Geldwood

The Geldwood Church, often referred to as a cult by its opponents, is a corrupt religious and military institution that practices and upholds the Geldwood faith in the Other World.

Faith
The Geldwood faith believes in the concept of salvation and shuns both necromancers and those who fraternize with necromancers, considering the latter's souls corrupted by association. Followers of the faith are expected to kill 'corrupted' fraternizers alongside necromancers on the spot, granting their souls salvation in death rather than making any attempt to cleanse them when alive.

Many members of the Geldwood Church wield magic, and the church offers itself as a place of refuge to those who possess the Evil Eye. The Geldwood religion additionally makes of a unique martial art, one distinctly recognizable as a Geldwood technique when practiced.

Organization
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', and may be supported by other specific units such as observation units when carrying out their missions.

Known members and former members of the Church include:
 * Sir Shagrua Lugrid the Calamity Crusher, a holy knight of the faith prior to being exorcised.
 * Recuria, a hieromancer present at the Corpse God's subjugation.

Story
At some point following the collapse of the Byandy Empire one hundred years prior to the start of the series, a faction of Geldwood's holy soldiers encounter five young humans in the company of the necromancer Corpse God and kill the 'corrupted children' to "free their souls." The Corpse God takes his revenge "there and for a hundred years after," becoming an enemy of the Geldwood Church in the process. In the interim, he compiles research on the Geldwood Church's 'underbelly' of internal corruption.

Sometime in the latter half of those hundred years, the Geldwood Church grants Shagura Lugrid—a possessor of the Evil Eye—salvation and take him in as a holy soldier, all the while trying to hide the fact that a faction of holy soldiers burned both the villagers who persecuted him and the bandits who slaughtered his family to death. Shagrua spends many years fighting as a holy knight in service of the Geldwood faith, vanquishing cults and monsters alike to increasing applause.

The Corpse God's century of terror and Shagrua's years of battle culminate in a final Geldwood assault against the "world disaster"-class necromancer, with Shagrua and the rest of his subjugation unit invading the Corpse God's labyrinth to vanquish him once and for all. Though the Corpse God is able to easily counter most of the forces who attack him, he vanishes to Shagrua's sword; once the Church's observation unit confirms all traces of the Corpse God's soul have vanished as well, Geldwood celebrates his vanquishing as a great victory for the faith.

Shagrua, however, finds himself consumed with doubt after he encounters the Corpse God's journal and extensive collection of books in the Corpse God's laboratory, the former revealing the Corpse God's kind side and the latter including a number of essays exposing "the underbelly of the Geldwood religion." Upon returning to a Geldwood cathedral in the Kingdom of Nyanild, Shagrua spends several days tirelessly researching the Corpse God's claims in the cathedral library and verifying their truth.

Concluding that he can no longer follow the Geldwood faith, Shagrua asks Recuria the hieromancer to tell the Church he has been possessed by the Corpse God and then escapes the premises, taking with him journals as well as evidence proving the order's corruption. Following his assault on several Church higher-ups, the Church formally exorcises him from the institution and orders its holy soldiers to pursue him at all costs.