Alonsus Secundus

 Bishop Moorwhelp is hill dwarf who is an  ordained and consecrated Bishop of the Church of the Holy Light. He serves as the Bishop of Stormwind (Diocese of Stormwind). He is the progenitor of the modern Council of Bishops.

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

Upon his family's patriarch's death, he inherited his father's wealth 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 on the Loch. 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 abundant 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 thanes and mountain 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 was multilated, 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 against their kin.

MoorwhelpGlass.jpg
Penance and Conversion of Heart Moorwhelp later returned to the bloodied scene unaccompanied to bury the ruined bodies of his regiment. Once he had returned the dwarves to the earth, he wept and contemplated. He returned to his base camp to report 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. He gifted his collective estate to his wife's kinship and left town in shame.

He left for the frontiers on the Wetlands. He found no company to the Wildhammer clan, and he 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, his liberation of his guilt - or rather the potential for any penance - did not occur to them. 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 holy magic 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 perennial pentiential wailing.

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 royal chapel of Lordaeron 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 philosophy of the Light. He considered this Holy Light to be the greatest fulfillment of what he had learned inductively through his decades as a hermit. 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 Holy Light formed Brother Johannes into a stoic. He was no longer affected so heavily by his own guilt, and if happenstance dictated otherwise, he turned to the Holy Light for consolation. He was a healed dwarf, unlike before, and changed in possibly every aspect one could be changed.

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 on Azeroth. 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 large complex. During this time, he met Mellar Servus and Niklos Adamant, two human friends. 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 again with his friend Mellar Servus 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 mission to become missionaries to the High Elves Kingdom.

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. Through his participation in an austere religious community, his magical strength grew to something of great note.

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 supermajority 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 and Friar Servus, 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 condemned those who hid had in the lighthouse and is said to have 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 and Holy Priesthood overcame the Orcish pest. Johannes participated in the holy wars. In the latter years of the war, Johannes returned to Purgation Isle with his apprentice priests to receive waves of refugees from the south that followed Mara Fordragon. At the command of the High Clerist of Stormwind, Johannes stayed there at the cursed isle and received more refugees. Johannes Moorwhelp noticed something about the High Clerist - a certain holy aura that followed her always - that was unlike other holy casters. Upon her departure, he kept many of the blessed items she left behind and hid them on the small island. Forced by the unresting spirits of his former brethren that resided on the isle, he left and departed up through the mountain passes to the Tirisfal Monastery.

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, Moorwhelp thought, King Terenas Menethil II ordered that the Internment Camps were founded to civilize, educate, and hopefully convert the Orcish captives in internment camps.

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 in the Kingdom of Lordaeron. Friar Moorwhelp, having seen the corruptive effects that money and landed titles 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 and defense of the church. 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 profound effect on Friar Moorwhelp. With the death of most of the Clerics of Northshire (regarded as the most conservative order in the Church) 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.

The Scourge
After Kel'thuzad and the Scourge plagued the argrarian provinces of Lordaeron, a few charismatic leaders of the Tirisfal Monastery began to separate non-humans from the affairs of the monastery. Johannes, with an intense disinterest in the diurnal affairs of the monastery, was not overly concerned with the loss of his voice. He was too encumbered with restoring a vast personal collection of religious wriitngs that he hoped would replace the writings lost in Northshire. He continued with his toils until he, and a few other non-humans, were blamed for the Plague out of fright and expelled from the Abbey. This separated him, for the nonce, from his friends Mellar Servus and Niklos Adamant.

Johannes wandered the provinces of Lordaeron, eventually securing a place amongst the Circle of Holy Light and an auxiliary position as a chaplain within its sister orders, Crippling Force, Champions of Peace, Champions of Truth, and Defenders of Justice. Johannes Moorwhelp was in close proximity to the aging King Terenas Menethil. Though Johannes was present in Lordaeron long before Terenas' reign and would remain living long after the King's murder, the dwarfish friar began to look up to the magnanimous king in a way that he never looked towards the mountain thanes of his own race. His presence in the Lordaeron Palace Gardens ensured his safety in the tumultuous times before the major Scourge battles, but as all things, this safety came to pass.



Latter Years
(WIP)