Bastion Teodorus Raines

Teodorus Raines was born in Darkon in 723 BC. Prior to the the Great Upheaval in 740 BC, he traveled to Borca to study Ezra’s teachings under the Home Faith. His demeanor was tense and suspicious demeanor; his vision dark and foreboding. He maintained strict adherence to the letter of Ezra’s scriptures, and was granted his Shield of Ezra as one of her clerics. The young warden was advised by some of his teachers, however, not to present Ezra’s teachings in such bleak terms. Perhaps overly influenced by the legends of his homeland, Raines spoke of the Legions of the Night as if they were eternally clawing at the very doors of the Great Cathedral of Levkarest. The Great Upheaval lent weight to Raines's words. He argued that it was nothing less than an attempt by the Mists of Death to expel Ezra from their ranks, the first omen of a coming age when the Legions of the Night would scour the world clean. Although the Church elders did not see the world in Raines’ apocalyptic terms, Praesidius Raskolka summoned a Bastion’s Council. With Bastions Denisovich of Mordentshire and Secousse of Port-a-Lucine acting as his advisors, Praesidius Raskolka declared that Ezra’s anchorites had a urgent duty to spread the word of Ezra to the four corners of the Core, even to those lands where existing religions stood in opposition to that word. Even more than had been the case before, young anchorites were encouraged to travel the Land of Mists. There were worthy works to do in Ezra’s name and new temples to establish in her honour.

Warden Raines was part of this new wave of evangelical anchorites. He returned to Darkon in 740 BC and began to preach Ezra’s teachings to any who would listen. He faced stiff resistance. Darkon’s spiritual heart was in the grip of two state-sponsored religions: the Cult of the Overseer, widely embraced in Martira Bay, and the Eternal Order, somewhat begrudgingly worshipped throughout the rest of the land. One more than one occasion Raines was physically threatened by the priests of the Eternal Order, but he persevered. In fact, Raines may have survived simply because his influence was negligible. By the time the Great Cathedral was completed in 745, Raines had already traveled through half of Darkon, never finding a receptive audience to his fire-and-brimstone sermons. Meanwhile, visiting anchorites sent back word to the Home Faith that Raines had altered his proselytizing style since leaving Borca; he now claimed that Ezra herself was granting him prophetic visions. Raines now spoke of a coming apocalypse he called the Time of Unparalleled Darkness. He claimed the ranks of the Legions of the Night would swell until they overran the land. The Mists of Death, sickened by their creations, would then destroy the world, wiping the slate clean. Ezra would spare all she could from this final doom, but her pact with the Mists of Death would only allow her to save those who had accepted her message into their hearts. Two additional factors made Raines’ end-times sermons all the more disturbing: First, he was quite clear that if you were not one of Ezra’s pious followers, you stood among the Legions of the Night. Second, he claimed the Time of Unparalleled Darkness would arrive within a single generation. The Home Faith was distressed by Raines’ extreme interpretation of the scriptures. However, he continued to receive the Shield of Ezra, the only sure sign that an anchorite was indeed serving Ezra in the Grand Scheme. Thus the Home Faith allowed him to continue his proselytizing, though they lent him very little support. By 750, Raines was literally at the end of his map. All of Darkon stretched behind him, and he had not established a single new temple in an entire decade. His failures merely made him all the more determined to spread Ezra’s word before it was too late. By the end of the year, Raines had settled in Nevuchar Springs, and could count his converts on one hand. When most Darkonians listened to Raines prophesy a time when the unholy forces of evil would rise up to destroy the world, they heard only the paranoid ranting of a madman. Then the city of Il Aluk was destroyed in the Requiem, and a pall fell over the whole of the newly-dubbed Necropolis. Suddenly Raines’ horrific prophecies seemed all too real, and he found his receptive audience at last. Raines established a new temple of Ezra in Nevuchar Springs, expelling the Eternal Order from his city. Early in 751, Raines returned briefly to Levkarest, accompanied by half a dozen of his followers. He presented his nightmarish visions as the Fourth Book of Ezra, and revealed that he and the anchorites he had trained had been granted a new Shield of Ezra, protecting them from the insidious corruption of the Legions of the Night. The Rite of Revelation was fulfilled, and Raines returned to Nevuchar Springs, Bastion of the fourth sect of Ezra.

In the wake of the Great Upheaval, Teodorus Raines, a Darkonese anchorite, had a series of apocalyptic revelations about a Time of Unparallelled Darkness, and the desperate state of the faithful beset on all sides by the duplicitous Legions of the Night. Raines penned the Fourth Book of Ezra, in 751 BC passed the Rite of Revelation, and created the fourth sect. He currently leads the Darkonese branch of Church of Ezra which is based in Nevuchar Springs.

Mangrum's Notes

"I’ve been tired of the "evil 'Black Myth' Inquisitors" stereotype for years. Like the Nevuchar Springs sect of the Church of Ezra, I wanted Wyan's inquisition to be dangerous and flawed -- but possibly, ultimately, right. Thus the emphasis on showing that Wyan's a good man, just misguided. He's made far fewer mistakes than most adventurers, I'd wager."

Stats

Human male, Cleric 5 / Anchorite of the Mists 2, Lawful Evil

Data from the Ravenloft Catalogue

		Ravenloft Third Edition
		Ravenloft Gazetteer Volume II - p31
		Ravenloft Gazetteer Volume II - p39
		Ravenloft Third Edition - p17 Heroes of Light - p56 Ravenloft Gazetteer Volume II - p30