The Dawn of the Church: the Forgotten History of the Church of Inner Light
By Kage

The unassuming exterior of this text belies the nature of its contents. The scholar who write this text did so with a clear desire to explore heretical knowledge. As such, it contains extremely explicit blasphemous speculations on the nature of the rise of the Church of Inner Light. Any religious individual who reads it would find its premises appalling; if the author's insinuations are true, this tome could shatter their faith completely.

Possession of this tome is worth **** Research Point per session. If delivered to the Church, this tome is worth **** Church Prestige Points. With a year of study and **** Research Points, this tome will provide information on the topic of The Life of Shiliya.

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Many researchers begin the story of the Church of Inner Light with the birth of Paraceln twenty-two years before his vision. In truth, Paraceln played an important role for the first twenty-two years of his life, but after his Vision only a foolish and deluded scholar would assign him an important role within the Church. This tome is the story of the true Founder of the Church of Inner Light, the woman known as Shiliya.

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Cordelie Bellatrix was born to a retired pair of witch-hunters in the Kodacha estates west of the capital. Partial records place her year of birth at approximately twenty-eight years before the Vision, making her six years' Paraceln's senior. Her parents raised her sternly, instilling in her a devout respect for the laws of nature. Details on her childhood are sketchy, but conjecturally we can propose...

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The Church of Inner Light has deliberately chosen to forget Cordelie Bellatrix's name, remembering her instead as Shiliya.

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After the chaos surrounding the Vision subsided, and Cyrille Komaru ascended to the throne as Regent, one of the new Crown Prince's first actions was to create a number of new families. It is significant that he created Cordelie's son Alexandre as the first leader of the Bellatrix family, particularly given the relatively low status of the Bellatrix prior to this point. My assumption is that Alexandre's father was a man of some power and repute who served the Crown Prince during the Vision. This explains the apparent discrepancy of Cordelie herself not being named the family's head. There can be no doubt that her hunger for power had already begun.

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After the Vision, Cordelie, calling herself Shiliya, unarguably ascended to the foremost position in the nascent Church of Inner Light. No longer the dynamic teacher and missionary, Paraceln himself slid back into the shadows. In replacing Paraceln, Shiliya soon exerted a level of control over the nation equivalent to that of the Crown Prince himself.

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By the time of her death, there are signs that Cordelie Bellatrix's iron reign over the Church had begun to deteriorate. However, none can doubt that in her sixty-eight years of life, she played a profound role in forming the Church of Inner Light today.