Holy Fury Hellenism

[SOSHaruhi101]

Holy Fury is apparently going to release Hellenism as a playable feature. However it seems to have been made unreformed.

Will we see Hellenism (And possibly things like Kemetic) turned into unreformed religions? I’m not sure if I’m happy with that change as the Hellenists were much more organized than say Germanics or Celtics in their internal structures.

 

[mattrhearn]

I think an argument could be made for keeping WTWSMS Hellenism as-is, especially once it's expanded to the earliest planned start dates when the Empire had only recently officially converted. But in Vanilla startdates I think that it makes sense for it to be unreformed, since it had neither an active priesthood (outside of local enclaves) and without a holy book or any majority-Hellenic provinces (both of which the Zoroastrians and Jews have) I think any revival is going to result in diverse and disorganized interpretations before coalescing into a reformed religion.

 

[loup99]

I don't think much of the Holy Fury Hellenism content will be interesting for WtWSMS, given how much it seems like it is centred around a revival, without many features around every-day life or an adaptation to the reality faced by Hellenic Pagans in the late 5th century and onwards. The current features we have integrated from ACR have been continuously worked upon and considered for years to be tailored for WtWSMS (even if this still a work in progress), while the same will not be true of the vanilla content.

 

[EnderDragonFire]

Makes sense to me to leave it as-is; Hellenism circa 769, such as it was, had little in common with the organized, previously-official religio of the late Roman Era.

 

[Wixelt]

Hellenism definitely was a loose faith compared to Christianity etc in the 5th century.

 

[Furion Matsuya]

Will you adapt the Temple dedication stuff though?, that just makes sense along with the astrology stuff at least.

 

[EnderDragonFire]

Hellenism definitely was a loose faith compared to Christianity etc in the 5th century.

No, it really wasn't a loose faith compared to Christianity. Not sure what you are counting as "etc" so I can't comment, but 5th century Christianity was *very* decentralized, heterogeneous, and localized. Hellenism wasn't any *more* centralized, but suggesting that it was less so is historical.

Now, if you were arguing that Zoroastrianism or Judaism were more organized than Hellenism (or Christianity) I would wholeheartedly agree with you.

If you want to know what Christianity (and Hellenism) were like at this time, I suggest reading;
*The World of Late Antiquity, by Peter Brown
*The Early Christian Centuries by Philip Rousseau
*Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman
*The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity

It's a common misconception that "the Chruch," (by which I mean the Nicine/Chalcedonian/Catholic/Orthodox church) was super centralized right from the start, or that it was unified in it's liturgy and doctrine, or that there was a strict church hierarchy. That generally didn't become true until the early middle ages, around the time of the Charlemagne bookmark in CK2, and was NOT true in the Migration Era.

Was Hellenism equally decentralized? Yes. It was also equally centralized.

 

[EmperorG]

I'd like Hellenism to be reformable simply so I could roleplay an Emperor redirecting the faith wholesale like Julian tried with his Sol Invicta shtick, whether it was or was not actually a reformed religion isn't as important as being given more room to role-play a rebirth of a dying faith.

 

[loup99]

I'd like Hellenism to be reformable simply so I could roleplay an Emperor redirecting the faith wholesale like Julian tried with his Sol Invicta shtick, whether it was or was not actually a reformed religion isn't as important as being given more room to role-play a rebirth of a dying faith.

In the mod you do however get the option of restoring the Pontificate Maxima. Although there could naturally be more options to customise it more, but at the moment since Hellenism is fairly fleshed out already for a dying minority religion we haven't focused on it.

 

[Wixelt]

I know Christianity wasn’t completely dogmatic (with the different Chalcedonian rites on the path to schism) at this time period and agree Christian (probably Hindu too) centralisation isn’t very represented in this mod, but I considered Hellenism to be more comparable to unreformed pagans due to the absence of scripture or clergy hierarchies (however rigid) after the destruction of the Pontifex.

 

[loup99]

Christian (probably Hindu too) centralisation isn’t very represented in this mod

Do you mean the centralisation process or the relatively decentralised state at start?

 

[Wixelt]

A mix of both.

 

[loup99]

A mix of both.

Anything concrete in particular you think should be changed to represent it better?

 

[ASlightlyCrispyPierogi]

I'd like Hellenism to be reformable simply so I could roleplay an Emperor redirecting the faith wholesale like Julian tried with his Sol Invicta shtick, whether it was or was not actually a reformed religion isn't as important as being given more room to role-play a rebirth of a dying faith.

Given the context of the era, would it not make more sense to put the 'Reformable Hellenism' efforts into Latin Solar? It's the rotting corpse that Hellenic is in the base game (zero provinces, zero characters, etc.) and was only barely defined under Julian 'n' Pals before petering out. The bits needed to organize Hellenic are already in-game.

Also, on the topic of Hellenic Mystery Cult and/or Neoplatonist societies, please don't go the lazy route and just make them a reskinned Monastic Order a la the Stoics. I know it's not overly helpful to just say 'do something different' and then not offer much to go on (Should Mithraic be made a Martial Society, given its popularity among soldiers? Neoplatonists have the academy, so that seems straightforward enough. Cybele had eunuchs and that's about the extent of my knowledge.), but I'd rather avoid recycling content.

Edit: Slight correction, there is one playable Latin Solar character (who never survives because they're a opm count vassalized to a one-province Nicene duke surrounded by much stronger powers). My bad.

 

[loup99]

Also, on the topic of Hellenic Mystery Cult and/or Neoplatonist societies, please don't go the lazy route and just make them a reskinned Monastic Order a la the Stoics. I know it's not overly helpful to just say 'do something different' and then not offer much to go on (Should Mithraic be made a Martial Society, given its popularity among soldiers? Neoplatonists have the academy, so that seems straightforward enough. Cybele had eunuchs and that's about the extent of my knowledge.), but I'd rather avoid recycling content.

Recycling monastic orders is out of question, there are already existing societies for that. If it was to do that then it would already have been done ages ago. What we will probably do though is that if we do a "model mystery cult" we are satisfied with the others will be modelled on that, with their specialities and particularities added on top.

 

[Seimour]

The main thing I'd look forward to is to have Hellenism keep the christian UI instead of being stuck with the norse one as it currently is.
Any fleshing out or use of the holy fury added content is just icing on the cake when I make use of the hellenic provinces of Soisson to convert to that religion and restore the empire sans the Gallileans.

Isn't Latin solar entirely unfleshed and in Africa?

 

[mattrhearn]

Slightly off-topic, but I'd recommend re-modeling some of the Hindu sub-religions as well if Neoplatonism is going to become a society. Mimamsa, for example,is treated as a heresy when it is a darśana, and an orthodox ones at that. Darśanas are better understood as philosophical schools, like Neoplatonism within Hellenism (Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta as collated in the 8th century can be seen as a rough parallel to Neoplatonism specifically). It would be like making separate religions in the West for Stoicism, and Atomism, and yes, Hermetics - these philosophical schools were not necessarily considered mutually exclusive, either with each other or with the mainstream doctrine of faith.

It's a hazy enough line that depending on the mod/game's approach it can be treated as one or the other (Lux Invicta does just fine treating philosophical strains as religions) but it should definitely be internally consistent.

 

[Zarket]

I know Christianity wasn’t completely dogmatic (with the different Chalcedonian rites on the path to schism) at this time period and agree Christian (probably Hindu too) centralisation isn’t very represented in this mod, but I considered Hellenism to be more comparable to unreformed pagans due to the absence of scripture or clergy hierarchies (however rigid) after the destruction of the Pontifex.

I am totally agreed with this. There are some reasons for the extintion of hellenism, and I think that a hellenist emperor (or king) would try to fix that. Enables reformation could be a good form to show that.

 

[pvt900]

To be honest, I think if the new system can be integrated so that in the event people can Reform the religion. Especially since as of the earliest date Christianity is the predominant faith in the world, and a Hellenism reformation could be used to push it as the religion's revival especially if the Reformer is the Emperor of the WRE, ERE or The whole Empire.

 

[SkyGreen24]

Maybe instead of making hellenism reformable you should use the new religion mechanics to be able to change it around a bit once the roman empire is fully restored/united, since you can now change tiny bits of the religion more or less.
This would allow a glorious Roman Emperor to adjust the religion according to his ideas in order to ensure the stability or whatnot