Dmitri Sergeievitch

Backstory

Born to a poor farming family in a village southeast of Luln, Dmitri was Sheared at an early age. During his travels, he found a mentor in Mother Irina Alexeva of the Church of Traladara.

Irina immediately recognized the young man’s potential as an itinerant priest, and rather than returning him to his family, she arranged for him to be trained at the cathedral in Specularum. Dmitri’s warm personality proved to be a winner for the Church, they tasked him a healer and counsellor for the various trade caravans and mercenary units that increasingly transited the rapidly-developing Duchy. He has made many friends during this time, including XXX and YYY. That said, Dmitri hates the Black Eagle with a passion, for the suffering it has inflicted upon his family. He’s met too many decent Thyatians to hate them as a people, but nevertheless associates them with oppression.

Now, after tithing 20% of his savings to the Church of Traladara and sending enough back to his family to keep them fed for a good few years, he has invested all of his remaining monies into funding his next great adventure.....

Traladara

(1) That the acts of assault, abuse, murder, theft and lying are sins, brought on by weakness or the intrusion of bad-will from evil or animal spirits;

(2) That the sins described above should be punished, in the manner that parents punish children: Physical punishment, imprisonment, and the witholding of rights (even death, in the case of extreme sinners who endanger others);

(3) That the role of the individual in the afterlife will be determined by the individual's state of wisdom, strength of character, and good-will at the time of his death;

(4) That the relationship of man to woman is a personal matter, not involving the philosophies of the Church unless one of the above sins is involved;

(5) That common magic ritual such as the use of lucky charms, tea-reading, palm-readings, card-readings and so forth are all declarations of man's curiosity about the world and determination to preserve himself from evil, and are often rewarded by the Immortals with the gleaning of facts about the future or nature of the world; and

(6) That the events of "The Song of Halav" are absolutely true; that King Halav, Queen Petra and Zirchev are now Immortals guiding the righteous and punishing the wicked in Traladara / Karameikos; and that the Golden Age of the Traladara will one day return to this land.

The basic philosophy of the Church of Traladara is that people should not harm one another, and that when they do the community should punish the wrongdoer in proportion to the degree of the sin. There isn't much more to their philosophy than that, and so the Church is ideally suited to the cheerful and whimsical Traladarans.

The role of the Traladaran cleric is to provide advice for younger people, based on his own experiences and the examples of behaviour given in "The Song of Halav." Traladaran clerics advise the young, perform marriages and officiate at other ceremonies, preach the church philosophies, and promote goodwill. They also fight—to save lives or to defeat evils. Approximately 70% of the population of Karameikos belongs to the Church of Traladara.