Alonsus Secundus

Bishop Moorwhelp a is hill dwarf who is an  ordained and consecrated Bishop of the Church of the Holy Light. He currently serves as the Bishop of Stormwind and sits on the Council of Bishops, where he is renown for his problem-solving techniques, his hardline approach to heresy, and his preachings on spiritual mercy.

This page is a work in progress.

Preconversion
Johannes Moorwhelp was born into a wealthy consanguinity of hill dwarves that had their fame as the early  cultivators of rams as means of hide, horn, and transportation. They made their home in the alps surrounding the great mountain. As a beardling, young Johannes had a keen for mischief as much as any dwarf boy-child would.

Upon his patriarch's death, he inherited his family's fortune and began a textile merchant coalition. This attracted a wide array of concubine, but none that interested the then-young Moorwhelp. He eventually fell in love with a middle caste Dwarven woman that came from a family of humble fishermen. He continued his very successful trade and gifted his lover's cooperative with a large dowry and married the woman. Together they ran his mostly honest trade.

Moorwhelp continued this very blessed life until war with the Dark Iron dwarves and the Wildhammer dwarves clashed in the War of the Three Hammers. The two were conscripted into the war by the Bronzebeard patriarch and his thanes, and served as mountaineers on the frontiers of the two sides fronts that had once been their peaceful hill home.

A small Dark Iron regiment ambushed the mountaineer regiment, who expecting the war to not last but a couple of days until the royalties made treaty, as they usually did. The small camp was taken over by the Dark Iron dwarves, and the inhabitants were gaoled within their own makeshift prisons. Moorwhelp had his beard hacked off by his jailors, the same culturally cruel fate that fell upon other men of success. This sent the other dwarves into a frothing rage. They attempted to break gaol and were killed, the women (his wife inclusive) defiled by the licentious host. Moorwhelp was maimed and let loose as an early example of what heinous atrocities that the Dark Irons were willing to commit in this battle with their kin.

Penance and Conversion of Heart Moorwhelp later returned to the bloodied scene unaccompanied to bury the ruined bodies of his regiment, including his own wife. Once he had returned the two dozen dwarves to the ground, he wept and contemplated. He returned to his base camp to report this, and returned to service until the end of the war as a drone. He returned to the life of a widowed hill dwarf, but the wealth was no good to him now that he had no wife to share it all with. He gifted his collective estate to his wife's kinship, minus a wagon, a great heirloom horn, two of his prized and sentimental rams, and a lock of his wife's coarse auburn hair.

Upon this he left for the frontiers on the Wetlands. He found no company to the then-unfriendly Wildhammer clan, and wandered. He, in the most early stages of his pilgrimage, blamed himself as a greedy and abominable person. Obstitent in his self-loathing and spiritual sorrow, he could only dream of what it felt to be liberated from his guilt. Over the course of what is believed to be nearly a century of contemplation and unguided monastic life, he eventually found an end to these self-chastising thoughts that were his first experiences with the Light's basic magics in a time of great need.

He regarded this as nothing less than miraculous. He had seen the Light before in the hands of the traditional priesthood of Ironforge, but nothing came close, in his mind, to the divinity that he had now answered his pentiential wailing of one century.

Now enlightened and eager, he traveled north to discover the earliest Church, which he felt the Light led him to. He was hesitantly taken into the lay employ of the Church as a minstrel. Here he would learn the elven instrument known as the lute, the human psalms and plainsong, and a considerable amount of the human philosophy of the Light. All of this he considered the greatest fulfillment of what he had learned inductively through his hermit lifestyle. He traveled between his duties at the Church and his wife's family to eagerly preach the Light to them and tend to his wife's venerable parents. He continued this lifestyle as he studied the rites and culture of humanity and elfkind.

Priesthood

The dwarven brother was a unique sight in a religion that was indeed open to everyone but whose roots were in the theology of men and their short though valorous journey. Old theological thought was that when a miracle of the Light was seen, a small essence of the "spirit of the faithful" -- every soul of every human on Azeroth, was taken channeled. This was an exclusive way of thought, though one that was widely held.

The Church hierarchy, though set in their tradition, were not bigoted. After all, the spirit of the faithful way of thought predated the alliances that were in their cradle among the dwarves and humans. Eventually, due the dwarves and elfs following a similar path as Johannes, (and a little pressure from Kings, who submitted to the Church but wished its ways were more in line with the need for diplomacy) the Church of the Holy Light revised their tradition to be more according to the spirit of the ways of the future Alliance. Though many of the more hardline and tradition-bound bishops retained their wish for segregation, this ultimately lead to the opening up of the sacrfiicial office of the Priesthood being opened more widely to dwarf and elf, and more generally any ensouled creature that wanted to take this path.

Within months of this developement in doctrine, Johannes was chosen by a bishop to begin studies in the Tirisfal Monastery, among the rigid monks and spirirtual clerics of the complex. He received accreditation and was forwarded to the Hall of Lights of Stratholme to complete his studies. There, by a powerful bishop who made his throne in the City of Stratholme, Johannes was ordained to the priesthood. As quickly as he was shipped to the large city, he left it for rural celebration and practice of his priesthood, under a holy order known as the Order of Preachers, an apostolate of the monastery where he received his accreditation, where he was sent abroad to various places to propogate the fire which was smoldering in his stone heart. His order took a special relation to become missionaries to the High Elves of Silvermoon and the surrounding duchies.

Johannes continued this practice for sometime and developed a love for the beauty of the liturgy and all of the ritualism of the Church of the Holy Light.

First War

Johannes's loyalty to dwarfkind was not entirely forefeit. In the year 2770 A.D., he entered a chapter meeting prepared to plead to the abbot that the Order take a sabattical from its preaching in the northern kingdoms to consider the further conversion of dwarfkind by preaching in Khaz Modan. The abbot, however, had pressing matters for the Order to tend to. The Clerics of Northshire had, for the first time in its history, been called to defend the Northshire Abbey from a horde of warlocks that came from the southern swamps of Stormwind. The dwarf priest, though conflicted, knew well the consequence of Northshire Abbey's failure. It had served as a center for the southern church and its archives were indispensible. With Friar Moorwhelp's vote, the Order unanimously elected to aid the Northshire Clerics in their attritious battle immediately.

But the time for aid had elapsed. Before they could build their ship, word came that Northshire Abbey had fallen to orcish treachery. Most of the clerics there were slain, and Northshire Valley laid totally in ruin. The archives were used to kindle the flame that soon consumed Stormwind in their northerly pattern.

Before the Tides of Darkness The Order ceased its building project immediately to accept a commission from the Mayor of Hillsbrad, who filled the preachers coffers for erecting a lighthouse on an island southern of Hillsbrad, so that the ships of refugees that would soon spill into the gulf would see the Mayor's town as their new home. Purgation Isle was founded as a church preceptory, where Johannes and the order would soon be tasked with the reception of a great number of frightened southrons that settled in the foothills and the other territories of the newly formed Alliance of Lordaeron.

Archbishop Alonsus Faol, aging and knowing well of the changes the Church would need to undertake to ensure the people of the Light a new tomorrow, founded the Order of the Silver Hand with his apprentice Uther. With four other men, Uther was anointed as the first paladin, and countless others soon followed. The news surprised the priest Moorwhelp, who knew the cloth of faith to be an indispensible symbol of the church. He did not criticize the Archbishop, who by the end of his reign was known as a spiritual master. Younger men from the Order of Preachers were called by the bishops and lords to become paladins, returning to the Purgation Isle enarmored and prepared for the Tides of Darkness inevitable descension.

Second War During the Second War, the Purgation Isle that the Order of Preachers occupied was a commonplace for refugees to enter in. The coasts acted as a bulwark for the armies of the Alliance. The Order of Preachers, who had a number of the newly-anointed paladins, was expected to participate wholly in the war effort. When the time came to man a ship that was bought by the fattened coffers and repel a naval invasion of the gulf, the abbot and the chapter voted a majority to hide in the lighthouse and not participate in the fight to prevent a Orcish purchase of the gulf. A small minority, including Friar Moorwhelp, disobeyed and fled from the island to travel to the Bishop of Stratholme's palace and ask that he rebuke the order and cause them to be obedient.

But the battle for the gulf was lost, and the Order of Preachers was by large decimated. The orcs did in fact gain a foothold in southern Lordaeron, and the Purgation Isle fell. The Bishop of Stratholme proclaimed that those who hid had in the lighthouse and had written a curse upon their brow and that they would not be allowed by the Light to rest for many years. The Bishop assigned the remaining preachers all to the Tirisfal Monastery, where priests and paladins alike armed to die against the the Orcish Horde that swept over Lordaeron and the whole north.

Eventually, however, the Alliance of Lordaeron bolstered by the Church of the Holy Light's Knights of the Silver Hand overcame the Orcish pest.

Council of Tirisfal Monastery
The Tirisfal Monastery was home to a postbellum meeting of the Council of Bishops that determined that the Church of the Holy Light believed that Orcs have souls and that thus it was their duty to refine them to society. The Friar Moorwhelp attended these council meetings along with the others of Tirisfal Monastery. In his mercy, King Terenas Menethil II ordered that the Internment Camps were founded to civilize, educate, and hopefully co



nvert the Orc deserters and prisoners. This won King Terenas the love of a great number of priests and churchmen, Friar Moorwhelp included.

The Council of Tirisfal Monastery also determined that Paladins anointed out of war-time were able to hold land and noble titles. Friar Moorwhelp, having seen the corruptive effects that money and land had on paladins even within his own Order, was not an advocate of this stance, prefering that the Order of the Silver Hand cleave to poverty. He was obedient, however, and does not speak often of these views.

Faol's Death
The Archbishop Alonsus Faol, who had Moorwhelp's affection and fraternal love, was soon to die, and a time of changing was dawning upon the Church. The Archbishop wrote a series of letters to the Church on crucial spiritual matters to guide the Church long after he was gone. A lot of the epistles were dispensed of as outdated by a new generation of priests, and today it is disputed whether or not the Archbishop even wrote the epistles. The epistles that lasted, however, had a pro found effect on Friar Moorwhelp. With the death of most of the Clerics of Northshire (regarded as the most conservative order in the C hurch) and the destruction of their unique archives, the new was already beginning to rage against the old. The Church was ill-prepared for any conflict as it scattered to replace the Archbishop and countless indispensible records.

Election of Benedictus
The Council of Bishops elected Priest Jarl, who would be known as Archbishop Benedictus to lead the Church through this new era of change. Jarl had been a close apprentice to Archbishop Faol during the dedication of the Cathedral of Light and the rebuilding of Northshire Abbey. Friar Moorwhelp was eager to show obedience to any who would lead the Church back to oneness of faith and prevent schism which almost seemed inevitable.

Third War
The Church of the Holy Light had not done well to heal the growing rifts in Friar Moorwhelp's eyes. The Holy Light could not be well served, he thought, if two sects warred against each other tirelessly. Without the patristic writings of Northshire to refer to, many of the newer generation of philosophers were free to depart from tradition.

Personality
Bishop Moorwhelp is known for having been consumed by the episcopal office. Once being known for a warm, inviting personality, a desire to have tea with all visitors, his love for children, and his warm and understandable homilies, he now is very direct and blunt to a fault. His preaching has become increasingly cryptic and he no longer seems to possess endless patience for children. It takes something particularly poignant or of importance to the Church of the Holy Light to cause him to undistance himself emotionally. Despite this, he is known by the people for his direct pastoral style, however contrived it may seem to be.

Relationships
Johannes is not known for keeping very many close friends. A dwarf consumed by his office, some speculate he can only identify with those who are equally enamored with religion and philosophy. Though all appear his acquaintences and he displays a fraternal bond with all, he scarcely allows anyone to ensnare his emotions, which are thinly veiled in his often distant ways.