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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 27
🕑 Added 2023-11-24 11:42:39 +0000 UTCOk Luke, calm down, who knows, maybe this Holy Inquisition may not be a bad thing in this world. So I asked Grandpa, “Grandpa, what is the Holy Inquisition?”
I should not have asked that question. The moment those words left my mouth, I noticed Mum and Grandma take in a deep breath while rolling their eyes and then adjust themself in their seat to get comfortable.
Then the floodgates burst forth and I was stuck in bed for a crash course in geopolitics. The opening statements in my crash course in geopolitics had such academic and scholarly words and statements like “pompous uptight inept pillocks!” and “not recognizing light attribute magic if it diddled them up the bum!”
Long story short, the Holy Inquisition is a quasi-military arm of the Zagraf Theocracy which is located on a landmass just off the coast of the continent.
Over the centuries, the Zagraf Theocracy has sent missionaries throughout the continent to spread their religion which resulted in them being the biggest religion on the continent, and once they were pretty much everywhere, their followers started to take on positions of power in every country.
Be it the humble scribe or town administrator, all the way to a minister whispering into a king’s ear, the followers of the Zagraf religion were there. Eventually, even priests were among the courts of kings to give council.
Of course, most nations saw this for what it was and took action to separate religion from government, but with a huge chunk of the populous being of the Zagraf religion, they could not totally excise the church out of their country.
During his lecture, Grandpa dedicated a good few minutes bitching about a single kingdom, the Hemton Kingdom, which was the country closest to the Zagraf Theocracy, just a few kilometers off the coast in fact. While other kingdoms and empires tolerated or outright banned the church, the Hemton Kingdom totally cucked to the Zagraf Theocracy and gave them a foothold in the main continent.
They were not even conquered by military might, apparently a few generations of kings ago, the king of the Hemton Kingdom decided it was a fantastic idea to become the protectorate Zagraf Theocracy.
Of course, prior to the Hemton Kingdom becoming a protectorate, a good number of high-profile people of the Hemton Kingdom died from a “mysterious illness” or had an “unfortunate accident”. Naturally, a lot of people called bullshit and there was unrest, but conveniently, there were a couple of religious orders from the Zagraf Theocracy “on vacation” nearby, with their armor and weapons.
The religious orders offered to quell the unrest and restore order, which the king readily accepted, and then shortly after, the Hemton Kingdom was dubbed a holy protectorate of the Zagraf Theocracy.
The surrounding countries tried to call out the bullshit, but the king denied all allegations and swept the whole thing under the rug with the political backing of the Zagraf Theocracy and every Zagraf church around.
Under normal circumstances, the other countries could not give 2 shits about what the Zagraf Theocracy did, but after this hostile takeover in all but name, the other countries became very wary of the churches in their borders.
“Grandpa, what does this have to do with the Holy Inquisition?” I said, interrupting my Grandpa’s rants.
“Hush boy, I am getting there.”
As Grandpa explained it, being a quasi-military, the Holy Inquisition was technically just glorified mercenaries with political backing from the Zagraf church and by extension the Zagraf Theocracy, so they were mostly allowed to roam the lands where the worship of the Zagraf religion held sway.
They were ordained by the church to seek out practitioners of the dark arts, like Necromancy, Blood Magic, creating abominations, or punching holes in reality to commune with eldritch or otherworldly entities.
The first and last of the dark arts mentioned were of particular concern. A necromancer, if given enough time and resources could raise whole cities to the ground and were a blight upon nations. As for punching holes in reality, things can get bad, and I mean really bad, the kind of bad that could potentially wipe out multiple small kingdoms and once almost wiped out a powerful empire close to a millennium ago.
Usually, what comes out when someone punches a hole in reality without knowing what they are doing are harmless or could be taken care of by a group of adventures, but on the rare occasion, something that should not be anywhere near the land of the living crosses over and starts fucking shit up until it gets bored and leaves or gets put down at great cost.
And take a good guess what necromancers and the majority of the malicious shit that cross over into our reality are weak against. If you thought light magic, you would be correct, and with the Holy Inquisition going around doing this on the church’s dime, most countries were glad to leave them to their business.
“So you see grandson, the reason we need to doctor the events of the assassination is because if you are discovered to be using magic and aura at the age of 3, we may be suspected by the Inquisition of creating an abomi-” Grandpa was about to finish his sentence when grandma smacked him upside the head and mum threw a pillow at him and buried my head in her chest while asking me not to listen to the “nasty old codger”, then scolded said codger about scaring me.
And to be honest, I am scared, damm scared in fact, I was just currently too weak of body react.
When everything calmed down and I ensured my mum that I was fine, they started filling me in on the cover story.
The cover story was essentialy that on the night of the attack, I heard a ruckus outside my door and went to investigate, seeing my family fighting for their lives, I threw a flower vase at the assassins which made an opening for my grandparents to attack, after which I chucked the accent table at the feet of another assassin to trip him up only for one of the assassins to attack me and that would be where I lost consciousness.
There was more to the cover story but they said it would be better if I only knew certain parts in case I say something I should not know.
Hopefully, with the testimony of an ‘innocent’ 3-year-old child, they would rather believe the victim than a bunch of assassins trying to bring trouble on their failed assassination targets. I sure hope this works.
The next day, a Royal Constable showed up and was led to my room to listen to my testimony alone.
When we were done talking, the constable let my family into the room.
“Lady Ironcrest, Lord and Lady Silverbrook, thank you for your time, and sorry to interrupt your son’s recovery, this interview was just a matter of formality. The things the assassin would try to hurt a child, it disgusts me. But worry not, we got everything we could out of them and they would soon be executed by today, our prisons are too good for those scum.” the constable said while looking like he wanted to spit in disgust but caught himself before doing it in a noble’s estate.
That went well, but being mentally grilled took a lot out of me, nappy time.
