Clerical Orders of Lyubov

There are three main orders of priests on Lyubov and the order of the Judges, each can be represented quite well by the existing entry in the Imperial Guard Codex or the Witch Hunters or Daemon Hunters Codex for Judges.

White Clergy are the urban priests who tend to the great Synagogues and lead the great academies. They generally hold the more politically influential positions within the religious hierarchy. Their duties include keeping the standards for weights and measures, overseeing oaths, collecting tithes and housing members of the lay community in times of crisis (the heavily fortified and reinforced synagogues of Lyubov are a legacy of the occupation and make excellent shelters in times of natural disaster or military crisis).

White clergy are respected and very often wealthy; Lyubov nobles tithe vast amounts of money to the religious establishment, particularly to "yes-men" who pander to them. The clergy (and their wives!) are sometimes on a social level equal to that of the petty nobles and wealthy landowners.

Although the clergy (with the exception of sextons) are immune to conscription. White priests were often soldiers as well and many such fighting priests become heroes. The most famous of these military orders are the Maccabees – followers of Matisyahu of Nidom, a hero of the resistance, who lead a guerrilla campaign against the Chaos forces that once held much of Lyubov. Notable for their long black coats and hats and white shirts and gloves and the large power-hammers they carry, these priests stand in the middle between the White and Black clergy. They lead religiously motivated troops in a never-ending war against Chaos and its followers. Any witch or chaos-follower who finds themselves in the hands of a Maccabee has truly been abandoned by the Dark Powers. The hatred of Chaos of these zealots knows no bounds.

Their grey vestments (a combination of black and white) shows them as sitting astride the roles of the Black and White clergy. Like their white counterparts, they are spiritual leaders well versed in the liturgy and formal religion but like their black brethren they live, work, fight and often die with the common soldier at the front.

Ironically, the Maccabean Order also requires its adherents to be able hospitalers and many of the priests of this order are Masters of Physik as well as able warriors. The Maccabees are well-respected for the hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions they operate. These institutions are considered part and parcel of their war on Chaos since charity is a requirement of the Law, it is the antithesis of Chaos and as they fight it on a physical level on the battlefield, so to do they fight on a spiritual level with good works and acts of kindness to their fellow man.

Black Clergy tend to be closer to the people, teaching and guiding the common man, accompanying the army to war, collecting and distributing arms and advocating for the ordinary man before the nobility. Some members of the Black clergy are, as a result, wildly popular and wield considerable political power – sometimes greater than that of their White ‘superiors’ in the religious hierarchy. Black clergy are often prolific writers, expounding on esoteric meanings of the scriptures and the deeper hidden meanings behind the stories and moral tales therein.

Black Priests are more commonly found as Pastors with High Command Squads or Medicae units than on the battlefield with front-line troops where they can minister to the faithful, help the wounded, encourage the disheartened and generally fill their role as the common priesthood of the Orthodoxy of Lyubov.

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