Campaign of the Month: January 2013
DANgerous Kalamar 4
Vessels of Man
The Vessels of Man was founded in 536 I.R. by Merelor “Iron Hand” Kalon, a Basiran cleric and theologian who served the Speaker of the Word for 15 years. He advanced through the faith’s hierarchy quickly, attaining great fame as a theologian and debater. His writings on the nature of the gods and their relationship with humans (and non-humans) became famous for their clarity and accessibility.
Then he had an epiphany.
He had always taught that the gods gained power from those who served them. As the gods waxed or waned in power, so did the clerics who served them. But no other people gained. The common folk – those who Merelor believed he championed – saw little benefit from the power of the clerics and suffered if the evil gods and clerics gained power. All too often, they suffered from conflicts between good gods as well, as the conflicts erupted into war and caused tragic death and destruction.
Merelor’s next publication, The Vessel of Freedom, was a deceptively thin tome with a torch on the cover and a simple message inside: people were better off without gods. The way to remove the gods, he wrote, was to destroy the clerics who spread their worship. His excommunication and execution order were issued in his absence within a day of the book’s publication.
He quickly gained a following that numbered in the thousands, although the zeal and numbers of the follows dwindled when a few dozen of them were arrested and executed without trials. A spying Imposter almost captured him, causing him to flee for his life and leaving his followers leaderless for years.
Since then, Merelor has been in hiding. When on this plane, he shrouds himself in powerful magical items that prevent magical detection and scrying. Now he values competence and loyalty over numbers, and a band of fanatics serves him better than the throngs he had in the days after the publication of the Vessel of Freedom. The society accepts only strong characters who have proven themselves both unafraid and lacking any great faith in the gods. Their strong points are the Wild Lands (where they find temporary allies among the Sentinels of the True Way) and the Young Kingdoms, although they have been discovered among Dodera, O’Par, and northern Kalamar as well.