.

The Twelve Points is widely reproduced (somewhat feverishly by novices of the various holy orders). Many of these novices are tasked with reproducing their own copy of the points as part of their training, and therefore most devotees of sufficient advancement within the faith carry a copy on their person. As a result, a great many copies are available which are considered "standard" but both the Emergence and Commentaries section may vary slightly from text to text as various authors may add personal notes or commentaries as they create their own copy based on which portions they have access to and find most compelling, and personal copies of particularly holy figures are often prized after their deaths as a holy artifact, especially if it features that theologians personal commentaries and insights in their own copy, which scholars may revise during the pursuit of their faith.

The Twelve Points are recognized as the principles which undergird law in almost all societies in which the faith of the Dozen Divines is widespread. As some of the Twelve Points are somewhat ambiguous, the degree to which the points are literal law varies.

The spread of the Twelve Points is a relatively new faith. It was supposedly dictated to the goodfolk by angels of the Twelve and inscribed onto the golden shield of their champion, one of the greatest heroes of the age, Oren the Righteous, who bore it with him and spread the original Twelve Points far and wide, and over his adventures, inscribed what he learned and the messages he received from the gods and his own understanding of the cosmology in the very first Emergence and Commentaries, while also transcribing the stories the gods told him into the first Parables. Oren and the fellow champions of the new divine pantheon called the Twelve Divines spread his faith far and wide through his holy exploits, and the spread of the faith, and its eventual triumph over many of the older pantheons of human gods played a large part in the resulting Concordance between the Goodfolk.

Prior to the advent of the Twelve Points following the Human Ascension, humanity's faith was far more militant as their gods struggled to claim their proper place in the multiverse. This ushered in an longstanding period of war and chaos known as Heaven's War, when the major races of Kethenicaea all fought one another as tools in a cosmic struggle between the divine gods, claiming many mortal and even some immortal lives and causing some deities to simply fade from existence as the various pantheons jockeyed for position and supremacy. In the aftermath of this cosmic struggle and the Great Sundering, the final act of Heaven's War, the human pantheon determined they had enough of their constant war and chose to make peace with the other major races and pantheons of Kethenicaea. They human pantheon's members created the Twelve Points and directed Oren the Righteous to spread their new law to mortal followers, creating the concept of the Goodfolk and the divine Concordance of Peace between the major gods of Kethenicaea, human and other races included, so long as they lived within the tenets of the Twelve Points.

Adherence to the Twelve Points spread rapidly, quickly becoming the dominant faith among most human cultures. Over time, the Twelve Points have evolved, as since their advent the gods have remained largely silent on matters of cosmic importance, and so scholars and theologians have interpreted and altered them over the millennia, making small alterations across different cultures and slowly diverging in some regards, but the core tenets remain largely the same and the principles of the concordance which they uphold have held over the centuries.

The Twelve Points have immense consequences on the history of Kethenicaea, ushering in a new era of laws and social structures amongst many societies, especially those of majority human populations, and is closely associated with the Concordance, established shortly after, of the goodfolk.