I keep seeing the phrase "too many people don't understand how SA works".
That's because it's true. They don't. You don't. You never did figure out how it worked. You know how to tear it down, and you're very good at causing trouble. But you never knew how it worked, or could make it work.
SA has not found itself able to evolve with the times, and has been relying purely on its history of success to see it through its recent actions. Ignoring the vocal majority of the full members is a huge mistake that has cost the Church a great deal. The politics of the elders have continued to alienate more and more individuals who wield considerable amounts of secular power. The Last Crusade is proof that the elders are out of touch with the secular powers.
In a way, this is true. SA has not evolved. But the evolution many people seem to want is to evolve into some powerless, toothless mass. If that's the kind of evolution you want, then too bad. It's better for the church to die than become the plain vanilla crap that every other religion in BattleMaster has become.
This latest crusade did not cause the problem. It simply revealed the problem that has been there for a long time, and growing. The expansion of SA into the south was the success that started the downhill slide. Too much success brought too many political conversions, and power seekers. It's been building for a couple years. The reason a lot of people didn't see it before was that the church wasn't making any demands of its members. As soon as it did, the veneer cracked, and all the internal flaws popped out into the open.
It was inevitable, really. Too many conflicting personalities. If enough people join it, you will eventually gain enough members from incompatible families. Imagine trying to have a single realm with all of these same people in it... It would fracture into pieces inside of a week. Plus you then add in all the people only interested in tearing others down, or destroying SA just to be able to say they were the one that did it. But too bad for them, because when the game is over, the post-game analysis will give Leopold the credit.
You claim that nobles not bending over themselves to please the church isn't typical medieval, but that simply isn't true.
I never made that claim. What I said is that in order for any organization in BattleMaster to succeed, there needs to be a critical mass of players willing to make their character subservient to that organization. This does not mean that they have to play toady, or slave, or mindless minion. But they have to recognize the church's authority, and be willing to play along with the church, even if there is no direct punishment mechanism to enforce it, like bans and fines. Imagine how long a realm would last if the ruler declared a war, and 60% of the nobles in the realm called him a fool and refused to fight.
