Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 6790793" data-attributes="member: 907">I think the perception of Silver Flame corruption is blown out of proportion, because it gets a disproportionate amount of text. That, in turn, can probably be traced to two things:1. The exceptions usually get more screen time, because they stand out.2. "Corrupt church" is a good trope, and the Silver Flame is the obvious place to put something like that. The Sovereign Host is too decentralized to work well (there's not that much of a hierarchy to climb), and other religions are either too small (Path of Light), too distant (Undying Court), or evil to begin with (Blood of Vol).That said, one of the novels had an example of a Sovereign Host temple where the chief priest interpreted the Sovereigns as draconic gods, and in order to emulate them he was focusing on amassing treasure. That's a different kind of corruption, for a different religion.When I get back to running Eberron some day, I'll have most followers of the Flame (mostly outside Thrane, but significant numbers inside as well) believe that taking over Thrane was a bad idea, because doing so gives the Thrane clergy divided loyalties - they will have to balance the statecraft of ruling Thrane with seeing to their subjects' spiritual well-being. And statecraft can be a dirty business, not always well-suited to the clergy of a Lawful Good faith. This is something that will lead to corruption when high-ups order dirty deeds done in the name of the Nation, and then use their spiritual influence to silence criticism in the name of the Faith. This is something we see in real-world politics as well - you'll have members of the opposition party denounce the practices of the government as immoral right up until they take power themselves, and continue those practices, with most of those who formerly criticized the practices now enthusiastically supporting them. (I'm trying not to name names here, because this is not the politics forum).Hmm. That would be a pretty cool campaign premise - the PCs being a group of agents of the Church/State, mostly getting beneficial missions, but occasionally having more nefarious leaders sending them to do more questionable deeds.</blockquote>

Verification