The men traveled under cover of night, their steeds galloping under the moonlit sky, over the hills and across the plains of the Duchy of Lordea's borderlands. They pushed far into the duchy itself, their work already done in the villages closest to the rest of Osteria. Their destinations in the kingdom's newest province were numerous, but far from all-encompassing; it was unfeasible to scour the whole territory for what they were looking for, and there was no need in truth. It had never been necessary for their targets to be eliminated wholesale, even if such an act of excess was feasible. Pushing them to the shadows worked well enough—defeated them most effectively. The lies they peddled could not spread there, shrouded in secret and obscurity. A few zealots always lingered on for awhile, but only among the old. The young were the ones in need of teaching, and they were the easiest to teach. A man alone with little to lose had no reason to release his grasp on all he had ever believed, but a mother and a father had one reason for every one child they parented. The creator had been wise to make pagans love their children as much as good Vinossians did; it made them much easier to convert.
All cloaked in black, the inquisitors arrived in their assigned villages at their assigned times, and made haste for the local guardhouses. A dozen declarations had been signed, each identical in wording, each bearing the signature of Ecclesiast Timone II. Their demands were clear: there was to be no intervention. It was as important that the guards not halt the proceedings as it was that they not participate in them. If the inquisitors were seen to only be able to enact the will of Vinos upon the heretics with the aid of the village guard, it would embolden the enemy. How easy would it be, after all, for the pagans to ensure men of their own teachings guarded their own villages? No, it needed to be the inquisitors, and the inquisitors alone. If ever it was feared there would be serious resistance, the Templars would more than suffice in rendering it a mere annoyance. It was not feared for there to be resistance this time. The province had been spared inquisition for so long that some of the young had no memories of it, and some of the old had forgotten theirs. By the end of night, they would all remember. All the heretics would live in fear. And all those bathed in Vinos' light, who watched their godless neighbors suffer, would be more devout for the experience.
With the guardsmen subdued, the inquisitors set to work. Just outside of one of the villages, the very first target of the night was a pagan shrine in the woods, populated by a lone, elderly preacher who had spent his day singing the praises of some dead god and did not hear the commotion outside his door. He perished in agony, screaming as his place of worship was enveloped in holy flames. In another village, a family was ripped apart, the mother and father stabbed in the gut by men in black armed with swords, their two daughters dragged off to be taken in by the nearest church, to be taught of the glory of Vinos. In the largest town hit, a trio of inquisitors barged into the abode of a rich merchant. His house guard struck one of the attackers, injuring him, and was punished for his heresy with a wild flurry of blows from a studded club, breaking his arm and beating him unconscious. The merchant was captured, a jewel encrusted goblet full of expensive wine dropped to the floor as a dagger was placed to this throat. As the inquisitors proceeded to ransack his house, they found a pagan idol under the mattress. The merchant's throat was slit, and all his valuables taken, to be sent to the Parna. All his more meager possessions would be given away to whomever the local pastor declared were the town's most pious men, and his home itself was placed directly into the pastor's care. Perhaps it would be turned into an orphanage, to care for the vulnerable of Lordea, or perhaps it would be sold off to some other merchant so that the pastor could have a gold necklace and a new horse. The inquisitors did not know and did not care. All that mattered is that the pagans were made fewer in number, and the pious were enriched for it. The people needed to understand that just as there were penalties for shying away from Vinos' light, there were rewards for basking in it.
Days later, in a church in Tythmas, a pair of irrelevant lesser nobles from some glorified merchant house were being married in the capital's third or fourth largest church. It had been third before the Parna was built, that must have made it fourth now. The groom had been a holy man—not of the cloth, of course, but church-going and generous with his donations. The bridge, however, was from a house of pagans. They weren't idiots, they had never flaunted their apostasy, but nonetheless they kept faith with foreign gods despite being named under the light of Vinos. Some months ago, a visitor to their home had not spotted a single artefact of the Church of Vinos, and became suspicious. Rumor had spread since then of the family's lack of devotion, with those most paranoid among the nobility guessing, rightly, that they did not follow the church at all. The inquisitors generally did not respond to this sort of gossip, lest they be used as a tool for court intrigue. Yet still, they had circuitously managed to purge a pagan family from Tythmas. For the day the family's patriarch heard of the inquisition in Lordea, he made plans to wed his daughter to a pious Vinossian as soon as he could. Any visitors to their home would now see stars of Vinos prominently decorating every room, and they had made a substantial and very public donation to the Parna as well. Their wedding, too, was quite a holy affair, attended by many pastors and many holy families, and with Vinossian iconography everywhere the eye could see. One figure in the reception, though, stood out among the nobles in their fancy clothes and the pastors in their white robes. A man garbed all in black, a hilt at his side and a bronze necklace with a star medallion adorning his neck. He did not speak to any guest but one, sparing his words for the patriarchy of the once heretical family. His comment was a simple congratulations, a generic well wishes for his daughter and her new husband, but the gift he offered along with it held more distinctive meaning. A goblet, encrusted in jewels, was placed into the nobleman's hands. The inappropriately dressed man smiled, and told him it had been made especially for one of the wealthiest and most flaunting merchants in Lordea. He was pious, the man in black explained, even more so than the patriarch to which he spoke. The merchant had given everything that he had to the Church of Vinos—literally. Even his life.
The noble did not find it hard to understand what the inquisitor meant, and neglected to drink from the goblet. He doubted the red stain inside was only from wine.
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