Talk:Jibril - The Shining Isle

Chosen

Every Jibrilite nation had a Chosen patron. They have no (immediate) game effect, but explain why your nation is the way it is. Possible template:

Seraph Altima

Totem: the Sun

Design: a sunburst

Preferences: Architecture, glass, light, the colours white, red and yellow

Policies: rigid social hierarchy, artistic patronage, institutional religion

The watchword of those under the guidance of Altima was perfection. All things should aspire to the transcendent perfection of God and the manifest perfection of the Chosen and the Codex, in form and function and thought. The light of heaven will pierce all darkness and reveal all imperfections.

Seraph Gestahl

Totem: Gear

Design: Clockwork Mechanism

Preferences: Architecture, Iron, fire, steam, the colours black, red

Policies: Technology, Infrastructure,

The Seraph Gestahl was/is a innovative chosen who was interested in the implementation of thaumatic technology and having little time for else but for his unusual interest in infrastructural projects. Whilst interfering little in social policies of the humans within his domain, he was fond of expansive infrastructural projects which shaped his domain considerably.

Seraph Gilgamesh

Totem: armor

Design: a gauntlet grasping a ball

Preferences: porcelain/marble, varnished wood, leather, the colours brown, white and red

Policies: military meritocracy, free education, athletic patronage

Seraph Grahf

Totem: The Red Moon

Design: Three cloaked figures standing before a red moon

Preferences: Melefs, Steel, Silver, Silence, the colours gray, black, and purple.

Policies: Spycraft, Excessively long term plans, experimenting on the human psyche

Grahf was a highly secretive Chosen, whom skirted the bleeding edge between genius and madness. Obsessed with long term plans, he had what some might call an obsession with the human psyche, and modeled his domain to cater to his experiments by setting up various different variations on the Empyrean faith, giving direct and often contradictory orders to individuals, and occasionally granting divine visions to his chosen followers- most of whom invariably went mad and had to be censured by the Inquisition. Grahf vanished shortly before the War in Heaven, but as such behaviour was common for the Seraph, nobody paid it any heed.

Seraph Illua

Totem: Lilies

Design: Gold Geass-V on white field

Preferences: Polished white marble and limestone; copper, bronze and gold finishings, flower gardens, lotus ponds, fountains, sunwells...

Policies: tba

It didn't end well.

Malakim Yalsamael

Totem:

Design:

Preferences: Opulent grandeur

Policies: rigid social hierarchy, mass indoctrination, funerary rites

Associated Chosen: Seraph Melchizedek

Priests and Cenobites

Below the upper leadership the Empyrean Church is divided into two general branches: the priesthood and the cenobites. The priesthood comprises the Presbyteratas and the Inquisition, who minister to the faithful and root out corruption respectively. The cenobites, by contrast, engage in cloistered study and memorisation of the tens of millions of words of revealed truth in the Empyrean Codex. Their role in the Church is to perform those tasks that require more theoretical knowledge than the pure pragmatics of frontline action. It is cenobites who write the seminary textbooks, sit in judgement in religious courts, and - most prominently, since the Enlightenment - oversee the construction and repair of Thautech in deifactories, and deifactories themselves. In many kingdoms the cenobites provide a prominent source of recruits for government and academic posts, and former cenobites make up the majority of the Church leadership.

While cenobites have, as a group, closer access to the Chosen and their wisdom, this comes with a corresponding tightening of standards. Unless on assignment or appointed to a post, they are kept apart from the wider world and educated in closed establishments that keep close watch on their students for deviations, as paradoxically the close study of the Codex sometimes offers more opportunity for fallible human minds to misinterpret it. With the addition of thaumatic technology to the cenobite curriculum and the great expansion of the monasteries this involved, not to mention the post-Enlightenment spread of heresies in Jibril, these strictures have only increased.

In the wake of the War in Heaven,

Royal Bloodlines

"Royal" families are a seemingly diverse lot. Each line has particular traits that superficially distinguish them from others while sharing in common the superhuman traits that make them the Chosen-picked rulers of Jibril.

Briavelisan Bloodline

(Progenitors)

Wentliane Caumont +

Gallis Briavelisa

Thereafter the Briavelisan bloodline (or House of St.Briavelisa).

Distinguishing Characteristics: Blue hair, Golden or Red spinwheel eyes. Generation skipping frothing madness...
Current Status: Royal House of Walstan

Dia Bloodline

(Progenitors)

Caen Dia +

Reisay Dosou

Thereafter the Dia bloodline (or House of the Calendared Sun).

Distinguishing Characteristics: Bioluminescence

Current Status: Royal House of Illumina

Polluxian Bloodline

(Progenitors)

Tascheter Pollux +

Maia von Atlas

Thereafter the Polluxian bloodline (or House of the Sea).

Distinguishing Characterstics: Elfin ears and uniformly bronzed skin (verging on actual bronze).
Current Status: Royal House of Lykeia