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[FantasticDorf]

[Introduction to priests]

Priest is a very generic term for a religious representative, of which there are many titles and roles worldwide in many faiths, but for the typical fantasy setting which may invariably differ between small parish plots to idols and bizzare elder god occultism such as idolising mega or forgotten beasts, a priest will just have to do. In terms of the game this suggestion is in favor of adding them as worldgen & fortress occupation roles as to expand and add a little depth to the religious faiths in the game which are superficially imposed on humans mostly.

Priests spout their deism, and would respect [RESPONSIBLITY:RELIGION] nobles as implicit superiors wherever they are found, acolytes are role defined priests for the elven religion of force worship and are dispersed to maintain its teachings & the power structure in the place of you might say the ecclesiastical structure they have where the Druid rules over the Queen in terms of importance.

[Priests in the Fortress]

Typically a Human or Dwarf priest may be generated by a [PRIEST] tag not dissimilar to many other occupational adventurer/hero tags and pick a relevant local religion and allow people with high levels of devotion to devote themselves to it, goblins are atheists but may in the right circumstances be swayed to religion after going 'native' after being freed from prisons or settling elsewhere.

The active role of a priest working within a temple zone is to confer with and bless dwarves who enter the chapel, help orchestrate and speak stories of the religion, if necessary console them (might i say it doesn't inundate the expedition leader or anybody else's time too much currently but the are there as someone to lean on if the priest is sympathetic enough)

• Very zealous and serious dwarves who may achieve much the same effect but instead level social stats into 'Intimidator' with their fire and brimstone zealotry compared to the compassionate nature of friendly and open minded priests, both types of priests work in their own ways, as overtly zealous dwarves feed off the empassioned priest, most dwarves find the personal attention of the compassionate priest mellowing.

The recommended skill set of priests are

> Persuader - makes more compelling arguments which may be able to flip dwarves with dubious or foriegn religious values.
> Intimidator - Through aggressive gestures (particularly influenced by personality failures to empathize and have negative facets) inspires zeal but may make other dwarves uncomfortable.
> Consoler - Individually they will bless and console dwarves who come to them of the relevant faith
> Speaker/Teacher - Dwarves in attendance will find the speeches interesting, lousy, or fantastic so requires some skill levels in this trait to ensure all in attendance are kept attentive.
> Organiser - Will organise dwarves into standing into attention for relgious events and synchronous singing/musical interludes.
> Writers - Priests may want to scribe their particular thoughts of religion into a book text, as well as annote more songs dedicated to a god within libraries, when they have the need they will set off in the library's direction.

[A example of a basic role defined priest, but by no means a dwarven one, it is one with a shortlist of restrictive tags applied]

Code: [Select]

[POSITION:CLERIC]
[name:cleric:clerics:clergy]
[RESPONSIBILITY:OCCUPATION_PREIST]


[ABSTINENT:REPRODUCTION] // This priest cannot bear or sire children by oath

[ABSTINENT:ALCOHOL] // The most controversial within dwarven kind, these priests are disallowed by faith to drink, such a experience is maddening for a typical dwarf, breaking this taboo by nessecity will make the priest exceptionally upset.

[ABSTINENT:MERRYMENT] // Much like puritanism, these dwarves avoid establishments that provide pleasure and feel guilt over typical feelings of enjoyment, but are resistant and zealous in the face of hardship. Not a dwarf preferred trait.

[ABSTINENT:COMPANY] // Can be interpeted in a matter of different ways, but these dwarves may prefer to take refuge privately and not confer with outsiders, akin to being monks, these types will not immigrate to places where the [RELIGION] noble is not present or talk casually to non-preists of the same sort.
In later arcs, purely religious groups of monks who have taken a vow of exile & solitude may appear as specific embarkation scenarios. And in world generation priests will make themselves known in attempts to convince the masses of friendly sites their civilization likes and convert those who would listen.

[Religious Leaders & Artifacts]

Any mooded items attributed to a priest's creation (which will influence the object & design, so instead of a steel crossbow you might recieve a steel figurine in the form of their diety or as many inscriptions of that god they can fit onto the object to divinate it) typically created through possession especially will be dedicated to the faith and egible to be gifted to the religious leader of your civilization.

If you have multiple temples of exceptional reputation by having multiple useful priests working with large congregations, the leading [RELIGION] noble will visit and impose their demands for their high maintenance stay until they die, and when they do they'll yield a holy artifact which in turn will attract pilgrims and other attention after your artifacts. Without a [RELIGION] noble priests act independently working hard within their temples content enough with their task to enlighten the masses in their own individual ways.

The religious leader also has discussion points about the formation of sects and religious followings in world-generation and real time play as they appear, including notifications on the progress of mega-beast or object cults plus a means to declare your local officiated settlement religion, which might put you at odds with others looking to declare on you for heretical sphere beliefs but in exchange receive more mono faith followers and donations of holy artifacts.

[GoblinCookie]

Is a priest better seen as a job or as a position, I am confused by [RESPONSIBLITY:RELIGION] in this context.  A priest would presumably be treated as a position holder and his priestly functions, whatever they are in the given civilization would be dealt with as special noble functions.  Or do we have a system where priests are just like tavern keepers for temples, religious stuff is simply an job assigned to a location needs to be done and priests are whatever individuals are assigned to that role in the temple. 

[FantasticDorf]

Is a priest better seen as a job or as a position, I am confused by [RESPONSIBLITY:RELIGION] in this context.  A priest would presumably be treated as a position holder and his priestly functions, whatever they are in the given civilization would be dealt with as special noble functions.  Or do we have a system where priests are just like tavern keepers for temples, religious stuff is simply an job assigned to a location needs to be done and priests are whatever individuals are assigned to that role in the temple.

No worries, [RESPONSIBILITY:RELIGION] is a existing religious noble which druids use but tends to crash the game when applied into player fortresses directly as a noble (which this suggestion seeks to fix by giving them a purpose in a hardcoded monarch like way), for my suggestion i was using them or else a generated one would be manifested like we have currently with [VARIABLE_POSITIONS:RELIGION] in creating religious establishments outside in world-gen to be called in wherever in the entity it's present. (it works, try it)

• A position tag ensures the security of succession since you can tie it back into generated priests by default or design by [SUCCESSION:PRIEST], heirs or elections, whichever you deem appropriate and free to change.

• Priests like you say are like tavern keepers occupationally doing the outlined roles which you can attract to your fortress or just set up by yourself out of spare dwarves with the desired skills and facets. They join the church of the associated [POSITION:RELIGION] noble as a establishment or remain independent initially.

The additional context is that [RESPONSIBLITY:OCCUPATION_PREIST] is meant to override the proposed generated [PRIEST] adventurer role by defining what it does and additional tags as to add customizability per entity, this may carry over to other generated roles for instance for more modding control.

[GoblinCookie]

No worries, [RESPONSIBILITY:RELIGION] is a existing religious noble which druids use but tends to crash the game when applied into player fortresses directly as a noble (which this suggestion seeks to fix by giving them a purpose in a hardcoded monarch like way), for my suggestion i was using them or else a generated one would be manifested like we have currently with [VARIABLE_POSITIONS:RELIGION] in creating religious establishments outside in world-gen to be called in wherever in the entity it's present. (it works, try it)

• A position tag ensures the security of succession since you can tie it back into generated priests by default or design by [SUCCESSION:PRIEST], heirs or elections, whichever you deem appropriate and free to change.

• Priests like you say are like tavern keepers occupationally doing the outlined roles which you can attract to your fortress or just set up by yourself out of spare dwarves with the desired skills and facets. They join the church of the associated [POSITION:RELIGION] noble as a establishment or remain independent initially.

The additional context is that [RESPONSIBLITY:OCCUPATION_PREIST] is meant to override the proposed generated [PRIEST] adventurer role by defining what it does and additional tags as to add customizability per entity, this may carry over to other generated roles for instance for more modding control.

Are we not basically dealing with a situation similar to the militia commander-militia captain situation in a lot of cases?  You seem to be proposing the existing tag be used to in effect to represent the equivalent of bishops rather than being for rank and file priests in general.  Thing is however that we have site level positions and civ level positions in general, the token does not necessarily behave in the same fashion at a higher civ level than the site one.

I think we should make it so that you have a civ-level religion position (or not) and then you have site-level religion positions that *may* be unlocked by the existence of the temple according to a new token that defines that.  In fortress mode, the priest carries out whatever duties are expected of him at the temple, but depending upon the token or not he may or may not exist if you have not built a temple yet. 

With no suitable temple the priest position-holder will in most cases not do anything, but he remains restricted by the new abstinence tokens, which should be available for regular positions and indeed citizen-statuses in general.

[FantasticDorf]

Are we not basically dealing with a situation similar to the militia commander-militia captain situation in a lot of cases?  You seem to be proposing the existing tag be used to in effect to represent the equivalent of bishops rather than being for rank and file priests in general.  Thing is however that we have site level positions and civ level positions in general, the token does not necessarily behave in the same fashion at a higher civ level than the site one.

With no suitable temple the priest position-holder will in most cases not do anything, but he remains restricted by the new abstinence tokens, which should be available for regular positions and indeed citizen-statuses in general.

Keeping to the brief of the original, that's a very Anglican view when I meant more towards a hardline 'Pope' esque landed noble attracted much like a king more by the means of [RESPONSIBLITY:RELIGION] as many a defined per entity (though i understand that may get confusing when you have 1 religious head and lots of 'bishops' running actual temple denomination organizations staffed by lesser priests), in effect they may effectively resign from priest work upon succeeding and take a seperate once the migrating landed noble takes residence as outlined in the original idea, anything like bishops is possible but a chain would need to be respected.

> Though of course you could say that the priest becomes a bishop then eventually becomes a 'pope' rather than the initial jump from priest to head spot, but that's how id envision acolytes in elven civlizations choosing from initiates to select a new druid from a pool.

> Occupation priests do all the busybodying, i comment in my original idea in the last two paragraphs that religious leader nobles handle religious holy artifacts, diplomacy intrigue and wider religious actions rather than (&) being a important celebrity celibate and otherwise lazy and useless noble.

Responsibility religion & responsibility occupation_priest are intended to be completely different roles despite the players input, but generally applied abstinence tags wouldn't be too unwelcome either. Bishops weren't originally in my outlined idea but i can see how senior priest roles fair but i don't particularly have anything to comment about them at the moment.

[GoblinCookie]

Keeping to the brief of the original, that's a very Anglican view when I meant more towards a hardline 'Pope' esque landed noble attracted much like a king more by the means of [RESPONSIBLITY:RELIGION] as many a defined per entity (though i understand that may get confusing when you have 1 religious head and lots of 'bishops' running actual temple denomination organizations staffed by lesser priests), in effect they may effectively resign from priest work upon succeeding and take a seperate once the migrating landed noble takes residence as outlined in the original idea, anything like bishops is possible but a chain would need to be respected.

> Though of course you could say that the priest becomes a bishop then eventually becomes a 'pope' rather than the initial jump from priest to head spot, but that's how id envision acolytes in elven civlizations choosing from initiates to select a new druid from a pool.

> Occupation priests do all the busybodying, i comment in my original idea in the last two paragraphs that religious leader nobles handle religious holy artifacts, diplomacy intrigue and wider religious actions rather than (&) being a important celebrity celibate and otherwise lazy and useless noble.

Responsibility religion & responsibility occupation_priest are intended to be completely different roles despite the players input, but generally applied abstinence tags wouldn't be too unwelcome either. Bishops weren't originally in my outlined idea but i can see how senior priest roles fair but i don't particularly have anything to comment about them at the moment.

They were originally in your outlined idea in effect because you drew a distinction between the higher-level religion responsibility and that of a regular priest.  You also have a situation where there are civ-level religion tokens and site-level ones potentially, the former being more like a Pope while the latter are more like bishops. 

The main issue here is whether priests are a status or a position.  That is to say is a priest something that you *do* or something that you *are*.  One model of the former is to have us build temples and then have us assign particular dwarves (or they assign themselves) to the temple at which point they become priests.  One model of the latter is to have specific dwarves choose to become priests and then have the site level religion position-holder ordain them into the priesthood.  The members of the priesthood remain members of the priesthood in the latter model and can then be assigned to actual do something at particular temples, we can in effect have unemployed priests only in that model.

I think the former model should be the default.  The site government builds a temple and then assigns folks to serve as priests in that temple.  The reason is that this system can exist in the absence of any civ-defined position tokens at all.  In order to switch over to the other model you should have to have a a position-token assigned to a particular position that says they [ORDAIN_PRIESTS], this need not be the same person that does [RELIGION].  It is the existence of this token on one of the positions of the entity is what triggers the procedural generation of a priest-status. 

Additionally you should be able to define a priest position.  This position if defined replaces all the regular priest stuff described above and follows an explicit hierarchy defined in the raws, the position holders (and nobody else) will then carry out whatever temple functions there are (the functions themselves are still generated).  The reason to have this is so we can have hereditary and elected priesthoods, as well as theocracies where the government and religious leadership are the same thing.  We can reuse the tokens for a regular position in this regard. 

[Exail]

Priest abilities:

Assigning a priest should give the Dwarf a set of abilities that can be worked up:

Identify vampire (automatic upon line of site with vampire)
Cure were-curse (requires traction bed and consumes a pure silver item)
Perform funeral service (lowers stress caused by loss of family/friend)
Absolve (if religion gets to be more complex and each deity have lifestyle requirements for dwarves, this would release stress caused by disobeying said requirements)
Perform Sacrifice(the sphere of death obviously needs this)

[Bumber]

Cure were-curse (requires traction bed and consumes a pure silver item)

Is the "cure" to kill them?

Seems like a proper cure would be much more difficult than buying some silver bolts from the caravan. There's always the "hunt down the original" cliche, which the new missions system makes possible. Also note that not all werebeast types are weak to silver.

[GoblinCookie]

Priest abilities:

Assigning a priest should give the Dwarf a set of abilities that can be worked up:

Identify vampire (automatic upon line of site with vampire)
Cure were-curse (requires traction bed and consumes a pure silver item)
Perform funeral service (lowers stress caused by loss of family/friend)
Absolve (if religion gets to be more complex and each deity have lifestyle requirements for dwarves, this would release stress caused by disobeying said requirements)
Perform Sacrifice(the sphere of death obviously needs this)

Should there not be minimal requirements for piety in order for those abilities to work though?  What if I appoint an athiest dwarf to priesthood.

[Miles_Umbrae]

How about individuals feeling a "calling" to preach about a deity communicating with them?
Or what about cult-leaders?