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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8663988" data-attributes="member: 6790260">You might find the Safiqi complicated then.In setting, the vast majority of Safiqi sects (which usually revere specific facets of the One, an idea inspired by the various names of God in Islam) are extremely "serve the people" oriented. E.g. some devotees of the Unknown Knower contribute to public education and aiding the poor (people who "go unseen" as it were), those of the Soothing Flame often provide healing and shelter to others in need especially in crisis situations, the Temple Knights are generally dedicated to the Stalwart Soldier and defense of all ordinary folk across the realm, the somewhat rarer devotees of the Resolute Seeker hunt down legit nasty monsters (like the aforementioned nasnas or basilisks) that live out in the desert and plague the world, etc.And then there are the Asiad al-Khafyun. A group that can best be described as the secretive "internal police" of the Safiqi. They have three main purposes: (1) hunt down and either capture or, if necessary, kill any heretic priests who have abused their powers, especially if that abuse comes in the form of controlling or dominating others, (2) eliminating extremely dangerous interplanar threats to the world (more on this in a bit), and (3) keeping an extremely high security vault of heretical or dangerous knowledge/artifacts/entities, so long as they can be safely contained and examined.They have done some things in the past that might qualify as "evil" in your eyes. For example, those extraplanar threats I mentioned? Yeah until very recently (because the player characters happened to it) one of those threats was a literal infectious mind-virus spirit of decay and savagery that can literally warp reality in areas where it has grown strong. It was called the Song of Thorns, and exposure to it in written, sung, or physical form, even only small parts of said written or sung form, could infect a person and cause the Song to spread. Prior to the party getting involved, the only progress in opposing it that the Safiqi had made was a magical form of suppression that would allow them to examine the infected without risk of becoming infected themselves....and that magic was very old. As far as they knew the only way to deal with infection was to kill the infected (which, with the tools available to them, was true), and to purge all references to it and instances of it. They had literally erased a city from all records (Al-Taraf, which they now call the Lost City; legitimately most people have no idea it ever existed) in order to keep the Song secret, because a massive outbreak occurred there and they weren't able to save it. They have killed people solely to keep this secret safe, because it is extremely easy to get to the realm where the Song of Thorns once ruled (though it can be hard to get back out again), and even one infected person getting out could cause an uncontrollable infection of the whole world.Other than their stuff dealing with the Song though, they're almost entirely focused on policing the Safiqi themselves, and because of the seriousness of this charge they undergo some pretty painful initiation rites which bind them to a certain code of conduct. It's complicated and I haven't nailed down all the details but basically they have ways of magically enforcing adherence to the rules they enforce which the highest echelons of the priesthood could use against them should they go rogue (which is a big concern, because a portion of the very very early Asiad al-Khafyun DID go rogue!) It's a very select group and membership is for life; once you join, you never leave, and you become part of more or less a divine "assassin/ninja" group dedicated to eliminating threats that are difficult or impossible for ordinary folk to deal with. So the vast majority of their effort is spent on hunting down wicked priests who abuse their cleric magic to hurt people, create undead, or otherwise do blasphemous and overtly dangerous/harmful things. They also cooperate with the Temple Knights in dealing with more ordinary "evil cult" type stuff, but that's not really a core focus.Their current leader is Fahd el-Sattar. He is an extremely serious man (very few non-serious people would ever consider joining the Asiad al-Khafyun), but the party has earned his complete respect with their tireless efforts to aid them against various threats and, in particular, their total defeat of the Song of Thorns. (Though some of that was because he could tell instantly that a party member had had some kind of interaction with the One personally, which...yeah for a man of deep faith that's pretty obviously going to earn some immediate and pervasive respect.) The party considers him a formidable man and an ally to call on sparingly, but an ally nonetheless.</blockquote>

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