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In Opposition of Iniquity


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In Opposition of Iniquity

Lector Turnfield’s First Confessional
 

Spoiler

 

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Preamble

I am Lector Trevor Turnfield, as of beginning this recollection I have just passed my 70th year and as I continue on in service of our Lord GOD I have borne witness to the woes and wonders of shepherding my fellow descendants and beyond; the bounties of loyal servitude to GOD and the trials that accompany this loyalty. I have without a doubt witnessed the scrolls’ messages thousands of years old ring true even to this day and it is with humility I profess that without the guidance of my Lord GOD I would be among the iniquitous for it is faith alone which has sustained my hope in goodness at many points in my life. I will recount for you dear reader and my brothers and sisters in GOD’s service the things I have witnessed in my fifty years as a man of the cloth. I shall have to do so in several parts however as the good Lord has seen fit to ensure that I continue to live in interesting times.


 


“And I am the Lord GOD without peer, and My trials are the holy trials, and My cure is the virtuous cure, and all the reliefs of the Virtue are open to the righteous forbearer.” (Virtue 3:10) 



I was born to Ivan and Louise Turnfield of Haense. I am grateful for the childhood I had and my mother’s insistence that I should be educated; She and my sister Eleanor taught me to read using the scrolls, particularly the Gospel of Godfrey. The labor expected of a farmer’s son is consistent and serious and I labored from my sixth birthday onward in the fields and animal pens but since my mother was a devout woman I enjoyed weekly mass as an opportunity to relax. Life was very simple until I was seventeen and made a journey to the Holy See to begin my study as an acolyte within the church. I spent two years in study, finishing a thesis on charity and working toward ordainment; initially it was my want to become a bishop or cardinal within the church in the interest of working down to establish charitable operations within the church but since I write this as a Lector of Owyn you may safely assume this never came to fruition.

 


“But GOD’s is the eternal power, the mysterious power with no part nor piece, no lowly anatomy.” (Spirit 7:6)



I was ordained at the age of nineteen, when a young man is paradoxically the most assured of his brilliance and at the height of his foolishness. Upon exiting the Old Providence Basilica newly frocked we came across a frightful specter of a young woman closing upon a playing child in the basilica yard. Coward though I was, I faced the specter with prayer, wielding a hefty lorraine; I pressed the aurum rosary against the temple of the lost soul and drove it away from the child. This was my first encounter with the forces of the deceiver in their rawest form. 

I was blessed enough to consecrate the Abbey of Saint Robert at the crossroads prior to the eruption of the war and it was what I believe to be a blessing that through my travels as a missionary I met the Cohort of the Flaming Covenant in their camp at Ramsfield; Paco de Mantequilla, Dante de Denesle, Isaac Jebediah, and at the time novitiate Dario de Mantequilla (also known as Dharas). The Lectors invited me to dinner and shared what little they had in the shadow of Luciensburg, the city they had taken from them; even as refugees and on the losing end of a war against demon-worshiping rats there was still the wealth of spirit among them to share with a guest.

 


“And you shall give your fellows the abundance of the spirit, which is My Word.  For the abundance of the spirit is never divided, but multiplied.” (Virtue 2:8-9)


 

Padre Paco had made mention of his efforts to spread the faith into the nation of Yong Ping with little success, though in a meeting with then Zhu Tianrui Ren I had made progress in the repeal of anti-missionary laws within Yong Ping and had gone on to aid a convert by the name of Oijin Kato from Yong-Ping. The first major blow to my spirit came at the hands of my own self-interest, due to savoyard persecution and crucifixion the name of the faith was soured like vinegar to the Pingers and hopes of establishing friendly relations and repealing laws was dead on arrival.

During this time I too began to sour on the rhetoric of the church as the dealings within canondom had become increasingly political in nature; I turned to physical exercise as a way to reckon with my anger and undertook the path of Owyn to reckon with my doubt in a centralized church. My first day upon the path I became separated from my pilgrimage party and spent several days wandering the woodland staving off starvation; it was not until I had wandered to the outskirts of providence that I was found by Padre Paco de Mantequilla who upon seeing me burst from the woodland in a confused stupor shot me with a crossbow. During my recovery I partook of day two in Du Loc wherein I was assigned to maintain a flaming altar to GOD for seven saints hours.

The flesh pit of Du Loc- the gibbering living flesh of the alien heart that had been planted beneath the city burst from the earth during my watch of the altar. It took the shape of the citizens of Du Loc and opened a great maw in the heart of the city leading into an acidic pit at the bottom. My first experience with combat was with these creatures, delving with the Lectors as a Proselyte into the under loc where that wicked flesh had begun to create monsters out of corpses to defend itself. To this day I shudder to think of those shambling creatures, their boiling blood, and the blades of bone that had burst from their mangled corpses and slew a city watchman. I took up a sword to defend an injured Lector and applied Tippen’s Root to the weapon and cut open a film of flesh that had blocked the escape of the party ahead.

 


“So I am the Most High, and in pursuit of My Virtue, I bid my faithful this: You shall keep fast to your word and station, and aspire not to greatness among men, but to My glory.” (Virtue 6:8)



I was not a part of the mission that saw the end of the flesh pit but during my novitatehood I was a participant in many battles against supernatural entities that had sought to target Du Loc. None serve as a better example of the typical Du Locian problem than the metallic vessel that fell from a tear in reality that contained a warrior in strange armor; following shortly after him came down a strange flying insectoid creature that shot Lector Dharas with lightning born from a oddly shaped staff, shortly following this a second portal tore itself open; slaying a flying bird and birthing a bipedal crab demanding wergild for a slight; I kicked him back into the portal and pulled Dharas’ unconscious form away from the metallic vessel the dying warrior landed in before it exploded, sealing the portals behind. In retrospect I understand this tale is farfetched and my expectation of what battles are to be expected against iniquity is deeply skewed by the many unusual battles I have partaken in.

What sealed my decision to join the Lectorate was the aid offered to me by two members to traverse into the dark swamps between Yong Ping and Vortice when a cannibal tribesman ambushed me during a personal sabbatical and stole from me a rosary gifted to me by my mother. Danzen and Dharas were with me, serving as my battle brothers in an effort to reclaim this gift. While in the swamp I encountered another poltergeist amidst the portion of the swamp infected by the tomblands, a crackadonk, and finally the Rougaroux I had written about in a report titled: “A Horror Hunting the Faithful.” Which can be found in the owynist archives.

The trials of the swamps brought me new clarity and purpose; a keen understanding of the Lectorate and my role as a shepherd of GOD. It was not enough to dispense wisdom unto the flock for wisdom offered little to men torn to pieces by werebeasts and vampires. It was the role of the shepherd to bear the crook and the sword; to fight the wolves sent by the jealous deceiver to rip them away from GOD’s pastures. 

 


“And you shall be without pretense or conceit, for before the mountain, the ant and the aurochs are equally small.” (Virtue 7:7)



Taking the mantle of a Lector came with certain challenges, I elected to abandon the facade of greater sophistication as it was conceit- I spoke as I would on the farm again and allowed myself to be what I am; the son of a farmer who took up GOD’s word and steel to defend my parish.

I spent my earlier years among the Lectorate in transit, I’m drawn to the outdoors fairly regularly but discovered the Hexer lodge of Savoy when Dharas joined them for a hunt; I should preface that there are few organizations I loath so much as Hexers so take my recollection with a grain of salt for I cannot be certain if my memory has not been twisted toward representing them more fouly than they truly were. After escorting Dharas I had a brief conversation with an elder hexer whom I regarded as sour and conceited for his supposed greater understanding of the world.

When during their hunt Dharas was injured they did not send for us, my brother’s legs were crushed and amputated by a crowdrake due to the Hexer’s own failing in planning and they did little else beside cauterize his legs and toss him outside the tent to work on their own; I carried my injured brother in a harness upon my back until his legs were capable of carrying him again.

Despite access to mutations themselves and greater forms of healing alchemy by their own profession the Hexers hoarded their knowledge in favor of turning a profit hunting 
disruptive monsters with no interest in morality or preserving secular lives; I find them to be as distasteful as the magi women they surrounded themselves with.
 


“So I find that you seek impossible knowledge not for the good of your fellows, or precious wisdom, but in the desire of power.” (Spirit 7:11)



Alchemy and Its charitable applications have always been a purview of the Lectorate, Danzen is the most talented doctor I have ever seen and were it not for his quick intervention when I suffered a chest injury I would not be here today; it was Danzen whom during a training session had a flash of inspiration amidst the vampiric outbreak for an alchemical cure to the ailment; I watched with curiosity as my fellow Lectors delved into the lab in a frenzy to formulate Saint Humbert’s Quintessence and drafted up a statement later in the saint’s week to begin a clinical trial of the supposed cure.

I was blessed to witness the first successful test of Saint Humbert’s Quintessence upon an orc from the Horde. I witnessed as among seizures upon the medical table his fangs shrunk into normal teeth and his vampiric claws gave way to short nails, all tests proved him a normal orc again. After a few more successful trials I sat with Dharas to make several copies and distributed them by hand.

It was the development of the cure that convinced me of the worth of alchemy, in truth. I came to recognize it as a technology of great benefit so long as it was wielded with the intent to do righteous acts and oppose iniquity where it reared its head; my fellow Lector’s desire to spread this knowledge and use it to perform medical care further convinced me that it was a worthy endeavor.

 


“And verily you must find satisfaction in service of your own realm, and the realm of all men.” (Spirit 7:15)



In the interest of brevity I share one final tale from the Lectorate’s days in Du Loc before the close of this first chapter - that being the invasion of a strange magician. It was an attack on Lord Brae’s tower in which a strange boar-man of tremendous stature baring salt white fur and strange tattoos that in retrospect were more than likely thanhic in nature. This strange wizard moved through walls and doors without care, not breaking them down but rather having made no indication that solid barriers held any bearing to it at all. 


My brothers and I broke through the myriad doors of Brae’s tower and down the lifts to his vault, trails of strange dust left in the wake of this beast as though it had aged the world around it, a theory I developed when as we approached the final door barring us from the beast we found ourselves slowed, the world moved at a snail's pace but try as we might to fight it we couldn’t break through this strange spell; our voices and bodies slowed but my mind knew that it was restrained. All in attendance shared in this experience and when our world sped up again the boar-man had absconded.

I know not what creature broke into Brae’s tower but if it has the means to read this, I should say I hold no anger for you strange swine wizard and would invite you to explain your theft, I believe there was some deeper meaning to your acquisition and invite you to share it and repent if necessary.

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