Yol the Collector, God of Wealth, Power and Death.
Yol is greed unleashed and most certainly a dragon though few know Yol’s true form. The priests of Yol are always scheming and planning and plotting all kinds of ways to generate more money for themselves. They pass on their knowledge of wealth generation to their followers, for a price of course. They have many members’ only libraries dedicated to the acquisition of wealth. The church is very popular among the many merchant guilds of the world. The church offers insurance policies to any who can pay. These policies are very, very, expensive and claim to keep the insured comfortable and safe, if they ever fall on hard times. To the casual observer the religion seems legitimate, but many families who paid into these insurance policies disappear and their houses and other holdings are signed over to the church of Yol.
Another endeavor of Yol’s church are healing houses for the poor and fancy hospitals and clinics for the wealthy. The healing houses are popular among the dregs of society, who are prone to disease and lack the funds or knowledge to take care of themselves. Treatments are bartered for with either food or service in exchange for medical care; few patients seem to get well under the care of the Yol priests. Yol also sponsors grand hospitals that service only the wealthiest members of society, but even there, things don’t seem exactly right. The wealthy are given the best possible care until their coffers run dry, then they start to get ill and relapse, but if money is found to cover more care, they miraculously get better again.
Yol medics take advantage of the peoples fear of pain and death and will hold off treatments until a patient is desperate for care, then they will offer the perfect remedy at an outrageous price. Payment must be made before any treatment and there are no refunds. Ever. It is important to know the more you pay or donate to the priest the stronger the healing spells will be.
Wealthy, chronically ill patients staying in one of the shiny white palaces of the church of Yol, who lose all their worldly possessions while under care, are unceremoniously moved from those hospitals to live out the rest of their lives in the messy wards of the healing houses. Another sad part about Yol is that they don’t invest in maintaining the properties they acquire through their schemes. If they cannot sell new acquisitions for a prophet immediately after taking possession, they will hold the building and let it rot and crumble to dust.
The symbol of Yol is a gold mouse on a pile of coins protected by two cobras.
An old myth tells that Yol’s twin brother, Yogarn, had agreed to will Yol his hoard upon Yogarn’s death. Not long after agreeing to the contract, Yol killed his brother and ate him. He then took his brothers hoard as his own.
The church hides behind excuses like there are too many poor and it is so expensive to take care of them, if they only had more money then maybe less poor would die in their wards. As for the rich, they’ll say they fell short on funds, and it is too expensive to keep a person in the hospital, so they were moved out so a paying customer could have the room. It is a shame they were moved in with the unwashed masses down in the healing houses, if we had more money to help these people, then maybe things would improve. Are you willing to donate to the church of Yol? Your donations will help a greater cause…
Schemes the members of the church have been involved in in the past include selling people into slavery, Charging for burials and then digging up and selling the bodies to the highest bidders. One priest was caught poisoning a small town’s well; apparently, he was hoping the poisoning would drum up business for his hospital. It is rumored that many thieves’ guilds are sponsored or supported by followers of Yol.
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About shent_lodge
Why would anyone tolerate these “priests”? They are like the Mafia without the positive family aspect, like the Triads without the community support angle. The Yolians(?) only cause misery and betray everyone they deal with, why would any society put up with them?
.-= Sean Holland´s last blog ..New Monster – Umray =-.
@Sean, Merchants with principles will not follow Yol. Most others do. Just like if a merchant has something a PC wants they will pay almost what ever the merchant asks. Yol priest are very skilled merchandizers of their faith. They are more for game plots than for PCs to follow. Most PCs have strong principles and strong moral views. Many NPC merchants in Alidor are morally challenged, and more are concerned with the bottom line, prophet and accumulating wealth. These greedy merchant types tend to look to Yol and his “Yolians” because they think alike. The religion of Yol is based on unfettered greed above all else. It is one of the only nearly, or questionably “evil” religions that is accepted by the people of Alidor it is not popular outside the merchant guilds.