Geldwood

The Geldwood Church (ゲルドウッド教団 Gerudouddo Kyōdan) is the most influential religious institution on the continent of Bol, where it is the official religion of the Kingdom of Nyanild and several other countries. Although its influence is lesser in the furthest regions of Bol, where distance allows other faiths to hold more local sway, and although its opponents disparage it as a cult, it is unequalled as a religious institution in scope, power, or membership. Its seat and holy land is the Boldorazon Autonomous Region, a city carved into Mount Boldorazo.

Faith
Salvation is the fundamental dogma of the Geldwood faith and the persecution of necromancers the Geldwood Church's consequent hobby. Necromancers are considered evil agents for their enslavement of souls; therefore, members of the laity are expected to execute a necromancer's fraternizers so that their souls can attain salvation. Members are also expected to execute anyone a necromancer has turned undead, since the Church forbids zombification as a resuscitation method. Since possessors of the Evil Eye are at higher risk of becoming necromancers, Geldwood offers them refuge and guides them down a holier path.

Geldwood adherents may learn a variety of magic-based holy arts. One of their main branches is dedicated to spiritual intervention; another branch encompasses physical healing, revitalization, and fortifying weapons. The holy arts repertoire also includes advanced, complex techniques pertaining to memory manipulation.

Although the Church may seem antiquated from a Terran perspective due to the armor of its soldiers, it has long been a catalyst for technological progress in the other world due to its history of smuggling in Terran technology, which comprises 70% of the innovations that the Church has introduced.

Ecclesiastical Polity
Geldwood is overseen by an oligarchy of nineteen head priests and priestesses who debate theological legislation reform. These reforms, along with news of the Church's latest technological developments, are disseminated to the public by whoever the oligarchy has chosen to be its current 'Saint.' The Church publicly denies that the Saint has more power than a figurehead, but laymen still look up to the Saint as Geldwood's unofficial leader.

Every generation of Saint inherits the first Saint's name "Salady Sarod Rackhambabel" and a solemn ritual mask to be used when making public announcements. It is rumored that all Saints can commune with Dragons. The current Saint Salady is the 142rd Saint and one of numerous women to hold the position. Although the first Saint was also a women, enough men have served as Saints that people typically refer to the Saint with the word for holy man or sage.

No one in the Church besides members of the oligarchy know that the past 119 Saints, including the present 142rd one, have been puppets of the 23rd Saint Elsia Sabaramond, the true pillar of the Church.

Laity
In addition to employing priests, priestesses, hieromancers, and sorcerers, the Geldwood Church depends on a large military order of holy knights and holy soldiers to combat heresy, criminal syndicates, and otherwise defend the faith. Specialized subjugation units are deployed against 'monsters' or Enemies of the world, with other units such as observation units acting as support.

Known members and former members of the Church include:

Background
The Church's current system to determine a Saint was established 540 years ago by the first Saint Salady Sarod Rackhambabel, who sought to resolve internal strife during a particularly unstable period of the Church's existence. Salady and the first twenty-one Saints to succeed her were able to live out their natural lives, unlike 98 of the 120 Saints who followed.

Elsia Sabaramond, the 23rd Saint, was not one of those 98 despite being reportedly killed by dissidents after she announced that the world is a sphere. Whether genuine or staged, her public 'murder' allowed her to seize control of the polity from the shadows, where she has remained concealed for centuries lest the laity learn they are under the rule of a necromancer.

Only twenty-one of Elsia's 119 'successors' manage to either live out their natural lifespans or otherwise keep their lives, the latter including Pani Guldmarg, the 83rd Saint, and so far the woman currently serving as the 142rd Saint. Of the ninety-eight unlucky others, some were people who Elsia killed and turned into undead undead puppets only after they became Saints, others were undeads whom Elsia maneuvered into the position.

If the Church was previously anti-science prior to Elsia's 'assassination,' it turned in the direction of the scientific frontier after the 24th Saint allegedly tortured and beheading of the accused assassinators. It is said that the 48th Saint designated all Geldwood churches as places of learning and introduced the Geldwood precept that all adherents must receive an education, the 64th Saint 'discovered' germs and developed purification spells as countermeasures, the 72rd Saint was dismissed because his reputation as a sword saint gave him too much individuality, and that the 84th Saint killed herself in grief after her development of repeating rifles triggered the spread of warfare.

70% of the innovations and technologies introduced by the Church to the Other World were smuggled there from Earth via Geldwood expeditions. Of the remaining 30%, it is largely unknown which ones can be attributed to Elsia, members of the Geldwood clergy or laity, or the Saints she let live—but it can be safely assumed some technologies were invented by Pani over the course of her three-year sainthood before she absconded her position, especially in light of the Church's current use of Medeon.

Recent Terran Expeditions
Around or a little over one hundred years ago, Geldwood joins forces with traitors of the Byandy Empire and forces open a 'Hole' to Terra Mater in the center of the empire's capital; this event is so catastrophic that it precipitates the Empire's rapid collapse over the course of a year. At least one Geldwood expedition crosses over to Earth for the sake of at least two missions: to bring back Elsia what they can of the latest in Terran technology, and to "recreate their hometown" on Earth.

The former mission is a success; expeditioners return with weapons and ammunition from the Terran Great War, a variety of engines, a Tesla coil, a projector, models of aircrafts, radio-communication equipment, and other technologies. The latter, which is conducted in Shinjuku, Japan, is a failure; although the Geldwood expeditioners manage to brainwash the local children they kidnap through songs, an inferior brainwashing technique to their standard one, they conclude that the full scope of their project is unachievable due to Earth's conditions being too poor to support the amount of magic required.

It is likely that this expedition is the one that escorted the tenth Arius Sabaramond Veytoelka to Earth at the bidding of the seventh Arius Veytoelka.

Last One Hundred Years
Several years and then some after the Byandy Empire's collapse, a contingent of Geldwood soldiers discover and kill five young people living in an abandoned coal mine with the necromancer Corpse God. Corpse God spends the century having his revenge against the soldiers.

Presumably in the latter third of those one hundred years, the Geldwood Inquisition burns down the home village of Shagrua Lugrid and bring him to the Boldorazo Autonomous Region. Shagrua becomes a squire when he is old enough and one of the Church's most formidable knights when he is an adult, with his slaying of Pirawizzo—a dragon the Church deemed an Enemy of the World—making him something of a celebrity. He and Recuria Lofilardo, a powerful head priestess personally instructed in Geldwood's holy arts by the head priest Arius VIII, accompany the subjugation unit that Elsia will later send to the mine-turned-labyrinth with orders to vanquish the Corpse God.

The battle with Corpse God appears to conclude with Shagrua its winner, for Geldwood's observation unit confirms that all traces of the Corpse God vanished after Shagrua struck a decisive blow. Shagrua discovers several books in Corpse God's laboratory during a post-mortem search of Corpse God's belongings and spends the next several days investigating the books' claims of corruption in the Geldwood Church.

Convinced that these claims are true, Shagrua assaults several high-ranking members of the Geldwood clergy, asks Recuria to spread a lie that Corpse God is possessing his corpse, and sets off on a journey to the Byandy Peninsula with Corpse God's diary and evidence of Geldwood corruption in his possession. The Church excommunicates him and orders its soldiers to pursue him at all costs.

In order to undermine Shagrua's popularity both outside and especially inside the Church, Geldwood's upper echelons begin referring to Shagrua as '(the) Calamity' instead of The Calamity Crusher. Recuria wages a quiet pro-Shagrua resistance against the anti-Shagrua campaign of her fellow Head priests and priestesses until they can no longer afford to let her retain her influential position. They dispatch Recuria and her ten allies to the borderlands of the Byandy Peninsula under the pretense that Shagrua was last seen there, Lord Domdaal and a contingent of one hundred soldiers to the borderlands to ambush Recuria's group, and Pani's reject Medeon I and the unwitting decoy Silk Malacougar to Byandy Peninsula to eliminate Easlies Swordfrail, one of the mightiest obstacles to the Sabaramond siblings' plan to reopen the interplanetary path. Elsia also dispatches the undead dragon Blokadow for this last purpose, an action that requires more secrecy due to being heretical.

Pani Guldmarg, having foreseen that Elsia and/or her clergy might attempt to rid themselves of Recuria, dispatches Utsurojuza to collect Recuria and her allies before someone else can. When she realizes that Arius IV is aware of her plan, she departs Zurodakkan airspace to pick Utsurojuza et al. up early rather than wait for them to arrive at the extraction point. Arius IV prevents the Aerial Studio from leaving for Byandy Peninsula and proposes an alliance between Pani, Utsurojuza, and Recuria and him—or, if they prefer, Elsia—for the sake of his and Elsia's common goal: the reopening of the interplanetary fissure.