Church of the Celestial Light

The **Church of the Celestial Light** is the dominant religious organization in Acruan and is the state church of the Union of Gaia that administrates the worship of the Celestial Light.

## Beliefs and Practices

The church holds as its core belief is that the Celestial Light is a benevolent force, one that guides and protects mankind imparting them a strict moral code and the promise to make the world a better one. It is through only by the grace of the Celestial Light can the faithful be found worthy of salvation. To be found worthy one must devote themselves utterly to the adherence of the Celestial Light and follow wholeheartedly its ways.

## Sects and Orders

### Light's Hand

An order within an order, a supremely secretive, ultra zealous and very well funded clandestine branch of church that is dedicated to the pursuit of eradicating all threats deemed otherworldly, corrupt or of heretical nature in the eyes of the church. They often employ radical methods to achieve their goals.

### Weaving Orderists

A secretive sect of priests and clergy who reject the teachings of the church itself and instead have turned to the heretical worship of a mysterious spider goddess.

### Order of the Insightful

An monastic order within the church whose members study and interpret the doctrine of the faith.

### Sisters of Benevolence

An benevolent all female order who travelled through the lands curing the diseased, tending to orphans and helping the sick and poor.

### Order of the Word

Comprised of local clergymen that serve as administrators of the churches who officiate at religious ceremonies, hear confessions of the faithful, and organize and lead events on holy days.

### Brotherhood of Chasity

An order that espoused the virtues of poverty, chastity, obedience and the rejection of sin.

### Cult of the Revenant Queen

A heretical cult that preach a doctrine of the late queen's triumph over death by the grace of the Celestial Light and her eventual bodily return to the throne.

### Order of Illumination

The Order of Illumination are a scholarly order that has devoted their lives to studying knowledge deemed forbidden, under the premise that to serve the Celestial Light, they have to know the darkness.

### Seekers of the Inner Light

Members of this obscure sect believe in enlightenment by means of finding the inner light in oneself.

### Cult of the Cleansing Flame

A splinter denomination which worships a fiery aspect of the Celestial Light.

### Keepers of the Blood

The Keepers of the Blood are a secretive order that are dedicated to their noble task of preserving the bloodline deemed the most purest which are believed to be descended from the holy union of Sezonians and that of the Stellarari.

### Redeemers of the Lantern

A hidden order that are rumored to be in the possession of a holy relic which supposedly can purify even the most vile sinner and redeem them.

### Pious Headsmen

Serving the church as executioners, these pious men have taken on the grim duty of delivering the release of death upon the guilty.

### Oracular Sisterhood

A division that consists entirely of women which is cloistered and tasked with interpreting prophecies from the Celestial Light to guide the faithful.