Greetings fellow Achaeans,

Judging by the recent spate of posts and the statements of certain
Occultists, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about who the
Church
of Achaea is, and what they stand for. I admit to having been somewhat
ignorant on the subject myself, so to alleviate that I read through the
entirety of the Holy Codex of the Church of Achaea in order to better
understand them. I found the experience to be most enlightening, and I
will here share with you the fruits of my reading. This will be quite
lengthy, as the Codex is fourteen pages long, so I will minimize direct
quotation from the text. Pentharian was quite wordy in attempting to
make his directions clear, but any who want to see the verification of
my statements may read the Codex for themselves. As it says, "...these
truths are available to any who enter this holy place and reads the
words written in this book."

Page 1: Nothing trememdously surprising here. A simple statement
of what book is being read. One may wonder, though, why the self-
proclaimed "Church of Achaea" named itself so. Is it a statement that it
is the only church in Achaea, that it represents all of Achaea, or
simply
a label by which to conveniently refer to the organization?
Page 2: Pentharian here states that he is Deucalion. He goes on to
define righteousness, quoting sages as saying that is is "doing what is
right or good. Just. Upright. Godly." He then adds that words can't
define righteousness, but only a person's entire life, thoughts, and
actions can. If he quoted the sages, however, then we may presume that
he thought their words to be some sort of useful reference point. So,
our mere mortal minds are to conceive of righteousness as doing what is
right (peculiarly unhelpful), what is just or fair, and what is godly
(i.e. behaving like the gods do). Since this is our reference point for
righteousness, we will refer to it often. Pentharian continues by
telling us that this very codex we are reading says that goodness is an
"eternal absolute", and thus it is known to be true. Members of the
church will be expected to live a good life and to end all that is
evil. Returning to our earlier reference point, we see that he must
intend for the church to live fairly and in the manner that the gods
do, and to seek to end all that is unfair and unlike the gods. There
also exist many selfish people who refuse to accept the consequences for
their actions. These people lie by saying that good and evil are
subjective. This can't be true however, because then you wouldn't be
able to live a life of absolute goodness if it were. I fail to make the
connection myself, but I must presume that a god operates by a logic
higher than my own. Pentharian finishes by saying that doing what is
good
(fair and like the gods, remember) will be harder than doing something
else, but has a greater reward of some sort.
Page 3: I will paraphrase as much as possible in the interests of
brevity. The following pages contain the ten commandments of this Codex,
and you should learn both the letter and the spirit of them. By living
your life by these rules, you will bring glory to the Church. Without
these rules, "...the Church is doomed to hypocrisy, confusion, and
apathy."
Page 4: Sometimes, you may need to use force against people who don't
listen to you. You may even need to kill them to stop them from being
evil. Don't worry though, since "...it is the *intent* <his emphasis>
of the action that makes the killing wrong and unjust.", so as long as
you
mean well, killing people is good. To kill if you don't think that it is
holy to do so is unacceptable, even if they are part of a group that
opposes you. When killing in righteous vengeance, keep it on a fair
1-to-1 ration. Unless of course, I say otherwise, war has been declared,
or the people in charge of the church tell you to. Then you can massacre
to your heart's content.
Page 5: Don't steal, because it's bad. Unless of course, it's from
a really bad person that I or the church say it's okay to steal from.
Then it's open season.
Page 6: Respect all of the gods, even the bad ones or the ones you
don't like.
Page 7: Innocent is hard to define. Scholars say that it means not
guilty, without blame, and harmless. The innocent are most often the
people who the evil (unfair and unlike the gods, if you recall) will be
trying to oppress. Try to protect people who can't defend themselves,
but
don't lose too much sleep over it.
Page 8: Your ultimate goal is to end all evil of any sort. It's
good to oppress evil people, but if people who don't seem to be evil say
that you are oppressive, try to figure out whether or not they are
lying.
Page 9: When you fight, you must be honorable about it, unless the
other guy isn't honorable. Then you fight however you want, but
get better bragging rights if you're honorable anyway.
Page 10: It's a lie that what's good for one person isn't good for
everyone. Goodness is absolute, everywhere, all the time. Being good
may not always be the best thing, but you have to do it anyway.
Page 11: If you make a promise, keep it, even if it's hard to. If
you made a progress that goes against the codex, then that was a bad
thing, but you don't have to keep it.
Page 12: Be kind to and defend your friends, allies, and anyone who
already likes you.
Page 13: Temples, the presence of a god, or any place that is
otherwise holy, is a safe zone for people you would otherwise kill. It's
okay though, since we like for them to run away.
Page 14: The spirit of the law is most important, but you aren't
smart enough to know what that is, so follow the letter too. Anybody
can read these words who wants to, so try not to make me look bad.
Symbolically wear clothing which represents Justice, Peace, Wisdom,
Discernment, Vigilance, Humility, Truth, Righteousness, and Honor.
Chase evil and bad things so that they fear you, and bring glory to the
church.

Just a few final notes. Mere mortal logic seems unable to grasp how
one can be like the gods (godly) when there are some gods who oppose
part or all of what is stated in the Codex. Reading the Codex raises as
many questions as it answers, but at least we know that the
church stands for the fact that whatever it says is right.

Penned by my hand on the 15th of Phaestian, in the year 307 AF.