Café de Nuit

Do the different sects of Ezra have different symbols or dress?
I don't recall any distinction being made as far as different holy symbols between the darkon sect or the Borca sect. Did I miss something in one of the books?
I am trying to figure out if a follower of the one sect, say Mordent, could see a cleric of Ezra on the street and tell if that person was from the mordent sect or the Borca faith just by what they were wearing.
Was there anything offical on this and if so where?

It's less of sect: the higher the rank, the greater the white stripes on their green robes.

The variation seems to be more between individual temples and nations than between sects per se. Local preferences and customs affect styles of sermon, architecture, etc, so why not dress codes? Apart from the rank-based white stripes, Ezrite vestments probably vary from region to region.

I'd recommend that a Knowledge (religion) check might reveal what land or (for a higher DC) specific temple an Ezran cleric is affiliated with. In some cases that might also tell you the sect (e.g. Mordentish Ezrans are of the LG sect), but in other cases, a cleric's nation of origin might allow for multiple possibilities (e.g. more than one sect's presence is felt within Richemulot IIRC).

Highly-exclusive orders within the Ezran faith, like the PrC-based ones from HoL, might have their own "uniforms" that would be consistent across nationalities and parishes.

I don't recall anything being specifically said about color coding between sects. It would make sense though.

Maybe darker cloths for the nevuchar springs sect, and lighter clothes for the mordentshire sect? It would make sense if the Chapel of Pure hearts clergy were known for their lack of armor, as their realm is both renaissance and known for ghosts (against which armor is useless).

Or also, the basic description of dress code is white with green stripes. Perhaps all of the different sects use slightly different shades of green, with darker green representing the LE sect from Nevuchar Springs, lighter green for the LG sect from Mordenshire, neutral middle-of-the-road green for the LN Home Sect in Borca, and the N sect in Port-a-Lucine doing the same neutral green as they can't be bothered to look up from their studies long enough to differentiate themselves from the Home Sect.

[Edit: addition] Or perhaps the Neutral sect in Port-a-Lucine differentiates themselves by still having the same neutral green as the Home Sect, but uses the above idea of a different shade of white (perhaps using Mother-of-Pearl as compared to a normal brilliant white), with the darker white color indicating their lesser direct effect in the world as opposed to the other sects that interfere directly in world events.

What about holy symbols or any other religious designations? Would they be different?

Instead of being hypothecal I will just describe the situation in my campaign.

The characters are going to find a murdered follower of Ezra in a town without a chapel to Ezra, Nartok Darkon.
I am trying to determine what sort of clues I can leave for them to identify him. If they know what sect he is from they will have an easier time of it.

If there are no differences in the out ward appearance I can always leave other clues for them.

FWIW, I wish we had a clearer, in-character designation for these sects (apart from the Home one) than "the Mordentish sect" or the like. Calling the branches by their alignments, even if it's purely OOC, rather detracts from the suspension of disbelief IMHO. The Ezran church as a whole is supposed to be rather formalized and structured (i.e. Lawful): surely the people within the setting have come up with "official", non-geographical names for all the sects, not just Borca's!

shadehawk wrote:The characters are going to find a murdered follower of Ezra in a town without a chapel to Ezra, Nartok Darkon.
I am trying to determine what sort of clues I can leave for them to identify him. If they know what sect he is from they will have an easier time of it.

Why not have him be carrying a small copy of one of the Books of Ezra? It might be the one that established the dead man's branch of the faith (the easy option), or he might have bookmarked certain pages with handwritten notes ... notes, bearing his own arguments disputing those passages' interpretations, in accordance with a different sect's teachings. The latter option would be best if one of the PCs has ranks in Knowledge (religion), and can deduce which sect he'd belonged to from which details of the text he'd disagreed with.

Either way, it'd be a chance to bring the rich in-game history of the Ezran faith into the adventure-plot.

Rotipher wrote:The Ezran church as a whole is supposed to be rather formalized and structured (i.e. Lawful): surely the people within the setting have come up with "official", non-geographical names for all the sects, not just Borca's!

What would you suggest on this, however? Start calling the Nevuchar Springs sect the "Eastern Orthodox Ezran Church"?

Rotipher wrote:FWIW, I wish we had a clearer, in-character designation for these sects (apart from the Home one) than "the Mordentish sect" or the like. Calling the branches by their alignments, even if it's purely OOC, rather detracts from the suspension of disbelief IMHO. The Ezran church as a whole is supposed to be rather formalized and structured (i.e. Lawful): surely the people within the setting have come up with "official", non-geographical names for all the sects, not just Borca's!

I've been thinking about something along those lines for a different purpose--I'm working (cursorily, but still...) on an article discussing Ezran mysticism. One of the things I'm working on is the symbolism of the name "Ezra".

So, the Ezran religion focuses on the number 5--but "Ezra" has only four letters. Let's say that each letter represents a sect:

Erudites: The Neutral branch, focusing on knowledge;
Zealots: The Lawful Evil branch, the scourge of the evildoer;
Rectors: The Lawful Good branch, concerned with personal improvement (righteousness, hence "Rector")
Anchorites: The Lawful Neutral branch, hence the anchor of the church, focused on stability and order.

The "fifth sect" will, according to this mystical analysis, reveal the full name of Ezra and combine the attributes of the four existing sects into a perfect totality. The fifth letter of Ezra's name is ineffable, and therefore was not revealed to the world by Yakov Dilisnya; it would probably have no linguistic correlate, anyway, being a mystical symbol of the goddess rather than a true "letter".

Then you could call Ezra's name "the Pentagrammaton", which has rather a nice ring to it...

But, to return to the point at hand, you could use a system like that to distinguish the sects.

shadehawk wrote:Do the different sects of Ezra have different symbols or dress?
I don't recall any distinction being made as far as different holy symbols between the darkon sect or the Borca sect. Did I miss something in one of the books?
I am trying to figure out if a follower of the one sect, say Mordent, could see a cleric of Ezra on the street and tell if that person was from the mordent sect or the Borca faith just by what they were wearing.
Was there anything offical on this and if so where?

I've always used a simplified Sword and Shield for the Ezran symbol--just a circle with a cross in it (circle for the shield, cross for the sword). When this was discussed on the RL mailing list a few years back DeepShadow suggested using variations on this theme for the different sects--that is, different ways of drawing the Sword and Shield. I forget exactly what he laid out, but it was something along the lines of using a) the basic symbol, b) a circle with a Swiss cross (all four arms of equal length, like on the Swiss flag), c) a circle with the "blade" of the sword extending outside the circle, and some other variation for the fourth. You could easily draw up something like that for your campaign.

I've always viewed Ezra much like protestant Christianity, many denominations but all with united core principals. To the layman there is little noticeable difference other than the emphasis or themes of the sermons.

Thusly, I would have little official differences in dress, reverends and other preachers all have the same white collars and black shirts, but it's their attitude and message that distinguish them.

As for the green dress code, it's in Anchors of Faith, in the Book of Sacrifices. Additionally, the Home Faith adorns silver.

Dion of the Fraternity wrote:As for the green dress code, it's in Anchors of Faith, in the Book of Sacrifices. Additionally, the Home Faith adorns silver.

Wearing silver might be a "Borca thing", actually. Perhaps that would be a possible way to make Ezran vestments suggestive of particular sects, if each sect picked up habits of dress from the domain where it's based? A Zealot's outfit (thanks for the cool names, Nathan! ) might incorporate ornamental chains or cords, a la Darkonian fashions, for example.

I've always viewed Ezra much like protestant Christianity, many denominations but all with united core principals. To the layman there is little noticeable difference other than the emphasis or themes of the sermons.

I use this allegory as well, especially when concerning the blessed army of Ezra. This works especially with the faith's relationship with the Law Giver clergy.

Ya Nathan, those four names are an awesome idea. Apparently someone likes his dictionary.