Settlement Population - Religious Class
This social class covers all the different Priests, from those that work with a specific temple to those that follow an independent path by paying homage to all Gods. With the potential backing of a God, most citizens treat members of the religious class with respect, in many ways similar to the professional troop class.
However as the Gods rarely give any power other than the common miracles to their followers the various Priests have to be careful about using what power they have and not overstepping their capabilities.
A common scenario in a lot of settlements is that the Priests working for one Temple that is dedicated to a specific God spend a lot of their time trying to gain more power over the other Temples.
Some Priests carry out this political manoeuvring believing that it is best for everyone, whilst other Priests do it for more selfish reasons. The neutral Priests have the option of taking any ideological path so it is hard to know how they will react to things without getting to know the Priest in question better.
Due to the need to keep the masses happy, religion is a very important part of a settlement, but more so is the ability of a God to show favour or disfavour in a settlement. These two factors make dealing with members of the Religious Class tricky, as it is all too easy to get pulled on to one side of a religious argument whilst facing the possible problem of divine wrath being instigated by a spurned God's Temple.
A lack of Priests can result in religious problems such as citizens having a crisis of faith. With fewer Priests spreading and maintaining the presence of their God, citizens could lose their passion and devotion to a God in question, and possibly all the Gods. This makes some citizens easier targets for conversion to other settlements.
Having too many Priests is generally not possible, unless the temple they work for is very rich. Possible problems for too many Priests is that the citizens could end up being told lots of slightly different viewpoints from the same temple, which could undermine the citizens' faith.
Members of the Magic Cyrcle are often put into this social class, but in some places members of the Magic Cyrcle are treated as a separate class entirely, but even then the end result tends to be quite similar.
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