The Church of Azakriel

This is source material for the upcoming free campaign module: The Devil's Fork
Image in this post is not going to be in the book, I still haven't decided between two of mine.

The people of the Duchy of Feorn worship an angel named Azakriel. Azakriel is an angel who was expelled from the Heavens by God for favoring humanity over other species and he currently lives in the real world. In this world, God is never directly worshipped for he has no direct contact with humans and is seen as a neutral background force. The idea of worshipping just God is seen as unusual and naive.

Azakriel is a warrior who fights to preserve humanity in the face of massive opposition from monstrous and demi-human dangers. He is depicted as an armored knight wearing a visored helm. Those who follow Azakriel called themselves the Novari, or the people of the light. His church is divided into many units not subject to a single central authority, each headed by a regional leader called a Novarius, who is merely a powerful political figure who spends their personal wealth constructing a Cathedral as the center of their church organization. This creates a drive for his followers to accumulate wealth, build their own church, and become their own Novarius. It is a devout follower's sacred duty to seek this path.

Azakriel's philopshy casts humanity in a titanic struggle against forces of darkness and malevolence. His moral code is structured around this conflict. His teachings encourage humans to seek a state of noble serenity and control over oneself, in a manner similar to the codes of chivalry or similar honor-based ethical systems in the real world. He has declared that goblins are the single greatest threat to humanity, castigating them as lesser beings that lack the temperment to make their own decisions without resorting to base tendencies of violence and theft. Much of his language about goblins describes them as locusts, rats, and similar vermin. He has granted preemptive moral clemency to anyone who kills one for any reason. However, he encourages their enslavement as they are more useful as semi-intelligent slaves than as food (too many bones) or simply slaughtered in exterminations.

Azakriel is a greater angel and served by a staff of lesser angels. One such angel, Leomidia, was wounded in a battle with a demon named Yarduu and has taken up refuge under the aegis of the cathedral in Feornheim. Yarduu is aware of her location and has placed agents throughout the city to keep an eye on her and report on her movements. Leomidia is incapable of healing herself, as it requires powerful magic which she cannot acquire in her trapped location. Seeking this out is one of the many quests available in the module.

The church dominates the social life of the Duchy, regulating several festivals and holidays throughout the year and providing a social cohesion. It has also enforced it's views of goblins onto the legal system, stripping them of all legal rights and reducing them to mere property as slaves. There are several thousand goblins living in the valley as slaves owned by various nobles, mostly as agricultural laborers. Fear of a goblin uprising is rampant.