Council of Vasilyev

The Council of Vasilyev was a months-long conference that was held in the village of Vasilyev in the Bazhkiri Monastic Order of Thea. This was hailed as the first event during which all races of Sirakos met in one place to discuss the future of a government. Representatives from the Holy Basilea of Arvhulhite and the Jagatai Trade Khaganate attended.

### Participants

All races on Sirakos gathered in the relatively small village of Vasilyev in the Northern Forest in the year 1 BCV (Before Council of Vasilyev). The Holy Basilea of Arvhulhite sent their representatives to oversee the discussions and assure that nothing decided in the Council was going to prompt hostility toward the golden elves.

The Jagatai Trade Khaganate also attended, attempting to convince the Lord-Cardinals and Lord-Bishops to encourage material consumption among the Bazhkiri people and increase their trade with the Khaganate. Historically, the Bazhkiri are quite modest in their spending, and the Jagatai were in the interest of changing this with the upcoming adjustments to the Bazhkiri religion.

The ice elves, having recently adopted Theazha en masse, sent a delegation independent of their golden elf suzerains, much to the dismay of the Basilea’s representatives. The ice elf delegation came from an order of Theazhan monks from a monastery north of Snowhold, St. Nikiva Seminary. The wind elves also attended, in an effort to gain the favor of the Theazhan scholars for a joint effort to solve the curse of blindness.

Three orc representatives came from each of the city-states, attempting to pressure the Lord-Cardinals into adding more anti-magic bylaws into Theazha, which had to that point, remained entirely neutral to magical practices.

Goblin representatives were sent as a message of goodwill toward the Bazhkiri people, attempting to dispel myths about their people. This was an exceedingly rare instance of goblins being put under strict behavioral regulations, and, even more rarely, actually obeying those regulations.

Each of the eleven Witchpeople tribes arrived, again to the chagrin of the golden elf delegation. The Witchpeople were, like the goblins, in attendance for the purpose of dispelling myth and rumor.

All participant delegations were received into the village and housed at the hospitality of the Monastic Order of Thea.

### Pre-deliberation conflict

The initial discussions among the Monastic Order were the actual conditions of the deliberations to be had. The delegations, with varying degrees of intensity, lobbied for the allowance into the actual deliberations.

The first conflict that came forward was when the ice elf delegation arrived, independent of the representatives from the Holy Basilea which lorded over the ice elves. The golden elves argued that the ice elves had no right to be at the council without the permission of their suzerain, while the ice elves argued that this is a matter of religion, of which they are a part, and not the state.

King-Cardinal Mikhol II was personally on the side of the golden elves in this debate, but from a vote taken amongst the Lord-Bishops and Lord-Cardinals, the ice elves won the Bazhkiri blessing to attend the council by a margin of 6 votes.

The golden elves immediately voiced another concern after the arrival of the Witchpeople delegation. The golden elves argued that the Witchpeople invited demonic presence into the area. This argument rang true among the staunchly religious Lord-Cardinals and they unanimously petitioned to have the Witchpeople ejected from the conclave. The King-Cardinal still possessed veto power, however, and invited the Witchpeople to argue their case.
The representative from the tribe of lvhulbhore Mhilu, the Witchwoman known as Guri the Green, stepped forward and delivered an eloquent speech that surprised every attendant. To this point, the Witchpeople had been stereotyped as illiterate barbarians. Guri the Green argued that, for the worshippers of Thea, both the Eleven Demons and Arvhulhite are false gods; if the Bazhkiri do not fear Arvhulhite, they should not fear the Demons; if the Witchpeople are to be cast out for worshipping false gods, so should the golden elves.
King-Cardinal Mikhol II was astounded by the eloquence of this argument, and the Witchpeople were permitted to stay, so long as they traveled to a distance of five miles from the village to perform their prayers and rituals.
The orc representatives petitioned the King-Cardinal to forbid any magic to be practiced during the conclave. The King-Cardinal agreed, but Guri the Green stepped forward once again, inquiring as to what was defined as magic, subtly implying that prayer fit the definition. The Lord-Council had a day-long deliberation and wrote the Sorcerous Determinations, which would, over the course of the Council of Vasilyev, lay the framework for Theazhan regulations on magic.

The Jagatai made their case to the King-Cardinal to have the rights for vending for the delegations and the Lord-Cardinals during the council. The goblins argued this, warning that the Jagatai would not stimulate the local economy as the goblins would. The goblin representative, Kuzzi IV, famously said:

> *We goblins enjoy the foreign, we appreciate the art in other cultures. That we may give patronage to your local craftsmen for our time here, to enjoy the unique style of the Bazhkiri workform, would be a privilege unmatched. We hope that the Bazhkiri people would enjoy the goblin workform in kind, so that we may exchange money and culture while we remain here. The Jagatai, were they to have the exclusive rights to sell their goods to the delegations, would only ferret that money away to their homeland, never to be seen in the Northern Forest again.*
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The King-Cardinal, growing ever tired of these conflicts, ruled that no one attending culture would be allowed to have a monopoly on the vending for the conclave’s duration.

The remaining prerequisite discussion was held in private conclave among the rulers and monks of the Monastic Order’s state only. This was to determine which, if any, foreign dignitaries were to be allowed into the actual conclave deliberations at all. They emerged one hour after entering, declaring that only the ice elf monks from the monastery of St. Nikiva would be permitted to be part of the discussion. However, there would be a break of two days between every day spent in private discussion, so that foreign delegations would be able to voice their concerns to the rulers of the Monastic Order.

### Issues

The early days of Theazha were contentious at best, with nearly every region having its own individual interpretation of Thea. The deliberations focused on these items:

* Is Thea represented by three individual personalities, or simply one personality with three souls?
* Are saints divine or simply agents of Thea?
* Is magic a form of miracle?
* Is divination heresy?
* What is the correct spelling of Thea (as opposed to Dhea)?
* What is the correct pronunciation of Thea (see above)?
* Should miracles be attributed to the individual that performs them?
* Should the celebration of the Seven Days of Following be paused for the day of prayer (the 19th of every month)?

### Procession

The first issue addressed is certainly the most contentious point. The council was evenly split onto which the three aspects of Thea (the Nursemaid, the Mother, the Midwife) were different personalities or instead three souls that inhabited the same person. Lord-Bishop Slevimir of Karvovna’s argument on the side of the latter was recorded as such:

> *Does a woman change so truly when they reach a certain age? Are they an entirely new person? If so, why do they not adopt a new name to reflect this? We see in Dhea the forms of humanity in their most all-encompassing nature. A woman is a reflection of Dhea in her most pure.*
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Slevimir of Karvovna was accused of blasphemy by the proponents of the three-personality philosophy due to his likening of Thea to the imperfect human form. This influenced enough voters to sway the vote in the other direction, leading the council to determine that Thea was in fact, represented by three individual personalities.

Slevimir of Karvovna’s blunder also influenced the Council to adopt the pronunciation and spelling “Thea” as opposed to the more rural “Dhea”.

When discussing whether saints were divine, the lone Lord-Cardinal who supported the notion that saints were divine was outvoted, despite his grandest protests. This man, Lord-Cardinal Slavily II of Astrakovo, was called out for his dalliance in magic when next he stood alone, in favor of declaring magic a form of miracle.

The ice elf monks of St. Nikiva Seminary had so far abstained from voting, but as the question came up as to whether divination qualified as heresy, they spoke up. They had practiced divination since their founding, in words an effort to determine the will of Thea, but in truth a holdover from the recent times at which the ice elves still worshipped the old Bazhkiri pantheon, the Six Circles.

The monks of the various Bazhkiri monasteries stood with the monks of St. Nikiva, but were outvoted by the governmental representatives. They are said to have silently returned to their seats and remained in silent prayer for the rest of the day’s meeting.

The next session of the council was introduced by Lord-Cardinal Oslo X of Aleksiri, who demanded a decision on the outlaw of magic. Reports from other delegations indicated that the orcs had been speaking regularly with Oslo since the beginning of the conclave.

The single decision occupied the entire day, only when the members of the council started to grow irritable with fatigue was a decision made. One Lord-Bishop, Slavzi of Keluga, in a bout of anger exclaimed that they could simply use the Sorcerous Determinations to decide which types of magic were acceptable.

This was unanimously approved, and the Monastic Order of Thea thereby outlawed any magic that fell under the qualifications of the Sorcerous Determinations. The orcs were reportedly disappointed at what they called a half-measure.

At the next session, the discussion was a fairly quick affair. The council members, still left with a poor taste in their mouth due to Lord-Cardinal Slavily II’s supposed self-aggrandizing ideas about miracles, set the vote in at a ratio of four to one.

Finally, the decision about the extra day of prayer in between the Seven Days of Following raged for several sessions. The rulers of the realm fought tooth-and-nail to allow the Seven Days of Following to continue through the day of prayer, desperate to not give their subjects an extra day of rest. King-Cardinal Mikhol II held the deciding vote, and, much to the dismay of his vassals, cast his vote in favor of allowing the Seven Days of Following to pause for the day of prayer.

### Conclusion

After months of progress, the Council of Vasilyev was concluded. Those members of the council that had a minority vote were given one month to adjust their realm’s function to align with the new tenets or they would be removed from their station. In the end, seven Lord-Bishops and two Lord-Cardinals had their title revoked for their failure to abide by the new laws of Theazha.