The fact that the church has innocent people killed sometimes is an open secret, but one with a significant amount of cognitive dissonance attached - a rough analogue would be knowledge of the Guantanamo atrocities, or COINTELPRO in the US population. Some people have heard of it, but many haven't. Most people disapprove of it, but they also don't think about it much, and when they do they choose to believe pretty firmly that it's something that happens to other people.
God's saints are, very occasionally, given the names of people who must be killed. There are saints who take this duty upon themselves, usually those unaffiliated with the church proper, but most of the time the saint will give the name to the church, and the institutional machinery will take care of the problem.
That this is for the good is a matter of faith. The church have been told that they work towards God's instantiation, and that these killings are in aid of that plan. It is understood in the ranks of the clergy that this type of arbitrary, lethal impunity would make their position untenable if it were widely discussed. It is in everyone's best interests to keep these killings low profile.
There are several institutions within the church that exist to facilitate this. At the very lowest levels of devolved responsibility, regional clergy will often have a small group of fixers, who they pay to abduct and murder people whose names come up. These are often non-professionals, but they work well enough most of the time.
Further up, regional heads will have a trained group of specialist killers, who can be seconded out where needed. They are generally very good at making things look like accidents, and their skills are called in where the locals botch their work, make too much noise, or draw the name of a target who is protected beyond their capacity to touch.
Then there are the Church Assassins. These men and women reside in the capital, and hold rank within the religious hierarchies. They are all very pious and very lethal, and most of them are now very old, because the church is modernising (to keep pace with the Baroness), and the ritualised killings of the Assassins are considered old fashioned and slightly embarrassing. Of particular note is their practice of taking the heads of their victims, to provide the angels with proof that God's will has been done. They all carry small hand saws beneath their vestments for the purpose, alongside the many other tools of their profession.
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The Baroness largely adopts a don't-ask-don't-tell policy with the church about all of this. She understands that they are a powerful institution in the Barony, but she is equally keen to have them understand that, if it really came down to it, she is a lot more powerful than they are.
This is because, about four years ago, the Baroness' name was given by God to its enforcers. The mainstream church officials immediately notified her of this and issued an internal memorandum that the angel responsible had made a mistake, but several hardliners found this unacceptable and a number of attempts were made on the Baroness' life. None of them were successful, and the church was immediately and quietly subjected to a brutal purge that wiped out everyone found even tangentially responsible.
Since this minor drama, the ranks of the clergy have been heavily infiltrated by the Baroness' professional spy service. The religious authorities have given assurances that there will be no more misunderstandings with the angels. It's probably not the first time that someone whose name came up in the lists was not killed, but it is certainly the only one that almost everyone in the church knows about. The theological implications of this on God's future instantiation are the subject of debate - usually debate outside the public ear.
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If you think that this state of affairs would be broadly controversial to those who knew about it, you would be correct.
The gnostics of the Barony come in two main flavours, though all are officially heretics. The church call them 'cooked' and 'uncooked'.
A cooked gnostic is an intellectual, often a scholar, someone who has access to information about God, its angels, and the Material Hell, and who has come to the conclusion that, at least formally, there is not much difference between God and the Hating Engines, and even less difference between an angel and a demon. A cooked gnostic will be the first to admit that there are certainly very extreme differences in the competing future visions of God's instantiation and the realisation of the Material Hell, and will tell you quickly and earnestly that one of them is obviously preferable. They will probably approve of clerical killing on these grounds; they simply refuse to adopt a properly religious attitude to God, its angels, and the church itself. The Hidden Secret Masters of All are gnostics of this type, as are most academics. The church formally repudiates them but they are completely tolerated in the society of the Baronial Capital.
An uncooked gnostic does not care, and probably does not know anything about, Hell, God, angels, or demons. They tend to be bands of people who have lost loved ones or neighbours to church-affiliated death squads, and who have taken up arms in defence of their communities, or to avenge those already taken. They usually live as bandits and poachers, fearing retaliation from both the church and the authorities, and often engage in low level irregular conflict with both. The Baronial Agents make no distinction between gnostic militias and common criminals, but if the church catch them they are often tortured before execution, and their heads taken in deference to the ancient customs of angelic accounting.
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| Elden Ring Confessor concept art |
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