The Royal Priesthood

The Royal Priesthood is the governing body of religious practise in the Kingdom of Men. It has the power to censure or even excommunicate priests and priestesses who it regards as heretical.

Structure

Major decisions, rulings and sentences are carried out in the capital with councils or courts composed of the highest ranking members of the Royal Priesthood, but lower ranking members operate as regional and local representatives across the nation. Members are drawn from the priesthoods of all of the seven deities, being accepted into general membership on the recommendation of existing members and accepted into the higher ranks by agreement of existing ranking members.

Public Agenda

As an organisation, their guiding principals have evolved over time, responding to various heresies, cults, schisms and changes to culture and national politics. At present their chief concern is to promote an approach they call Conciliation in the veneration of the various gods. Over the past hundred years there have been quite a number of cases of dangerous cults rising up. The Royal Priesthood believe that these cults have come about due to something they label "Dis-Integration".

Dis-integration happens when the focus of the veneration of one of the gods emphasises one of their domains over the other. The tendency to do so is strong in human nature, but it leads inevitably to a counter-balancing movement in the form of a cult or schism.
When teaching, counseling and performing their rites, priests must not see their field as two distinct extremes. They must not focus on one domain or the other, but they also must not consider their work to be about two distinct extremes, two distant poles in balance.
Rather, each god's domain elements must be viewed in integration and conciliation.

- Council Advice Memorandum

The Dichotomies of the Deities

In Pethron there are seven gods and each has stewardship over opposing pairs of domains

• beginnings and endings
• growth and destruction
• peace and war
• truth and lies
• sun and storm
• leading and following