Church of Light, Mauler Temple, and the characters associated with them – Part 2
Read part 1 here!
I talked about the organizations themselves in the last post. Today, I want to take a closer look at the associated characters. First, I’d like to focus on the Church of Light related characters and after, I’ll focus on the Mauler Temple associates. At some point, I might even make go ahead and talk about Graveborn who got caught up in the religious mess, mainly the forsaken family, on the celestials’ complicated relationship to both religious organizations, or on the political counterparts of each respective organization – the royal army for Lightbearers and the tribal alliance under Skriath for Maulers.
In this post, I’ll be focusing on the more directly related characters – Cecilia and Eluard, and the next one will move on to the more distantly related ones – Belinda and Lucius.
Cecilia – Purger of Sins
When we talk about Church of Light, the characters who always get brought up are Lucius and Belinda first, and Eluard later. Few people ever bring up Cecilia even though she’s been in the game for a fairly long time and may even be directly involved in multiple characters’ backstories (Rosaline and Belinda are most likely, though if you believe the Oscar and Rosaline siblings theory, then he counts too). She was one of the first characters to point at the darker side of the Church of Light that we came to love to criticise so much.
Now, I don’t want to pretend like all of this ignorance comes from Cecilia’s appearance and gender but we saw how people react to Lucretia – someone who kills children at large for no reason other than her own bitterness and who stalked a man she idolized without even knowing him, then pressured him into marrying her. I just feel like a lot of people cut Cecilia some slack because she’s a conventionally attractive woman, not to mention one who makes a clever use of what would otherwise be a disability. With that out of the way, there is more why she doesn’t get as much dirt as the other characters in this organization. Cecilia had a very strong reason for joining the Path of Ascension, one that a lot of us can understand and emphasize with even if we haven’t been through the same.
Cecilia is one of the few characters where we have details about her family. I don’t mean there aren’t any, but you could probably count them on the fingers of your hands. And what more, most of the other characters are more or less at least partially responsible for the deaths of their loved ones while Cecilia had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. Cecilia joined the church only after already having gone on her own to take revenge for her husband and deciding that it wasn’t enough. Cecilia’s reason for joining the church is, ultimately, the will to protect others. Whether you like it or not, cultists do exist in Esperia, and they murder people. Cecilia was on the receiving end of that cruelty once and she doesn’t want anyone else to get there too. In a cruel twist of irony, there are times when she herself is now the one causing pain by tearing families apart. The question is: Do her good deeds outweigh her wrongs?
Where the question of Cecilia gets interesting is when we consider one of the most recent character’s addition. Oku, much like Cecilia, went through a horrible loss, and following the event, he joined an extremist organizationthat slaughters those it hates without discrimination. I think the key difference between them is that Oku was, like I said previously, at least partially responsible for his own downfall. Oku seeks to attone by killing people while Cecilia seeks to protect others from the same pain she went through. In Oku’s case, helping others is a by-product of his own redemption while in Cecilia’s, helping itself is the goal she was aiming for.
Eluard – The Protector of Souls
The other member of the inquisitory part of the church, the most secret part of it, would be Eluard. Now, they could’ve easily gone the same route as they did with Cecilia or having Eluard be the “evil church person” a lot of people in the fandom were expecting him to be, they went the complete opposite route. Eluard is, quite possibly, the gentlest character we have. One who actively strived to save everyone at any given moment and was genuinely terrified when he lost control even though he would’ve been murdered if he didn’t kill the people around him first. Even after the powers within him calmed down, he spent hours weeping over the lives he involuntarily took, and hours more in prayers for guidance and forgiveness.
An important part that I think doesn’t get brought up enough is that Eluard has nowhere to go. He’s been adopted by the church as a young child. We don’t know if that’s because he was orphaned because even in the real world, the church would often adopt even children with families, and some families would give their children up for a good name in the community and a reputation of piety. The Church of Light then went on to cripple Eluard socially by not teaching him any life skills and only educating him in the way of the church. Eluard has nowhere to go not because he doesn’t try hard enough but because at his age, it would be virtually impossible to start from the ground up, not to mention the church would hunt him down if he disobeyed.
He’s always been pious and a frevent believer but despite his best efforts, the Light has been avoiding him for years, as if waiting and biding its time. This is purely a theory on my part but we know that since a young age, Eluard didn’t get upset with people but rather regarded everyone and everything around him as priceless treasures. The Light descended upon him the first time he felt any sort of animosity – and even then it wasn’t selfish on his part. Or at least the story says that’s what he felt but in Eluard’s own words, he wished for them to be soothed by the Light and to see the truth. For what it’s worth, it seems almost as though the Light was waiting for some superficial hint of malice to then amplify it and bring out its destructive power in full. It resulted in Eluard breaking down, much to the further displeasure of the other priests.
Eluard became an executioner but not of his own volition. The Light that descended upon him is described as “dazzling,” in quotation marks. Nobody knows what really happened, and Eluard never talks about it. But that day, he put on a golden mask – his very own gentle way of rebelling against the very organization he just joined. Instead of sharing the church’s cold hatred for anyone even a little different, Eluard hides his face and, likely, weeps for every lost soul. Of course, he can’t show this outwardly. Hence why the mask is protection as well as a way to stand up to the oppressive regime of the church.