Aurists

One of my players riffed on how Mormons think that Jesus came to Mesoamerica first in the New World.

Joseph Smith was influenced by the first images of Mayan structures and stelae threading their way back to North America.

Disclaimer: This is not an insult to Mormonism, merely a parody. Please treat it as such.

In Requiem, Aurism is a branch of the Velamnan Sacerdote that treats writings on gold tablets of indeterminate origin as divine. The Sun Tablets encourage Aurists to raise up shining cities and populate them with believers. So, Aurists travel around, establish communities, which link back to older trading outposts, hopscotching around frontiers and other loosely settled places.

Behold!

Aurist Spell List

1st level: ceremony, command
3rd level: enhance ability, warding bond
5th level: beacon of hope, spirit guardians
7th level: banishment, immaculate conception*
9th level: hallow, mass cure wounds

*my homebrew spell

Tend to the Flock
At 1st level, your words can galvanize and encourage your friends. You can spend 1 minute giving a speech while presenting your holy symbol. This speech affects a number of friendly people of your choice equal to your level plus your Wisdom modifier. Choose one of the following effects:

Incite Zeal - Creatures you choose gain a d4 that they can roll and add to an attack roll after the attack roll. Double the number on the dice if the target of the damage roll is a fiend, an undead, or a member of a religion hostile to the Aurists.

Inspire Resilience - Creatures you choose gain a d4 that they can roll and add to a saving throw before they make a saving throw. Double the number on the dice if the saving throw is against an effect generated by a fiend, undead, or a member of a religion hostile to the Aurists.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier per day and must take a long rest to recharge this feature. If the dice is not used after 1 hour, it expires. A creature can only have one of these dice at a time. At 13th level, the dice granted by this ability become d6’s.

Channel Divinity: Declaim Heresy
Starting at 2nd level, as an action, you choose one creature you can see within 30 feet of you, cursing it until the end of your next turn. The next time you or an ally of yours hits the cursed creature with an attack, the creature has vulnerability to all of that attack's damage, and then the curse ends.


Gifts of the Spirit
Starting at 6th level, when the cleric gives a buff or debuff, you can bestow that effect on one additional creature within range (that creature makes its own saving throws if required).


Flocks of the Patriarchs:
Starting at 8th level, you can cast the “Wedding” ceremony spell on an Aurist up to a number of times equal to the man's Wisdom modifier, bonding a different person every time. The effect remains for that specific partner (as long as the human is within range) until either partner is deceased.


Motivation of Zion:
Starting at 17th level, you may cast one spell of 3rd level or lower that buffs or debuffs a target that requires concentration. This spell does not require concentration for its duration and does not use a spell slot.

Immaculate Conception

4th level conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Components: V,S,M (fine linen swaddling worth at least 10 gp)

Duration: Special

You touch a willing female humanoid or female beast. They are instantly impregnated with a fetus appropriate to their race, ethnicity, or species that is halfway through its normal gestation cycle. Flip a coin. On a heads, the fetus is female. On a tails, it is male. The fetus is healthy, and is born at the appropriate time. 

If the female creature is unwilling, the spell fails. If cast on a male humanoid or beast, willing or unwilling, the male must make a Constitution saving throw against your spell DC. On a failure, they are incapacitated for 1 minute. On a success, they are stunned for 1 turn. 

Aurist children have several paths ahead of them because their role inside the flock isn't predetermined by their biological sex. When children turn 12, and become young men and women, they choose between 6 roles: the matriarch, the patriarch, the wife, the husband, the missionary, and the priest.

Matriarchs are women who dress in what we would think of men's clothes, wear false beards, smoke fine tobacco in grossly enlarged pipes, stamp around in boots polished to a deep, abyssal shine, and guide their husbands and children. 

Patriarchs perform the exact same role as matriarchs: namely overseeing farming logistics, trade manifests, negotiating caravan contracts, voting in the colony council, arguing over the finest ways to age whiskey, comparing minutely the various qualities of different plugs of tobacky, and acting as jurors, among other various duties and responsibilities. They are males.

The wives are females who take care of food preparation and childrearing, staff the various shops in each colony, and dutifully attend to the crafts needed to keep a colony running: smithing, breeding, farming, brewing, and other sundry pastimes.

The husbands are males in women's clothes who perform the same roles as wives, keeping their faces scrupulously shaven, powdered, and their hair long (or wigs long, depending on their age).

Missionaries are those brave souls who push the boundaries of the known and owned world to find property to found new colonies on. They are traders, dressing in the glistening golden paraphernalia of the stereotypical Aurist, quaffing much, making merry, laughing, haranguing, and beating a path to the door of every rube and unknown element in Requiem, seeking every advantage. 

If the matriarchs and patriarchs are the lub-dubbing hearts of every flock and colony, then the priests are the gossamer souls. They keep the confidence of every Aurist in their pillowy cotton robes, and when called upon to pass sentence upon their fellow Aurists for crimes against the colony or outsiders, act as judges, gaolers, and executioners. They can be either male or female, but all priests shave their heads, and may not take a husband or wife. They renounce all familial ties during their shrivening at 18.

Matriarchs and patriarchs may take as many husbands or wives as they wish, though 6 is a normal number. Wives and husbands married to the same matriarch/patriarch may have intimate relations with each other but not with other wives and husbands or matriarchs/patriarchs. 

Every child born within a nuclear Aurist family is born of either a husband or a wife, regardless of biological sex. When matriarchs become pregnant, they designate a husband or wife as the mother of the child to the entire community. This husband or wife is required to wear a special girdle to carry their child. 

In a similar vein, when a child is born of a matriarch, the husband or wife carrying the child emulates the process of birth, generally by being louder than the matriarch. 

The process of regrowth after the demon wars has been steady. That's not much comfort in the face of staggering losses in the wars (upwards of 70%) so the Aurists are pushing boundaries again, angering the tribes of the Comancheria and piquing the attention of the Altepetl's inquisitors in the process. 

The Seven Heavens have long, bitter memories of their near-dominance, and they dream of tamed plains, subjugated savages, and the inevitable march of Christendom. 

They will accomplish these things with a dull, booted tread, as they did before. Long live Lord Lucifer. Long live Prophet Gabriel. Long live Michael, the Iron-Shod Angel. Blessed be those who strike down the enemies of the Lord. 

DEUS VULT!