VE is still alive last I saw. There's at least one elder priest who is too stubborn to quit.
I've been contemplating taking my character on Dwilight and going down a religious route with him, but that can't really happen until certain things resolve themselves first. I've been toying with a religion that caters to both adventurers and nobility, sort of a dualistic nature with callbacks to AP in parts.
It's still alive, but hollow. It's a walking corpse. I don't think that priest (Baal, right?) has done much for the faith for a while. Machiavel was basically carrying the church for years, making promotions, sending a few messages now and then, overlooking temple finances. But the Long Winter made it a huge financial drain, and it just wasn't worth putting even more effort into something that was obviously never going to rise again.
But I would say that VE survived and grew considerably after the departure of its founder. It's later, as others left, and as Caerwyn fell and SA became more important in D'Hara, and that Machiavel had too many other political responsibilities, that it started really degrading.
