Church of the Divine Lucre

Religion in Ermarian
Church of the Divine Lucre
Central Tenet: Accumulation of wealth
Leader: Various
Founded: 512 IE | Centered in: Throughout Ermarian

The Church of the Divine Lucre is a religion with the central tenets of accumulation of wealth and personal enjoyment. Such a concept would normally be considered corrupt and lavish in a religion with more mainstream members, but in the Church of the Divine Lucre a strong dedication to avarice is the norm and empathy is hard to be found.

The Church makes most of its profit by providing protection to passing travelers. Those who do not wish to pay or cannot are generally assaulted shortly after meeting Church members, by people who look suspiciously like Church members. In the larger cities, the Church performs basically the same service; they offer protection to shopkeepers at high prices or request a donation, and when they do not recieve any money thugs arrive soon after and chastise them for their impiety. The Church has also been known to teach priest spells to adventurers for exorbitant amounts of gold.

Although allegations have been made more than once that the Church filters ill-gotten artifacts to the Cult of the Sacred Item, no connections have been proven. There are also few reliable inside witnessess, probably because of the very high salaries and commissions that the Church pays.

Some purists do not classify the Church as a religion; they claim that, because the Church has no patron deity other than currency and no benevolent or malevolent or doctrine towards humanity, it cannot be an actual Church or cult. Unfortunately, these scholars cannot agree on what the Church actually is.