User:Trevyr/Temple Holdings

My personal thought would be to do something like one small temple (shrine) for every holding level, one normal-sized temple for each (holdinglevel/2), one large temple (cathedral) for each (holdinglevel/4), rounding down (so numbers less than one become zero). Distribute as you will throughout the province, shrines inhabiting smaller
villages or outskirts of large cities. Exceptions may be made when the
province is also the home of a bishopric (or whatever category you use),
so those automatically get a cathedral whether they have the required
province-4 size or not. Note that churches may do this on purpose:
concentrating their religous power in a province away from the province of
secular/political power can help them avoid undue attention from political
leaders and enhances their own power in the province they choose to
dominate. I have no idea whether this corresponds to the material in the
Book of Priestcraft or not, because I came up with this pattern before
that book came out, and tend to remember what I use. I remember thinking
that the advice in the book was pretty good, and that I probably would
have used it if I hadn't already had a good, working system in place.
My tendency has always been to place Templars and Paladins as a separate
"side order" associated with the religion, and accountable to the same
religious leader, but largely separate in their governing bureaucracies.
Thus, in my background for the Duchy of Osoerde, the knights of Haelyn in
Osoerde were all members of the Order of St. Naelyn (which included both
regular temple-affiliated fighters--templars--as well as paladins). At
least, they were under William Moergan's father, Duke Varghas Moergan. The
order was officially disbanded by Raenech after the usurpation, but
remained a sort of underground presence in Osoerde among those resisting
Raenech. If you require templars and/or paladins as temple guards, change
one of the temple units to a monastery of a military order, and then
create an agreement between the religion and the military order where the
order provides guards for the temples on a rotating basis, in return for
other considerations (mostly food and money, probably). Or, as I did in
Osoerde, make the monasteries represent "law holdings" instead of temple
holdings, since in the middle ages monasteries were often large land
owners, and feudal entities in their own right. This is the approach I
took for the temple of Cuiraecen in Osoerde, they had a number of
land-holding monasteries which trained warriors who could serve as temple
guards or as units of knights.
All of this may be very interesting, but doesn't answer your question
about personnel. My tendency would be to examine the buildings you design,
and decide how many people would be required to staff them, but that's my
approach. A small shrine might require only 5 people: a priest, a couple
of acolytes, and a few lay servants. A regular temple might require 25,
say 4 priests and a high priest, 10-15 acolytes or cannons to serve as
teachers, assistants, for ceremonial duties like choirs and maintenance of
holy areas and items, and 10-15 lay servants for maintenace of regular
areas, as well as for services like cooking, seeing to the stables, etc.
Or you may choose to have acolytes perform all these services. A cathedral
requires many more people, in part because it serves to coordinate the
activities of the province(s) around it. Perhaps 125 people in all? Of
which perhaps half to 3 quarters of which are ordained or acolyes, and the
rest lay members.
Just some suggestions.
Mark Vandermeulen

December 1999