#afk col

I talked about the organizations themselves in the last post. Today, I want to take a closer look at the associated characters. First, I’d like to focus on the Church of Light related characters and after, I’ll focus on the Mauler Temple associates. At some point, I might even make go ahead and talk about Graveborn who got caught up in the religious mess, mainly the forsaken family, on the celestials’ complicated relationship to both religious organizations, or on the political counterparts of each respective organization – the royal army for Lightbearers and the tribal alliance under Skriath for Maulers.

In this post, I’ll be focusing on the more directly related characters – Cecilia and Eluard, and the next one will move on to the more distantly related ones – Belinda and Lucius.

Cecilia – Purger of Sins

When we talk about Church of Light, the characters who always get brought up are Lucius and Belinda first, and Eluard later. Few people ever bring up Cecilia even though she’s been in the game for a fairly long time and may even be directly involved in multiple characters’ backstories (Rosaline and Belinda are most likely, though if you believe the Oscar and Rosaline siblings theory, then he counts too). She was one of the first characters to point at the darker side of the Church of Light that we came to love to criticise so much.

Now, I don’t want to pretend like all of this ignorance comes from Cecilia’s appearance and gender but we saw how people react to Lucretia – someone who kills children at large for no reason other than her own bitterness and who stalked a man she idolized without even knowing him, then pressured him into marrying her. I just feel like a lot of people cut Cecilia some slack because she’s a conventionally attractive woman, not to mention one who makes a clever use of what would otherwise be a disability. With that out of the way, there is more why she doesn’t get as much dirt as the other characters in this organization. Cecilia had a very strong reason for joining the Path of Ascension, one that a lot of us can understand and emphasize with even if we haven’t been through the same.

Cecilia is one of the few characters where we have details about her family. I don’t mean there aren’t any, but you could probably count them on the fingers of your hands. And what more, most of the other characters are more or less at least partially responsible for the deaths of their loved ones while Cecilia had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. Cecilia joined the church only after already having gone on her own to take revenge for her husband and deciding that it wasn’t enough. Cecilia’s reason for joining the church is, ultimately, the will to protect others. Whether you like it or not, cultists do exist in Esperia, and they murder people. Cecilia was on the receiving end of that cruelty once and she doesn’t want anyone else to get there too. In a cruel twist of irony, there are times when she herself is now the one causing pain by tearing families apart. The question is: Do her good deeds outweigh her wrongs?

Where the question of Cecilia gets interesting is when we consider one of the most recent character’s addition. Oku, much like Cecilia, went through a horrible loss, and following the event, he joined an extremist organizationthat slaughters those it hates without discrimination. I think the key difference between them is that Oku was, like I said previously, at least partially responsible for his own downfall. Oku seeks to attone by killing people while Cecilia seeks to protect others from the same pain she went through. In Oku’s case, helping others is a by-product of his own redemption while in Cecilia’s, helping itself is the goal she was aiming for.

Eluard – The Protector of Souls

The other member of the inquisitory part of the church, the most secret part of it, would be Eluard. Now, they could’ve easily gone the same route as they did with Cecilia or having Eluard be the “evil church person” a lot of people in the fandom were expecting him to be, they went the complete opposite route. Eluard is, quite possibly, the gentlest character we have. One who actively strived to save everyone at any given moment and was genuinely terrified when he lost control even though he would’ve been murdered if he didn’t kill the people around him first. Even after the powers within him calmed down, he spent hours weeping over the lives he involuntarily took, and hours more in prayers for guidance and forgiveness.

An important part that I think doesn’t get brought up enough is that Eluard has nowhere to go. He’s been adopted by the church as a young child. We don’t know if that’s because he was orphaned because even in the real world, the church would often adopt even children with families, and some families would give their children up for a good name in the community and a reputation of piety. The Church of Light then went on to cripple Eluard socially by not teaching him any life skills and only educating him in the way of the church. Eluard has nowhere to go not because he doesn’t try hard enough but because at his age, it would be virtually impossible to start from the ground up, not to mention the church would hunt him down if he disobeyed.

He’s always been pious and a frevent believer but despite his best efforts, the Light has been avoiding him for years, as if waiting and biding its time. This is purely a theory on my part but we know that since a young age, Eluard didn’t get upset with people but rather regarded everyone and everything around him as priceless treasures. The Light descended upon him the first time he felt any sort of animosity – and even then it wasn’t selfish on his part. Or at least the story says that’s what he felt but in Eluard’s own words, he wished for them to be soothed by the Light and to see the truth. For what it’s worth, it seems almost as though the Light was waiting for some superficial hint of malice to then amplify it and bring out its destructive power in full. It resulted in Eluard breaking down, much to the further displeasure of the other priests.

Church of Light

The Church of Light sucks. That’s once consensus we can all agree on. It’s corrupted and terrible and absolutely doesn’t deserve to hold any sort of moral high ground over anyone at all. But regardless, it exists, and the general idea behind is not an evil one. CoL is meant to guide humans to humility and to enforce peace and prosperity with the help of celestial magic. They take in orphans, give them education, jobs, and some stability in life despite them not having families. Outside of the church, the only other organization we now of that sort of does something similar is the Violet Orphanage. But where the VO focuses on forcing children to enter life-threatening situations to bind to demonic powers, CoL raises children in the presence of the divine and allows them to grow their own connection to it at their own terms. Furthermore, CoL roots out demonic cults and violent groups across the Lightbearer Kingdom that could, and often do, threaten the peace of the common people. They track their origins to the first worshippers of Dura and the celestials during the first Hypogean war, and they strive to give hope to people and allow them to live in faith that something or someone is watching over them. All in all, the general idea behind CoL is a noble and good one. It’s just that, much like everything ran by imperfect people, it got horribly perverted over time.

As things stand, CoL is a horribly misguided organization. This is an important detail because I don’t actually believe most of CoL members are malicious or causing suffering on purpose, even though I agree that the people in charge probably are terrible and disgusting and deserve to be wiped off the face of Esperia. Their first crime would be how overly careful they are. Someone who hid a criminal is not necessarily a criminal but the chance is always there, and for the CoL, even that chance is too big a risk. In a way, I believe this comes from a place of fear. They know how easily humans are corrupted, and thus they don’t trust the local authorities to deal with violent dangerous criminals on their own, and they don’t believe they would put them trough honest trial either. Just the possibility of a violent criminal escaping justice thanks to their money or talking skills or just because they don’t seem like they would be one of those people is too much of a risk for CoL to take, and it is really not that hard to see why.

The church protects people and connects them to the gods. That’s their entire purpose and the reason for their existence. It’s only natural for people to try and justify their own importance in the world, to try and prove that they are needed. Now, should this ever come at the cost of purposely creating enemies and ruling with fear and iron fist? Of course not. But at the same time, you can’t blame an organization based around protecting an insanely large amount of people for being careful and trying to eliminate potential threats as soon as possible. Sure, the people hiding the cultists may not be a part of the cult now but if they were left alive, they might decide to continue the work of said cult, sewing more evil and distress to society.

Another thing that I think doesn’t get brought up enough is that there is a place within the kingdom where CoL has close to no influence. That place is the city of Rustport. And far and wide, it is known as a hellhole of chaos where you will get robbed or murdered in broad daylight if you’re not careful or powerful enough. Anything from petty crimes through illegal alchemy to slave trade is on the market here and the absolute freedom is terrifying. The survival of the fittest is the only law that applies here, only further highlighting the importance of CoL for the kingdom. Twisted as it may be, CoL provides stability. The good priests and priestesses shine as beacons of light, hope, morality, and humanity while also teaching others to be humble and considerate, and supporting the ruling power’s laws.

Mauler Desert Temple

The Mauler society has a very different set of rules and codes than the human-based Lightbearer kingdom, and what more could we really expect? The Maulers are a people who were treated less than poorly, and were nearly slaughtered by their own creators before they decided to fight back for their lives and honor, and both of those remained a huge part of their culture ever since then. Maulers are a tribal society that has very little in terms of centralized structure. There is the Mauler Chieftain who can order the other tribes to unite against a common threat but such alliances inevitably fall apart when the Chieftain dies. The only other constant across all the Mauler tribes are the voodoo priests working for the Desert Temple.

The Desert Temple, much like CoL, has many roles and comes from a very good place. It heals the sick, it provides support and wisdom to the fighters. It can help settle disputes in a non-violent way in a culture that is very much based around violence. And unlike CoL, it has a deep understanding of both life and death and a great respect for both, that can clearly be seen in its practices. The game even directly tells us that voodoo magic is one of the oldest forms of magic that exist in Esperia, one that is not bound to a god or an element but rather one that is innately a part of the world and that allows itself to be seen and used only by those who are familiar with and respect the natural order of life and death. Even the Wilders were not able to tap into it, and it might be because they chose to run to save their lives rather than to fight for them and embrace the possibility of dying for the cause they considered right. Furthermore, DT has proven itself as the helping force to drive back calamities and natural disasters, with its members willing to put down their lives to protect or help others. However, even here we see many imperfections.

As with most things with Mauler society, DT is inevitably based around usefulness. If you aren’t useful to the temple, you aren’t welcome in it. If you are a burden, you are better off dead. Emotions aren’t useful, only raw power is. The temple demands children from many tribes be sent there to serve as temple warriors from a very young age, and then trains them to only be loyal to the temple. In the process, they strive to destroy their empathy and stun their emotional growth, essentially crippling them in that regard. This is one of the reasons why Antandra never hesitated to kill someone she grew up with for something she considered the right thing to do. These children are raised as killing machines, doing simply what the temple tells them, or what the temple instilled in them as the “right” and the “just” causes. It demands blind obedience though, especially from the temple warriors themselves. Antandra gets banished not because she killed but because she drew her blade without an order. The DT is authoritarian and absolute and doesn’t allow for any free will.

Sadly, we don’t have nearly enough lore on the Maulers as a whole to talk about a place without their influence to see whether they have some wider role in the society like CoL does, but a lot is likely going to come with the promised artbook. Until then, I will go off the note that nearly all the tribes seem to have deep-rooted respect for the temple. Aside from the Chieftain, the temple really seems to be the only thread connecting the wild and untamed Mauler society and possibly to be the only organization capable of making it work closely together, although they are yet to properly use this power of theirs. Or perhaps it is good that they didn’t yet. The religious zealotry that CoL pursues would end up devastatingly when combined with the Mauler temperament and sense of honor, so perhaps a part of their role is making sure the religious tensions never reach such an insane high. All of this is just pure speculation though.