Church

Biodata

History

Rise of the Papal State

The Holy Lord Church spread across the land after its foundation several thousand years earlier. The existence of vampires helped it attract believers. By roughly a thousand years before the story, kings needed the pope’s blessing to establish their legitimacy 13.

Successive popes developed the Church into a territorial power, beginning with the training of church knights. Its Papal State became the Western Continent’s strongest nation, while churches and believers—including devout kings—extended its influence beyond its uncertain borders. This institutional prosperity coincided with widespread hardship and a declining population 10 13.

Norton’s Rebellion and Pursuit

Norton spent twenty years confined within the Church’s upbringing system. After his revulsion at the human meat served following Mass exposed his supposedly impure thoughts, Bishop Rosen selected him for the Ascension Ritual. Norton attacked Father Mia upon realizing that he was to be sacrificed; a church knight killed him, and his corpse was burned and taken outside the city 1 7 8 12 13.

His resistance also affected a church knight, who turned against his companion while disposing of Norton’s body. Church authorities regarded Norton’s rebellion as evidence that their training needed to become harsher, while witnesses to the knight’s defection fled in fear of collective punishment 13 14.

After Norton revived as a vampire, Father Mia and Rosen activated Holy Knights to capture him. The deaths of two Holy Knights brought Archbishop Adam’s intervention: Mia was executed, and Rosen was ordered to abandon the pursuit when the pope dispatched the Holy Judgment Order. Adam also warned Rosen not to let anyone else find Norton 16 19 27.

Purge of Holy Lord City

Five hundred Holy Knights entered Holy Lord City and assumed control of all local Church affairs. They closed Holy Lord Cathedral and began killing those accused of being unclean. Residents exploited the purge by accusing rivals of heresy and seizing their property 29 30.

After a year, fewer than one in ten residents remained, corpses filled the streets, and Norton had not been found. The cathedral eventually reopened to supervise the removal of bodies 30.

Following the Holy Judgment Order’s recall, Rosen later withdrew the remaining knights to protect the cathedral against increasing werewolf attacks. Neighborhoods and outlying settlements lost their patrols, and the cathedral closed again 42.

Adam’s Succession and Reforms

The dying pope revealed that Adam’s handling of the vampire affair had been a test of his suitability as successor. He valued Adam’s patience, ambition, ruthlessness, and willingness to sacrifice Holy Lord City to achieve his aims. Before dying, he entrusted Adam with the secret of God’s sealed body 33 36 37.

As pope, Adam established the Eye of Holiness to capture and research monsters and vampires. Public rumor linked the institution to a desire for immortality. He also had the previous pope’s sex slaves burned through the Ascension Ritual 46.

Adam subsequently became dissatisfied with the Eye’s results. Reports reaching Norton indicated that the Church had secretly acquired something from Holy Lord City, but neither its identity nor its purpose was disclosed 48 49.

Organization and Hierarchy

Clerical Leadership

• Holy names: Bishops receive religious names; “Adam” is the archbishop’s holy name 26.
• Regional variation: Local rulers exercise markedly different policies. Holy Lord City is exceptionally fanatical, whereas Archbishop Duoxia allows Lino City’s commerce and ordinary life to flourish under comparatively limited intervention 6 44.

Recruitment and Upbringing

The Church raises its missionaries from adopted orphans rather than recruiting them from outside. Norton’s experience shows a system built around isolation, religious instruction, and severe punishment 1 4.

• Restricted movement: Clerics cannot leave the grounds, stand in high places, look into the distance, or speak with outsiders. They must wear hooded robes and lower their heads while walking 1.
• Restricted social contact: Informal companionship and socializing are forbidden; free time is devoted to communal worship or solitary scriptural study 4.
• Punishment: Violations can result in whipping or immediate beheading. Norton witnessed at least ten clerics executed during his confinement 1 4.
• Knight conditioning: Church knights also undergo childhood indoctrination and rigorous training, producing exceptional obedience and combat discipline but little capacity to conceal unfamiliar emotions 12 14 17.

Doctrine and Rituals

Scriptures and Divine History

• Divine figures: Church texts identify Shenyin as God’s offspring by a woman, Jonah as God’s offspring by a man, and Kuba as God’s offspring by a corpse 2.
• Religious imagery: Holy Lord Cathedral’s murals depict Caesar, Shenyin, Jonah, and a severed head Norton identifies as Kuba’s. A God Shepherding Sheep Picture later physically harms Norton 4 23.
• Cross symbolism: The Church treats the cross as sacred despite its connection to the suppression of God’s revival 41.

Weekly Mass

• Central observance: Weekly Mass is the Holy Lord Church’s most important regular observance 9.
• Procession and charity: Missionaries follow prescribed routes and procedures, including the distribution of black bread 4.
• Lethal enforcement: Church knights kill a starving mother and her child after she enters the flower-lined procession route to plead with Norton 6.
• Human meat: At Holy Lord Cathedral, the post-Mass meal includes human meat presented as a blessing. Knights watch for anyone refusing it 7.
• Compulsory consumption: Rules against wasting food require participants to finish all the food prepared, contributing to Norton’s vomiting 8.

Ascension Ritual

• Public meaning: Human sacrifice is presented as the highest honor, allowing the chosen person to serve beside God 8.
• Preparation: An ideal willing sacrifice fasts for three days, bathes, changes clothes, burns incense, and cleanses the body 8.
• Execution: Burning is part of the ritual’s practice; the cemetery behind Holy Lord Cathedral contains the remains of repeated ritual fires 10 13.
• Concealment: Norton receives books explaining the ritual’s origins but is denied an explanation of its actual procedure 9 10.

God’s Sealed Body

The Church’s highest leadership guards the knowledge that God is sealed, not dead. Adam sees the pale divine body nailed to a bone cross, with golden blood slowly emerging around a bone spike in its chest 36.

• True architect: Shenyin sealed God using Kuba’s divinity and remains; the cross is made from Kuba’s bones 37.
• Sunlight’s purpose: Focused sunlight helps prevent God from awakening. Adam realizes that the Ascension Ritual’s true purpose concerns maintaining this suppression, not restoring God as the scriptures suggest 37.
• Divine blood: Blood from God’s body can be used to cultivate Holy Knights 37.
• Overriding obligation: The old pope warns that God’s awakening would destroy everything. Protecting the seal must take precedence over the Church’s survival, and any successor king or pope must be told of the body even if the Church falls 37.

Military Forces

Arms and Armor

• Standard plate armor: Ordinary knights wear white steel armor with white cloth bearing the Church’s red cross. A suit weighs at least twenty to thirty kilograms and can withstand repeated greatsword blows without being cut apart 14 24.
• Greatswords: Knights use large swords for executions and combat; one knight severs a werewolf’s leg with a single strike 6 16.
• Grappling launchers: Crossbow-like weapons fire chained, barbed hooks to restrain monsters 16.
• Holy Knight armor: Golden armor is heavier and more imposing than ordinary plate, with wing-shaped structures replacing conventional eye openings 24.
• Local strength: Holy Lord Cathedral initially has at most three hundred ordinary knights; a little over two hundred remain after the Holy Judgment Order is recalled 6 42.

Supernatural Capabilities

Detection and Pursuit

• Aura tracking: Two Holy Knights identify Norton as a vampire and pursue his aura through the city, smashing through an earthen wall along their route 24.
• Sacred-image damage: A religious mural burns Norton even while he is concealed beneath roof thatch 23.
• Unconfirmed methods: Norton suspects ordinary knights possess tools for locating magical creatures after witnessing an apparently unreported werewolf hunt, but the specific mechanism is not established 19.

Sacred Objects

• Consecrated crosses: Crosses bearing God’s glory can injure vampires. Father Andrew carries a silver cross for protection, though silver itself does little harm to them 42.
• Holy water protocols: Church manuals prescribe holy water, a stake through the heart, dismemberment, and widely separated burial sites for corpses. Bodies drained by vampires are to be soaked in holy water 3.
• Holy Knight blood: Drinking the two slain Holy Knights’ blood causes Norton extreme agony but accelerates his transformation and later remains his most effective known source of growth 27 32 48.

Vampire and Monster Research

The Church began investigating vampires around its foundation and accumulated extensive research across generations. Despite this, it has been unable to create vampires reliably for experimentation, and its instructional books reveal only limited information about their development 3 10.

Vampire-Origin Theory

The Church identifies three recurring conditions in vampire births, but the narration explicitly distinguishes this theory from established fact 10:

• Lack of faith: Disbelief in God and exceptionally “unclean” thoughts 10.
• Extreme death: Death under extreme circumstances 10.
• Intense resentment: Powerful resentment at the time of death 10.

Its own attempts to reproduce these conditions have failed. Senior Church figures nevertheless covet vampires’ immortality 10.

Eye of Holiness

• Founder: Pope Adam 46.
• Mandate: Locate, capture, and conduct detailed research on monsters and vampires 46.
• Early results: Norton observes little progress in Lino City, although church knights kill three werewolves during his surveillance 47.
• Papal response: Adam becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the institution’s performance 48 49.

Notable Locations

Relationships

• Norton — Former Church-raised missionary, intended sacrifice, and later vampire fugitive. He hates the Church but seeks its research and the protection its monster hunters indirectly provide against werewolves 1 12 19 41 44.
• Pope Adam — Successor to the elderly pope, guardian of God’s sealed body, and founder of the Eye of Holiness 37 46.
• Bishop Rosen — Low-ranking bishop involved in Norton’s sacrifice and pursuit; later prioritizes the cathedral’s security over the protection of Holy Lord City 8 19 42.
• Father Mia — Priest whose abuse and treatment of Norton exemplify the violence concealed beneath religious authority. Executed after the loss of two Holy Knights 1 27.
• Archbishop Duoxia — Regional leader whose relatively restrained administration makes Lino City attractive to Norton as a hiding place 44.
• Vampires — Treated as unclean enemies, yet valued by senior figures as potential sources of immortality. Father Mia claims that impoverishing the poor into anemia is intended to deprive vampires of food; Norton’s ability to endure hunger undermines that rationale 10 19 45.
• Werewolves — Hunted by church knights and investigated under the Eye of Holiness; increasing attacks also prompt the withdrawal of protection from Holy Lord City’s residents 16 42 46 47.
• Boya Empire — A foreign power praised by a critic whom church knights arrest in Lino City. Norton later notices increasing numbers of its spies there 45 49.