The Faith of the Maker

The one faith of the setting, split since the Fourth Crusade into the Western Church and the Eastern Church.

Source

Expanded 2026-08-15 from the GM’s Faith of the Maker player primer (Sources/Faith_of_the_Maker_Eastern_Hazadi_Player_Primer_v6.md) — written explicitly from the Eastern/Hazadi perspective the PCs were raised in, and cited (GM). The Heavenly Courts table was then restated by the GM later the same day — see Sources/GM Celestial Courts revision (2026-08-15).md and the warning under The Five Heavenly Courts.

The Lord of Light, the Divine Maker

The Maker is the creator of Creation and the source of the order within it — not the greatest of many powers, but the source from which duty, morality, Gift, judgment, and rightful spiritual authority proceed. The Maker is beyond concepts of gender. (GM)

Mortal faculties — reason, conscience, compassion — are genuine and limited: religious certainty is not proof of having understood the Maker’s will, which is the Eastern Church’s core lesson from the Schism. (GM)

The Four Keys to Heaven

1. Obedience to God, Word and Deed
2. Duty Above, Honor Below
3. Duty before Passion, Faith before Family
4. Courage in Darkness, Resolve in the face of Death

The Five Heavenly Courts

Also called the Celestial Courts. The GM restated the whole arrangement on 2026-08-15 (Sources/GM Celestial Courts revision (2026-08-15).md), and this is the current canonical form:

Court	Core theme	Principal associations
Dawn Court	Beginnings	Artifice, Glory
Day Court	Life	Community, Healing
Dusk Court	Endings	Martyr, Repose
Star Court	Permanence	Knowledge, Protection
Moon Court	Change	Luck, Travel

All worshipers of the Maker have access to the Divine, Good, Law, and Light domains. Many followers devote themselves to one of the Courts. The Monastery of the Dawn presumably followed the Dawn Court — and, as of S5, is known to have been built over the Dawn sanctum.

The Faith primer sketches each Court’s character: Dawn — beginnings, making, achievement, worthy works; Day — life, service, mutual obligation, the flourishing of communities; Dusk — endings, loss, death rightly faced, the duties surrounding mortality; Star — understanding, vigilance, preservation, things that endure; Moon — change, journey, uncertainty, fortune, transition. Devotion tends to follow vocation: a healer to Day, a scholar to Star, a traveller to Moon, a craftsperson to Dawn, and someone facing death or funerary duty to Dusk. (GM)

This table has been revised twice — check it before you build on it

Earlier in the day on 2026-08-15 the GM ruled the opposite way on one point: that Travel belonged under Star and Moon’s association was Change (Sources/GM Primer clarifications (2026-08-15).md, item 2). The revision above reverses that — Travel is back under Moon. Aaron, relaying it, noted the GM may still be working this out.

The revision also drops the third domain per Court that the older setting doc (Sources/The Fallen World - History and Miscellaneous Information (2026).md) gave: Resolve (Dawn), Seasons (Day), Loss (Dusk), Liberation and Love (Moon). The GM’s column header reads “Principal associations,” so whether those are gone or merely demoted is not stated — nobody has asked. The new table matches Sources/Fallen World Spheres and other Mechanics.md exactly.

The Courts are not independent divine powers; devotion to a Court — or to one of the Blessed — remains worship of the Maker, and neither can be a separate source of Revelation or allegiance. Claiming otherwise is among the serious heresies. (GM)

The Courts once named holy orders (S7): imperial-era books record donations to “the Holy Orders of the Five Courts,” a Phoenix “once founded as the order of the day,” and an order of the moon declared anathema. See The Orders of the Five Courts.

Speculation (S5)

Estelle’s Six Voices — the angels who followed the Deceiver — are Dawn, Day, Dusk, Moon, Stars, and Silence. Five of those six are exactly the Heavenly Courts above. Either the Courts are named for the Voices who once “spoke for the Maker to the peoples of the world,” or Estelle has mapped a heresy onto the Church’s own furniture. The missing sixth, Silence, has no Court at all.

Scripture

• The Book of Light — the word of the Maker as revealed in visions to the first of the Blessed. Sets out the Law of God, the origin of the world, the Fall, the Wrath, and the early First Crusade. Passages are cited by the name of the Blessed who penned them.
• The Teachings — dozens of volumes of commentary by generations of religious figures. The rulings of the Grand Prelates, as direct revelations, hold nearly equal weight to the Book of Light. Most parishes hold only the Book of Light and the Words of the Most Holy.
• The Eastern emphasis (GM): the Book of Light is Revelation; everything after is Teachings — ancient, authoritative, binding, and still human interpretation, which can be debated, developed, and corrected. In Hazad this distinction is load-bearing: the Schism is understood as proof that even powerful and learned authorities can confidently interpret the Faith incorrectly. (How this squares with the “nearly equal weight” formula above — which came from the older setting docs — is presumably part of the East/West difference itself. Asked 2026-08-15; no GM ruling yet — still open.)
• Miracle is not Revelation (GM): a genuine Gift, real Channeling, even a Celestial manifestation establishes no doctrine by itself. Notably, a relatively common Channeling divination can distinguish power received from the Maker from power received from a corrupt source — the Church does not have to guess.

Divination (S7)

Per Countess Balventia and Church Rituals from a Secular Perspective (Felice D’Oiseaux):

• Normal Divination — found among all gifted; things such as detect magic. (Compare the “relatively common Channeling divination” above that distinguishes the Maker’s power from a corrupt source.)
• True Divination — much rarer: a ritual art, practiced by followers of the Maker, that enables asking questions. At a basic level it provides hints; at a high level you can ask literal questions of the Maker.
• The risk is “the fate of Vibia” — the only named Blessed in the Book of Light who received the revelations that became it; the power eventually caused her to expire.
• Most historical uses are sedate — a simple pro/con before a battle or endeavor. Salemon Fouquier, now archprelate of Ximes, used divination as a prelate in the Fifth Crusade — only the pro/con kind, at least according to the book (GM) — and is still alive. The named exception is Blessed Benedict, who asked specific questions before the Third Crusade (it is accepted that the resulting plans depended on the Betrayer Queen, and failed with her).

Speculation (party analysis, S7)

The Western Church likely retains divination-ritual knowledge similar to what Estelle does — specifically, similar to Blessed Benedict’s practice. Which folds neatly into the Order of the Phoenix’s known association with divination Gifts and its reported wartime divination forty years ago. If Estelle’s art is Church ritual art, the question of whose Church trained her gets sharper.

Judgment, Agency, and Possession (GM)

The Maker judges lives — intention matters, but so do knowledge, choice, consequence, coercion, and duty. One doctrine with immediate campaign relevance: responsibility requires agency. A person whose actions are literally controlled by another will — possession, complete domination, or comparable magic — is not morally responsible for the controlled act; responsibility rests with the controlling will, and stripping someone’s agency is itself a severe violation of the Faith, because it usurps the victim’s very capacity to choose obedience.

(Sit with what that means for Madeline Foussard — transformed by ritual against her will — and for Ari’s binding. By the Faith’s own doctrine, the heavier offense belongs to whoever holds the leash.)

The Afterlife

The most devout pass to the Heavens; the most corrupt are cast to the Hells. Everyone in between is born again — given another chance at a virtuous life. Some Blessed can perform the miracle of rebirth, but only sparingly and in service of the Maker’s will.

The primer’s framing (GM): most souls reincarnate without memory — the Maker’s patience with ordinary imperfection; the exceptionally virtuous leave the cycle and become one with the Maker; the exceptionally evil go to Hell. True resurrection exists and is among the rarest of accomplishments — only a handful of living practitioners across the Four Kingdoms are believed capable, the body must be fresh and intact, and sometimes it simply fails, which the faithful accept as the Maker’s will. That scarcity is the measure of what Lusia Balventia reputedly holds.

The Ritual of Rebirth — which can bring a mortal back to life, if the Maker so wills it — is reputedly within the power of Lusia Balventia, Countess of Karvena, who holds one of the most powerful divine gifts in Hazad despite not being formally clergy. (GM) That is the party’s only named example of the miracle in a living person.

The Orders Militant

Six holy orders founded after the Second Crusade — see Orders Militant for the fuller treatment.

Members of any of the Orders Militant also gain access to the War domain.

Order	Charge	Motto	Status
Phoenix	The Holy City and the person of the Most Holy	”Revealing Light, Purifying Fire”	Active (West)
Eagle	Hazad	”Soaring Prayers”	Active (East) — sided with the Sultan in the Fourth Crusade
Raven	Morrschatten	”In Sacrifice, Meaning”	Active
Swan	Averoigne	”Honor and Faith”	Active
Gull	Cardacci	”Through the Storm”	Active
Owl	All that the others did not defend	”Vigilant in Darkness”	Dissolved Spring 1736; members executed