Chapter 6292 Rules of Faith

Chapter 6292 Rules of Faith

Ves did not act according to people's expectations.

What Ves had done was to impose himself onto the gathered churches in a brazen and unacceptable manner.

He not only wanted to be in complete charge of the coalition in the initial years of its existence, but he also sought to dictate how power would be shared after there was room for greater power sharing.

The representatives had made many good arguments why the share of voting rights in the coalition should be based on membership size, degree of involvement, wealth, age, state support, military might, societal contributions and more.

Perhaps the only subject they could agree upon was that no single criteria should determine the ranking of different faiths. It was too unfair to use measurements such as membership size and the amount of mechs they have under their command as the sole determinants of their ranking.

Faiths that scored weak in one area tended to be strong in other areas. Should their value to the coalition be discounted just because they never optimized their organizations to score well in an arbitrary factor that never held any importance in the past?

This was why the dispute gradually started to shift towards a compromise solution. It was clear that no one could gain total satisfaction without attracting the complete ire of other opposing faiths. The logical solution would be to find a middle ground where the amount of voting rights would be determined by a formula that incorporated every important variable and assigned certain weight values to them to denote their relative importance.

This was why the pugnacious representative of the Seekers of the Promised Land turned to Ves. The conversation proceeded in a direction that put a lot more emphasis on membership and population than he liked.

This was bad news for the SPL because its strong emphasis on bloodlines, heritage and a whole host of historical reasons caused it to maintain a small and tight-knit community of highly religious and militant worshipers.

Though its size simply couldn't match up to behemoths like the Diocese of New Rome and the Neo-Crescent Faith, one of the greatest advantages of the SPL was that it had always maintained a high degree of unity and cohesion throughout millennia. The members of the SPL and its predecessor organizations had proven its strength as a major force in the religious community many times that it was unthinkable to rank them far below the traditional big boys.

As such, the SPL clearly wanted to skew the discussion back in his favor by having the organizer and moderator of the discussion bring the topic back into balance.

What Ves should have done was to give smaller faiths such as the SPL a bone by agreeing to put more weight on other criteria such as placing a greater value on first-raters or taking their current military assets into account.

He did not do so. He plainly stated that population size should be the sole variable used to determine voting rights in the coalition.

While this attempted declaration came as a pleasant surprise to the other old faiths, their representatives actually adopted cautious and waiting expressions.

Even they did not expect for Ves to blatantly decide this important in their favor. While they most definitely wanted to have a greater say in the decision-making of the coalition, they were keenly aware that getting too much would only drive away the smaller faiths, thereby inflicting massive massive damage to a cooperative that aimed to represent all of the faiths of red humanity!

The representative of the SPL was completely justified in his indignation towards the mech designer that sought to dictate his decisions to faiths that were far older and wealthier than himself!

"Professor Larkinson, with all due respect. Your premature verdict does not accurately reflect the traditional power balance of our religious community. Basing our voting rights on membership size alone without any regard for class, wealth, influence and so on will cause the churches that are most active in third and second-rate states to overtake ones that are rooted in first-rate states. If that happens, then the coalition of faiths will turn into an interest organization that disproportionately seeks to satisfy the selfish desires of the weakest and least productive members of our society. Such undeserving welfare will not benefit our society as much as investing in our best and brightest."

Seeing that his earlier emotional outburst fall on flat ears, the representative of the SPL switched tracks and made a rational plea instead. He controlled her wording and put forth a number of logical and convincing arguments.

Unfortunately for the SPL, Ves remained unreceptive to this latest plea.

A stocky and bearded dwarf-like figure wearing traditional blacksmith garb appeared in front of all of the representatives.

The external incarnation had fed off the spiritual feedback of quite a few craftsmen and dwarves over the years. This allowed him to exude a heavy presence through his glow that partially radiated through the remote connections!

With the help of his godly presence, it became quite hard for the representatives to deny Vulcan's divine trappings.

"Superior Mother!"

The representative of the Temple of Hexism, who happened to be a familiar sight to Ves, burst out in fanaticism as the imperious and matronly visage of the Superior Mother imposed herself on Blinky's form!

If people still found reason to question Vulcan's divinity, they found it much harder to do the same towards the Superior Mother!

The external incarnation of Cynthia Larkinson not only channeled the aura of a genuine True God, but also possessed exquisite control over her own transcendent power.

She was expertly able to work with the limitations of this virtual venue and convey as much of her god-like might through the flawed remote communication channels!

Ves smirked when he called over a third god.

"Gaia!"

This time, it was the turn of the representative of the Gaia Coven to look as if she had entered paradise. Her eyes practically rolled over as the manifestation of a radiant and divine tree hijacked Blinky's spiritual form!

Unlike the Superior Mother, Gaia possessed a lot of might, courtesy of the large amount of devoted Terran worshipers.

However, Gaia had no relations to old and powerful cultivators who had accumulated a lot of knowledge and practiced many abilities to perfection, so her control over her aura was much less refined.

This made an even greater impact as her raw power struck the spirits of all of the representatives like a crashing shuttle!

Though Gaia's quality of energy was still very much deficient, she clearly had no issue with the quantity that she had at her command! Just the raw power at her disposal was probably enough for her to independently form a manifestation in the material realm and actively fight to tilt the balance of numerous crucial battles of the Red Tide Offensive!

"This... is your true source of power." Ves declared as he tried his best to maintain Gaia's presence. "No mortal source of strength can match the relevance of the power of your god. A faith that tries to gain more power by playing secular power plays has no place in our coalition of faiths. In this club, the only basis of power is the strength of your god, and the only currency worth counting is the faith produced by your flock. Now, does any of you disagree with my verdict?"

"..."

"Thought so." Ves smirked.

He knew at this point, he had fully cemented his control over the coalition of faiths.

Though he did not know what it would morph into after a few years, for now, he would be assured that it would form his most solid and obedient backing in the Red Collective!