Holy Father Jeroche / Father Jay Ehcor

I have done such evil by you

-- Prologue: Elaine

Once the de-facto leader of the church of Aodanr, he brought about a decades long crusade with the sworn purpose to subjugate the wills of the world so they could all move in one in one, non conflicting direction. He believes the true potential of Aodanr is squandered with too many conflicting desires. 

He was defeated politically by Abigail Hawthorne, and her movement of doctrinal compassion and compromise. Between a growing weariness for war, a high death toll, and increasing pressure, most of his supporters abandoned him. His last fervent supporter, Elaine, tended to his needs in his declining years, before sacrificing herself so he could be reborn in his prime. 

With his youth restored, he now now ascends the Pantheons under the guise of Father Jay Ehcor, a fun loving, guitar strumming peaceful worshiper of Aodinr. They intend to silence Abigail Hawthorne once and for all, and restart their ambitions for war and utopia. 

Backstory

Born as a bastard child from an affair, Idris Cambor's childhood was paradoxically ideal and tumultuous. He never met his birth father, and his mother, Delia Cambor, promised to never speak of her moment of weakness while his step father, Caris Cambor, was off to war. He grew up in the third borough of the port city of New Deplo, often called little Sidonya, named after a plane of hell due to the many settled Daemons in the area. His father was a celebrated veteran, and off the benefits of his service, they had a relatively nice life in the rather poor neighborhood. Young Idris's step father treated him with a sense of mild detachment, something that didn't become clear until his little sisters, twins Baria, and Clada, were born. 

Even before that he felt a profound sense of isolation. He went to an inner city school, where he felt disconnected from his peers by class. His closest friends were the teachers and staff. His original dream was to be a teacher, conflating their authority with respect, but also having a genuine desire to help others. 

The arts called to him, especially music. When the instruments came out, no one was rich, or poor, or bastards, or the favorite child. Everyone simply had their part to play, and the music was a character all its own. He became laser focused on becoming, specifically, a music teacher: even at this age he was very direct about his approach to all things.

And then tragedy came knocking on his 16th birthday. His step father died, sending the rest of his family into a deep depression. At first, he felt spared from this tragedy: the man had never shown him the same love as the rest of his family, and so he never got too attached to the person who insisted he be called 'dad.' But his mother and his sisters were dear to him, and seeing them spiral caused a strange, conflicted agony in him.

It was the catalyst for him to begin studying mysticism, the divine dragons, and pushed him into more scholarly pursuits for a time, trying to make peace with his conflicted heart. He took to the worship of Aodanr like a fish to water. It was an apathetic god, but that was not a deal breaker. He was very used to apathetic people at this point in his life. The important part is Aodanr came with no judgements. It was a god that promised that if he followed his passions they could come true. It was more support than he had ever received form anyone. 

There was already a stigma around the name of Aodanr at this time, but it was mild. A god that granted fantastical power un-vetted so long as you paid a price is always going to attract a certain kind of person. When his mother expressed her concerns, it soured their relationship. Slowly he began to drift apart from his family, eventually leaving to find a job in a church of Aodanr. He was a paladin, trained to fight, though he was rather adverse to violence at the time. He spent most of his late teens and early twenties writing the fables that make up the bulk of Aodanr holy text to song, and sharing them. Being called Sir Cambor rubbed him the wrong way. It was how people referred to his step father. He formally changed his name to Jeroche during this time, taking the name of his high-school music teacher.

Sir Jeroche got his first taste of combat and deployment when one of the many sects of the worship of Aodanr cited some lesson about some fable that made the other churches heathens in their eyes, and worthy of extermination. Much to his horror, at the time, it was his own sect. He wound up deserting, being familiar with the fables and finding the conclusions his own church had drawn appalling. Eventually he wound up moving half way around the world, and becoming a paladin for an unrelated faction of Aodanr worshipers, one's that worshiped them as Aodinr, in the context of being more of an art goddess. But peace wouldn't last for long as a neighboring church squabbled over the true meaning of another fable and they were back to fighting. Jaroche was starting to understand why his mother was worried. In the books the many petty wars of Aodanr believers were a little timeline of silly stories. But in person, it was a fresh new hell every few months. 

He didn't run away though, not this time. He liked his peace loving little sect and fought to defend it. He was more fierce than the rest of his piers, and his habit of using the masculine pronunciation of their god rubbed them the wrong way, but he didn't care that he was quickly becoming outcast yet again. His passions drove him to defend this little space until he was excommunicated. He had suggested they should counter attack, and destroy those who would bully them. He cited the fables of The Three Moons, and The Viorinokenshi, and though some of the church was moved, others found using such sweet and peaceful tales to justify such violence beyond unpalatable.

The betrayal weighed heavy in his heart. The lives he had taken had been in vain. The sins he had committed were for the ungrateful. And his solution that he poured so much effort into planning had gotten him abandoned yet again. In his rage he swore that he would end these wars. He joined one of the many churches that he had been holding back, and parleyed his knowledge of the peaceful sect into letting him lead one last offensive. He got his first taste revenge. 

And then another sect labeled the destruction a violation of the lessons of the Witch and the Giant, and attacked. Jeroche had enough of these squabbles. He was tired of the fighting. But he took his newfound success and began crafting new fables, ones he claimed were divinely inspired, to justify the counterattack and conquest of any enemy to his new sect. It wasn't long until every rival around them were forced to convert to their views, or slaughtered. The church that formed from this new super sect was a chaotic soup of different ideas and views, and to his frustration, the fighting didn't stop with conquest. And so he began an internal campaign of changing minds, or expelling heathens. What remained was stronger, sharper, leaner. An engine of war that consistently moved the way the young paladin wanted. Understanding the power he held, he capitalized on it to stop future conflicts. Whenever sects fought he would pick a side and render aid, but though his aggressive religious politics, he'd wind up swallowing both sides of each conflict and converting them to march in step with him. With more followers sharing the same desires, communal prayers got stronger, their focus got stronger, and he developed the philosophy that would carry him throughout his life. 

Aodanr has no will, Aodanr is just the music we all play. And without a conductor, it is just noise. All desires must serve the orchestra, only then can the music of a better world be heard. And he would be that conductor. As he set about unifying the faith, he came across many small towns to deliver his ultimatums in the guise of aid, he came across a young funerary witch named Abigail Hawthorne, an orphan that lived alone with her little sister. They were elbows deep in dark magic. Jeroche saw a lot of himself in that feral witch's eyes. How she lashed out. How boxed in she felt. How she felt no one really understood her. That all of her desires had to be sidelined. For all of his building of followers, he had yet to take a true apprentice. And so Jeroche manipulated Abigail to leave home and learn directly from him.

He taught her his philosophy, the true philosophy behind the war machine. He taught her how to fight, and how to focus in the heat of battle. How to twist and word prayers, speaking them backwards to shoulder the burdens of cost. He taught her how to use others to her advantage. 

And he taught her that she would be loved if she simply obeyed.

Her training was done as Father Jeroche finally took the title of priest, and left the front lines, now confident he had a pawn ready to do his will. The unification of the church was almost done, and the next stage of his plan to create his utopia was under way. He launched a crusade. Instead of infighting, it was on other faiths, corporations, countries, anything he could justify. It started small, with easy targets: little nuggets of land that were embroiled in controversy or already deep in war that he simply took a side in. But the honed war machine of the new church of Aodanr didn't stop there. They used the conquests they took, and their political history to claim a right to further lands, to further people. And so the war marched on. 

Three years in, his apprentice betrayed him. Something in her had snapped, and all the lessons she learned folded back on themselves. Her rebellion didn't set back the war by much, but calls for execution rang out. But, with the shreds of empathy he had left, he remembered his own anger and frustrations. He decided to spare his apprentice, but forbade her from participating in the war any longer, lest she snap again and cause a more major upset. He would come to regret his mercy.

Over the next decade the crusades churned as a constant on the world stage. They were horrible things, everyone knew it. but over the course of a decade, it became an accepted fact of the world. There were crusades happening. Over there... somewhere. Between intimidation, and careful target selection, the international community had taken to turning a very blind eye. 

It was shortly after his formal promotion to High Priest, the official highest point of the holy hierarchy, did the name Abigail start to surface again. It was murmurs at first, that went ignored. But as the years dragged on, he found more and more vocal opposition to his invasions that had gone unchallenged before. More and more he began to hear that name. He caught her face in the background, talking with important people. Important people that started to oppose him. And then he started hearing her name from within his own congregation. About new interpretations of the old fables. About some of the fables he had written explicitly to justify his actions! The enthusiasm for his utopia was being undercut.

Thus began a quiet purging. Excommunications, disappearances, unfortunate accidents. The environment to these new ideas that had seeped into the church had become so hostile, many members that began to change their mind left of their own volition. Desperate to stem the bleeding, he began to plan out assassinations on his ex-apprentice, to right the wrongs of his mercy. It was too little, and too late. She was ready for them. And after a botched attempt in public view, where the assassin failed to destroy themselves, Abigail questioned him on live television. What was originally a broadcasting of a parade had turned into an interview between his greatest enemy, and someone that knew far too much. 

The worst part was... she changed the assassin's mind. On live television. She took apart his manipulations, and forgave the man that was inches away from putting a bullet in her skull for the world to see.

The crusades stopped. The next generation of Aodanr worshipers that had survived the purge took it upon themselves to return the favor. Holy Father Jeroche was excommunicated in shame. The world knew his name. The world had known what he had done. Only a few of the most dedicated followers he had followed him, and his paranoia drove away all but one. 

And he killed her so he could be reborn.

Now under the name Jay Ehcor, restored to his prime, he looks to find and kill Abigail himself, and then to fold his ideology of utopia back into the faith. To make new followers that will help him finish his calling. 

• Experienced
• Youthful Vigor
• Tremendous Divine Powers
• Ruthlessness

• Stubborn
• Old Fashioned Thinking
• Tremendous Anger
• Vengeful