Etiquette
for Clerics and Religion
Do espouse personal beliefs and engage in private forms of worship while in the Principalities. If anything, Glantri is a land of varied eccentricities, that even the belief in some minor Immortal of some unknown portfolio is perfectly acceptable.
Do not proselytize, preach, or worship in public. It is simply and plainly illegal in the Principalities.
Do use interjections or expressions that contain the names of Immortals—such as “Alphaks’ shadow!”, “By Odin’s beard!”—as even these can be construed as proselytizing in public.
Do use Rad’s name in vain, as his is the only Immortal name used and accepted by Glantrians. Even seemingly irreverent expressions—such as “Rad damn it!” and “By Rad’s magical arse!”—are merely considered comical and not at all blasphemous.
Do welcome clerics into your social circles. They make interesting and entertaining company, as they know more stories, legends, and myths about the Immortals than any bard or loremaster or court jester.
Do not allow clerics to preach their doctrines or impose their morality upon you. Should such things happen, local constables can be easily contacted and the cleric will be duly detained at the Tower of Sighs.
Do allow clerics to heal you of diseases, poisons, curses, and even flesh wounds. They are quite useful in such matters, and much more convenient than visiting the local apothecary for alchemical potions, especially when you are gasping for breath, bleeding to death, or clinging onto life.
Do not allow clerics to heal you in exchange for religious favors or conversion to his faith. It is considered nobler to die and later be reanimated as an undead denizen or reincarnated in another body (save when the body is that of a dwarf or a hin!).
Do not allow belief in Immortals to hinder your own personal growth. Religion is an institution for oppression, hindering the growth of the individual person, numbing the mind with dogmatic half-truths, and enslaving the spirit with restrictions and rules of conduct, all to indulge the greed and power lust of certain mortals who claim the powers of the Immortals as their own.
Do recognize the influence and study the example of the Immortals, as all of us have the potential to achieve Immortality ourselves —although clearly, some more likely than others.
Do engage in philosophical discussions of mysticism and the metaphysical nature of the Immortals, as such activities reveal the divine secrets and other planes of existence.
Do not take mysticism and religious teachings as dogma, as many of them are fallible mortal fabrications—if not downright self-serving lies—given some semblance of respectability and disguised as truth from the Immortals.
