I have seen some new 'why do we care' posts. I will quote myself again, ironically the one where I said I would be saying it 'one last time'.
But here we go again.
I'll say this one last time.
It's not about Manann sending a storm to destroy your ships. That is a potential thing, but not the main thing. The main thing is the fear of all the faithful on the coasts and rivers of his potential wrath. It's these people, who do your fishing, who do your naval trading, who could come to or leave Ostland by boat, that are the main thing. And their fear of that wrath will, as I have stated previously in a much larger and angrier post than this one, will drive them to run from the waters. Your trade will dry up, because people will be afraid and will not come to Ostland, or set sail from Ostland. Your fishing boats will not sail. Your coastal settlements will wither and die, and it won't matter how many Greatships you try to build, the Cult won't bless them forth from the docks, and the crews won't crew them. Because they are afraid of pissing off Manann. That is what Maghda is trying to get going here. For all affected peoples across Ostland, and further beyond who care, to see and think and say 'Ah, Manann has been appeased, thus we can and should sail our boats and fish our fish and so on and so forth'.
The People. Of. Ostland's. Coasts. And. Rivers. Are. Afraid. Of. Manann. They also worship him, because fearing and respecting him is literally the whole deal of the faith, placating him and very occasionally getting spiffy rewards. Spitting on their faith, stomping on it and saying 'it doesn't matter, shut the fuck up about Manann it doesn't matter his desires don't matter' will quite simply not work.
Furthermore:
There's a reason I explicitly pointed out Salkalten being a point of holy wrath in defense of the people by Manann in my angry post a short while ago. And why I've characterized Maghda as caring deeply for the Faithful of Manann explicitly in these past two updates, focusing explicitly on 'how can we make things better for them/reassure them'. Because she really cares about them! And, like, yes, the Greatships would not be under Ostland control, but my god, why would you think she would want to explicitly harm the Faithful of Ostland. The point is for Frederick to make the sacrifice because of the pride and money put in them, not anyone else. Otherwise, she would have been like 'hey, yeah, let's do some penance for the wife and the ogre and all the Greatswords and so on and so forth'. The punishment is for Frederick, no one else's. She also sneered on the tendency for there to be collateral damage when the Sigmarites go a-bashing. So why...why...why...would you think she'd accept causing collateral damage to Manann's Faithful in Ostland in the course of this?
It was supposed to come up organically next update, as the levels of appeasement could improve Maghda's level of authority amongst the Cult, meaning she could allocate more funds and effort to protecting the holy site of Salkalten's temple or things like that, but I didn't want to explicitly spell that out here, because its supposed to be a personal vote of thought not something that metagames on the potential offerings afterwards.
She would never, ever, ever countenance an act that would cause more harm to Ostland's faithful to the Cult, especially when she's made it clear how this is supposed to help them spiritually and mentally so that they can go out and do stuff physically.
Just...try to consider the subtext and extrapolate, please? I'm sorry if it was too obscure, if it was, that's on me, but...just...yeah.
Causing Ostland's coastal defenses to weaken, and thus bring harm to Manann's Faithful? Is explicitly anathema to her.
She is Sea-Born. She has
not been involved in the political infighting of the Empire, or even the Empire in general for her entire life. What she cares about is Manann's Faithful, and reassuring and protecting and aiding them how she can. She has explicitly spat on her predecessor's policies and political acting, and made sure to read up on Frederick as best she could before he got to Marienburg, and I noted in the update how she's pleased that he's proving some of the stories told about him right, and some of them wrong.
The point,
again, is
not, under
any measure, for the Faithful of Ostland to suffer because of this, but in fact to be reassured and revitalized. Which is why Frederick is doing the penances, because to them, a significant portion of the province's population, 'They Don't Like That Thing That Happened'. These aren't thousands upon thousands of priests, these are thousands and thousands of sailors, fishermen, stevadores, and so on, who are scared shitless that something is going to happen if Manann is never placated, or even a gesture made towards said stuff. Faithful of Manann are noted to be the outright most absurdly superstitious in the bevy of the Empire. They basically have an endless stream of weird gestures, rituals, mutters, prayers, stances, acts, etc. the moment they hit open water to when they hit shore. Even if Manann never does anything, well neither will they out of fear of the day that 'nothing' becomes 'something', and are trending towards doing 'nothing' themselves because of said fear.
You can, I suppose, treat that swathe of Ostland's population like hostile dirt. I just...don't think that seems in-character, at the very least.
If anything the only thing I would say is that the Matriarch of the Mannanites feels like she's being to reasonable, I can only imagine it's because she's read up so extensively on Fredrick that she does actually respect his deeds and accomplishments even as she's disgusted with what the witch hunters did.
Ironically, I thought it would be an interesting
subversion for her to be extensively more reasonable than most normal religious authorities in the Empire by virtue of her spending her life at sea separate from the politics and infighting of the Empire. She's a Priestess-Captain turned Matriarch of the Cult, and by that virtue alone she's already begun to have friction with certain elements who had gotten used to a leader who was far less willing to utilize the wealth of the Cult for other measures, and more willing to use its influence on other matters than she feels they should have.
But here we are, regardless.
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Vote's open.