Ecclesiarchy

The Ecclesiarchy in Babel are fairly average and similar to many other imperial worlds. Telos itself has had no major religious events occur on it and has only one official (sector level) saint Gleep Odinson the general who conquered the planet although even he is not greatly worshiped in Babel due to ancient rivalries between his regiment and those that founded Babel.

The Ecclesiarchy has a number of holdings throughout the city, most noble houses sponsor a church as do many of the more important guilds and even the slums have small temples. The largest and grandest churches are found in the Adaptus district though and the high temple is located in this area. The only parts of the city not to host the Ecclesiarchy are the mine workings of the Mechanicus.

In general the Ecclesiarchy in Babel is split into three sections, the house chaplains, the core church and the preachers: -

The house chaplains are either nobles themselves (normally a third or fourth child with little chance of inheriting) or from a servant family that work for a noble. They tend to the spiritual needs of the nobility and work in the house chapels. They tend to be very linked to their parent house and although they bring in a large amount of wealth to the church they are normally looked down on by the core church as attempting to serve two masters and it is rare but not unknown for a house chaplain to obtain a high rank in the church.

The Core church is the main body of the Ecclesiarchy and makes up the majority of the church. They run most of the religious sites in the city and are what most people think of them the Ecclesiarchy is mentioned. This group contains a large hierarchy ranging from local priests to the Arch Bishop himself, the ultimate religious authority in the city. There is some mobility in ranks but movement from the local level to a city wide office is unusual. Most positions remain in a single family for several generations.

Preachers are the most devote of the churches members but they are also considered the lowliest. Preachers do not run a specific church instead they preach to whoever they come across, as such they are found throughout the city as well as in the wilderness and the slums. Many preachers feel drawn to their profession by a vision whereas others are ‘promoted’ to preaches from within the church, this is often considered a punishment and is used to remove individuals with unpopular ideas. Many preachers follow minority paths such as the redemptionists but as long as they remain in small numbers and only practice among the poor and dispossessed they are mostly overlooked.

The current Arch Bishop of Babel is Marcus Silverman the half-brother of the City Governor. He came to power two decades ago. He started his career as the house chaplain to house Branden-Smythe and unusually made a cross to the core church when his brother became Governor, his rise with his brother’s sport was meteoric and upon the natural death of his predecessor he was nominated as Arch Bishop. Him main policy has been to bring Church and State in line with each other as much as possible, this has angered many of the other bishops and clergymen and there have been a large number of reassignments of his opponents over the following years. Silverman has a policy of making himself much more open to the public than many others in his position, he throws the high cathedral open to all coming once a week and any may come and position him. This along with his unpopularity among the rest of the church has led to several assassination attempts. However, he seems to be protected by some force in each case the assassins have been killed by what the Arch Bishop calls ‘the will of the emperor’.