Draft:High priests

Omega 0.90.4

High priests are the six recorded leaders of Omega's religions, including the Archdruid. Each carries a holy symbol and can be succeeded by a suitably advanced player. Meeting a high priest, killing one and earning the office are separate events: advancement is claimed at your patron's altar.

Finding a high priest

Each religion has a main temple in the countryside, marked X. The high priest normally occupies the northwestern chamber. From the central altar, search the concealed passage immediately to its north and follow the west corridor. These are separate locations from the five altars in the Rampart Pantheon.

Office	Initial holder	Main temple	World coordinates
Odin	Gallow	Shrine of the Noose	22, 30
Set	Kharst	Temple of the Black Hand	45, 45
Athena	Allana	Parthenon	51, 11
Hecate	Dara	Church of the Far Side	19, 46
Balance	Thistleman	Great Henge	32, 5
Lords of Destiny	Humperdinck	Halls of Fate	49, 59

Coordinates count from the world's upper-left corner, starting at 0; Rampart is at 27, 19. Reaching a temple's coordinates does not guarantee a safe journey through the surrounding terrain.

Your own religion's temple begins nonhostile, and the Great Henge begins nonhostile to everyone. The other initial high priests are hostile to visitors of another faith or no faith. Attacking or attempting to steal from an empty-handed person can still provoke them.

High priests can also appear as notable mansion residents, in wilderness encounters or through summoning the Hiscore NPC type. The summon chooses a random recorded person, not a selected priest. Mansion residents start hostile even to their own followers, and sleep when generated at night. Each newly generated high priest receives a holy symbol; an existing copy in your inventory does not prevent that.

Becoming high priest

Advance to Senior Priest, then pray at your patron's altar while carrying the required symbol and exceeding your own incumbent's recorded character level. All six initial incumbents have recorded level 10, so the initial requirement is level 11. The earlier promotions require 400, 1,500 and 4,000 priesthood experience, claimed one rank at a time.

Your religion	Required symbol	Final promotion spells
Odin	Set	Restoration
Set	Odin	Hellfire
Athena	Hecate	Hellfire
Hecate	Athena	Desecration
Balance	Any one of Odin, Set, Athena or Hecate	Disintegration and Heroism
Lords of Destiny	Destiny	No additional spell

The promotion also grants +5 current and maximum Power, including for Destiny. Your offered symbol becomes an identified, authorized symbol of your own religion. Pray with it in inventory or the pack; the altar's separate Sacrifice command is not this promotion procedure. The selected object is replaced with one symbol, so separate a stacked offering if you want to preserve extras. Your name, level and chosen behavior replace the incumbent's history; games marked as cheated do not write the shared history.

Alignment must still permit advancement: Odin and Athena require a positive value; Set and Hecate accept values of 1 or lower; Druids require a value from -10 through +10. These promotion limits differ slightly from initial admission. Destiny has no alignment restriction.

The symbol need not come from a temple, and the incumbent need not be killed. Theft or a symbol taken from a mansion encounter can satisfy the same requirement. Killing a high priest simply installs a randomly named successor, preserving the recorded character level. Those replacements are spellcasters, so killing an initial melee priest can make the next encounter more dangerous.

Handling the symbol

A successful pickpocket attempt takes the priest's first carried object, normally the holy symbol before the priest has acquired other possessions. Dexterity, thieves' rank and the NPC's combat level affect success; membership in the Thieves' Guild is not required to attempt it. Success shifts alignment one point toward Chaos. Trying again after the target is empty-handed provokes hostility.

Do not activate an identified symbol taken from a priest before your promotion authorizes it. Even your own religion's stolen symbol is unauthorized. Invoking it can destroy your carried possessions, drain mana and leave you at 1 HP. An unidentified symbol's failure to respond is not evidence that identifying and trying again is safe.

An authorized symbol supplies healing, cleansing and mana recovery. Promotion is the normal source, but the Destiny ritual can grant an authorized symbol before High Priest rank. Activation checks the item's identity and authorization against the current patron, not priesthood rank or alignment directly. Blessing, identification and ordinary charging are not ways to authorize a stolen copy.

Symbol state	Activation result
Unidentified	No effect and no hour recorded
Identified, but unauthorized or from another patron	Godsfire can destroy accessible possessions, drain mana and reduce HP to 1
Authorized for the current patron, same hour as last successful symbol use	One symbol shatters and HP becomes 1
Authorized for the current patron, different hour	Recovery succeeds; the item remains and the hour is recorded

The Godsfire destruction loop only runs while HP is above 1 and does not include the pack. Its failure to run at lower HP does not authorize the symbol. The hour marker is shared by all six kinds and every copy, begins unused, and compares the 24-hour clock hour. The same hour on another date still matches unless a successful use at a different hour intervened; this is not an elapsed one-hour timer. Changing patron can also make a formerly authorized symbol unsafe.

Successful recovery	Scope
Healing	If below maximum HP + 10, add 1–100 HP; if that passes maximum HP, set HP to maximum + 10. Blindness is removed. This need not fill a large HP deficit.
Cleansing	Remove poison and disease; uncurse currently equipped items, not all unused or packed possessions
Mana	Raise to at least the calculated normal maximum; preserve a higher existing amount
Cost	No mana cost, item consumption or reduction of a finite charge supply

The six symbols' own blessing or curse does not modify those successful effects. Ordinary prayer does not automatically replace a lost symbol after you already hold High Priest rank. Beneficial artifact enchantment can restore stripped activation power, but cannot grant authorization or reset the shared hour; enchanting an intact artifact causes backlash.

Missing priests after promotion

In 0.90.4, if you hold High Priest rank and your name still matches your religion's recorded leader, newly loaded main temples omit their high priest and reveal the secret passage. This applies to other religions' temples as well as your own. It does not remove previously encountered mansion residents.

Collect any other needed symbols before promotion if you want to avoid this complication. Renaming your character breaks the name match and lets the normal temple generation occur again, although the recorded high-priest name remains the old one. This behavior was verified by executing the original temple loader; it is not a claim that the story deliberately grants authority over every temple.