Priest of the Western Church and its formal head in Halwa — recently arrived, and already making enemies.
(Spelling: the GM’s Halwa notebook writes Ignazio; the session notes had “Ignacio”.)
What We Know
- Formally appointed head of the Western church in Halwa by the diocese of La Serenissima — a see for which Halwa is a low priority. (GM)
- His appointment ends about a decade in which Sister Alasia ran the church with no formal appointment at all, after her priest husband died. (GM)
- Holds more hardline views than the recent local norm — and his line is straining the informal truce under which Halwa’s two churches politely ignored each other and quietly cooperated without ever calling it cooperation. (GM)
- Arrived recently; has “apparently pissed off some people from the Uru clan” (Clans of Halwa) — which, we now know, is Fajan the Younger’s clan. (S4, via Achmed)
- Personally came to the church entrance and turned Haroun away from visiting Sister Alasia. (S4)
- Sister Alasia herself warned Haroun to be careful around him — quietly, in the street, unprompted. (S5)
- The expat community is skeptical of him: they understood Sister Alasia, whose preaching ran to Maker Protect!; his sermons are Maker Smite!, and it is not going over well. (S5)
Speculation
A new western priest who gatekeeps an old intelligence contact, arriving in the same city where Owl knights were captured four years ago and where the party’s sanctum lead sits — his timing deserves scrutiny. Is he protecting the flock from an eastern agent (fair, from his side), or does he have something to hide? And what did he do to anger the Uru clan? See The Halwa Ambushes.
Speculation
His appointing diocese is La Serenissima — the see Pious III held before his election. That is probably just geography: La Serenissima is simply the diocese responsible for Halwa, and considers it a backwater (GM). But the party has independent reasons to watch church traffic into this particular city, and a hardliner dispatched from the Most Holy’s old see, breaking a decade of comfortable local neglect, is worth one raised eyebrow.