Church of Amaunator

The church of Amaunator was the primary religious organization dedicated to Amaunator. Their deity died of neglect after about thousand years after the fall of Netheril, but survived as a sect in the church of Lathander.

Initiation
During the days of Netheril, or to be more precise during those days, the city Unity still stood, it was possible for a person to be invited by Amaunator himself to enter the clergy. He sent a miscellaneous manifestation of a woman in a dress with a scale sign on it. If the scale sign was even, the recipient of the omen was invited to join the clergy. The Yellow God personally informed his clergy about the new would-be comrade and priests appeared within a tenday to pick up the recipient to the city of Unity to start training.

Titles
Amaunator's specialty priests were called sunlord or sunlady depending on gender. Collectively, the entire clergy was called the Amaunatori, a term that doubled as an adjective.

Hierarchy
Titles in Amaunator's faith were organized in a hierarchic structure. The hierarchy in the church of Amaunator was very strict and binding. During the age of Netheril, the top of a given temple of Amaunator was called a Righteous Potentate. Any activity including relieving people of duty was done at that one's discretion. His own duties included the oversight over the members' advancement in the intra-church hierarchy and teaching lay-worshipers.

The second-in-commands, of which seven were assigned to each Righteous Potentate, were called the Monastic Abbots. Each of them could assign or relieve lower-ranking people of their duties. Each of the seven had different other jobs distributed to them. For example, tending to the temple farms, tending to the exteriors of a temple, acquisitions to fulfil spiritual needs, acquisitions to fulfil physical needs, maintenance of the library, oversight over the monks, and preaching the benefits of following laws were all jobs that were each distributed among the seven Monastic Abbots.

Under a Monastic Abbot were again seven so-called High Jurists assigned. The titles of even lower ranking clergy were lost.

A group of priests that stood outsider of the hierarchy, but were obliged to at least annually report to the temple they were assigned to, were the monks, a type of divine spellcaster. They were relieved of temple duties from time to time.

Activities
Amaunator represented the idea that law and order should be followed. During the days of Netheril, the church's base consisted of rulers, soldiers, and powerful mages. His priesthood also were regional rulers or advisors to politicians.

During those days, the priests dedicated themselves at obtaining a thorough understanding of law including how to use it for their benefits, something their god wanted them to do. To obtain such understanding and certainty in applying them, priests trained each other in court rooms both in real and mock cases.

Their expertise was used to create new laws in a given community, to fulfill roles in court rooms as judges, and to settle disputes. A profitable income source of the Amaunatori was the usage of their legal understanding to settle disputes between merchants that were too low-level to be presented to the real authorities.

Rituals
During the days of Netherril, the church of Amaunator yearly celebrated the signing of the Pantheon Contour, an agreement between deities of the Netherese pantheon, which Amaunator oversaw. It was their holiest day.

A ritual that was conducted to celebrate Amaunator in his sun-deity aspect was the Summer Solstice. Being the longest day in the year, Amaunatori sunbathed, relaxed, and thanked their god for sunlight. This ritual had also an appeasement factor to it. Amaunatori believed that not or improperly celebrating this day would make Amaunator cause the sun not to shine for an entire year.

Amauatori believed that other occasions to thank Amaunator were when they managed to legally pull someone over the barrel, won a debate, or passed a new law. Celebration was done by a priest burning magically preserved oak leaves and incenses.

Tactics
Priests of Amaunator could turn undead rather than rebuking them. Their specialty priests could do so too, which was not something every faiths' specialty priests could do. The church of Amaunator developed a number of spells that were unique to them.


 * Advanced sunshine:Advanced sunshine was a spell that shortened the daylight hours by one minute for various immediate effects.
 * Amaunator's uncertainty:Amaunator's uncertainty was a spell that instilled a sense of uncertainty in the affected creature that made it pause before taking action.
 * Illumination:Illumination was a spell that allowed the caster to spend in a state of accelerated time to request a form of physical aid or answers for questions from the deity.
 * Sun scepter:Sun scepter was a spell that enchanted a golden scepter with the ability to imbue the caster with authority that made others comply with it.

Base of Operations
During the days of Netheril, the enclave of Unity held the biggest temple to Amaunator called the Forested Enclave of the Face on the Sun. Their temples were called Courts.

Dress
Amaunatori priests wore bright yellow, red, or orange clothes for ceremonial purposes. These were generally long-sleeved and had a lot of decorations starting with sun depictions through in various ways including the use of gems and gold to form a sun. When a priest wore clothes made of cloth-of-gold, it was a sign that the given priest owned a temple. Another part of their regalia was a headpiece in the form of a sunburst.

The Amaunatori holy symbols were made of either gold, gold-plated metal, or gold-painted wood.

When venturing out as adventurers, Amaunatori priests wore clothes that put usefulness to the front. They were still fond of ornamentation and had a tendency to use bright red or orange cloaks, tabards, and other accessories. They had a tendency to wear armor with gold-plating or -washing.

Dogma
Amaunatori believed that law was the foundation on which any civilization was built without which any civilization would fall apart. They viewed the predictability with which the sun rose every day as an aspiration how securely the law would deal with wrongdoers and solve problems. They were also expected to take advantage of their legal knowledge by their deity.

This belief was lived out by teaching their novices to not just learn but also live in accordance with the law. The idea was that people who knew about law were the ones who could live a life without coming into conflict with it. The church of Amaunator was a very hierarchical organization. Those in the lower rung were told to keep tabs on their superiors. The goal of this policy was to increase the number of precedents that could be used to give rulings uniformity and with it their church influence.

Orders
During the age of Netheril, the church of Amaunator had a lot of orders with representation in most cities of that nation.


 * Most Transcendent Affiliation of Paradisiacal Pens:The Most Transcendent Affiliation of Paradisiacal Pens was a group of Amaunatori scribes who made it their goal to build centers of Netherese legal knowledge of every city and land in which Amanuantor's faith had a presence.


 * Syndicate of Celestial and Righteous Lawmakers:The Syndicate of Celestial and Righteous Lawmakers was an order of warriors, especially paladins. They consciously ignored or softened up Amaunator's messages and tendency to evil and put the lawfulness to the forefront.


 * Brotherhood of the Sun:The Brotherhood of the Sun was a group of monks. They did the fieldwork and were relieved of their duty at their temple from time to time, but had a duty to report to the temple they belonged to.

Classes
The church of Amaunator had a total of three kinds of divine spellcasters, clerics, monk, and specialty priests called sunlords or sunladies depending on gender. The monks were members of the aforementioned Brotherhood of the Sun and

Relationships
The church of Amaunator was allied with the church of Kossuth and was at odds with the church of Shar. Amaunatori worshiped their god as the god of time from time to time. Amaunator prevented to on this for fear to get on Mystryl's bad side.

Before Karsus's Folly
During the days of Netheril, the church of Amaunator was a popular church with a presence of their orders in the majority of the nation's cities. During those days, rulers, soldiers, and powerful mages made up the worshiper-base of the church.

After Karsus's Folly
Two factors caused the influence of the church of Amaunator to dwindle. First, when Karsus's Folly happened, their god was correctly accused of having done nothing to stop the catastrophe. The Yellow God could do nothing because he had had no legal right to do so and this lack of action made people abandon him and with it the church. Second, the following seven years after Karsus's Folly were marked by bad harvest and the Anuaroch was expanding. While the Amaunatori did their best but insufficient efforts to stop the desert's expansion, their people revolted. The decision of the church's priesthood was to mercilessly quell these uprisings. It ultimately led to the church losing its influence and authority. Over the next millennium, their god died. Given that the fall of Netheril was in –339 DR, the breakdown of the church was about 661 DR.