Peter has done a great job here.
I wish to make a couple additions and little clarifications.
>>What I am trying to do is clarify for myself what Syranthir's Ten Thousand
>>were like before their migration to Peloria - particularly as it relates
>>to Syranthir and Charmain.
>
>They were a bunch of knights with pagan grunts AFAIK.
Pre plate armor knights, too. Nice horses, though.
>Talor united the
>nations into a loose confederation called Loskalm.
The earliest united land was called Akem. Later it was called Loskalm.
Loskalm was sometimes united, often not, before Talor.
>Then the God
>Learners successfully occupied Loskalm and began to convert it
>into a bastion of Monotheism. As a result, Syranthir was kicked
>out.
This was pre-Abiding Book, and they worshipped different understandings of
what Malkion was. They even had different names for it.
Here is a quote from my Dictionaries.
Later Changes
As the political and mercantile power of the Malkioni enlarged various
groups interpreted the Invisible God in different ways.
One popular version was called THE RIGHT POWER (Kionvaran). He has a
special interest in Rightness and the Righteous. At first it was a powerful
unifying movement in Jrustela, and inspired the Return to Righteousness
Crusade which brought monotheism to mainland Genertela. However, they later
became a rigid and bitter band of arch fundamentalists, interpreting
everything through their own book, called the Sharp Abiding Book today.
The God Learners got more abstract and claimed that the Invisible God was
Makan, the Great Mind. They increasingly distanced themselves from the
mundane world in favor of this god until they lost themselves completely.
The so-called Inflamers went so far that the actually performed pagan burnt
sacrifices to the Invisible God, who they called Zabandan. They were even
considered wayward by the demonologists who tried to conquer gods. They
were eventually exterminated by the Righteous.
Irensavel was another aberrant interpretation of the Invisible God.
Amidst these and other heresies, an orthodox church dutifully bore its
functionary responsibilities among the common peoples. These often
forgotten people occasionally showed themselves, as in the White Robe
Protest and the Illiterate's Rebellion, which nonetheless achieved its
objectives.
This orthodox church was the basis for the later Rokari tradition.
Irensavel, the Fronelan Heresy
Fronelan sorcerers were offended by the Return to Rightness, whose god
Malkioneran they saw as a false demiurge.
A significant part of this religion is in its moral issues: there is a
right and wrong which transcend humanity and even the gods.
The Center of their philosophy was, instead, based on personal experience,
and in obtaining sensitivity in applying the impersonal (sorcerous) powers
to the material world.
This developed to be contact with their own higher form of God, which they
called the Hidden Mover, a mysterious entity which even preceded the
Oneness of Malkion the Creator.
The Hidden Mover was separate from the world, preceding the creation even
of matter and energy. Thus his transcendent magic and protection was
similar to the God Learners. However, Irensavel had a strict moral code,
and did prohibited the massive exploitation of either worshippers or nature
which Malkioneran encouraged.
To the worshippers of Irensavel, Malakion was the evil and corrupt demiurge
who purpose was to keep people in the gross and bloated clutches of the
material world. Living Irensavel's Pure Life would allow people to be freed
and become one with that transcendent entity.
Powered by hypermail