Draft:High priests
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. 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.
After promotion, the authorized symbol supplies healing, cleansing and mana recovery, but repeating its use in the same clock hour shatters it and leaves you at 1 HP. Changing to a different patron also makes an old symbol unsafe to invoke.
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.