Sep05
on September 5, 2017
Feeling Crossed
Clerics are weird.
According to gaming legend, clerics were originally presented as “vampire slayers”, being holy warriors. They were likely more akin to paladins before that class emerged. But, with paladins, clerics have an odd place in the lore. There’s not a lot of “priestly” characters in myth or fantasy fiction, and those that are seldom have powers and are more cloistered monks than holy warriors. Given they gain their powers directly from their gods – effectively performing miracles – clerics are really closer to being saints than anything else. Which is kinda weird when you think about it. You don’t picture many real world saintly figures bashing goblins across the head with a mace.
Well, this reflects a view on the topic that is typical of european (and therefore american) countries. In the eastern ones the figures of saintly beings with a penchant for bashing evil creatures to brittles is more common and accepted. For one Saint Cuthbert we got, they have a few dozen local myths which we don’t know of at all… but yet, as previously mentioned in one of your posts, our medieval monks prayed and miniated beautiful books, while theirs meditaded and trained in both unarmed and armed combat.