Refuting the Resolutes of Stendarr: Exposing the Truth Behind a Misled Religious Order.

###Refuting the Resolutes of Stendarr: Exposing the Truth Behind a Misled Religious Order. by Anchorite Aurelius Aelius-Kyneweard
Episcopate of the Imperial Cult of Reman
Freedom Fighter for the Eternal City

Written in the Year of Akatosh 2E 582

A new religious order has risen to power across the land, headquartered in my ravaged homeland of Cyrodiil; a sect of knight-paladins and warrior-priests known as the Resolutes of Stendarr. The faithful Resolutes travel the war-torn land, providing escorts for merchants and travellers, eliminating criminals and bandits, offering healing and protection, always in exchange for “offerings” of gold to their Order and to their god Stendarr, who blesses them with the power to protect the land. These offerings are without fail returned to their individual chapel-houses and from their to their secret Temple-Headquarters, to be used for the greater good by the leaders of this Order, known only as the Harmonious Masters. They wield powers of light, granted by prayer, and speak with the righteous fury of the Divines.

These services are noble ones, and most of the Resolutes are good-hearted and sincerely pious people, but they are being mislead. I have thoroughly investigated this Order, their teachings, their origins and their abilities, and I have found their claims to Divine power to be utterly false. The powers they wield are no more than ancient magickal techniques used by the Ayleids millennia ago, and many other cultures since then. The Ayleids were the first to perceive light not as a divine or outside force, but as an element of nature. The powers of the Resolutes are an amalgamation of spells based on the Ayleid practice of channeling the elemental force of light, all unnecessarily formatted and approached as prayers to the Divine Stendarr. The Harmonious Masters teach that these spells come in three different forms: the Restoring Light, the Wrath of Dawn, and the Aedric Spear. Resolutes train for years beneath these Harmonious Masters, following a rigid system of meditation, prayer, ritual, combat training and quasi-magickal instruction in order to master these spells. I will explain how these magicks have been warped into religious teachings, and how any mage with sufficient magickal instruction can wield them.

The Restoring Light is perhaps the most well-known and sought-after attribute of the Resolutes: the power to call upon the Divines to restore the sick and wounded. These spells, as the name describes, take the form of a soft, warm light, often leading the recipient to feel comforted, even touched by the Gods. This light, however mystical-feeling, is nothing more than the caster’s magicka, focused into a different form.

Any mage worth their robes is familiar with the rudimentary formation of elemental energy, and thus already familiar with the focus and skill required to form one’s own magicka into a tangible elemental force. Fire and ice come more easily than lightning, because lightning is a far more complex element. Light, contrary to popular provincial folklore, is an element, though one of the highest complexity. When one channels their magicka into light, it has far more potential uses than its more raw elemental cousins. With proper focus, this magicka-tuned-to-light can be channeled into the wounded to restore vitality, heal minor injuries, and even burn out diseases and curses. However, these Resolutes are often ignorant to how their magick works, bathing their target in “Restoring Light” (while distractedly babbling their prayers) instead of focusing specifically on the wounds. This is a mistake your standard healing master, who simply and much more easily channels their magicka without converting it into brilliant light, would never make. When cleansing diseases, they often set up elaborate rituals that serve no purpose other than to help focus their minds. They can also focus their light inward to form a protective shield around the caster exactly like a standard shield spell, though any Resolute would tell you it’s the “shield of Stendarr”. The fact remains that the Restoring Light is nothing more than a variation, mainly cosmetic, of standard healing and warding spells, often much more inefficient in nature.

The spells of Dawn’s Wrath are easy to understand when one understands the elemental nature of light, but it is worth reiterating how much more difficult it is to channel light as opposed to the more familiar elements of nature. The Resolutes’ magickal instruction begins with the very basics of pyromancy, the formation of fire, and then immediately turns to meditation and focused prayer to morph this fire into light. With no practical magickal education or instruction on mystidynamics, it takes years of practice until the technique of changing the form of magicka “clicks” with the novice, which is hailed as an epiphany by the Harmonious Masters and a sign of initiation for the novice. Some novices train their whole lives without success, doomed to serve minor roles in clerical service. But I digress.

The spells of Dawn’s Wrath consist of using the Resolutes’ magicka-tuned-to-light as an offensive projectile in the same vein as a fireball, burning and often blinding the victim. Once a novice masters the formation of light, it becomes a simple matter of strengthening the amount one can send out in a single focus blast. Practicing with fire is strictly (and highly irrationally) forbidden. These spells are incredibly easy to fizzle, requiring the utmost focus and willpower to condense and accurately propell, but once mastered they are extremely formidable. The light is often much stronger than magefire, causing greater burn damage, especially to ghosts and the undead, who have a weakness to such raw destructive force. This only serves to reinforce the notion that the light is a blessing of the Divines.

Finally, we come to the so-called Aedric Spear, that power which the Resolutes pride themselves on above all others, and with good reason. It is, so far as I can tell, an incredibly unique and rare technique, though it could have a history in long-forgotten Ayleid tomes (more on that in a bit). Despite that, through extensive interviews with various Resolutes, along with a year of experimentation, I have managed to recreate and even master my own "Aedric Spear" technique, with no prayers needed. The technique is an advanced form of elemental manipulation; rather than focusing their light into a single point to be hurled and released from the aura of the caster, the Resolute continually channels their light into a single point in the hand and surges it with several pulses of magicka. This forms a kind of conjured beam or rod of light that can be thrust at the target, very similar to a finely-focused gout of flames. The similarity, however, ends at appearance. It takes an extreme amount of control and discipline to maintain the focused point of light while giving it constant bursts of magicka. Too much and the spell fizzles, the point of focus broken. Too little and the spell fizzles, the point of focus too weak to crystalize. A true master of the Aedric Spear can hurl it with a strong pulse of magicka, resulting in a brilliant explosion as the beam shatters upon impact. When perfect form is achieved, the art of using this technique to stab enemies in the face is mastered. This is where a Resolute’s combat training aids them most. Once mastered, the Aedric Spear is as powerful as any physical weapon, able to block attacks and pierce armor with ease. Maintaining the spear constantly is impossible; the drain on magicka is too great for prolonged use. The Harmonious Masters contend that use of this spear is a blessing granted directly from Stendarr himself, but as previously stated, it is simply an advanced form of elemental manipulation, a technique usable by mages of all faiths, or none. Parallels can be drawn with the Akaviri technique of the Flame Whip, with the dreaded Finger of the Mountain spell of the Colovian Cloud-Witches, or the near-forgotten legends of Nordic Clever-Men wielding spears of the hardest conjured stahlrim.

At this point, I’m certain the reader is curious how an order based on such misguided teachings and willful ignorance could persist in these modern times. Let me tell you that the answer is manifold. In times of war, people always look for a source of hope. And even in times of peace, doubtful souls still hunt for signs of the gods. The blame also lies with the persistence of superstition in the world, a problem that, as the historical records show, goes back and forth through the ages. The legalization of Daedra worship in Cyrodiil, the mysterious events surrounding the Mages’ Guild and the Soulburst, and the rise of the Worm Cult have all caused a massive resurgence of superstitious paranoia amongst the common folk, especially in Cyrodiil. The people live in willful ignorance of magick, yet magick has always been both feared and loved; these Resolutes offer many of the advantages of magick, with all the security of a chapel prayer. In many towns in my homeland of Cyrodiil, becoming a Resolute is one’s only way of embracing magick without facing rejection from their community.

The story (dare I say, conspiracy?), however, goes even deeper, back 160 years, to an unassuming Altmeri priest known as Ptolus of Summerset. He served in the Temple of the One during the reign of the last Akaviri Potentate, Savirien-Chorak. Imperial records show that he meticulously catalogued the Ayleid scrolls left by the Temple’s original founders, the Ayleid worshippers of the Ten Ancestor Gods. Few of these texts have been translated in our age, but there’s little doubt that Ptolus was privy to a great deal more resources than today’s Ayleid scholars. A few decades before the assassination of the Potentate, Ptolus resigned from his post at the Temple, ostensibly to return to his homeland, and essentially dropped from the historical record. I believe that he discovered hitherto lost magickal theories and techniques while serving in the Temple, and disappeared in order to master them and gain a small following.
More than a century passes, and a mysterious author known as Ptolus the Bright appears. He founds an order of holy warriors, indoctrinated and brainwashed into believing they wield the power of the Gods, preying on a superstitious populace in a time of cataclysm. Gathering influence and power, and most importantly, gold. I’ve found records of hundreds upon hundreds of gold flowing into the coffers of the Harmonious Masters from each individual chapel-house (of which there are at least a dozen in Cyrodiil alone), led by the ancient and mysterious Ptolus the Bright, sequestered in a Temple-Headquarters none but the Harmonious Masters have seen, and I ask you, what are they doing with all that gold? They feed no poor, offer little charity as an organization, and build no monuments. They do not work to restore the Empire to glory; indeed, many Resolutes openly aid her enemies! Yet thousands believe that these wanderers work the will of the Gods! I fear what this cult will do with it’s growing political influence.

Dear reader, I take ire to the claims of the Resolutes because I am a member of my own religious order of holy warriors, an ancient cult that has worshipped Reman for centuries, and his Divine Mother long before that. We have been the bulwark against corruption in the Nibenay Valley for millennia. Yet the gods, even blessed Stendarr who I have never left out of my prayers, have never granted me spears of light. I know men that have served the Knights of Akatosh all their days, whose families have fought for the Dragon since the Empire of Alessia, and the Gods have never granted them Dawnfire. Even now, as I fight alongside my brothers who bleed in the streets of the Eternal City, the gods do not heal them simply because I ask them to. That these Resolutes claim to be blessed above all others is an insult to every man, mer and beastfolk that has fought in the name of the Divines. That these Harmonious Masters sit upon the country’s wealth while the Imperial City burns is a crime against humanity. My order and I are busy, occupied fighting to restore the Empire and not recruiting villagers en masse, but along the way, I will demystify and expose the Resolutes of Stendarr and their Harmonious Masters to every person I meet.
I would, however, never seek to scandalize or discredit the Divines. Their blessings are all around us, not in the form of spears, but in Nirn itself and all her elements. Pray to the Eight and to blessed Reman, not for special powers granted from without, but for the spirit and willpower to claim true power, from within! Never doubt the silent gods, for they are always watching. Never follow an authority without question; never fear knowledge and understanding. And above all, do not fall for the seductive lies of the Resolutes of Stendarr. Master the light for yourself!

##Praise Reman and all the Eight!