So the families are punished for wanting to found a town?

[geeksicle]

But with such dangerous and sadistic God, I don´t understand why they kept up the Order´s religion on Shepherd´s Glen.

Maybe they feared His wrath.

I think that's pretty much at the heart of a lot of religions. Very few people believe in and worship a God because they think he's a nice chap, at least in the relatively early phases of a religion. I remember an episode of the British version of Wife Swap where they'd placed a deeply religious mother in a home with a young gay daughter (trampling on people's beliefs and feelings for fun and profit, yay reality tv!) and she'd gone off about "this lesbian thing" being unacceptable, and then they showed a clip of the mother crying - not because she'd upset a girl whose mother was away, but because her God would be cross with her for doing so. If she was reduced to tears by that thought, I can only imagine how petrified our friend in Shepherd's Glen must have been, having seen proof of their vengeful-ass God in action.

[ww_andi]

That was a relatively good example their are alot of extremists

[rm2kking]

But with such dangerous and sadistic God, I don´t understand why they kept up the Order´s religion on Shepherd´s Glen.

Maybe they feared His wrath.

You mean Her wrath.

[AuraTwilight]

God's an androgyne, both are appropriate.

[ww_andi]

IN 3 tho they only mention her a a woman in their belief anyway

[AuraTwilight]

Yea, because of Claudia's reform of the Church, which essentially muddled God with Alessa. Dahlia personifies God as a male.

[ww_andi]

I see was there a memo or something i missed i don't remember anything about a reform. Maybe its been to long since i played three. I will go play it again.

[Kenji]

Although SH3 makes it seem that way, there's very little consistency in the Order's beliefs. In SH3 in particular, Claudia has positioned herself as something of a prophet and, along with Father Vincent, remolded the organization to take the events of SH1 into account and romanticize them into a new religious dogma, hence all the iconography regarding St. Alessa in the church that Vincent financed.

SH4 introduces three concurrent sects that have been around since the births of Alessa and Walter, at least, all three being in alternating states of competition and cooperation (with the Valtiel Sect apparently being the cooperative element). Then we have the Holy Way of Homecoming, a group of devouts who wish they could stop believing, but can't, so they make a pact with God to escape the Order.

All of this, mind you, takes place in a small lakeside city over a century and a half. I didn't find the cult's believability truly stretched until it asked me to believe there were at least four different sects existing simultaneously in such a small area... and keep in mind that these people aren't exactly the live-and-let-live type, either.

[AuraTwilight]

You know you have a plot mess on your hands when "stereotypical satanic cult" is more believable.

[ww_andi]

lol but i do like the complexities of it all. I think that the order arnt the type to sit around and wait. So is it not so believable that in a small cult with few members would so easily find different opinion on the subject matter. Therefore proclaiming themselves a diff section (which would really be an exaggeration

[Droo]

Dahlia's sect was more than happy to sit back and wait for seven years for Cheryl to return.

[AuraTwilight]

And before that, were just content sitting on their hands waiting for destiny to deliver God all on it's own.