Maelstrom Campaign - The True Faiths: The Smith

Followers of the Smith believe that service to the community is the highest good. They urge everyone to set aside their own personal agendas and feelings, and strive to work for the common good. His priests state that to come together to form communities is the destiny of all thinking beings, and His followers are pledged to strengthen and defend the village, town or city in which they live. The anvil and the hearth are symbols of the Smith, but so also are the sword and shield, in many temples He is often depicted in His aspect as the Soldier. Followers of the Smith include builders, carpenters and architects in addition to smiths and soldiers. The pious believe that when a community is not under threat, His followers must spend their time improving the community so that it grows stronger. They must, however, be vigilant, for threats to the community must be dealt with as quickly as possible.

According to the ancient scripture of the Smith, eventually one community will develop to the point where all members give unstintingly to it. This land will be so strong that it will conquer all others, at which point it will conquer heaven itself. Followers of the Smith tend to be static although the Church encourages its lower ranking members to travel widely, to see how things are done in other societies, so that these lessons can be applied to the home community. Priests of the Smith are trusted members of the community, although astute leaders know that their loyalty is to the community as a whole and not to the dynastic rulers who lead them. Several rulers have come to face the wrath of the priesthood of the Smith by ineptly managing their communities.

Worship of the Smith is strong in every land that maintains an army of any kind, but it is particularly powerful in Amun-Sa where the priesthood lead the Mameluks: an army of elite warriors raised as slave soldiers from childhood. Nhairtoum is the leader of the Mameluks and the priests of the Smith, who they call the Soldier in Amun-Sa. He does not possess the temporal power of the Hierophant of Fidelia, being loyal to the king of Amun-Sa, but he is still exceptionally powerful and devotees of the Smith in other lands acknowledge his pre-eminence.

The Commandments of the Smith

The community is greater than any individual, strive to increase its strength.
Threats against the community must be faced and eliminated.
It is the will of the Smith that the strongest communities conquer the weakest.
The weak destroy what they could control; the strong expropriate what they cannot conquer.

And so it began......

Dawn breaks, war looms, the evil Lord is gathering his armies to wage a campaign of destruction upon the free peoples of the world. It is up to I, Sir Maximilan Pegasus to stop him, with my trusted band of adventurers we must gather the enchanted sword of Tek, the Shield of Way-Lem and the amulet of Subsidence and together we shall slay this abomination! “TIME FREEZE” And bam, the fantasy world fades away, the enchanted sword of Tek in my hand is a rubber sword smothered in coloured ribbons with a laminated card cable tied to the hilt, I look down and I’m wearing plastic armour and unflattering heropants, and the magical world of my imagination washes away to reveal a field in Wigan, but you know what? It’s larp and I’m a larper, it’s what I do.
I started larping when I was 17, I’d never role-played before, I’d never played D&D or Warhammer, never played WoW or any form of online game, I’d never even read Lord of the Rings, I feel somewhat privileged that I hadn’t done any of those things, I think it gave me an untainted attitude towards what larp could be, I had no preconceptions about saving the maiden fair, slaying the dragon or smiting the liche, to me it was just a new thing to try.
It was cold, really cold, 10am on a September morning, the rain was battering down and I’d been given a faux fur tunic, a mouldy old sword and been pointed towards a man and told, “You’re monstering, there’s the ref he’ll tell you what to do.” I obeyed, I played wave after wave of zombies, orcs and various line monsters and to be honest, was cold, bored and hungry. That is, until lunchtime, the teams switched sides, I got into the kit I’d scrounged up, as with most first timers, a black trenchcoat. I took the mouldy old sword, stood with my fellow adventurers and it hit me, I’m a god damn hero!
Pow, there it was, a new larper was born.