Saint Azur the Liberator

"'You are correct; I cannot claim a superiority of arms, nor a greatness in strength or litheness, nor do I yet outnumber you. I am a poor man, with nothing but my cloak, my stick, and my faith. With faith alone, then, shall I best you.""'My mind is fervent for Her sight,""And heart made valiant by Her hand,""My spirit dauntless in Her light,""But merciful as She commands""Through these four virtues my faith bides""A four-pillar house with strength inside.""" "'In Sylvala, the Goddess, Daughter of the Sun, Mother of humanity, She of the Flame of Purity, do I trust. Whilst She smiles upon me, you might torment my mortal flesh, but you cannot hurt me.'""Saint Azur the Liberator, the Declaration of Cenobek, 16 PA"

1400 years ago, humanity had yet to feel the first tendrils of the creeping cold, yet even to set foot on Fimbria's shores; they lived in an extensive kingdom on Karanoth, Axan, ruled by an everlasting house of elves. These, the Elvish Kings, might rule for a century or more individually, often dying not to age or ailment, but accident and intrigue, with the family itself never once displaced from their mastery of the realm.

Whilst the humans of Karanoth continued to worship the goddess Sylvala, their kings and queens paid reverence only to the Elvish Ideals; and indeed this Ideal worship was becoming more commonplace amongst the upwardly mobile common folk of Axan, as was knowledge of the Quenya tongue and elvish customs. This trend was dramatically reversed, and the ruling house of elves ultimately overthrown and destroyed, by the preaching of Azur of Cenobek, a learned cleric with a tongue of silver who established a vast flock in and around his home town of Cenobek.

Born in 46 PA and raised in an educated household close to the local elvish governor, Azur is said to have gained his extensive knowledge of the old faith variously from a servant confidante, a stash of old texts, or even visions received directly from the Goddess. Abandoning his family, Azur roamed the area around his come town, preaching reform in the Sylvalan faith - he advocated a society in which faith was intertwined with every aspect of human life, one that could never be reached whilst ruled by infidels, no matter how tolerant.

Though never outright calling for rebellion, Azur soon fell afoul of local bureaucrats in service of the elves; they levied a charge of conspiracy to violence against him and brought him to court, where he was bombarded with barely-concealed threats and insinuations, the officials hoping to provoke a reaction that would prove his capability for violence. When Azur faced down the threats directly, warning the elves not to start a fight that would only lead to their undoing, they thought they had caught him - they asked him what weapon he could possibly hope to threaten the state with, alone, unarmed and frail.

Yet Azur replied not with "my followers" as they had hoped, but his famous "Declaration of Cenobek" speech, faithfully remembered by observers at the very public trial. Though the court naturally still managed to convict, public opinion sided firmly with the cleric, and his Cenobek-wide fame grew to a national level.

As Azur languished in jail, a dramatic, grassroots revival of the Sylvalan Faith was taking place around Karanoth, temples being rebuilt and Azurite teachings spreading by word of mouth, irrepressible by the authorities. More and more believers gathered each day at the palace to call for his release, many peaceful, some less so.

Eventually, Queen Cynna, last of the Elvish Kings, who bore no role in the original arrest, decided to give the preacher an ultimatum - endorse the monarchy and calm the crowds amassed in the palace courtyard, or summary execution; naturally, he chose the former, and was lead up from the dungeon to the balcony from which rulers were accustomed to addressing the masses. The crowd grew silent, and Cynna ordered her guards back to create the illusion of a spontaneous confession.

However, instead of doing as promised, Azur began preaching to the crowd on the principles of faith he had established during his time in prison. He made it to the fourth (which, ironically, is "a word given on any honour other than one's faith, to any other than another faithful, binds not. A word given in this manner binds absolutely.") before Cynna, angered at the betrayal, drew her sabre, ran to the balcony and beheaded the saint. It is said that the head, which fell down into the waiting crowd, finished off these principles prior to expiring, but this is disputable at best as most witnesses were more focused on subsequent events.

For as the saint's body fell, the sky, hitherto cloudless and bright, suddenly darkened in anger, and bolts of lightning lashed out of the clouds, striking the palace alight with white flame, the icon of the Goddess. The crowds outside, incensed, blocked escape from the burning palace and entry for would-be firefighters alike, and the head of the old state was consumed in an inferno that raged all the night, the storm yielding not a drop of rain to save it.

Although this marked the end of the saint's life, the shock of the death of Queen Cynna and much of her household gave Azur's principles of faith, carefully recorded by his wife, Ida, even while he languished in jail for 15 years, wings that carried them to all corners of Axanaira. Tales of kindnesses and miraculous feats he performed prior to incarceration, as well as his preaching on a society free of elvish rulership, spread quickly, and stoked the flames of rebellion.

In 3 short years, the elvish rulers of the kingdom were dead or fled, and the turn of the century was marked by the founding of Tor Morta'an, the first Kingdom of Man (or at least so its founders thought), with Ida, keeper of much of Azur's collected teachings, crowned its first monarch, Queen Ida Azuria. She wasted no time establishing the Azurite Church, interlacing it with all aspects of the new kingdom much as her late husband had envisioned.