It probably seemed to many that the man who would become known to his followers as the Blessed Ascendant was the most unlikely sort imaginable. He did not come from the great or noble Houses, and he did not have any particularly great skills as a leader or even an orator. He merely wandered the streets of various cities of the duchy of D’Erange, asking questions of those he encountered and forcing them to examine their own biases and blind spots when it came to the faith.

Hailing from the poorer regions of that province, history has forgotten what his actual name and most of his biography has been similarly erased by the passage of time and the efforts of the authorities to expunge him from the record. To those who subscribed to his beliefs, though, he was to become the most important person to walk the mortal world.

Ultimately, as he wandered and questioned those he encountered, he began to postulate a theology. Unlike those who had already established the Faith, he did not believe that the world was fundamentally and irrevocably corrupted, only that it was contaminated because of its increased distance from the Name. Human beings, enfleshed as they were, were not totally lost, for they were surrounded by

Note, however, that the Blessed Ascendant still believed that it was the attainment of union with the Name that was the ultimate goal of the devout. Where he differed from his colleagues in the upper echelons of power was in his belief that one could enjoy the world, that it was indeed through the perfection of it and in the creation of future generations that humanity could itself could achieve the closeness to the divine that was the purpose of all life. In his schema, the fiery spirits that inhabited humankind would be reunited with the Name at death, but it was possible to bring humanity itself closer and closer to the transcendent fire nature that was its fundamental nature.

This, of course, went against everything that the Faith had proposed, as it seemed to suggest that the material world could be perfected and, even worse, that it was through the awful act of sexual reproduction that humanity could be saved. The authorities were horrified, not least because they recognized that it was possible that this theology, with its encouragement of sex, would certainly prove to be more palatable to both the common people as well as the nobility and even, in the worst-cast scenario, the clergy themselves.

While the Ascendant preached a message of peace and prosperity for all and disavowed arms of any kind, the authorities in the Imperium, both secular and spiritual, saw him as the gravest sort of threat, and they immediately planned to remove him. However, they were somewhat stymied in their efforts, for they realized all too well that his popularity among the masses would make it exceedingly dangerous to try to take immediate armed action against him.

Eventually, however, they were able to infiltrate the close set of men and women who surrounded him–they called themselves the Acolytes–and had one of them betray him. He was then taken to Aïonis, put on trial before both the first two Imperators and the newly-seated Council of Prefects, and sentenced to death. At this time, it was still customary for the people of the Imperium to gather to witness these executions in a public arena, where the condemned would be torn asunder by wild beasts. So it proved with the Blessed Ascendant, who was subjected to flaying before being thrown, alive and screaming, to the embrace of the beasts.

What happened next would be a source of conflict and confusion for centuries to come. While the Imperial authorities would claim that the Ascendant died an ignominious death, the followers of the Ascendant claimed that he was instead purified and returned to the bosom of his eternal parents, the Name. From this claim would also come the key part of their theology, which claims that the Name were the actual parents of the Ascendant.

After the Ascendant was killed, the Imperium swept through all of the Imperium and even into Korray (many of whom had converted to the Ascendants way of thinking) and stamped out the heresy with a cruelty and ruthlessness that would echo down the centuries. They consigned many people and books to the flames, determined that they would be forgotten. They saved their particular ire for one called Arkadios, who was the Ascendant’s chief Acolyte and, at the end, the one who survived the longest. His death was similar to that of his master’s, as he was thrown to the beasts for the delectation of the masses.

Since his death at the hands of the Imperators and the ruthless persecution of the Arkadian Heresy, the only pocket of those who espouse that faith is in the lands of the Haransharin, particularly in the capital Tafshin. There, they continue to produce their own theological tracts, working from the bits and pieces of the past that they have been able to cobble together. They still believe that the Ascendant was the trueborn son of the Name, and that it is through an embrace of the material world that one can attain closeness to transcendence.

As a result of the steadfast mission of the Imperium to eradicate all traces of the heresy, there are very few documents left from the earliest days of the faith. All copies of the Gospel of Arkadios were destroyed, with the only bits left being those scraps that were mentioned by orthodox theologians in their resolute effort to refute the (admittedly quite popular) teachings. While some of Arkadios’ disciples and their work managed to escape, the Imperium is prone to sending agents into Haranshar to sabotage the libraries known to contain these heretical tracts and even to conduct assassinations of the leaders of the Church in the East.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the men and women of the Church of the East see themselves as the One True Faith rather than their companions in the west. They have their own hierarchy, headed by the Episkopos, the titular leader of their faith. She is advised by her own council, comprised of Prelates.

The Shahs have long understood that they can use the splinter of heretics that live in their nation to stir trouble for the West. While they are forbidden to proselytize, and while they have been at times persecuted by both the Ormazdhian priesthood and the Shahs, as a rule they are too valuable to be swept away.

At the time when this story takes place, the Church in the East has begun to shrink, as the upheavals of the last three decades in both Haranshar and the Imperium. However, there is still great potential for them to seize power, and so it may well prove with the discovery of a palimpsest in the very heart of the Imperium…