Coryneus Faux

**Coryneus Faux** was a 3rd century Prothyran theologian and a member of Prothyran Society for Theological Sciences. He is most notable for his short paper, *Laws of the Body & Soul: A Treatise on the Matters of Life, Death, the Soul & Holy Resurrection.* His paper was one of the first works detailing contemporary theological theory regarding the nature of resurrection and the interplay between the major gods Akreena, Agrios, and Wodea of the Unseran pantheon. The paper was first published in 224, with a revised edition in 236 following the burning of the first People's Library of Prothyra. A short prayer authored by Faux serves as an epigraph, and would come to be popular among members of the Branded Palm. The paper in full reads:

## **Laws of the Body & Soul:A Treatise on the Matters of Life, Death, the Soul & Holy Resurrection**

**As detailed by Brother Coryneus Faux of the Prothyran Society for Theological Sciences**

1st Edition Published c. 224 JDF

2nd Edition Published c. 236 JDF

*Akreena, Lady of Life and the Forge that Burns. She is the goddess of creation.*

*Agrios, Lord of Death and the Blood that Flows. He is the god of the afterworld.

Wodea, Lady of Nature and the Grave that Keeps. She is the goddess of the cycle.*

True and holy resurrection is a rare, nigh unheard of miracle. It would be the greatest of gifts which the gods could bear, and lies beyond the jurisdiction of any singular being, godly or not. Never in properly recorded history has such an act of divinity been witnessed with verifiable testimony, and even in the old lore, it is the stuff of legend; a myth amongst myths, as it were. Indeed, there is more evidence to suggest the possible existence of the fabled Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life than there is to support the concept of true and holy resurrection as a reality of our world.

Theoretically speaking, it would surely require (at the very least) the blessings of the deities Akreena, Agrios, and Wodea, all acting in concerted agreement with one another. The nature of these blessings is outlined thus:

Before any other, Wodea's blessing must be earned to deviate from the natural cycle of life and death. Without this permission, the endeavor is a heresy, and must be abandoned lest you draw the wrath of the Lady of the Rotting Oak. It is here that most matters of resurrection end outright, for the Cycle is a sacred thing, and must be adhered to by all living things.

But, should one convince Wodea to allow for deviation from that which is mandated by the divine, one must petition Agrios, the Lord of Blood and Death for His blessing. The Reliquary of the Departed, where all holy souls forged by Akreena reside after death of the body, is His and His alone to draw from. Without this permission, the Soul of the resurrectee will not not be released freely, and thus the endeavor is a heresy.

Though Agrios is known well to endorse the drawing of souls and the raising of bodies by his devoted, to combine the two is an act traditionally beyond his tolerance. For when one draws a soul, the body remains dead and vice versa. In most matters of divine necromancy, a balance of collateral is kept, and so the Lord of Blood and Death is content to loan out one or the other, and moreover, while the Lady of the Rotting Oak may sneer at such testing acts, Her ire is not raised in full, for the integrity of the Cycle is ultimately kept intact. It is for this reason that, while various forms of ghost and animated corpse may, under certain circumstances be considered endorsed by the divine, creatures such as the lich and the vampire are heretical by their very nature.

And so, we arrive at the last blessing one must attain. Once one has received permission to breach the Cycle and to draw a soul from the Reliquary of the Departed for the purposes of true and holy resurrection, one still has need of a vessel in which to house this soul. To reforge the body of the resurrectee to be as it was in life, one must receive the blessing of Akreena, the Lady of Creation. This may yet be the most difficult blessing to receive, for though Akreena is a loving and generous mother, her generosity is not without its limits. When a life is first forged, it is forged as both body and soul. To reforge a body for a soul that has already lost the one they had been given would be an unprecedented favor. It would, by the very nature of the act, elevate that child of Akreena above all others. For the Forgemother, to love is a craft like any other, and her work is not so cheap that she would spoil a child so freely. The resurrectee would need to be a subject of truly exceptional character to beseach She who has already given them life and who has already sacrificed Her own hand for such a miraculous boon.

### **Pseudoresurrection: Undeath & Heresy**

Any raising of either the body or the soul (or a raising of both without the collective blessings of the gods), will result in a being who is neither truly alive nor truly dead in the total sense of the word. This act is known as a pseudoresurrection and these beings are known as the undead.

Not all undead are heretical in nature, but neither are they loved by every god. Wodea, for instance, despises undead beings of every kind, and only begrudgingly tolerates the existence of those propagated by Agrios and His followers. Indeed, Agrios stands alone amongst the major gods in actively endorsing the raising of the undead, and even then only under strict laws and guidelines. Specifically, one may raise either the body or the spirit of the dead, but never both in tandem. To raise both, and especially to bind one to the other, is a heretical act.

This was a major point in the genesis of the Warforged of Völkervier. They are, at their core, souls of the dead who have been drawn from the Reliquary of the Departed, and while they have been bound to autonomous vessels, the bodies they now inhabit are mortal constructs while their original corpses remain entirely dead. This satisfies not only the laws of Agrios, but also runs in accordance with Akreenan dogma by constructing a new body using the gifts of craftsmanship (rather than petitioning Akreena to reforge the body that was lost), as well as avoiding a true breach of the cycle as overseen by Wodea (though it's commonly accepted that she holds no more love for the Warforged than any other undead creature). And so, despite the hardships the Warforged have experienced and the dubious labeling of “soul-scarring,” they ultimately fall well short of the realm of heresy.

Should one commit heresy by attempting a resurrection without the blessings of the gods, in addition to bearing the punitive wrath of the divine beings whose domains have been desecrated, one’s efforts may also result in a psuedoresurrection. Theories abound as to the origins regarding the specific forms these heresies might take.

A common belief endorsed by the late Joachim Walbrau states that the first vampire arose as the result of a pseudoresurrection that bore the blessings of Agrios and Akreena, but failed to receive the blessing of Wodea, who cursed the resurrectee with vampirism. Still other sources claim that vampires hold an origin similar to liches and other soulbound undead, rising as the result of mad wizards who disregarded the territory of the gods altogether. Whatever their source, undead born as the result of heresy are not to be trusted, and are to be destroyed without hesitation.