Kolnai

This article is a Work in Progress. This article is still missing significant information.

This article is rated S for Spoilers. This article unravels an important mystery within this world.

This article is rated T for Triggers. This article can be considered insensitive towards religious people.

Kolnai is the title of a very select group of people. Commonfolk are unaware of these people and even kings only have a passing awareness of them. As such, this title is very secretive and very few people have ever heard it spoken. But to those that know what it means, this word is terrifying.

Meaning

A Kolnai refers to a select few with God-like powers, obtained through far-reaching abuse of their immense wealth. The name comes from the God of Wealth, Kol Korran and Kolnai just sounds so much better than Kolny.

Obtaining power

The Kolnai were once very successful business people. Each of them had their own speciality, like weapons, travel, commerse, medicine and religion. As their wealth increased, they could buy the services of magic users. These people were the weapon, could teleport or could heal directly.
Becoming more accustomed to magic users, they wanted this power for themselves. Their wealth made them interesting to devils, who are always looking for new souls to strengthen their army. They gained Warlock powers after making a pact with a powerful devil. In return, they would hire the wretchedly poor to do evil deeds. And these evil deeds would ultimately decide their fate after death.
Not all of them sides with the devils of course. Two of them (travel and medicine) spent a lot of gold on expert wizards teaching them the ways of magic. Notably, the religious leader did side with a devil, who pretended to be an angel fighting the evil demons.
Their wealth soon became just a stepping stone for their new-found greed for magical power. They learned they could use this wealth to create a cycle of poverty. Poverty would lead to desperate people doing anything for some gold, which they could use to generate more poverty. Every so often, the wealthy would kill a few of the poor people and capture their soul. As their collection of souls grew, so too does their magical power. However, souls are a finite resource, so if they use too much magic from the gathered souls, their magical power would decrease.
Over time, they didn't need the power from their patrons anymore, having gained enough power through their experience and the souls they harvested. This gave them a new insight, that once you're powerful enough, you can actually turn worship into magical power. They made themselves into Gods by hiring preachers to teach the commonfolk about them. The circle of poverty didn't stop, as it was clear that poor people are much more likely to be faithful, because of their desperation for a better world in the afterlife.

Ultimate power

They are now immortal beings with the power to manipulate The Weave. They held on to their specific domains.

Name	Speciality	Magic domain
???	Weapons	Destruction magic
???	Travel	Teleportation magic (incl. across planes)
???	Commerce	???
???	Medicine	Restoration magic
???	Religion	None

Their power is so vast that they can block magic users from using 4th level or higher spells. They rent out access to certain level spells or allow someone to pay-per-use. Of course, people can also go into debt to cast a spell, but this debt isn't always monetary. Those that dare defy the Kolnai can cast without payment. Maybe you succeed, maybe you still go into debt, or maybe the strain being put on The Weave is so great that it might just have severely bad consequences.

Type

Professional