Inquisition

The term "inquisition" refers to an ecclesiastical tribunal, the trial of an individual accused of heresy, or the general expurgation movement against heresy and magery throughout the Kingdom. Questioning at the hands of an inquisitor will almost certainly involve torture, and if the accused is found guilty of heresy, they face branding or even execution. Anyone found guilty of magic use must be burned at the stake and thus cleansed by fire in order to purify their soul.

Any inquisition which is conducted is done so under the direction of the Patriarch, and overseen by the Grand Inquisitor. It is the responsibility of the Order to ensure that no one uses magic while in the lands of Dav, and as such they are the party which responds to any such accusation.

The methods of determining whether one uses magic or not are varied and involved. Often times simply the threat of an inquest is enough to send someone admitting their usage of magic to the nearest priest, begging absolution.

It is said that there are certain herbs which will react differently on a mage as opposed to one who does not use magic. This is one of the most common methods of determining magic use, but is not necessarily the only, or the first, method used.

Traditionally, the title of Grand Inquisitor resides in the Cardinal of Lithmore; however since 298 the Grand Inquisitor title has been granted to archbishops, with the Patriarch assuming the role of the Cardinal of Lithmore.

Heresy
Heresy is one of the more ambigious crimes that one can be held accountable for in Lithmore and also the most deadly. The Holy Order of Dav, guardians of the one true religion of the Realm, can and do have absolute authority to seek out and purge the land of heretics. Their methods are many, but their goal is singular: to destroy all traces of heresy and those who embrace it.

Some say that those who have been executed or maimed for these crimes were done so falsely, but most remain silent on the issue as those who dare speak in defense of a heretic often join their friends in punishment for their crimes against the Lord of the Springs.

The Origins of The Inquisition
(Note: The information in this section is not common knowledge, and parts of it are in fact heretical. The Holy Order has done much to erase the history of mages. The texts required to know of this information resides only in the hands of the Holy Order itself and the Sable Masque.)

Before the Consolidation in 109 SC, there were three classes a man could fall under: the commoner, the noble, and the "Skilled" (as they chose to call themselves). Commoners and nobles, while mingling little, understood and accepted one another's place in the order of things, but the Skilled, called witches and mages by all others, stood outside of society. Cold and aloof, some say mages lacked passion, others said they were inhuman.

The social strife between man and mage only grew as mages ceased to be only hermits living at the edge of town and supplying minor spells to the populace. The exact date is lost, along with many other records, but sometime several centuries before Dav's reign, mages began to consolidate. The first "Academae ab Skilled" brought masters and apprentices together, birthing the beginnings of High Magic. As master and apprentice met together in the academy's arcades, skilled societies found purchase for their roots, the beginnings of which would become legitimate organizations recognized by the government. Working together, slowly the academy, then the skilled themselves, consolidated their political power. Less than fifty years after its creation, claim some historians, a mage sat on the council of every petty king and no few aristocratic homes had their own academy-trained mage under its employ.

Early on, however, the nobility began to question the loyalty of their mages. These powerful beings inhabiting the courts frequently kept to themselves even while they swayed the minds of rulers. The common folk, already resentful of those above them in status, found allies even within the rich and powerful nobility who already felt the same stirrings of frustrated hatred towards mages for daring to rise as high as they. The largest religion of the land, the Holy Church, however, preached the love of all mankind. It remained neutral for quite some time despite those nobility with much sway amongst its ranks.

Over time, however, this position of the Holy Church became untenable. Still, devout clerics refused to preach against magic, and splinter sects began to appear, taking up the call against those who called themselves "Skilled". Unbelievably popular, it was all the Holy Church could do to keep itself together as more and more of its flock departed for the sects. Meanwhile, over the next century or two mages continued to congregate, becoming legitimate and distinctly powerful entities such as guilds and societies.

By Dav's time, the duchies were still separate nations, each held by a petty king or even several kings. Each court had at least a mage, an official cleric, a bard, and several advisors. Mages had become so powerful that any king without a mage was not even recognized by other duchies. The Holy Church patently hated the skilled for usurping their power, though they were wise enough to be silent where direct action against them could be taken, but it was the only other body of power that spread through all nations as far as the Daravi despite national borders. For their part, the mage of each court represented their nation in the Great Circle, a cross-border council of mages known derisively as the Seven, for that is how many there were in total.

In 102 SC, fire fell from the sky. The break-away sects of the Holy Church blamed the crisis on mages, but the Seven claimed to have no part in what they called a "falling star" phenomenon. Several homes were destroyed, and a local academy apprentice was put to the stake. This first act of violence was precipitated by the Holy Order, a sect of the Holy Church that felt that only decisive, forceful action would save the people from the powerful, aloof mages. For its part, the Holy Church decried the actions of the Holy Order, claiming the subversive sect had acted on its own with no knowledge or guidance from its parent church.

By 109 SC problems had risen to a fever pitch. The Holy Order grew in numbers through masterful speakers who preached that it was "...a war between good and evil, man and mage, for the right of mankind to be ruled by their own instead of demonic witches..." Burnings in provincial villiages threatened traveling mages, sometimes invoked by the populace without even a member of the militant Holy Order present.

When Dav finally overthrew the Holy Church, declaring himself the Patriarch of the Order (to the Order's eternal joy), he installed the Holy Order as his state religion at the influence of his Captain of the Guard, Orderite Aelwyn Falsteph. He himself pioneered the Inquisition in its current form, funding it, supporting it with troops, and ultimately ensuring its legitimacy.