The Luminarite Creed

From the books

In The Outcast Knight

Luna's cathedral is a place of incense and song, of stone saints and martyrs, with a great stained-glass window of saints. Its priests include Balorin Dawnbringer and Haelun Lightwind. Under Luna's law, blood-madness is an affliction rather than a crime, and only the cathedral has the rites to purge it. Children learn about the Eye of Luna in Luminarite catechism, where it is a seer, a teacher and a gift from the Light.

Alesund Moonspear is announced in the arena as "Templar of the First Light, sworn shield of Luna". His armour is plain steel inlaid with lines of luminarite and carries the sunburst sigil of the Eye of Luna. When the luminarite flares, he can raise an unseen dome that holds back a blade. Such templar miracles are rare in the arena.

As the demon threatens the city, the smell of burning luminarite incense spreads through the streets, "a city-sized prayer". After the ritual, Balorin says that what woke when the Eye was struck is older than the Creed and older than the cathedral itself.

In The Channeler

The First Sanctum is the Creed's remote motherhouse and the Arch Luminar's true seat. In the hymns it rises in terraces of white stone, each narrower than the one below, until the highest chapel seems sharpened out of the sky. Its envoy, Brother Adresin, wears spotless pale robes with the Arch Luminar's seal at his throat. As the Arch Luminar's public voice, he oversees the Spire Tithe, in which the Fae Council surrenders chosen youths to First Sanctum authority.

Those youths never see the motherhouse. They are taken to the Lower Sanctum beneath the Lightspire precinct. In its archive gallery, a mural of the founding sacrifice shows the first Arch Luminar with his hands lifted towards a radiant sun. Around him kneel serene figures in grey who have no mouths, above the inscription "They gave gladly, and their silence became our dawn". The Creed's templars ride in white plate with luminarite staves and pikes, and those staves hum whenever a Fae brand stirs.

In The Highlander

Luna's version of its old pact with the north is a ceremony: a noble north and a shining south, bound in mutual defence under the Light. A wayside shrine on the road holds wax drips for the Light beside offerings to Orun. According to Sable, Crowbrook says that the Light demands obedience while demons at least admit their hunger. During the violet night, priests, some in gold masks, contradict one another in public and argue over which doors are sanctified for common entry.

In The Godless Priest

Luna's road priests drive gold nails into the plains at measured intervals, claiming that the Light makes travel safe, and priests time their rites by the Spire's glow. A copied priestly dispatch calls Alerion's death honour, Eamon's condition grace, and the Lightspire's visible flaw a test of faith. As the Light fails, the belief of millions carries one doctrinal sentence through the weakened boundaries and into the mouths of carried demons: "the Light remains perfect".