I'm sure you possess this knowledge (afer all, you do seem to be the omniscient and most righteous spokesman of the church these days). I'm just going to inform the rest of Achaea who and what the Occultists are.
No, I am not a spokesman, I am a scholar, one of my fields of study being that of history. First of all, our guild was founded by those that turned away from the Church because you rejected them. Save me the whole "did you expect us to let those baby sacrificers and heart eaters live amongst us blah blah" argument. When you turned away the Occultists, they found it most convenient to live a life of secrecy and intrigue for reasons which I'm sure everybody can understand (if you don't know what I'm talking about, right now I want you to post a list of every guild skill you have, what it does, and the best way I can counter it). You mentioned something along the lines of us keeping knowledge from the masses even though we proclaim to want to spread our gifts and knowledge. Like the church, we expect those that wish to partake of our gifts and learn of our knowledge to come to us, not us to them (lest they learn the nature of our power and use it against us. The oath ensures our secutiy)
Now, you seem hellbent on "destroying evil without prejudice or forgiveness so the evil will eventually say 'awwww shucks, you were right all along.'" However, let me ask you this: is this necessary? As far as I'm concerned, the Selucarian Empire was quite successful in holding its own, despite the fact that numerous Occultists lived and flourished among the rest of the populace (yes, that includes paladins and priests).
In fact, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the Seleucarian empire would've had a much harder time combatting its enemies including the Black Wave had it not been for Occultists fighting at the fronts (yes, I know the paladins and priests played vital roles, too. But it shines a whole new light on the prospect of all us being no good evil bastards when long ago while facing a bloodthirsty goblin an Occultist was the only thing that saved your ass from death, eh?)
And for those that want to know: I use Seleucar as an example simply because it was successful, vital to our very existence as we know it, it demonstrated that priests and paladins could coexist with those that didn't agree with them, and because Sarapis himself aided its growth.

Most of you know that I am quite capable of making a long and tedious post that stretches for hours. However, the point of this post was not to argue any points: t'was simply to...CORRECT...Israfel about the nature of Occultists before he's up to his chin in his own bullshit. But like I said: you probably already knew this. If you didn't, perhaps you should find more information on a subject before speaking about it.


Kruldar Gront

Penned by my hand on the 25th of Scarlatan, in the year 253 AF.