The Great Church ,

Gods of the Tree, Lords of Good, Holy Ones

Myths,First Thunder,Founding the great church

Holy orders of the great church

Doctrines of the great church

Members of the Great Church worship the gods equally as a family, so the organization occupies a broad and nebulous place in the world. As a group, the gods are called the Lords of Good for a reason: They are associated with all that is holy and sacred. Together they represent life, its many wonders, and its prolific disappointments. The Church recognizes three groups of gods: the old gods, the treeborn gods, and the young gods.
The old gods are associated with the fundamental elements that are everywhere, with or without the interference of the mortal hand or mind (rocks, oceans, stars). Scholars sometimes call these the “chthonic” gods. The treeborn gods represent the individual, with Terak being the body, Tinel the mind, Morwyn the spirit, Zheenkeef the emotions and dreams, and Mormekar the body’s ultimate failure, death.
Finally, the young gods represent the concepts of society, or groups of individuals: nobility, forging, diplomacy, love, and woodcraft. The Great Church, therefore, ministers to everything that lives and thrives in the world as personified by the Gods of the Tree, from the smallest monetary transaction to the unfathomable workings of the heavens.
The Great Church represents the gods with icons, showing them seated in a semi-circle on thrones of gold. Each god appears in his or her most common likeness, as described in the gods’ various entries. The symbolic representation of the Lords of Heaven is a white tree with five golden fruits growing on it. A cleric of the Great Church’s holy symbol is usually a tree crafted from white gold with five yellow-gold fruits.
The tree symbol is simplified when scrawled or put on small surfaces, as an inverted pyramid containing five circles in a star pattern. This is a much less formal symbol than the tree, but it can be made quickly or crafted out of basic materials and used by a cleric of the great church as a holy symbol in times of crisis. It is the symbol used by the very poor.
The Gods of the Tree are not particularly strongly associated with any one group of people, or any one race. The Great Church certainly is, though, and its associations are explained below.
The gods are predominantly neutral good. Although the pantheon is divided quite strongly between the chaotic-tending gods and the lawful ones (necessitating the Compact), they are united in their opposition to the works of evil—slaughtering infants, slavery, making bargains with devils, and other, darker deeds. The Great Church, however, is largely lawful good, and because of this, the chaotic gods rarely bother with the organization.

Advance the Principles of Good

As a family, the gods’ motives are complex. Each god seeks to further her own ends, bringing mortals to her way of thinking. As determined by the Compact, gods grow stronger with worship, so each god strives to influence the world through followers and promote those forces that lead worshipers to them. This often brings two or more gods into conflict. Furthermore, a schism divides the two families of gods. One is unruly and believes that the individual is the strongest force in the universe; the other believes that organization and societal structure are the keys to strength.
Now, while the gods have much to argue about, they are unified behind the principles of good. They oppose senseless destruction, murder, and the many other trappings of evil. The destruction that evil brings leads to fewer followers (or at the very least corrupts the mortal races away from the ways of the gods). The gods are quite fond of the mortal races and would see them thrive, and the treeborn gods were nearly destroyed by murder and mayhem in their youth, when they were moved to war against one another. They have learned the perils of the dark path. Therefore, the gods aid the mortals in their struggles against evil as a unified group.

The Church

The Great Church, whose members simply call themselves “the Faithful,” is an enormous organization spanning nations. Its primary goal is to ensure every population center in the world has a church dedicated to all of the gods, that performs their holy work. Its secondary goal is to make the worship of the gods accessible to everyone . Thus, one can find a church dedicated to the entire pantheon in almost every city.
In communities with large Great Church structures, other churches sometimes set up shrines within the Great Church’s halls, to make it a central gathering place for members of any faith. The Great Church enjoys good relations with most of the other churches, particularly lawful churches, which is why clerics of individual gods are willing to offer services under the Great Church’s roof. These relations appear pleasant, but in many cases they’re superficial alliances. The leaders of the Great Church believe all the other churches focus their worship incorrectly, on single gods and strange notions, and condescendingly humor them.
Many of the leaders of the other churches are jealous of the Great Church’s significant wealth and authority. Because it is easy to avoid alienating any religious group by supporting the Great Church, many secular leaders give generously to its missions, support its efforts to expand, and otherwise interact with it as the accepted legitimate religious center of power in the world. Furthermore, the leaders of the Great Church are free to involve themselves in politics and other earthly matters since they do not have direct rapport with any one god, and are not being used regularly by the gods as instruments for their plans in the mortal sphere. This freedom means many secular leaders have a cleric or paladin from the Great Church as an advisor, and members of the local Great
Church hierarchy are often on town and city councils. All of this amounts to a church that can exert an enormous amount of influence on political affairs. To be clear: The Great Church is less connected to the gods than any other church, and the other churches are in no way loyal to or subservient toward the Supreme Patriarch of the Great Church. While some of its clergy receive spells, and its paladins are a force for righteousness throughout the world, the gods rarely reveal themselves to members of the Great Church or call upon its faithful to perform great deeds in their name. The gods rely on their own churches for such purposes.
While the Great Church welcomes worshipers of any race, its membership is mostly human. Other races seem to find its highly unspecific worship of the gods unappealing. It is therefore rare to find a Great Church in a dwarven hold or elven wood. The Church’s congregations are generally made up of those who do not have the time or inclination to worship one god in particular.
Religion is an important part of nearly everyone’s life, but the average person has no real reason to worship a specific god constantly. When crops fail, a farmer goes to the Great Church and prays to Rontra. When heavy with child, she goes to the same church and prays to Morwyn. In the Great Church, she sets aside some worship for the other gods as well. This is done for simplicity’s sake, and to avoid offending any of the gods.
Legends are quite explicit: If you pray to all the gods and accidentally leave one off, that god will grow angry and might seek vengeance against you The Great Church takes these sorts of concerns out of the common person’s hands and provides complete, non-mysterious ceremonies for all occasions, making religion far more accessible to the average peasant or layperson. Its popularity with the common folk also helps account for its wealth, as a tithe to the church is customary, swelling the church’s coffers as its congregations grow.
The Great Church is terribly unpopular with religious zealots of all varieties. They accuse the Church of making the gods commonplace, decreasing their worship to a few perfunctory gestures made out of duty or habit instead of devotion. There are many people deeply concerned with what seems to be the unstoppable growth of the Great Church; the concerned are often elders from other churches.
The gods view the Great Church with some ambivalence. Although the Great Church’s prominence makes them very powerful, the organization is not as useful to them as their own churches. That being said, the Compact allowed Hell and the Abyss to become very powerful. The paladins and other members of the Church working against evil have proven valuable in the struggle against Asmodeus and the demon princes. Once in a great while, a figure arises in the Great Church who is so good and pious she becomes a favorite of all the gods and receives special boons from the entire pantheon. This is exceedingly rare, and has not happened since the time of Saint Anne

Type

Religious, Organised Religion