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[Antonine]

"Sorraine is the only realm that lets no other religions in"

That describes a ban. You might as well say that Arcaea bans all religions because there's no guarantee any region lords will let their priests in. It was an inaccurate statement. Full stop.

[Velax]

Whatever makes you feel better, Antonine. I'm sure all the non-Sartanians will totally agree that Sorraine doesn't stop other religions from entering.

[Antonine]

It's not a question of feeling better, it's a matter of fact. The laws of Sorraine do not ban other religions - they require all region lords to allow the Church of Sartan to preach in their regions but other than that they follow the same customs as Arcaea.

So either Sorraine doesn't ban foreign religions or Arcaea does as well. Either way, what you said was inaccurate.

What individual characters might think is going to be very different but as players we shouldn't try and pretend the facts are other than what they actually are.

[BardicNerd]

What individual characters might think is going to be very different but as players we shouldn't try and pretend the facts are other than what they actually are.

However, since we were talking about what individual characters think, the facts have no relevance to the discussion.

[Velax]

What BardicNerd said. Which I also said. Repeatedly. But don't let what is actually the case get in the way of your rhetoric.

Also:

Unwillingness to let other religions inside their borders

I doubt that any region lords would give permission [to preach]

If you think there's any appreciable different between these two statements, well, there's not really much more I can say, or can be bothered saying, to convince you otherwise.

[Indirik]

There is a big difference between a realm-wide policy/law of "no other religions", and "it's the lord's decision". While the end result may be the same in many, the second is much easier for outside religions to penetrate. Also, the policy of "it's the lord's decision" makes the realm's policy *the exact same* as nearly every other realm on the island. And unless you were to poll every lord in every realm, you can't know whether any realm would collectively allow/forbid any individual religion. Any less is just uninformed opinion or blatant propaganda. And you never know, the results may surprise you.

[Antonine]

This.

Saying that Sorraine bans all other religions is a lie. It's a great propaganda line which I don't expect characters to stop using IG but that doesn't mean players can claim the propaganda is true OOC without expecting to be told they're telling a lie.

[Antonine]

Velax, what you originally said was:

"Unwillingness to let other religions inside their borders - the only realm that does that currently."

Now, given that Sorraine operates an identical policy to, for example, Arcaea or Cathay, that statement simply cannot be correct. Either that or you and I have very different definitions of "the only realm".

[Scarlett]

Isn't this sort of an academic quibble?

Caspius made a big show of closing down a large temple to the MAE in Ozrat. Other Sartanist lords have done the same. The religion itself does not for a moment suggest that tolerance is A-OK.

If the law in Sorraine says otherwise, I doubt anybody outside Sorraine knows it, and they'd probably not believe it. It may be technically true that they're permitted but I doubt anyone thinks a lord of Sorraine is going to score any points in Sorraine by permitting foreign priests. Certainly not Order or Dragon priests, which leaves the MAE, and the MAE isn't going to spend much time or money there after they already lost a couple temples (I think the one in Aanos is gone, too).

[Indirik]

It is indeed a quibble, for sure. However, it's a bit of a surprise to be told that "everyone" knows that something is true, and that the whole island outside Sorraine looks down on us for something that simply is not true, and that we never knew people thought about us. Not that anything will change because of this discussion, because our characters don't know that this is what people think. But it is iinteresting to hear.

[Stabbity]

The whole island looks down on Sorraine because they've earned it. The realm's population, whether be it by law or not is irrelevant, is openly hostile to the other faiths of the island. That is public perception. The CoS is the only religion on the FEI that doesn't play nice with everyone else. Nobody else closes down or sacks temples, uses their religion to attempt to undermine governments, uses secular wars as an excuse to go burning temples, etc etc. They have earned their reputation. Even if they hadn't, attempting to convince everyone else on the forum is a pretty dumb way to go about it. If Sorraine is interested in the goodwill of everyone else, they should attempt to garner goodwill IG

[Indirik]

To set the record straight, it wasn't the Sartanians that started the religious side to the war. Both the Order and CoH started burning our temples first.

[Meneldur]

The whole island looks down on Sorraine because they've earned it. The realm's population, whether be it by law or not is irrelevant, is openly hostile to the other faiths of the island. That is public perception. The CoS is the only religion on the FEI that doesn't play nice with everyone else. Nobody else closes down or sacks temples, uses their religion to attempt to undermine governments, uses secular wars as an excuse to go burning temples, etc etc. They have earned their reputation. Even if they hadn't, attempting to convince everyone else on the forum is a pretty dumb way to go about it. If Sorraine is interested in the goodwill of everyone else, they should attempt to garner goodwill IG

To be fair, the fact that Sartanism doesn't "play nice" with everyone is part of what makes it so fun. Religions like MAE might be well respected, but they are also dead boring and to a large extent pointless as the very reason why they are well liked is because they don't actually do anything significant. Also the Church itself isn't as looked down upon as you make out; it has a significant presence in nearly every northern realm and no ruler has yet attempted to ban or destroy its temples (though if the Church dosn't get its diplomatic ability back on track then that could change).

However you are quite right in that the downside to this is that they shouldn't be surprised when their theocracy is looked down upon. If you're going to have a realm that disrespects the religions of its neighbors, then you can't expect your neighbors to rush to your aid when a pseudo-religious war goes bad (I say pseudo-religious because even if Sorraine didn't intend for it to be religious, its certainly viewed as such by many due to their lack of a coherent justification for the conflict).

[Scarlett]

I don't think they're looked down on. To the extent that Sorraine might be, it's more because of poor leadership than because of the Church, which has had some blunders but as Meneldur pointed out, these came about because the Church actually does something.

It is one of the difficulties of 21st century values in a medieval game. The CoS is really the closest thing to how medieval nobles (if not Kings) would think about religion. Most every religion in the Middle Ages was openly hostile to most every other religion, and the exceptions to that rule were more on the local level in the handful of cities where you had multiple faiths mostly getting along -- like Jerusalem, until the Turks came in.

As a player I wish there was some sort of middle ground to pursue, because religion should be one of the prime movers of conflict in the game. But no King who enjoys a firm level of control is going to willingly hand over control to any religion, so Galiard can't do much about it, and the other faiths are too fragmented (at least at the moment).

Most of the realms on the FEI have been secular dictatorships of one form or another and they'd be pretty foolish to give that up.

[Lefanis]

To set the record straight, it wasn't the Sartanians that started the religious side to the war. Both the Order and CoH started burning our temples first.

What did the WotD start, then?