The Dragon of Liris
There is a great and ancient city beyond the eastern forest, beyond Quolinara, and even beyond the vast reaches of the eastern ocean. It is a place so dense with people from every walk of life that it has been fondly given the title 'The Patchwork City,' and the title is quite apropos, for Liris is given life by the eternally varying races, beliefs, religions and cultures that compose it. It is so large that they say one must walk three days and three nights to travel from one end to the other. At night, and from a distance, Liris looks a bit like an ocean, for hundreds of thousands of candles, torches and lights glitter in the darkness like the stars might reflect off of the surface of the sea.
At the highest point in Liris, atop a hill that overlooks the rest of the city, sits a humble building of wood and stone - the Temple of the Gods. Within it, all religions are worshipped freely by the Lirians. There are pure white statues of marble depicting the bright Lady, Waylumi, and imposing blackwood carvings of Dahkoar. All stand alongside trees planted in the name of Ateraan, and other figures honoring gods and goddesses we have never heard of here in Gahlen. Liris has almost always been a city of free worship.
However, there was one year in the city's history when the Temple of the Gods faded with disuse, for a new deity had taken the city by storm. Cobwebs gathered in forgotten corners of the temple, and dust coated the statues and trees with a soft layer of desuetude. Only a lone acolyte remained in the old sanctuary. This young man, who we shall call Pip, watched on with sadness in his heart as, each day, fewer and fewer people came to the temple. They chose, instead, to visit the opulent place of worship next door, for the King had decreed that the Dragon-God Bel was the new and very official deity of Liris, and that the citizens must tithe before Bel each day lest the dragon-god turn his wrath upon the city itself.
Pip wondered at this, for he had never heard of Bel before, so he wandered next door to the Temple of the Dragon-god. He had to wade through hundreds of people, wiggle around stacks of gold and valuables, and duck beneath wisps of smoke that drifted through the air, borne of heady incense and stoked braziers to get to the altar. There, he found a terrible construct: a mighty stone dragon sat upon the dais, wreathed in strands of jewelry and garlands of flowers. At Bel's feet sat hundreds of offerings - Pip saw whole turkeys, plucked clean; he saw stacks of meat and cheese, kegs and bottles of beer and wine; expensive swathes of cloth, women's earrings and necklaces, and a few engagement rings; he even saw several clumsy drawings tucked beneath the heavy stone tail of the dragon statue - a child's offering.
Something in Pip's stomach turned a little. Either it was the waffle he had for breakfast, he mused, or something was off about all of this. He turned to a nearby priest, tugging at the man's sleeve. 'Why do you worship this god?' He asked the man. 'Bel is the Dragon-god of Power and Plenty. He provides for our city so long as we worship him; without him, Liris would be in ruins!' Pip frowned, fully aware of the fact that Liris had been a happy and thriving city before the arrival of any dragon statues.
The priest sneered at the boy and said, 'You doubt the power of Bel? Look at the offerings before him, and then come back tomorrow morning, when the temple doors open. You will find that the temple is locked by the King himself each night, with all the offerings within. And each morning when our Lordship comes to open the doors, Bel has consumed all of his offerings. You do not think he is a living god? Do you not see how much he eats and drinks every day? Bah.' The priest turned away from the boy, dismissing him wordlessly.
True to the priest's words, the very next day when Pip arrived to the temple to watch the King open the doors, he found that all the offerings from the night before were mysteriously gone. Pip felt the stirrings of awe as he stared up at the massive dragon statue, and cold, stone gaze stared back... but then dark, keen eyes noted something most curious lying on the floor by Bel's clawed feed: a chicken bone, picked entirely clean. Pip hurried over to the statue to inspect before anyone could shoo him away, only to find six, seven, eight, and nine other chicken bones stacked neatly on the floor. 'Why,' the boy wondered, 'Does a statue as large as an arphant need to spit out the bones? He could eat three of those chickens whole without batting a lash.' And that little warning in Pip's stomach, that quiet twinge of uncertainty, grew into a whisper: something is not right.
That first night, Pip watched as the King secured the gilded doors of the temple next door. All night, the acolyte sat in the window looking outwards into the darkness, waiting for someone or something to open the doors. And yet morning came and brought with it no new knowledge - only dark circles beneath the acolyte's eyes. He rushed into the Temple of the Dragon-god as soon as the doors opened, and found once more that all of the offerings had been consumed, only a stray coin or two left behind along with an odd little pile of chicken bones, stripped clean. Bel stared stonily at Pip, and Pip stared back. 'You're not a god,' he told it firmly, and began to plot.
Later, as the temple began to clear out in preparation for the doors to be locked as per usual, Pip put his plan into action. He made sure that he would be one of the final people out of the temple, and on his way out, he smashed into one of the heavy metal braziers that kept the temple warm during the day. Ash, embers and soot went flying everywhere and to the absolute horror of the priests tending to the temple, the first brazier tipped sideways into a second, and then a third, creating a domino effect. By the time Pip was done, ash coated everything, including the great Bel, who watched on with that same cold, blank expression. The priests were irate, but little could be done for an 'accident,' and they decided that the temple would have to be cleaned in the morning, for the King was waiting just outside to lock up.
Pip slept soundly on that second night, with ash in his hair and a smile on his lips. The very next morning, he rushed over to the temple and darted inside as soon as the King unshackled the doors. Instead of running to the statue to inspect the offerings - or lack thereof - as he had the past two mornings, Pip walked along the wall, looking down at his feet. 'Just as I thought,' the boy murmured. There, imprinted upon the ash and leading from what appeared to be a solid wall, were a series of distinct footprints. Not the massive clawed prints of a dragon-god, Pip mused, but the more slender delineations of several pairs of soft-soled shoes.
On the third night, things went a little differently. Pip and the head of the Lirian guard waited until everyone filtered out of the temple, with the King's discreet permission, and tucked themselves behind the enormous statue of Bel. 'If you're wrong about this, we'll 'ave your head, boy,' the captain murmured, but Pip hushed him. 'Watch and see ‘Bel’ in action,' he told the man. And watch they did: for a time, nothing happened. But as the sun set, bathing the temple first in crimson, then in darkness, a sudden sound echoed through the temple - stone ground upon stone, and from the wall emerged a secret door, one that blended nearly seamlessly with the marble walls and was covered, for good measure, by a tapestry depicting none other than the fearsome dragon Bel.
Out of the secret door came a line of Dragon-god priests, tittering quietly amongst themselves and laughing occasionally. Pip and his companion watched on silently as the priests sat down for a feast beyond compare. They tore into the turkeys first, leaving behind small piles of bones, and filled their pockets with gold and gems until nothing was left save for the remnants of their feast. One crumpled a child's drawing and threw it across the room without aiming - into the waiting hands of the guard captain as he emerged from his hiding place, Pip standing victoriously at his side.
To all the clerics present, whether you are my own or hail from another faith... don't get any ideas! Suffice to say, the ending of the story is a little less pleasant, and I won't regale you with the execution stories, apologies. I have always loved this tale, though, because I think it illustrates so well the tenet of Wisdom; we see it all throughout Pip's tale. It's present from the very moment when Pip has an averse reaction to the statue of Bel. Wisdom is the quiet voice that whispers to all of us in such moments, when we pause to listen closely: something is not right here, and so it was for Pip. And Wisdom can be found, too, in the three days Pip spent first testing a theory, and then formulating a plan. But it was not Wisdom alone that won the day, was it?
In Pip's actions, we see a congress of Wisdom - the ability to assess a situation 'with keen eyes and an open heart to the truth,' as Waylumi's tenets state - and Vigilance. I'm using Vigilance in a flexible fashion here, for as per tenets, it calls us to shield the weak, to seek out darkness where it may exist and banish it; but in a more broad sense, Vigilance is a call to action. In many ways, Vigilance is Wisdom put into action. Each are wonderful qualities on their own, but when paired together, bright and beautiful things are born from their union.
My eternally Wise brother Granjr said to me the other say, 'Each tenet holds its own rather well, but like a chair, it needs all of its legs to actually be stable for it to be that chair!' How true, and how perfect for our tale of Pip and Bel. Can you imagine if Pip had possessed the Wisdom to know Bel was a false idol, and the wit to prove it, but lacked the initiative to do so? Or conversely, if he had acted on his gut instinct but done so without a good and Wise plan? The people of Liris would be worshipping a rock, to this day, and those priests would be too fat to fit through the temple doors.
In this story, you may have noticed that Pip's religious affiliation was quite deliberately left open ended here. To me, he is an acolyte of Waylumi. But this sermon is not just for me and mine. As you listened, I hope you understand that Pip was you, and one of you - a cleric of Dahkoar, a druid of Ateraan. Or not even a cleric at all. Perhaps Pip is a squire, or a magelet, or a young merchant or a new shaman.
I would wager that almost all of you present hold some set of creeds, dogmas, tenets or edicts near and dear – the convictions you live by, yes? So take a moment to think on them, and recognize that with a couple of noted exceptions... all of you have more than one. Whether they are Love, Honor, Wisdom and Vigilance or your own canon of beliefs, there is a reason they do not stand alone. In and of themselves, they have undeniable individual power, but it is only when you pair them together that you understand the all-encompassing and unstoppable force of your beliefs.