Of Faith and Fear
Twenty-First Day of the Seventh Month 294 AC
To say the authority of the High Septon over his brothers and sisters in the Faith has taken a blow in the aftermath of the reconquest would be understating matters to an almost comical degree. "There is about as much order in the Faith as there is in Oberyn's sheets most mornings," Doran Martell had confessed one evening over wine and tea in the gardens, and while his sister may have rolled her eyes over his choice of simile, no one argued the point. Yet disordered as it might be, the authority of the Faith is the best chance you have at ending the conflict on the Vale without the use of force. So far there has not been much lawbreaking only petty crimes of defiance like vandalism and insults hurled at the officials of the realm, most of whom had nothing to do with the matter that had so riled up the Vale-folk, interspersed here and there with the hints of more dangerous things.
A party of travelers from the Crownlands had been attacked on the road and forced to turn back. A priest of the Red God had barely escaped a fire at the inn he was staying when a few of the locals decided to test the power of his 'devil god'. In all cases, the perpetrators had been found and were now serving out their sentences, but it will be no easy task now to go among the dales and bring word of soap and spirits from the Ministry to Health, much less the virtues of education or the uses of Low Magic.
A lot of people had gotten it into their heads that you were robbing graves to raise them in your armies, or that you were kidnapping children for the use in your dark sorceries, or whatever kettle full of tripe the last tinker to pass through the village had half-heard and passed off even worse. Part of you wants to fly off at once across the Vale and explain. You could find the words, of that you are sure, at least until the cold voice of practicality reminds you that the words are likely to be different from person to person and there are only so many hours in the day and night to make one's self heard by all of them
The first step is to get the septons to stop spreading nonsense, to stem the flood, before you can worry about what you are going to do about the mud it would inevitably leave behind, and that, it turns out, is a lot harder than simply asking the High Septon.
"What would you have me do, Your Majesty? Threaten to cast them from the bosom of the Faith?" the man speaks in a tone too soft to be called exasperation, though it is clear he wishes he could allow himself the luxury. "Little will that matter to those who were already speaking out against the conclusions of the Conclave in Oldtown, who whispered that I must have been deceived somehow or worse, that I myself was in league with the deceivers, that I am not a shepherd worthy of the Golden Crook, but indeed the very wolf of which the flock must be wary. They do not say it openly, Your Majesty, and they have little in the way of formal leadership yet, for the learned and the wise find their arguments painfully lacking, but one does not need to be wise to be loud, nor indeed to draw a following. If I were to send one among the Most Devout to speak to the ringleaders, what do you think they would find? Reasoned theological argument?"
"I imagine not," you reply quietly, recalling the times you had dealt with the like. Yet you doubt the High Septon had come before you to say that he is powerless. No, he wants something from you, some price for his aid perhaps, and to be fair there are some prices you are willing to pay for peace, just as there are those you would not in ten thousand years accept.
"The smallfolk are afraid, Your Majesty," the priest continues. "They whose lives change only slowly, like gentle lapping waters of a still lake laying down sediment layer upon layer, now see a great wave looming over them, and then must either trust that it shall bear them up or they must drown. It is not the priests any whom I send will have to convince, but the very folk of the Vale and hard will it be for any voice, even one consecrated, to speak against the ones who have served there for years or decades, so tell me Your Majesty what can the brothers I shall send to the Vale promise will not change, what truths of old will they be able to pass on to their children? What in all the strangeness of this new world can they keep?"
It is more than just for the Smallfolk of the Vale that he is speaking, that much at least is clear for all with ears to hear the faintly ragged edge in a voice well trained to show only such emotions as its bearer wishes.
You weigh your next words with care, for this is not a question you have been oft answered and so far your promises have had more to do with the future over the past.
What do you reply?
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OOC: It has been a while since we had an open vote so here is a chance at some soft policy making by proxy. Not yet edited.
rolleyes
