The Order of the Divine Wills is a pantheistic monastic order, watching over the
Abbey of Caelester. While many are principally dedicated to a single deity, all members are required to honour the entire pantheon of gods. They make the appropriate prayers and offerings at each of the shrines and temples in the Abbey complex, as well as tending its gardens, cleaning and maintaining the buildings, and copying, translating and printing ancient texts.
Notable Duties
All monks of the order are required to take part in services throughout the complex, and are expected to make good use of their time, taking on chores around the complex as needed - more onerous tasks are assigned by drawing lots, as even the
Abbot is not considered above cleaning floors or scrubbing pots.
There are three head gardeners, each of whom oversees a different section of the Abbey's extensive gardens. Their varied perspectives on how a garden should be tended ensures the grounds have enough variety to appeal to a broad range of viewers. The head beekeeper is treated as having equal rank, though this monk oversees a much smaller part of the garden. Along with a handful of monks who serve with them, they have sole authority over the small central section of the gardens where the beehouses are kept - no others are even permitted to enter this area unsupervised. Here they collect honey and beeswax, taking great care to minimize their disturbance of the bees and ensure that they only take what can be spared.
Another group serve under the master brewer in a large brewery complex. Here they brew the best ales, lagers and meads available in the city. They also handle the distribution of their product to a variety of merchants and local tavernkeepers, trying to ensure that no one interest can achieve a monopoly on their product. Profits from these sales make up the vast majority of the Abbey's funding, providing enough funds to allow them to operate comfortably even in hard times when donations are in scare supply.
Many of the monks serve in the scribarium, creating copies of ancient Asurian texts. They keep these records carefully protected in a deep storage. The originals have long since crumbled to dust, but they are dedicated to carefully preserving the contents as faithfully as possible. This has had little impact on the world until the development of the printing press a century ago, which has finally allowed them to begin making duplicate copies that can be distributed to the public. The knowledge in these ancient texts and similar ones found in other archives of ancient knowledge around the world, combined with modern science has led to considerable advancements in recent decades, greatly speeding the development of technology. Much of the scribarium is also off limits to all but a handful of monks - officially to help with the preservation of tomes of knowledge, but also such that certain forbidden texts can be preserved in secret, where curious fools won't even know to look for them.
Finally, the Abbey Builders - forerunners of the city's larger
group - are dedicated to maintaining and improving the buildings, artworks and infrastructure of the Abbey complex. These monks learn a variety of construction and artistic skills, studying architecture, masonry, sculpting, painting, carpentry and many other fields. After the
earthquake that destroyed much of the city, these skills allowed them to rapidly repair the temple complex. However, instead of restoring the Abbey's beautiful facades and artworks to their former glory, they have simply made structural repairs, and now devote most of their energies to rebuilding the rest of the city, along with many Caelestran volunteers.
Comments