Hagia Sophia (Faith)
This is the Tether that Servitors of Faith find...
'convenient' would be the appropriate term... to not discuss much. There are... 'issues' sounds nice and
nonjudgmental, no?... surrounding it.
The fact that it was originally consecrated as a Christian
place of worship is actually not one of those issues - nor that the eventual
Tether was stabilized by Divine Fire in 540 AD. Well, the latter was not directly an issue; it would have
been targeted by Hell no matter who ended up in possession of the Tether. Of course, the fact that it was Gabriel's
certainly made it of interest to Belial, to the occasional detriment of the
Tether's structural integrity. It's
thus not altogether surprising that the Archangel of Divine Fire gifted it to
Khalid after the latter ascended to Superior status... actually, maybe it is,
after all. Well, even Archangels are
imperfect beings.
Now, in those early days, before things went really
sour, Khalid was far more ecumenical when it came to non-Muslim Tethers,
not to mention non-Muslim Servitors (although not as ecumenical as he is
today), so it was not particularly unusual that he decided to assign as
Seneschal one of his highest ranking Christian angels (a Mercurian named
Petros). It was also not particularly
unusual for the Tether to be increasingly ignored for the next seven hundred
years. Khalid had other issues to deal
with, and it swiftly became clear that the Archangel of Faith did not
particularly consider the Tether to be, frankly, worth his attention.
And when Constantinople fell, well, that's what made
the whole thing a hot potato, metaphorically speaking.
The ironic bit was that the Ottomans weren't
generally the convert-or-die type of conquerors: they pretty much didn't care
if their subjects were Christians or Jews, just as long as they paid their
taxes on time and didn't make trouble.
Unfortunately, when a city is sacked, bad things happen - and when they
started happening at the Hagia Sophia, the Seneschal (who had been steadily
screaming for help for about six months, with absolutely no response) was
incandescently furious. As Petros saw
it, he had a choice between being dissonant to his Word or to his Choir.
The choice was easy: after all, his essential nature
had never abandoned him. So, as the
Ottoman troops closed in, he calmly picked up his chalice and ciborium and
walked into the Tether Locus, making no attempt to disguise his ascension to
Heaven. This was dissonant, of course
- even if the eventual legend was of a monk who had walked into a wall - and that,
coupled with the loud Byzantine Greek oaths reverberating through Khalid's
Mosque, was certainly enough to get the Archangel of Faith's attention.
Objectively speaking, Petros was at bottom in the
wrong - but he didn't particularly care at that moment, and was not shy about
graphically informing his Archangel about some of the unintended consequences
of promoting a universal world religion.
Probably the most egregious action of his was his offer to back up his
argument via the testimony of the witnesses to the sack of the Hagia Sophia,
many of whom were undoubtedly streaming past the Pearly Gates right this
second. Petros was rude. Petros was insolent. Petros was deliberately pushing the limits
of the Pax Dei as far as he could. In
short, Petros was doing his level best to achieve martyrdom - and, if Khalid
had been any other Choir than Elohite (a point that was incidentally, not to
say unflatteringly, brought up quite early and in some detail), he might have
managed the trick. Instead, Khalid
Bound him to the physical structure of the Tether itself as a punishment. He's been in there ever since.
The Tether has degraded significantly since that
period: even after its conversion to a mosque Khalid remained uninterested in
maintaining it. Indeed, it's not been a
formal place of worship since the 1920s: today the Tether is a shadow of what
it used to be. Many members of the Host
are unaware that it even still exists.
But Servitors of Faith do remember, and now that things are...
'better' seems to sum it all up, really ... they are starting to consider the
best way to bring things up with Khalid about possibly letting Petros out of
his prison. Surely going on seven
hundred years is enough time to at least review the case, no?
On the other hand, there's the unique time structure
for celestials to consider. It's only
been two millennia since Khalid was just another Word-bound adventuring around
the Near East with his kid brother; a mere six hundred years since it became
obvious that Khalid was being quietly abandoned by Heaven; and an infinitesimal
fraction of a century since the Archangel of Faith's Fall was a terrifyingly
real possibility. Aside from that, he's
sort of busy right now dealing with some more unintended consequences of
certain of his former policies. In
short, possibly it's not yet the best time to bring up the subject. Heck, the last time someone checked with
Petros, even he was telling people to let it slide for a while. He's not in any pain, after all, and the
experience has certainly given him lots of time to work through what he did and
said. By now he's quite remorseful.
Mostly.
Hagia Sophia: Weak (5 Forces, Slow Flow, Rebound).