| Johannes Moorwhelp | |
|---|---|
 Alonsus Secundus by Dancinfox | |
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Positions |
136th Chief Shepherd |
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Affiliations |
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Motto |
Until Rod and Right Can Be Crushed |
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Age |
466 (2335 A.D.- ) |
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Family |
Octavus the Opulent† (Father) |
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Orders |
Ordination 2751 A.D.
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|
Residence |
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Signature |
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| Styles of Alonsus Secundus | |
|---|---|
 Prudentes Ut Serpentes Implices Ut Columbae | |
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Reference Style |
His Holiness |
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Spoken Style |
Your Holiness |
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Religious Style |
Archbishop |
Alonsus II (Common Alonsus Secundus; born Johannes Waldebert Moorwhelp) is the Archbishop of the Church of the Holy Light as elected on May 10 2803 A.D., in which capacity he is Bishop of Stormwind and Chief Shepherd of the College of Canons. Alonsus is regarded as an accomplished missionary, philosopher, and commander.
Early Life[]
Suddenly and at a tender age, Johannes found himself in leadership of Clan Moorwhelp. Said to be born in the purple, the first son of his Lord Father while he was patriarch. The entire burden of his clan, which enjoyed a Golden Age under his father and grandfather, rest squarely upon his shoulders.
Johannes was never comfortable with worldly power, though. He preferred an unremarkable life, much to the chagrin of his older brothers who most certainly could have managed the wealth of the clan with more acumen. Upon the death of his father, Johannes distributed much of his money imprudently.
As a Clan patriarch, Johannes joined his older brothers on the field of battle. Perennial clan feuds would eventually see the hill clans wrapped up with the Bronzebeards in the War of the Three Hammers. In the early spring of the first year of the war, the first series of Dark Iron raids would ravage the country side, taking his brothers, his kinsmen, and his wife.
Having had his dignity robbed from him, Johannes served the war through and was offered an ancestral seat on the Senate. Shamed, mentally feeble, and uninspired by the idea of statesmanship, he set aside the toga of senatorship for a coarse hair shirt, departing for the woods to live a life of solitude and asceticism.
For untold years, Johannes wandered through the wilderness, eating only fallen fruit and wild vegetables, preaching only to wild animals and plants. He was never strong, and now unceasing fasting ruined his digestion and played havoc with his heart. Yet Johannes looked upon these years as the most fulfilling and happiest years of his life.
But these years could not last forever. Wandering across ancient spans, no longer covered by the dark of the woods, he stumbled into the the Arathi Highlands. Curious about these people and their way of life, Johannes wandered into the Arathorian Empire and a culture deeply rooted in the Church of the Holy Light.
Johannes was taken up with the rapturous language of this philosophy. For several decades, Johannes mastered the philosophy of the Light by careful study. Though the language was not easy for him to learn, he was able to eventually suppress even his accent to conform as much as possible. He desired to belong in this human society and have a purchase of its way of life.
Studying daily in the local church, Johannes befriended the priests there and, though the philosophy was very human centric, he became known as a sage. After several years of service, Johannes was given a place in the imperial university as a professor of the Dwarven Language. He taught priests and ambassadors that went on to be some of the vital links between the young civilization with dwarven society. After untold years of this servitude, he was recognized by the imperial authorities and given a place as a servant to the Trollbane family and a Caretaker.
In this capacity as Caretaker of the Cloak, Johannes was sent to keep care of a variety of powerful relics owned by the imperial family in Stratholme, a rising cultural center in the world at that time. He worked very closely with the ministries of the Church through his time in the hallowed halls of Stratholme.
The Bishop of Stratholme, Æþelwulf, with imperial blessing chose Johannes to be ordained as a priest of the Light and the Order of Preachers. He would serve the Seven Kingdoms by ministering to the needy alongside his duties as Caretaker. He was promoted to Caretaker of the Chalice, a position which granted him leadership of the four Caretakers within the Order of Preachers.
Priesthood[]
Johannes's practice as a priest was far away the trappings of the high church for some time. Remarked by his contemporaries as a quiet priest preferring a simple life, his life within the order of the priesthood brought him all over the Eastern Kingdoms, most immediately to Quel'Thalas. His mission to Silvermoon proved to be formative to him as it became apparent that the vast majority of elves would convert to the philosophy. Johannes was a moderate voice to the elves in a time where a struggle between purists and mages was wearing at the balance in wider society.
Though he often traveled to remote missions, he made his home in Lordaeron City, where his contemporaries agree he finally found the assimilation he had so desired. Johannes penned many works of philosophy, but his readership was very limited, and his ideas would not begin to take root for several centuries.
Moorwhelp witnessed countless changes of power within his order, his church, and in the wider world. His order seemed to fill and empty in pulses that to humans were lifetimes, but to a long-lived dwarf was the beat of a heart. This lead Moorwhelp to become a very detached priest as the course of years faded away with his fast-paced surroundings.
He was eventually sent to Northshire Abbey to act as a liaison between the Abbey and the growing church in the south. It was here where he was exposed to a culture of deep spiritual with the Clerics of Northshire. He took his vows with the permission of his superiors to asceticism, chastity, and adopted a strict adherence to a life of work and prayer.
It was in Northshire that he met Abbot Farol, a man whose teachings on ritual, reverence, and the Universe he admired. Abbot Farol became his spiritual father in a way that no other teacher before the Abbot had gained. Much of Moorwhelp's practice was dedicated to writing down the philosophies of this rare man who would go on to become Archbishop Alonsus Faol.
Northshire was a kind and comfortable place for Johannes, who was far enough away from the imperial courts to breathe the fresh air of the Valley and get dirt under his fingers for the first time. Moorwhelp traveled to Stormwind City often to preach in a growing church there. He spent most of his time inscribing ancient rituals and cataloging the thousands of relics there kept.
Invasion[]
On a fateful afternoon in late November, word reached the abbey that a group of seven brutes, twice the size of any human man, rode out of the Black Morass on worgs and slaughtered an entire village. The perplexed Clerics of Northshire, at the behest of King Llane Wrynn, began an inquiry into the matter along with the Kirin Tor. The inquiry confirmed what many had feared most: these Light-forsaken creatures, the Orcs, were by some means carrying demonic energies with them.
The Clerics and Mages began immediately to research all that they knew about demons and the strange Portal that had been opened to grant Orcish access to Azeroth. Johannes's head was spinning at all of the relics, previously left to their vaults for years at a time, were being used in investigation or given to knights to wield.
Nothing proved quick enough. With a betrayal of one of the Kirin Tor's own, the Orcish Horde extended the Dark Portal to such a length as to allow legions of demon-fueled brutes through to Azeroth. In a flurry of destruction, town and fortress alike fell to Orcish exploit. Their goal: the capital.
This was the first time Moorwhelp had seen the power of the Light be used in war. In a traveling band that seemed to never arrive in time, the Clerics, Johannes included, set about the countryside to provide relief and absolution to the dying, but also to send the Orcish cur back to hell.
As the countryside of Elwynn was ravaged by the Horde, the Clerics knew that they would be next. Ancient rituals were being performed on the abbey to ward it from demonic threat. During one such ritual, the Ritual of Sacred Binding, authorities from Strom burst into the Abbey, interrupting the clerics. A decree from the head of the Order of Preachers, the Caretakers, and the imperial authorities, with the signature of the Emperor Liam Trollbane, the Mother Superior of the Order of Preachers, and the Caretaker of the Sword. The decree demanded that Johannes and his Caretakers be recalled immediately to Purgation Isle.
Purgation Isle[]
The document would later be proven to be a forgery on the part of the Caretaker of the Chalice of Purgation Isle.
Episcopate[]
Under Benedictus[]
Johannes was a most unlikely candidate for success. Of venerable age, balding, and frail, he had no craving for the episcopal office. He often complained in the early months of his episcopacy that he was "so stricken by sorrow that he could scarcely speak."
Though Johannes regarded his episcopacy as a punishment, he immediately threw himself into the struggle for order in the midst of disunity. He began his administration of the troubled Diocese of Stormwind with an act of penance on behalf of his predecessor for his heresy: a pilgrimage to the Tomb of Uther the Lightbringer, in which he was joined by many of the clerics of the Kingdom of Stormwind. To no apparent, immediate avail, the move left Stormwind free to fester in heresy and schism while Johannes made his pilgrim way through the deconstructed Lordaeron. But the priesthood would be unified by this penitential act in a way that he did not predict.
In his writings to the scattered of Stormwind, he urged that "spiritual mothers and fathers could not be so absorbed in external cares as to forget the inner life of the soul, nor neglect external things in the care for one's inner life. One who is compelled by necessity of his position to speak of the highest things must also exemplify the highest things."
The words were autobiographical. Nothing seemed too great, nothing too little for his personal care. His labors are more astonishing when one considers that he was in poor health and often confined to bed. "For a long time," he wrote to an unnamed friend, "I have been unable to rise from my bed. I am tormented by the pains of illness: a kind of tongue-like flame that seems to pervade my whole body as the plague: to live is pain. I am daily dying, but never die."
During Johannes's time as Bishop of Stormwind, the Diocese of Stormwind held an extensive patrimony following the Archiepiscopal Hegemony. Unglamorous, though extensive and productive, the holdings rested on the mainland around Stormwind City. These lands cumulatively made the Church of the Holy Light one of the wealthier land owners in the Eastern Kingdoms. Quite naturally, then, during the Elemental Invasion and other national emergencies, officials of the patrimony stepped in to collect land taxes and feed the population. The head of this tax and welfare system was Johannes.
And there he was in the threadbare robes of a humble brother, sending the priests to work the fields and eating alongside the pauper. "Priests, the bridge-keepers of the divine and the mortal, must mingle compassionate with the necessities of the lowly. The more kindly compassion descends to the lowest, the more vigorously it recurs to the highest," he penned in an urgent letter to the priests. To eschew the traditional robes of his office was to eschew pride, Johannes thought.
Johannes, however, was provoked and irritated by the pretention of his numerous high-born rivals. He strained every nerve to stomp on the fingers of any high-handed sinner that would attempt to bring profane motive to the Church of the Holy Light. His efforts were often waylayed by rivals of his that would not accept his censure. One notable instance would be referred to post-humously as the Bauvlet Crisis. Lord Terick Bauvlet, Stormwind marshal and Lord of the Black Morass, imprisoned and tortured many priests in the Stormwind Stockades after a long, failed struggle to force Johannes's hand in consecrating bishops that would openly preach total war with the New Horde.
Time in prison could not blunt Johannes's vengeance against all who would not repent of high-handed blasphemy. After a Silvermoon-orchestrated slaughter of pilgrims at the Tomb of Uther the Lightbringer, Johannes marshalled a crusade against the Blood Knights. He preached in the streets, "[S]o Our Lord Uther the Lightbringer did stay to die at the hands of his apprentice for love of his King, so too shall we go to die in defense of he that defended, overthrowing this evil and consuming ourselves in the bargain to do it."
Johannes, once a pacifistic elder of crumpling constitution, was proven to be a fierce combatant.
Archiepiscopate[]
Early Reception[]
After the abdication of Caspius, the bishops of the church, widely viewed by the world to be in shambled and on the verge of schism, entered into the third conclave since the Third War. After the third vote and the third hour, Johannes Moorwhelp was elected unanimously and chose the name Alonsus Secundus in homage to the patron saint of Stormwind City, Alonsus Faol. His unprecedented, swift election was very well received by the wider public who had excepted him to be elected in the previous conclave. Since the election, His Holiness has dedicated himself to the revival of the Silver Hand, the reform of Council of Bishops legal code, peace among believers, and the unification of the Church of the Holy Light.
Silver Hand Revival[]
When the bishops of the world convened at Northshire and swiftly elected Alonsus, they well knew that he was perhaps the most vocal opponent of several of the dominant forces in the Alliance Silver Hand. His Holiness' pre-election history with the Silver Hand was dual in nature - on one hand, as senior bishop, he, through the ministry of the Clergy of the Holy Light, brought the Silver Hand revival. But on the other, as the revival took its own character, he could not prevent an elite few Alliance paladins from the perennial pretension that the branches Silver Hand could possibly be separated from their firm foundation in the Church, a notion that he would spend years straining every nerve to vanquish as Archbishop. If it was true - if he was the warrior archbishop to stamp out evil in the Church - his faith was his sword and his prize in mind, the very soul of Uther's order.
Bad Blood and Tarnished Honor[]
Despite this, Alonsus made a vow to those faithful present at the night of his election to work within the appointments that his predecessor had made, an unexpected move that would influence his archiepiscopacy indelibly. Grand Master Ashvale, who had herself a turbulent history with Alonsus as a Caspian appointment, proved herself to be a friend in his mission to restore the Silver Hand an plant the revival he had started long ago firmly in the garden of the Church.
Even with all solicitude both had undertaken to mobilize the Silver Hand after the Caspian dissolution, the lines in the sand had been drawn before he was elected; the various Silver Hand detachments were determined to stay divided, for now. Ashvale would soon abdicate her position of Grand Master with Alonsus's blessings, the two of them agreeing that it was unsuitable for the perilous throne to be filled in the current state of discord.
Unexpected Betrayal[]
Soon after, Lord Chancellor Allrick Antonius and Tenevus Stromheart had staged a plot to privately vote to dissolve the Congregation of the Silver Hand, which was the source and summit of any unity that remained in the revival. The elite of the church, swayed by the argument of Alonsus's Chancellor, voted in favor of the resolution.
Alonsus was privately outraged by the decision of his peers, but publicly, there was precious little he could do. Bad blood ran thick. Engaged simultaneously in a struggle for the unity of the Church and the peace of the Council, he knew that this was a fight that, newly elected, he could not fight. So, with Lilith Olethos, he vowed to reform the Congregation in due time.
In the interim, with Alonsus distracted to the good of the wider church, Tenevus Stromheart used the massive power vacuum, lack of clarity, and outrage at the Council decision he helped to render in his foundation of the Court of Uther. The Court, Alonsus thought, was nothing more than an organization, unclear in purpose, that sought to usurp as much from the traditional functions of the Church, the State, and the Silver Hand revival as Stromheart could possibly gobble up.
Teetering between the "merely secular" and the "wholly spiritual," the Court of Uther infuriated Alonsus by what he regarded as a blatant disregard for the truth, but he could not wrap himself up in another lengthy conflict with Stromheart, he thought. He left Stromheart and the Court to its own business, working with Lilith Olethos to redraft the Congregation of the Silver Hand.
Congregation Revived[]
In a time more lengthy than he would have liked, the Congregation of the Silver Hand was re-established for business, this time with a completely different structure, one that ultimately disabled the Congregation from meaningful growth. Though Alonsus was irritated, he obeyed the Council and watched the Silver Hand Congregation fade once again to irrelevance in short order.
The Conflict[]
Times Change[]
The Hidden Year[]
The Hidden Priesthood[]
[]
Decrees[]
Decreta: The Light has been pleased guards against forgery, exhorts believers to be faithful, and announces His Holiness' intention to keep current advisers and work with them for very serious reform, especially to the Silver Hand and the Council of Bishops.
Decreta: The Crowning Dawn lifts all previous out-standing excommunications; announces investigation of all loss of priestly faculty, and makes several minor changes in the leadership of Congregations.
Decree 3: Perfect Unity and Communion subsumes the Orthodox Church into the fold of the Church of the Holy Light establishing the filial relationship between the Archbishop and the Patriarch.
Lineage[]
Presently Held Posts[]
| Archbishop | ||
| Preceded by Eustasius Greenleaf |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Incumbent |
| Bishop of Stormwind | ||
| Preceded by Kaston Electus |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Bishop Tyragonfal |
| Chief Shepherd | ||
| Preceded by Alonsus Primus |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Bishop Tyragonfal |
Previously Held Posts[]
| Lord Chamberlain of His Holiness | ||
| Preceded by Office Created |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Niklos Adamant |
| Clerk of the Council of Bishops | ||
| Preceded by Gottfried Helheim |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Eustasius Greenleaf |
| Vicar-General of the Church | ||
| Preceded by Caspius Greenleaf |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Melchiz Tzedeck |
| Prefect of the Congregation for the Dwarven Rite | ||
| Preceded by Hragli Runeforge |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Benegrim Ironbrow |
| Promoter of the Faith | ||
| Preceded by Position Created |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Office Merged with Lord Chamberlain |
| Prior of the Holy See | ||
| Preceded by Agustus Throben |
Alonsus Secundus | Succeeded by Office Abolished |
