Beneath Banners and Crowns

🪶 The Virellian Doctrine is Éraille’s official faith... half religion, half royal covenant... binding the throne, the church, and the soul of the realm.
🪶 It takes its name from Saint Virel, a mortal martyr who is said to have carried the Flame of Truth through the darkest age of man... a time when the gods fell silent and kings turned against their own people.
🪶 The Doctrine teaches that light and shadow are divine partners, not enemies. One reveals truth; the other tests it. Its followers believe that all who bear authority must walk between them both... hence the royal motto:

Saint Virel’s teachings were compiled centuries ago by the first High Seers of Valmère into the Codex Virellis, a text revered as both scripture and law. Every coronation, every oath, every sentence of judgment invokes it.


The Doctrine is less about worshipping a god than embodying balance between purity and endurance. Its adherents see life as a series of trials meant to temper the soul like steel.

📖 The Four Sacred Precepts: 📖

🕯️ The Shadow Tests
🕯️ The Flame Purifies
🕯️ The Oath Binds
🕯️ The Crown Bears the Burden



SYMBOL _______________________MEANING ____________________DESCRIPTION

The Everflame_______Divine truth and endurance_______
The Shadow Veil_____Humility and acceptance of imperfection____ The Stag and Flame__The union of nobility and divine trial_____
The Silver Chalice___Sacrifice and divine endurance_____
The church’s sanctuaries are candlelit, somber places... filled with silver light and carved stone. There are no stained-glass depictions of paradise, only scenes of endurance: men and women bearing flame through storms or standing unbowed before thrones.



The Holy See of Saint Virel
-:- The central body of the Church, headquartered in Valmère, beneath the great cathedral known as Église Saint-Virel... its crypts house the relics of the saint himself.[/indent]

High Hierophant
🧝Orders & Ranks 🧝


🕯️ The Rite of Endurance
🕯️ The Anointing of Shadow and Flame
🕯️ The Vigil of Cinders
🕯️ The Trial of Reflection


💥 The Doctrine entwines with Éraille’s monarchy so tightly that to question one is to question the other.
The Archbishop’s voice can sanctify a crown... or damn it.

💥 This is what makes Caspian’s moral independence so dangerous. He was raised under the Doctrine’s eye, taught that “shadow is trial, flame is truth,” yet he sees how the Church twists suffering into obedience.

💥 His private thoughts often contradict its dogma: “If pain is meant to cleanse, why do the pure suffer most?”

💥 In protecting Evelyn and Celiah, he risks committing spiritual treason... not merely against his father’s rule, but against the Doctrine itself.

💥 To defy the Church’s definition of divine order is to invite its wrath... and yet, his compassion for them are the very act of faith Saint Virel once preached.



📖 The Virellian Doctrine 📖 shapes Éraille’s art, language, and even its architecture -:--

⚡The Old Fae Court is not a kingdom in the mortal sense... no walls, no borders, no crowns of gold. It is a living covenant that once spanned the Wildering Realms, a plane interwoven with the roots of mortal creation itself.
⚡Its power lies in participation, not dominion; the fae did not rule the world... they sustained it.
⚡Where the Church of Éraille built sanctuaries of stone, the Fae built theirs from seasons and song, their temples were forests, their scriptures storms.
⚡The Old Court is said to have existed before language was prayer... when to speak was to shape, and to feel was to create.

“When mortals begged, the Fae answered by becoming.”



⚡Worship was not obedience, but participation.
⚡Unlike the Virellian Doctrine, which sees divinity as distant and hierarchical... the Fae believed creation itself was divine, and all sentient beings were part of its endless cycle of renewal, decay, and rebirth.
⚡Their worship was a reciprocal act.
⚡To love, to make, to destroy... all were valid expressions of divine balance, so long as one accepted the consequences.

The Fae saw sin not as moral failure, but as imbalance... an excess of one force that must eventually be balanced by another. Thus, a Fae:
“We do not repent... we restore.” — The Song of Returning


Core Tenets of the Old Court

1. Creation is Communion.
2. All Things Answer in Kind.
3. Emotion is Power.
4. No Kneeling, Only Joining.



Unlike mortal hierarchies, the Old Court is fluid and seasonal ... its power cycling through nature’s moods rather than fixed authority.

The Four Seats of Creation:

SEAT_______DOMAIN___________________SYMBOL_____________ASPECT

SPRING___Birth, music, memory____The Blooming Harp_____The Dreamer

SUMMER__Growth, passion, revelry__The Golden Chalice_____The Lover

AUTUMN__Balance, trade, twilight___The Turning Coin______The Judge

WINTER__Death, silence, sleep_____The White Thorn_______The Keeper

Each season’s court governed its aspect of creation, and together they formed the Circle of Continuance... where all change was sacred.

Celiah’s heritage, temperament, and trade magic mark her as a child of the Autumn Seat... the Court of Balance and Exchange, where all oaths are bound in word and will.




For the Fae, magic was not a tool or gift... it was the language of being.

Each spell, gesture, or trade is an act of joining with the world, not commanding it.
✨ Emotion is the catalyst.
✨ Debt is sacred.
✨ Immortality is not a blessing but a duty.



⚡ When mortals discovered religion, they replaced participation with obedience. The fae called this The Great Stillness... the moment creation became something to worship rather than something to be.

⚡ The Old Fae Court’s final act of defiance was to withdraw from the mortal realm. The forests dimmed, the rivers lost their voices, and the skies forgot their names.

⚡ But some fae remained... or returned in fragments... their essence bound to mortals who still remembered how to feel without fear.