culture ON THE PERSERVERANCE OF FAITH

[Noer 577]

ESSAY ON THE PERSEVERANCE OF FAITH
Vasili Valic

 

I pray to Sigismund, for we live in a time like his. We Adrians are not the august lords of one great empire, as was Godfrey,  we are not mythic icons of the ideal as Horen, and we are not yet redeemed as Owyn. Like Sigismund, we live in a time of low moral authority, of a humanity fractured and compromised in the absence of what once was. 

 

I have been blessed by my father, Velislav, with the great histories of our people, what was once known as Ruska or the great Raevir. I may be off base, as subject to the many hundreds of years ago I write of and the erosion of time, but nevertheless in such trying times I must try to use this gift to the advantage of common Adrian, especially those in doubt of their conscience.

 

I can understand the sentiments of those souls, some more forgivable than others, which would receive the actions of our crooked Pontiff, and our occupied Canonist faith, as a sign of its death. These folk would believe schism is the option in the face of excommunication, that because our Pontiff is fallible, so is our belief. 

 

One must never forget that Godfrey's immediate descendants abandoned Oren in its hour of need against the Kingdom of Urguan. Though rectified some decades later through the Imperium Tertius, it was his exodus and its shadow in which Sigismund lived, in a humanity subjugated by non-humans.

 

We do not exalt Sigismund for his reign, but his restoration. It was Sigismund who, in the face of a humanity that failed, decided not to abandon its faith in  decline, but who reunited mankind under one cause, from Flotsam to Abresi, to restore the agency of humanity to its own hand. It is Sigismund's translations of the scrolls that from which our faith descends in its identity. Those who would seek to remove him from the annals of the Canon would be doing so for the purpose of illiterate megalomania, unaware that the truths they preach even against his name were written by his pen.

 

We live in a time of Dragons and Ghouls, Vampires and other ilk; each side of the current conflict would have you believe the other is their agent. I do not believe either to be true. However, there is not a settlement in the world today which does not harbor the ill omens of undeath or immortal pacts with daemons. Humanity then is subjugated as it was then in Sigismund’s time. We are in a stasis, a vacuum of moral direction plagued by the absence of one just goal. 

 

We must think like Sigismund at this time. We must not abandon Canonism simply because there are those within it who are mortally villainous, for it is our unified faith of Humanity. We need not schism ourselves from the world simply because it wants us to. We are human, like any other, and we are, in Adria, the true and eldest heirs to Carrion. Alongside it, we carry the indomitable spirit of freedom and rectitude that has seen it burn in the face of unholy tyranny time and time again. 

 

I speak to you Adrians, to pray to the restorer of moral rectitude once more in our time of excommunication. We must not entertain these crooked souls who know neither victory nor defeat, hiding behind their walls for perpetuity while they strangle our faith to death. We must fight for our faith.

We must liberate Canonism, not send it to hospice. We must liberate our identity and right titles from the Hansetian menace, not consign them to their perpetual torment under its roof. 

 

Do not resign your beliefs simply because others wish you to. Affirm them in spite of this. 

Spoiler

 

[marikandaperc 1818]

"WOAH!" EXCLAIMED LUDMILLA EXCITEDLY

[CloudMagma 196]

Renata closes his eyes for about two minutes upon reading the missive, then opens his eyes back up.