n7axw wrote:Louis R wrote:I agree that the Brethren accomplished a great deal with what they had - in fact, the signs are that they had gone just about as far as they could without straying into the open whether they intended to or not. They ran out of time when they did because the Grand Inquisitor happened to be a paranoid manipulative bastard, but in another generation or two even a Samyl Wylsynn would have been starting to feel some twinges of concern over the Out Islands' orthodoxy.
And that leads me to another can that hasn't been kicked around much lately: It's rather unlikely that _every_ fully-paid-up member of the inner Brethren has remained on Charis - but none have been mentioned turning up elsewhere in the Empire, and I'm very, very sure that Maikel would have called them in when he was on their respective islands and given them an update and the appropriate tech kit. They would have simply been too useful to waste - still would be, for that matter. I don't find that especially surprising, to be honest, since while I would expect some full members to be off Charis, I wouldn't expect it to be very many - easily as few as one or two, given that there don't seem to have been more than a couple of dozen to begin with.
There is no textev that any of the inner circle amongst the Brethren of St Zherneau worked anyplace but Charis. Their role was to preserve the secret and work to spread St Zherneau's public teachings, particularly on tolerance as widely as possible, which in practicality worked out to influencing the priesthood within Charis to such a degree that the Charisian church was standing out enough to attract attention in Zion.
I agree that eventually Zion would have reacted even without Clyntahn. But Clyntahn hastened the reaction.
Don
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Whether or not the BOSZ's inner circle ever had members off of Charis may be less important than what the
outer circle(s) may have accomplished and where. Sheer distance from Zion and keeping their own people for their own priesthoods would make for indifferent orthodoxy through the Out Islands, but the Brotherhood's influence has been at work for the same result in Charis at least.
That part doesn't require knowledge of the Knowles journal - that is, membership in that original inner circle - and may well have diffused at least to Emerald and maybe Tarot. Emerald at least has been about as much in Charis' cultural and economic sphere of influence for a long time - it's why Nahrmahn felt he had to maneuver against Charis simply to retain Emerald's effective independence - and Tarot was also subject to asymmetric Charisian influence. Some of that may plausibly have been ideas about the Church/individual relationship that may plausibly have gone back to the Brotherhood, though that is of course plenty speculative.
It'd be a lot more tenuous to try to read any of that into Corisande, Zebediah, or Chisholm, or even more Fallos, Trellheim, or Hammer Island. (Heck - the influence on Hammer Island may amount to
the village priest having an afternoon thinking about a quip made after a sermon by one Charisian sailor, and not even RFC's books are long enough to get THAT detailed!) Again, sheer distance from Zion and retention of local priests is doing much the same thing out there anyway.
For that matter, the mainland priests who got "exiled" to the Out Islands would have been those who did not care to and/or did not have the connections to play for the most prestigious mainland positions - men like Erayk Dynnys, Klairmant Gairlyng, Paityr Wylsynn, Zherald Ahdymsyn - and that's going to go along with, often enough, reduced attachment to the way things are in Zion. Driven to the right circumstances, Dynnys and Ahdymsyn could be as settled and happy in themselves with rejecting Zion and orthodoxy as a native Out Islander, and Gairlyng and Wylsynn had a streak of rebellion cooking away in their hearts just waiting for a safe outlet that they found out there. So you get a third distinct influence toward Out Island heterodoxy that way. There's no reason to suppose that that only operated in this last generation, so we get a fuzzier account of the origins and development of Out Island theological restiveness.