Temple Income

TEMPLE INCOME

Most folk in the Realms know that priests of some faiths (such as Waukeen’s) sell pardons and medi¬cines, and demand offerings or sometimes set fees for performing certain rituals, such as cleansings, weddings, and atonements.

The income of a temple is usually far broader in source and nature than that. Offerings of food, accepted from poor worshipers, go to temple kitchens to defray food expenses. Almost all cler¬gies expect offerings in return for the utterance of certain prayers and certainly in return for spell¬casting. Most clergy also expect compensation for most services, such as burials, consecrations, blessings of new businesses, or the god’s favor for a journey. Almost anything that requires prayer before the altar is also cause for an offering—as opposed to advice given by priests without the guidance of prayer or ritual, which by tradition is supposed to be freely given.

Faiths of fierce deities such as Umberlee and Talona deal in protection rackets (in effect) by demanding offerings of appeasement to keep the holy wrath of their deity away from those making the offerings. Even wandering clergy of gentler faiths (such as the Alicorna, priests of Lurue) might request payment from landowners when they eliminate dangerous local monsters.

Some priests sell holy relics and their lesser cousins. “Favors of the god” are blessed items meant to bring good luck to the bearer or house¬hold, and “tokens of the god” are holy symbols of recognition and veneration for lay worshipers (not to be confused with a cleric’s holy symbol).

The largest source of daily income for most churches is payment for the delivery of verbal or written messages, documents, and small valuables over vast distances, from one individual to an¬other. All such deliveries are “altar-sworn” safe. The priests swear before their deity to deliver their charge faithfully, without altering or distort¬ing it, pilfering from it, or violating its privacy if possible. Obviously, the contents of a verbal message are known to the bearer, but a writ¬ten message will not be unsealed or read by any member of the priesthood, nor will anyone allow a third party to read it. This oath is sworn upon pain of losing the favor of the deity—that is, being expelled from the church.

This widely available service has given rise to an interesting dodge: Someone in possession of something that could get her killed, such as stolen royal regalia, might in desperation deliver it into the hands of temple priests with a fee for deliver¬ing it to either a fictitious person or one whom the sender, but few others, knows to be dead. This enables the priests to keep and conceal the item forever as they attempt to deliver it to the proper person . . . whom they will never be able to find.

Many temples serve as banks and keepsafes (safe deposits), securely storing all manner of things for worshipers, from legal documents to great-grandma’s mummified fingers. Temple storage is especially popular with the homeless; poor commoners who fear for the security of their property while they’re working or seeking food; and those who travel for a living, such as drovers, caravan guards, and wagon merchants.

Temples also perform the same moneylending and money changing functions as our real-world banks, and of course charge fees for doing so.

Like real-world banks, they invest such funds (and the money they earn from offerings and rents) in livestock and farm crops and cargo ships and businesses, charging interest on every loan. So, most urban and “verdant breadbasket rural” temples are usually wealthy, not poor.

Almost all priesthoods use their income to buy land, build properties, and become landlords, taking in a constant stream of rents from tenants, tenant farmers, and “rental” farmers. They also acquire houses, farms, and sometimes even cara¬van companies or shipping fleets, willed to them by the devout. In this way, many temples have slowly become the owners of large amounts of valuable city real estate. It’s generally understood that being a landlord does not allow the clergy to

discriminate against tenants who primarily ven¬erate rival deities, or to curtail prayers and other religious observances of other deities performed in rental premises that a temple happens to own.

Certain priesthoods, particularly those of Mask and Waukeen, often engineer price increases and currency inflations, and profit by loading or un¬loading their stores of coinage or goods at times of high margins. Clergy of Siamorphe work to en¬rich nobles who have pledged much to the church, “when we can afford it.” Priests of Mask sell dis¬guises, and for much higher fees can hide people for short periods.

Some faiths pay children copper pieces in re¬turn for business or political information that such “innocents” see and overhear, which temple agents then resell for much, much more, saying only of their sources that “The god sees all.”