High priests

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A High Priest of a God is chosen by his followers. He or she will reign and guide his flock for as long as he/she desires, or until a schism is started against him/her.

Current High Priests
Pishe FraLipoLipi
Gapp Juppie
Gufnork Ingalill
Sandelfon Charon
Fish Betta
Hat Bananas
Sek Beasteater

In this section, I'll give a short overview of what a High Priest can do during their time.

Who can become High Priest?

Everyone! Well, nearly everyone, one or two exceptions. Ok, probably you'll never get to be HP to be honest... But, if you're of sufficient age, over GL 150 and if you've prayed shortly before the next election, you're a potential HP! All you need to do now is win an election.

Getting your commands

To get your command (e.g. obsecrate, excommunicate) you need to pray at the high altar of your deity. Once you have prayed, 'commands' will list your new masters commands being:

  • invest
  • dismiss
  • obsecrate
  • excommunicate
  • absolve
  • marry
  • divorce

Invest/dismiss - appointing ministers

The first thing a new HP usually does is appointing new ministers to help him guide his flock. Ministers get a fancy title and the "Minister" prefix, but are completely harmless. If you want to be a minister, suck up to you HP or threaten him with a schism!

Ministers are appointed using "invest", and divested using "dismiss".

Obsecrate

High Priests have a special command called obsecrate. With this command they can ask the deity to alter various things about the way deity points are spent, as well as get information on who is draining or contributing to the pool the most and on specific players' deity point usage. You can get rough details on the current setup with the Devout Inquisition ritual and check on your own expenditure/contributions by using the 'meditate on obsecration' syntax at a high altar.

The things they can currently do are:

  • Reduce ritual costs - up to 30% of ritual costs can be set to be shouldered by the deity point pool.
  • Increase ritual costs by taking tithes - rituals can be made to cost 30% more than usual, with some of the surplus being put back in the deity point pool. This is a more efficient way of converting gp to dp than praying.
  • Make rituals easier and better - self-explanatory really, this can chew up a large amount of dp.
  • Declare a ritual profane - prevents priests and followers of the same religion from using that ritual from faith rods. While it's possible to declare a ritual naturally granted by your deity profane, it doesn't affect performing the ritual without a faith rod. This is visible when meditating upon obsecration.
  • Ban a ritual from another religion - prevents priests and followers of a specific deity from being able to use the specified ritual from faith rods made by priests of your religion. For example, banning Hattites from using Pishite-created Stasis rods.
  • Declare rituals of another deity unholy - prevents priests and followers of your religion from using any faith rods created by priests of a specific deity. This is visible when meditating upon obsecration.

As usual, heretics are unaffected by all of this.

Excommunice/absolve

Have you been a naughty naughty priest? Played with your rod too much (FAITH rod, you sicko!)? Watch out, because before you know, you'll get excommunicated by your HP! Once excom'ed you won't be able to use any deity point related command anymore. You also won't add deity points to the pool when you pray, and won't be affected by any deity pool settings. Finally, if you're a priest, being excommunicated changes your guild title.

Absolution can also be granted by the high priest, but the command must be prefixed with "nosoul" or the soul command absolve may be applied instead.

The high priest must be at the high altar to excommunicate, and will have to put the player's name in all lowercase. Excommunicating someone will cause a board post to be made by "Voice of <deity's full name>", along these lines:

Let it be known that: by order of High Priest <name>, the
heretic <player> has been excommunicated from the Church of
<deity's full name>, for <reason given>.

The faithful are asked to pray for {his|her} eternal soul.

The excommunicated player doesn't get any message about either being excommunicated or absolved.

Schisms

OK, to be honest, HP's can't actually do this one, but YOU can start a schism against your HP!

Schisms are basically the priests' guild version of Votes of No Confidence. Any priest who could be a high priest in a standard election can cause a schism in the church by finding a supporter (who must also be a priest who could stand in a standard election) and initiate the schism by going to the voting room in the Temple of Small Gods (syntax in the room help file). NOTE: excommunication is *entirely ignored* by this process, for obvious reasons. Once a schism has been started, everyone else in the church will be informed of it and there will be a week's interim in which you can state your case, and in which other potential dissidents can jump the bandwagon and also declare their interests in the post of High Priest. If, when the week expires, there are no valid challengers (eg, the separatist withdrew, or his supporter did, and no one else stood up), the schism will be resolved there and then. Otherwise, voting will start. This is exactly like a normal election, except:

a) The incumbent High Priest remains in his/her role throughout, as do ministers.
b) Only the incumbent High Priest and the successfully-seconded separatists will be up for election.

If a separatist wins, they will, with immediate effect, become High Priest as though they'd just won a normal election. If the incumbent High Priest wins, life goes on as before. If at any time in the entire two week process the High Priest position becomes vacant, the schism will be entirely aborted and a normal election will start.