Lazarist Prophets
“I cannot separate myself from the pain of my followers. We’ve walked too long together.”
– Prophet Solon, when travelling under the moniker of Albrecht the Father
A Lazarist Prophet is as much a leader in pastoral love as they are in war. They are the first kind face, smiling through mucus-laden bandages, to welcome aspirants down the path of redemption, reborn through a new name, new family, and new doctrine. They are the first kind face, contorted by lion skin bumps and eroded saddle-nose, to welcome heretics down the path of retribution, ushered by the suffocating weight of a limestone crown. It’s a dynamic that ultimately serves one purpose: the correction of mortal ways and the end of all that is sinful. Who better to lead the Processions of the Sacred Affliction than those who navigate in the sacred space between spiritual life and physical death.
The progenation of a prophet is ordained by God, a determination in the course laid out before them. Would-be prophets are typically adherent leper-pilgrims of the Sacred Affliction, guided by the all-encompassing tribulations of the Pure Tzaareth, hardened by the throes of battle and humbled by the acceptance of their community. They are legs to the lame, eyes to the blind, shields to the weak, and well acquainted to the woes and perils of the downtrodden of this wretched world. Draped in lesions with naught but bandages and a rusty sword to their name, they fundamentally understand the troubles which burden themselves and their troubled kin. It is through these trials that the prophet-to-be is granted perspective in the face of death, the freedoms that come with it, the tethers that break as one catches a glimpse of the Twelve Gates. How much good can one do when one only has a year left to live? A month? Days? Seconds? Each action is more critical than the last, especially as the Lord’s afflictions take their aching toll on a body left ragged and wanting. Each forethought is a mere suggestion, but the present is certain. We may begin the journey today, but who will reach the destination tomorrow? A thousand inquiries leading to but one answer: love.
And only then does the pilgrim – nay, the prophet – find the truth of God’s unending warmth and His power over mortality, and understands how God brings new life even when all hope seems lost. The path of compassion overcomes death and offers an escape from finality. Every moment is an opportunity to take one step forward, welcome another believer to the cause or deliver another blow to the apostate, even if that moment is their very last. And so the Lazarist Prophet grasps their kin and holds them tight, uttering harrowing lamentations of life beyond the safety and purity of their holy commune. They point to a world cradled by the heretics who have opened the doors to Hell and invited pain, poverty, war, and sin to pollute the gardens of Creation. It’s not only those who deal with the Devil, but even those who call themselves “good Christians” who have become numb to practices that edge nearer and nearer to the brink of heresy, dooming the world to the iron-locked clutches of Satan. It is not us, the prophets rattle, who have earned the trappings of misery. These burdens are a gift from God to separate the righteous from the slothful.
Confessions are drawn from desperate newcomers as the prophet taps hammer to bloody chisel. They inscribe transgressions that the Holy See would reward only with capital punishment, laying bare the pilgrim’s deepest vulnerabilities for all to witness. Only once the Lazarist Prophet detects honest dedication in an aspirant do they bestow the homecoming gift of a millstone. Those so burdened, their darkest confessions on rope-rash display, haven’t a place to go, and thus cling to the men and women they call “Father”, for the Prophet is the only one who can offer salvation and lead them with the promise of hope and home.
Most processions are small bands of alms-seekers and roving warriors, but some are magnificent gatherings thousands strong, spearheaded by a loose covenant of prophetic leaders, each under a web of owed respect as baptised and baptiser, eschewing formality and institutional support in favor of community-focused aid. These inner circles bear an incredible weight in guiding enormous columns of unsheltered, hungry, maddened lepers. Sourcing the aid necessary to drive those feet forward is a monumental task requiring cooperation, sacrifice, and of course, faith. However, the journey is not always giving nor forgiving, for many faithful cities and townships withhold alms and forbid passage in fear of wasted resources or spreading of illness. This defiance of papal bull, defiance against the children of God, forces Lazarist Prophets to take more extreme actions to provide for their followers.
A Lazarist Prophet’s affection for their flock is mirrored in their unrelenting hatred for slights against their cause. In the year 1909, Baghras Fortress was taken by a Procession of thirty thousand pilgrims led by the War Prophet known as Risen, who utterly overwhelmed the heretic defenders with wrath and zealotry, before establishing the fortress as a Levantine stronghold. Although Duke Constantine XI expected field regiments to displace and defend the fortress under New Antioch control, he was surprised to be met with refusal by the Prophet – Baghras Fortress was taken for the Procession, and for the Procession it would remain. No outsider, Christian or otherwise, shall assert their control.
In a bleak irony, it isn’t uncommon for a Lazarist Prophet to direct their visions of calamity upon Christian settlements that have denied them alms, declaring them no better than sinners at the burning gates awaiting their turn at the yoke of the Court. They camp outside the walls of offending settlements in spiritual protest, exhorting sulfuric damnations through loudspeakers, capturing craven merchants and travelers who peddle to the blasphemers, and crafting towering monuments from the cracked millstones left by leper-pilgrims who have perished during their long and arduous protests. While some are satisfied with demonstration alone, some Lazarist Prophets will pick up arms and direct their pilgrims into the cities by force, sacking fellow Christians for their supplies and demanding the burdens of faith be shared amongst all of God’s children.
Whether confronting erroneous believers or the outright heretics of Satan’s armies, Lazarist Prophets are a powerful force of faith on the battlefield. They take to the front and centre, standing side by side with their congregation, donned with their personal millstones and armour made from saintly idols and holy relics, capable of deflecting heavy fire through faith alone. Brimstone sermons and jaunty hymns alike are hawked through hoarse, prophetic throats, as their kin, stoked by visions of heaven’s glory, clamber over the top to drive their foes into the mud. Though no stranger to finer mechanisms of warfare, Lazarist Prophets are more intimate with sharpened steel and weighty stone extensions of their calloused bodies, crushing heretics flat with great flail blows or blasting through accursed armour with anti-tank hammers. As the lines thin and their pilgrim comrades begin to fall, Lazarist Prophets will offer an outstretched hand, invoking the Gift of the Sacrament to quell the pain of near-mortal wounds or stymie the speed at which the Black Grail spreads.
As the battle comes to its last, when blades are blunted and magazines are emptied, the prophet builds a pyre around the bloodied millstones of their fallen kin, sending them to salvation with one last act of love. The prophet then holds the embers of faith in their heart as they gather the pieces of a sundered procession. Again and again they follow Saint Lazarus on the next trail of devotion and destruction.