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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rhialto" data-source="post: 2110514" data-attributes="member: 630">The followers (some use the term 'cult') of Hythates, legendary musician, mathematician, and magician, have long presented a problem to the Eyrosian Senate.  Brilliant, talented, masters of manipulating public opinion, as well as the other so-called Hythatian arts, Hythatians are both sought out as musicians, advisors, architects and loremasters, and feared as heretics, rabblerousers and dissidents.   The reasons for this is their zealous adherance to Hythates's teachings, especially as regards the universe in general.  Hythates was a Unifer, one of those who feel that Eyros is the creation of a Supreme Being outside of time.  What made Hythates unique is that he felt that the Being created it by rules which can be divined by mortal men.  All magical power, he felt, is the result of following these rules.  Hythates's probing of these rules lead him to revolutionary conclusions in music, mathematics, and geometry, all of which he found to be connected.  Later followers would discover uses for Hythatian learning in architecture, engineering, memorization, and planar science.  Had this been the end of it, it wouldn't be a concern.  However, Hythates mixed his findings in science with controversial religious teachings.  He taught that all individuals were eternal, their spirits reborn endlessly into new bodies.  He taught that all religions were in reality failures of faith, and distracted people from "the Source" as he called his Supreme Being, placing between men and the Source a wall that pretended to act as a bridge.  He taught that governments were another distraction, and that an awakened individual would have no need of them, being fully accountable for their own actions.  He taught that his followers had no need to submit to any authority that they did not feel worthy.  These teachings were somewhat less enthusiastically recieved by those in power then his scientific findings.  However, for a horde of intelligent, iconoclastic young men and women, the Hythatian lore, as it was called, was recieved enthusiastically.  For them it offered a reassuring, empowering new view of the universe, preferable to the doom and gloom of the Draconic Legacy and ancestor worship.  The state found itself in a quandry--the services of the Hythatians were invaluable.  The politics of the Hythatians were questionable.  For many, the later trumped the former, and a vicious crackdown resulted.  However, it was here that the Eyrosian government made a miscalculation--the Hythatian movement were experts at dramatic presentment and emotional appeal, and were able to use the persecution to increase their popularity.  Soon the Senate was facing riots and uprisings.  It was then that the Grand Monarch Casca declared a conditional toleration of the movement, which has continued to this day.  Many of the more reactionary members of the Senate still grumble about this, while some of the more prescient ones worry about the problems that might come in the future...</blockquote>

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