Legend: Saints of the Ilmatari Faith

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DM Durentius
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Legend: Saints of the Ilmatari Faith

Postby DM Durentius » Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:43 pm

The Ilmatari faith venerates saints, unlike most other Faerûnian religions. There are hundreds of Ilmatari saints, but only two are very familiar to the commonfolk of the Easting Reach. St. Dionysus was an important figure in the early history of the Ilmatari faith - and he was also a native of the first kingdom of Impiltur. St. Selimbrar is well known as a hero from the Narfelli empire.

St. Dionysus

St. Dionysus was a force in the Bloodstone Lands about 500 to 600 years ago. He was the opposite of the standard Ilmatari, being both forceful and martial. Dionysus gathered and organized the Ilmatari of Easting Reach, the Vast, the Great Dale and the lands around Lake Ashane. He was born a peasant near the city-state of Lyrabar in the first kingdom of Impiltur.

In time, Dionysus joined the militia and served well for nearly a decade. His military experiences made him respect the power of nobility and learning. These would be important later in his illustrious life. While searching for an escaped slaver, he entered an overgrown shrine in the foothills of the Earthspur Mountains.

Here, he was given visions of Ilmater's glory and immediately was consecrated by the Broken God as one of his clerics. Dionysus found a poorly handwritten account of Ilmater's dogma that he kept ever after. This ancient text is called Dionysus' Chapbook, although Dionysus did not actually pen it himself.

After resigning his commission, he proselytized to the peoples of the Impilturian city-states and beyond into the Unapproachable East. Quickly, he rose to prominence and developed a devout following that he organized into walled and defended cloisters, unlike the other faithful of Ilmater. While still caring for the downtrodden and sick, his followers also could defend themselves against those who wished to harm their charges and themselves.

It was one thing to die a martyr's death; it was another to be slain for herb lore and coppers or by wild beasts. Dionysus also stressed reading and writing among his flock, preaching that the passing on of dogma or lore orally, as was often the case, was not adequate to give the faith its necessary pillars.

Dionysus formed a loose alliance with the clerics of Deneir in Impiltur and was often permitted to visit the secret Masters Library beneath Iron Dragon Mountain in the Earthfasts. At the Council of Keltar in the Year of the Alarmed Merchants (828 DR), Dionysus brought forth his ideas of defense and literacy to the Faerûnian church.

Since this time, the Ilmatari have kept accurate records and have learned medicinal lore. They teach reading, writing, and weapons training as a rule now rather than as an exception.

Dionysus was still a soldier at heart. He stressed that the Ilmatari owed fealty to their rightful lords as long as the nobles fulfilled their obligations to their folk. He argued that the Ilmatari should be spiritual aids and advisors, helping rulers to make the right decisions. The Ilmatari paladin Lords of Imphras II govern Impiltur to this date, and King Gareth of Damara also is an Ilmatari paladin.

The tale of Dionysus' death is still retold in Impilturian legends. In the Year of the Wondrous Sea (863 DR), a small island appeared in the middle of the Easting Reach. The first explorers who went to the island never returned, but nothing else of note occurred for a season. When a tower appeared overnight on the island, Impiltur began to worry.

Still, nothing happened. A group of Thayan Red Wizards then hired Impilturian servants to explore the mysterious island. Only two of the servants returned; all of the others, they said, had perished in magical traps or at the hands of extraplanar and undead horrors. The two survivors fled when a bloated monstrosity hurling black bolts of lightning attacked the Red Wizards. The two snatched a bloodstone-encrusted crown off a waterlogged seat cushion and fled.

Within days, lacedons, zombies, and skeletons began to come from the sea and attack Impilturian coastal settlements. Water elementals destroyed ships sailing upon Easting Reach. The rulers of all the cities received a message on tattooed human skin. The message simply read, Return What is Mine. It was signed Sevanoq, Master of the Tower Aquiarum, Archmage of the Circle of Narfell.

The populace named this threat the Water Demon. Searches were conducted for the two survivors of the island expedition and the bloodstone crown they had stolen. The men's bodies were in an alley in Sarshel, but there was no trace of the bloodstone crown.

When creatures from beyond began to attack, the rulers called upon Dionysus to aid them. He mustered a formidable force of warriors and clerics to deal with the menaces that were attacking every day. The clerics were effective in countering the summoned elementals and lower-planar beasts.

The force landed on the island and fought through waves of undead and charmed pirates to the base of the tower itself. Sevanoq and another lich appeared to do battle with Dionysus. For an hour, Dionysus sustained grievous wounds as he dealt punishment to the physical forms of the liches. Dionysus knew he was dying. He called upon Ilmater to protect the people he had failed. At the same time, the other lich brought its magic to bear as Dionysus' last hammer blow hit Sevanoq.

Those coming to the aid of the dying patriarch heard Sevanoq gasp part of a word before he dissolved into a foul puddle. The other lich vanished leaving the survivors to collect their dead and dying. Dionysus told his men to leave him where he lay. He said that he had more tasks to accomplish, tasks only he could perform. As their ships sailed westward, a localized earthquake rocked the island, causing Sevanoq's tower to collapse. The island itself then began to sink below the waves.

The departing ships saw a flock of white doves appear and circle the site, as a stream of white light struck the water. A planetar that wept yellow roses alit on the water for a moment, then left skyward. Those witnessing the events felt their weariness vanish and their wounds to be less painful. Since that day, many have searched for the remains of the Tower Aquiarum but to no avail. To this day, Impilturian parents use the tale of the water demon to bring unruly children in line.

Dionysus' death technically was not a martyr's death, but he did sacrifice himself to ensure the destruction of a great evil. His work in life and his valiant death sowed the seeds of light and good in this region.

After the fall of Impiltur's first kingdom, Dionysus' example served as the catalyst for the proclamation of Impiltur's second kingdom as a stable regime in a chaotic and dangerous area of Faerûn. Damara too has been freed from the yoke of Zhengyi the Witch King and again is under the sway of Ilmater and his faithful. The Ilmatari paladin King Gareth Dragonsbane rules and guides the land.

St. Dionysus was very fond of the poppies that grew in the fields of the Great Dale and Impiltur, and after his death the red poppy became the flower associated with him. Since poppy juice can be used as a pain reliever, this is a good choice for an Ilmatari saint.

St. Selimbrar

St. Selimbrar was a paladin serving the Ilmatari temple in the Narfelli capital of Heligonius. He was a ranking general of the Narfelli army and a hero in many of its battles against the devastating magic of the Raumathari battle sorcerers. In the Year of the Wrongful Martyrs (-188 DR), Sir Selimbrar was ordered to lead his regiments to put down an uprising of serfs from the Great Dale who had been forced to work in the Narfelli farm belt near Milthius.

Both the ruins of this Narfelli agricultural center and the once fertile fields that surrounded it long have been buried beneath the barren wastelands of today's North Country, having vanished after the fall of Narfell and Raumathar. Narfelli parchments safeguarded in the queen's library in Impilturian Lyrabar say that Sir Selimbrar was convicted of treason and for his refusal was sentenced to die, together with more than 80 serfs who survived another commander's putdown of their rebellion.

According to the Narfelli text, Sir Selimbrar and the serfs were stripped naked and whipped as they were forced to carry wooden crosses to a temple hill dedicated to Talona above Milthius, where death sentences were executed as sacrifices, to placate the goddess of disease and poison. When the death march reached the hilltop, the arms and legs of all of the condemned were broken and they were bound with ropes to the crosses they had borne, beginning the slow and agonizing death of crucifixion.

The Narfelli parchments say the condemned had been upon their crosses for less than an hour, and none had died yet, when a huge gold dragon flew in from the south and came to the hilltop. From the dragon's back stepped an emaciated man dressed in tattered rags whose body was covered by fresh wounds and the ancient scars of many whippings.

The man pointed to the Narfelli legion and said, "A curse be upon you, but of your own making, and the curse you shall suffer shall also bring the fall of your degenerate land!" With these words, the Narfelli soldiers had been bound motionless to the place where each stood. The ancient man then gestured with his right hand, and Selimbrar and the serfs were freed of their ropes, and their broken bones were healed. They descended from their crosses whole men again.

At this point, the Narfelli accounts in Lyrabar and the teachings of the Ilmatari church begin to differ. After that, the Narfelli text claims, Sir Selimbrar mounted the gold dragon's back in shining armor, flew upward upon the wyrm, and directed it to swoop down upon Milthius. The gold dragon attacked the city time and again with its fiery breath weapon until nothing remained but soot and ash.

Sir Selimbrar then directed the dragon toward the fertile fields of Milthius where the serfs had been ordered to work, and the golden wyrm bathed the fields time and again with its breath of weakening gas, according to the Narfelli parchments. After that, the fields lay fallow, and no seed would germinate in them nor would the least blade of grass take root within them, according to the Narfelli records.

The church of Ilmater claims that its painbearers were present at the mass crucifixion, bore witness to what transpired that day and passed the tale faithfully on within the church, where it is repeated correctly to this date. According to the Ilmatari, the Narfelli soldiers indeed were held motionless by the gestures of the old man, who they claim was none other than the avatar of the Broken God himself.

When St. Selimbrar, as they name him, stepped from the cross, he walked directly to the gold dragon and mounted it, then flew with the dragon southward. The avatar gestured to the freed serfs to follow, and they did so, miraculously marching through the sky behind St. Selimbrar and his wyrm. After the serfs, Ilmater's avatar followed.

Only after all had disappeared were the Narfelli soldiers freed from the magic that had held them. At first, nothing occurred to them. But in the days afterwards, the first time any of the soldiers drew his sword, he immediately broke out with the laughing plague, according to Ilmatari accounts, which led most of the warriors at the crucifixion of St. Selimbrar to refuse to ever draw steel again.

The Ilmatari deny that St. Selimbrar and his dragon did anything to destroy Milthius - an action that would have taken many innocent lives - or that he contaminated the farmland of Milthius, for it would be against the tenets of Ilmater to cause massive death, suffering or starvation.

The Ilmatari say that there indeed was plague in Milthius in the Year of the Wrongful Martyrs (-188 DR), and that the plague and famine caused the city's fall, not fire. They also acknowledge that the fields of Milthius went barren in that year, but they speculate that these things were the poisonous breath of Talona, who felt that her temple hill was desecrated through the abortive sacrificial crucifixions in her honor that the Narfelli failed to execute there.

Whatever the case may be, the Ilmatari claim that St. Selimbrar and the 80 serfs that he freed in Milthius continue to serve the Broken God and have indeed have done so seven times since the Miracle of Milthius, as they call it.

The most recent event, they say, was the appearance of an armored knight atop a golden dragon, blasting a battle call upon a silver horn and followed by 80 marching men in serfs' clothing who were armed only with scythes during the Second Battle of Bezentil in the Great Dale in the Year of the Roaring Horn (1288 DR).

According to many who witnessed that battle, the knight and his gold dragon defeated the dracolich Nargustrandir in a mighty aerial battle over the Eastern Dale, while the serfs, seemingly unstoppable, mowed down archmagi and warriors of the Cult of the Dragon and many other evildoers. Neither the knight nor the serfs are said to have uttered a single syllable on that day.

After completing their mission, the knight and his dragon flew southward, and the serfs simply marched upward into the southern sky, disappearing over the horizon behind them. The painbearers of Ilmater are certain that this was an appearance of St. Selimbrar and the freed serfs of Milthius, and few sages in the Realms doubt them.
Have you heard the story of Durentius and his cock?

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