Yuri Chernyaev

Andrew’s cleric (Sun: light/Protection)

My life was never difficult. I’ve tried to learn gratitude for it, but I can’t help resent it a little instead. Well alright, maybe a lot. It’s foolish, I know, but I just can’t shake that chip on my shoulder. You see, great heroes never have it easy. Astrid the Seer watched her parents die in The Creep. Yorick of Pent was raised from the dead and haunted by visions of hell forever after. Even Garpo the Wastelander fits the bill, being a goblin and all.

Not I; my parents were happy, we were well educated and I’m sure we had meat with every meal. I am kin to no twisted sibling (my sister Eva is a lovely girl). I don’t think I even had a single piece of itchy clothing, for Molkai’s sake. My brother Daniil was first in line for father’s business, so he learned the accounting, the politics and the heraldry. I, on the other hand, was ushered onto the path of a clergyman; dabbling with the usual ‘wealthy male child’ things on the way (you know -sword play, horse riding, hunting, archery and the like).

Of course, given the size of my father’s donation, I ascended to a comfortable administrative post, leaving the beggar-bathing and leper-tending to my brothers. It felt very wrong. All this time I’d told myself I would make a difference once I became a priest. No more lounging and eating grapes, no more house dogs with better diets than most people. I was going to make a difference. Yet there I found myself, waited on hand and foot by laymen while I made administrative entries in a gilded book and held meetings with other over-indulged low-level functionaries.

So I vacated my position and ventured outside the High City to become a mendicant, begging for a living and speaking of the Circle to all that would hear me. Sadly, the peasant-brothers refused to take me seriously. What sacrifice is poverty, they would say, when Yuri may go home for a meal when he gets hungry? Attend a hospice if he gets sick? Bend the Guards’ ear when someone does him wrong? I suppose in a way they were right, but my exclusion lead to disillusionment. Were these humble beggar-priests any less arrogant then their wealthy superiors? So I left them, convinced that there was no justice in wealth and power, or strength in poverty. It seemed to me that the high clergy made themselves soft, and the low clergy made themselves weak, both in a very deliberate way.

Of all the gods in the circle, it seemed to me that in the City of Otraxis we love Eurus least. Every man in trouble speaks his name for personal protection, but when does that same man heed his call to defend someone else? So I returned to the Great Temple and read. I ignored the dark looks from my brothers and the chastisement from my betters and re-learned the old ways. A hundred years ago, the clergy of Otraxis were just like those in the outside world; they would be called by a certain god and strive to exemplify that god’s virtue. Now we are all required to put equal weight on all segments of the Circle and I tell you, a priest can find an excuse for any kind of behaviour if he assembles his creed from whatever pieces of scripture he likes.

So carved my own symbol (a wooden Circle to represent the gods, but with a shield icon for Eurus placed at the top) and went out on my own. Now, I don’t know what I am. Though nominally I’m still a Clergyman, the Circle say I have lost my way by expounding the virtues of Eurus overmuch. The laymen ask me to conduct the standard rites, and I’m happy to, but they care nothing for my ideas and ask for no special protection. So I wander, supporting myself with odd jobs where I can and waiting for Eurus to guide me to where I am needed. The gods have not abandoned me, despite my penchant for ‘mild heresy’ and I take this as proof that I walk a legitimate path.