wrote:Some of us who live in this Cage we all call home came here from one prime or another. Despite the Lady's forbidding of outside Powers, we remember, and sometimes still hold dear those Powers we looked to for guidance and support. Our temples that gave aid and succor to the poor. Our priests who gave healing and protection.
Here in the Cage there is an order intolerant of these beliefs we hold dear. The face of this order recently, fills the bazaar with his propaganda, his flyers, and even his lies. He has his license, and his right, to spread his philosophy, but I am here to put light to the truth of it.
This Athar speaks of temples filled with gold by people beguiled into giving their wealth to the Gods. Those of us who lived in the Primes know this for the lie it is. If you did not live there know this. There are temples devoted to giving back more than they gained. Priests who eschew personal wealth and live as the lowest of their brothers. Paladins who gave everything, even their lives to protect others. Not all faiths were like this, but the Athar would have you see them all the same.
The Athar claim that the Gods are just powerful mortals, but on my prime we know this to be false. Yes, we have seen some mortals rise to divine state but many more have always been so. The Athar would have you believe that mortals can rise to the heavens on faith of followers alone, but on my prime some cultures worship their rulers by the thousands with no divinity granted. This is just more Athar ignorance, perhaps willful, to coax more followers to their own faith.
That is all I see the Athar as. Another faith, religion seeking followers. While the one in the bazaar claims he could call on divine powers with no belief, he is wrong and disingenuous. The Athar do believe in a God. The one great unknown they believe lies beyond the veil. A nameless Power in the multiverse. Even if they did not have a Power of their own, a priest or paladin must have faith in something to call divine magic. Be it a God, or a concept like Good or Evil, or simply the light of the universe. They put their faith in something and draw power from it, thus making that thing a Power of its own. If this Athar truly had no faith in a higher power of some kind he would be no more capable of divine blessings than one of Khazeet's tables.
That is what makes them no different, in the end they don't know. They have faith, belief in something greater. They want their own faith to be stronger, to be able to call on more power and expand their influence. Even so, they have no more proof of their believe than anyone else. What they do have is the hubris to believe their way is the only right way. People who believe in Gods, except for the Athar God, are blind or have been duped so they say. Even the faithful of opposed deities on the primes have sense enough to acknowledge each other's faith as real.
In the end my fellow Cagers, they are cowards. They hide behind our gracious Lady's protective skirts and blaspheme beings that cannot touch them here. If the Athar truly believed, as other faithful, they would take their preaching to the Primes and see just how false those Powers are.
This has been your dose of truth
Richard Saunders
