Religious Relics

[Duvaille]

Title:

Religious Relics

Summary:

Priests can declare some unique items as relics. Carrying relics of your faith makes the faithful peasants in your region to be easier to control. If an infidel carries a relic, there is an upheaval in the peasantry, especially if it is an infidel of an evil faith.

Details:

An elder priest can declare a unique item as a relic in a high enough temple. It comes with a cost in gold and time, with subsequent simultaneous relics costing more.  A relic grants a bonus in region control in a region where the relic holder has an estate, but only when the peasants in the region are of the same faith and in majority. If an infidel gets his hands on a relic, there is an instant continent wide uproar among the faithful peasants with morale losses across the board with an effect that diminishes over time. If the relic returns to hands of a true believer, the morale penalty is removed.

There would be no benefit in holding on to more relics than one at a time.

Benefits:

Such relics would strengthen the interaction between priests and lay members of religions. The priests would have more to offer to the lay members, and could use these somewhat rare items as gifts and rewards to those members who have done the faith a good service. The holders of the relics would have tangible benefits in improved regional control, provided the peasants followed the same faith. These benefits are balanced with the risk of losing an item to an infidel, thereby creating a weakness that could potentially temporarily damage the entire faith. This opens up possibilities for more drama and wars.

Possible Exploits:

None that I can think of.

And after this one I totally shut up about unique items. ;)

[Velax]

I really like this idea. One addition: declaring an item as a relic allows you to rename it (eg: Blessed Blade of Sartan) or at least add/change the suffix/prefix of the item. So the Legendary Shield of the Ancients would become the Legendary Shield of the Aenil, or the Tempered Ring of Willpower would become Adghar's Ring of Willpower.

[Tom]

Absolutely no renaming. Over my dead body.

A suffix or additional qualifier (like the sages/wizards have) would be a thought I would entertain.

[Zakilevo]

lol you named those items didn't you Tom? Wouldn't it be better to just let people RP about religious relics instead of unique items do the job?

[Tom]

lol you named those items didn't you Tom? Wouldn't it be better to just let people RP about religious relics instead of unique items do the job?

I don't name any items. The game does. And the uniqueness factor depends on it, as well as the item history, the wiki links and almost everything else.

[Zakilevo]

Back to the topic, I am against it because many relics are remains of holy people usually. Things they used in life or has significant meanings to religions. Unique items should just stay as good tools to use in battle.

[De-Legro]

Back to the topic, I am against it because many relics are remains of holy people usually. Things they used in life or has significant meanings to religions. Unique items should just stay as good tools to use in battle.

And if the Unique item just happened to be of importance within the religion? For example in the religion I was a part on on FEI we had a unique item as the badge of office for the High Priest/High Priestess. Keeping the item maintained was a religion wide effort. I could easily see such situations leading to a relic.

[Zakilevo]

You can RP it until you lose the item. I am just against adding an additional feature to do the job for people.

[De-Legro]

You can RP it until you lose the item. I am just against adding an additional feature to do the job for people.

You can RP the entire game, battle included. This idea is more then just having a relic, like I pointed out religions are already doing that. This is going to give the relic meaning and context outside of the religion as well.

[Zakilevo]

There are too many ways to lose the relic. Adventurers can steal it, or the person holding it loses interest in BM and leaves with the item... etc. Relics are generally kept in sacred places heavily guarded. If we are going to have unique items as relics, there should be an option to keep the relic in a biggest temple to keep the item from degrading or not have it at all. Why would you even let a commoner touch your religion's most holy relic?

[De-Legro]

There are too many ways to lose the relic. Adventurers can steal it, or the person holding it loses interest in BM and leaves with the item... etc. Relics are generally kept in sacred places heavily guarded. If we are going to have unique items as relics, there should be an option to keep the relic in a biggest temple to keep the item from degrading or not have it at all. Why would you even let a commoner touch your religion's most holy relic?

In the earlier days of Christianity they allowed such things with some of the relics, but then the early days of Christianity didn't have such a power clergy.

[Zakilevo]

They probably lost some of the relics by doing that:P. People always are looking for some way to connect themselves with whatever god they believe in.

[JPierreD]

They probably lost some of the relics by doing that:P. People always are looking for some way to connect themselves with whatever god they believe in.

And they could replace it with a replica, and noone would notice. Shame that we would not be able to do that with Unique Items...

[Longmane]

And they could replace it with a replica, and noone would notice.

By Jove sir, are you inferring they were somewhat gullible back then?  :o

If so then you are slightly mistaken sir, as according to this and other things I've read while working on my own feature request concerning relics, (part of something involving the priest aspect of the game, and like my others on a very low back burner  :D) they must have been way more then "somewhat gullible"!!!!

Saints and martyrs multiplied, and their relics multiplied even more rapidly. Churches were built on the tombs of martyrs. Princes and bishops went to extraordinary lengths to acquire relics.

Constantinople became the center of a vast commerce, owing to its favorable position near the scenes of the Old and New Testaments. St. Helena, mother of Constantine, is said to have found the three crosses of Calvary and identified the True Cross by touching a dead man with it and bringing him to life. So precious was this relic that it was cut into bits and bestowed, traded, and sold all over Europe (to such effect that Calvin later counted enough pieces of it "to make a full load for a good ship").

The capture of Jerusalem in 1099 brought a flood of relics—Judas' pieces of silver, one of the Biblical sower's wheat seeds, two heads of St. John the Baptist ("Was this saint then bicephalous?" acidly demanded Guibert of Nogent), and hundreds of other items.

But this was a trickle compared to the torrent loosed by the capture of Constantinople in 1204. Bishop Garnier de Traînel, who served as chaplain of the Latin army, brought back many treasures to Troyes, among them a silver arm encompassing a relic of St. James the Greater; the skull of St. Philip the Apostle, incased in a reliquary decorated with a gold crown studded with precious stones; and several pieces of the True Cross, enclosed in a Byzantine cross of gilded silver set with five fine emeralds. The Crown of Thorns, pawned by the new Latin emperor to the Venetians, was eventually purchased by St.-Louis, who built the Sainte-Chapelle to receive it, apparently regarding it as superior in authenticity to the two other Crowns of Thorns that Paris already possessed.

Other relics aroused skepticism even in a religious age: one of Christ's baby teeth (How did anyone think to save it? wondered Guibert of Nogent), pieces of stone tablets on which God was said to have written the Ten Commandments, and the "authentic relic" of the Lord's circumcision, claimed by a number of churches.

[fodder]

gives the temple guards something to do, won't it..