Welcome to the Round Table of Bretonnia!

We are finally approaching the end of this series, and I plan to finish it in style. This article will contain over a heart-stopping 10000 words. I hope you are ready for the strain on your eyes, my lovely audience.

I'm going to do something different here. I'm going to pretend I'm writing chapters on the different faiths in the Unified Church of Bretonnia for WFRP supplemental material, such as the good work of Liber Fanatica. My reasons for that are that I want to fully develop and solidify the concept of the Unified Church. Both to create some background material that could be used in roleplay or tabletop games, and for my own amusement and sense of accomplishment. With each faith I will talk about the structure and organisation of the Bretonnian branch, their relations with the other cults, and write a bit of fluff; something to add flavour to the background of these cults and Bretonnia. Sometimes this will mean that I'll retread or repeat stuff I've already talked about, but I want to be thorough. Where I feel it's necessary to explain or rationalize what I've written down I'll give further arguments in parenthesis for it so as not to spoil the feel I'm going for here.

The Unified Church of Bretonnia

Background: Back before Unification, the priests of the Elder Gods, Taal and Rhya in particulair, were seen as the dominate faith in Bretonnia. The nature deities were uppermost in the daily lives of the Bretonni tribes. Things changed dramatically however with the appearance of the Lady of the Lake and her champions, Gilles le Breton and the Grail Companions. One by one each high priest of the Old World Gods was subjugated by the followers of the Grail. After the last of the twelve Great Battles was finished, the Matriarch of Shallya beseeched Le Breton to keep the peace in the kingdom he had just formed. Knowing that the majority of the populace still prayed to the Old World pantheon, he agreed and formed the Council of Couronne, an assembly of the spiritual leaders of Bretonnia. In turn all priests would accept the Lady of the Lake as the Queen of Heaven, the ruling Goddess of the Old World pantheon. For a time it was good for all parties involved, but then the Fay Enchantress appeared along with her Grail Damsels and the nationwide worship of the Lady. The cults now found themselves bested at every turn. The Damsels had more miraculous powers than even their mightiest prophets. Each Grail Knight was more capable than an entire regiment of templar knights. And by the priests' own words, the Lady of the Lake was superior to their own deities. Their funds and following flowed through their fingers like sand, resulting into them being forced to unite as one so that they could survive.

Organisation: Despite its name the Unified Church of Bretonnia isn't exactly a unified organisation. It is more of an alliance between the cults of the Old World Gods, enforced both by centuries of royal decrees and simple necessity, as the cults in Bretonnia no longer have the assets to operate on their own. They need to work together and pool resources, because the ruling class care little for the Gods of the Old World and their followers. As such it's not unusual to find temples dedicated to more than one deity or priests of different faiths working together on the same ceremony. The churchmen have to pay lip-service to the Lady of the Lake, as many nobles and not a few peasants ask that their prayers and rituals are dedicated to the Goddess of Chivalry. While Damsels are considered the true ‘priestesses' of the Cult of the Lady of the Lake, there aren't enough of them to preside over every wedding or funeral. Hence why the Unified Church gets enough funding to survive, but not flourish. Every so often a priest gets tired of praying to a mysterious Goddess not his own and goes rogue. The Church is always quick to condemn these apostates, for the alternative could mean royal censure on their beliefs.

Structure: Each of the cults is headed by a cardinal - or two in the case of the faith of Taal and Rhya - who together form the Council of Couronne. Again the name is not entirely true, since the Council is wherever the King resides. Dogma says this is done so the Council can advise the monarch on the will of the Gods, but in practice it's because the cardinals have many privileges at court which are key to collecting and maintaining donations from the ruling class. Beneath the cardinals are the archbishops and bishops, who are the leading high priests of Dukedoms, cities and other important domains. Under their guidance are the ordinary priests of the Church that operate much like their counterparts in the rest of the Old World, although far more poorer. Lower down on the totem pole we have the various monastic orders, who have managed to survive largely because many of their monasteries are either self-sufficient or provide useful services to the community such as a hospice or a school. Then there are the friars, wandering monks who travel back and forth to hamlets who don't have their own temple or priest and depend on the charity of others. It's the friars who the peasantry often have to turn to when it comes to hearing confessions and administering ceremonies, since in the land of chivalry there are many hamlets that are situated too far away from a normal temple, to say nothing of a fully ordained priest.

Militant branch: The Church as a whole cannot afford to maintain their own templar orders, which has resulted into the formation of the Palatine Guard. These red-clad men-at-arms are given to the cardinals by the royal court, and are sworn to serve and protect the cardinals with their very lives. Of course the cardinals are more often than not occupied at the royal court, insuring that a good portion of the Palatine Guard have to do nothing but look pretty for ceremonies and festivals. Other, savvier cardinals use their warriors to protect important temples or officials. Aside from the token of trust to local priests and the warning to possible thieves and vandals this gesture evidences, it also keeps the men-at-arms in shape and in some way prepared for an actual battle. (The Palatine Guard was the real name of a military unit of the Vatican, and they are clad in red both to associate them with the more well-known Swiss Guard and because of the earlier mentioned sumptuary laws concerning the three noble colours.)

Relations within and with the Church: The chapters of the Unified Church of Bretonnia can be broadly divided into three camps: the royalists, the workers and the seasonals. The priests of Shallya and Manann are the royalists, mainly because they're the only cults that are held in high regard by the nobility, feelings which these churchmen are more often than not happy to return. However, the difference between the two faiths prevents them from ever becoming a true power bloc. The workers are comprised by the Morrians and Verenans, named thusly because they do the work no-one else can or will do, i.e. burying people and tutoring children. Sometimes they side with the royalists, but this often hurts their cause. While the ruling class recognize that the cults of Morr and Verena provide important services, the nobles can do without their fatalistic reminders about mortality or lectures about oppressed peasants. The seasonals are formed by the priests of Taal, Rhya and Ulric. The name comes both from their intertwined traditions revolving around the seasons, and is also a snub for their fall from grace. While they do their best to work together, there's dissent between the urban and rural elements of the seasonals. The former sometimes support the royalist movement, while the latter are prone to talks of rebellion and returning Bretonnia to the time of the Church of Nature and Nurture from before Unification.

Aside from this divide between faiths, there's also a struggle between radical members of the urban and the rural priests of the kingdom as a whole. The clergy found in the cities and more well-off towns are more susceptible to corruption, because they have to confront daily with the lacklustre devotion of nobles and the attitudes and politics of merchants. The friars and the inhabitants of the more isolated temples and monasteries in turn are prone to talks of rebellion against the established order, and a return to the time where the Old World pantheon and its chosen disciples didn't have to bow down to a enigmatic Goddess that has female wizards as her representatives on earth. The two factions despise each other, but are at an impasse. The city clergy are too few in number to force the rustics to change their ways, but are more closely aligned with the corridors of power. Virtually every cardinal comes from a city temple, while the rural priests and the monastic orders have to do with what little they get from their superiors and the often lacking charity of the local lords and merchants.

The relations of the Unified Church with the other cults of the Old World are also less than stellar. Many believe the Bretonnian clergy are kowtowing to the nobility, and that the Unified Church is a slap in the face to the other branches of the cults of the Old World Gods. In the past there have been talks of the other nations declaring a crusade on Bretonnia and liberating them from the grasp of the Lady of the Lake. So far the power of the Grail Knights and Damsels has stopped every attempt. This has only worsened theological relations, since the righteous disdain for the Lady and her following has now been replaced by genuine fear. (The idea of three separate camps was done in a spur of the moment, but seems fitting to keep the Bretonnian faiths separate and disorganized. As for the relations with other cults, I like the idea of there being religious reasons for attacking other nations, and as I previously established it's logical that the priests of the Old World Gods in other nations wouldn't like that its members in Bretonnia now pay homage to the Lady.)

Fluff: The Nunnery of the Threefold Womanhood in the city of Bastonne is one of the oldest remaining monasteries in Bretonnia, dating from before Unification. The cynics could say this is simply because all the buildings from during or before Le Breton's time are preserved as monuments to his greatness. However, the fact that the abbey is devoted to three Goddesses in particular, and womanhood in general, plays a large part in it as well. The three Goddesses in question are Shallya the Healer, Rhya the Mother and Verena the Teacher. Women from all over the kingdom come here to dedicate themselves to the divine, for the nuns here are renowned for knowing the mind of the fairer sex like no other and warmly welcoming new devotees into their sisterhood. There are lurid tales about what the women exactly do when no men are looking, but these stories are outnumbered by those who describe in horrific detail what the nuns do with men they find trespassing. Indeed, the saying of "get thee to a nunnery!" is often used among the men of Bastonne as an exclamation of disbelief, as a man invading the sanctity of the Nunnery of the Threefold Womanhood would result in a fate worse than death. (I wanted to show a temple wherein separate faiths actively worked together, and a nunnery dedicated to basically the Warhammer-equivalent of the neo-pagan Triple Goddess - The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone - seemed appropriate to me.)