I am increasingly convinced that the first temples were not founded to honor the gods, but to control those born with a natural affinity for magic: those we now call priests. The gods are real, so far as my observations and the accumulated records suggest, but temples that stand apart from royal authority and answer to no crown are a relatively recent innovation in the long history of the world.
Perhaps one child in two hundred is born able to channel what they name aether in some capacity, and I will concede that it is a mercy to train such children before they maim others or burn themselves out by accident. Yet the stories that reach me about pale-aelvar society turn my stomach. The ordeals their gifted children are forced to endure in the name of “discipline” and “devotion” make even the harshest human temple look like a refuge by comparison. If this is piety, I want no part of it.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
