Vigilance

Finally, priests have to be vigilant against powers or elements which threaten their faith or their followers.

These powers and elements don't usually take the direct approach, such as attacks by armies or monsters. The priest needs to be vigilant against more subtle intrusions, including:

The Agent Provocateur: This is someone who falsely joins the priesthood, spends a long time becoming a trusted member or even a leader of it, and then persuades members of the faith to perform actions which will get the faith into trouble. For example, in times when the priesthood is in conflict with another faith, the Agent Provocateur might encourage outright war with that faith. When a conflict with the local rulers could be sorted out by calm diplomacy, the Agent Provocateur will instead recommend or issue ultimatums and demands. And, naturally, the Agent will keep his true masters apprised of the priesthood's secret movements and activities at all times.

Corruption in Specific Orders: Sometimes priests go bad and use the priesthood for their own gain. In addition to methods mentioned above, they may also secretly defy requirements of their priesthood, steal temple funds, use their duties of guidance to influence others to profit these priests, etc. No such corruption goes unnoticed forever, but the unwillingness of people to believe that they've put their faith in crooks and thieves can ensure that this corruption can go on for a long, long time.

Libels: At times, members of rival priesthoods will persuade their followers that other priesthoods perform acts which are profane and evil. In a culture where religious prejudice is a strong factor, this is often easy to do. For instance, it might prove simple to convince one's flock that the priests of a more despised faith are kidnapping young women (only women of the libeller's faith, of course) to serve as unwilling temple concubines, then killing them. It's especially easy to do when the libeller secretly arranges for the kidnapping and murder of several young women in his own faith. When this sort of thing goes on, it's vital that the priests of the accused faith prove the truth. They can't do it just by giving local authorities a tour of their temple to show there are no unwilling concubines here -- and even if they do, a particularly clever enemy will have concealed the body of one of the kidnapped girls there for the authorities to find! It requires capture of the killers and demonstration that they were serving someone else . . . all of which is a good basis for a priest-oriented adventure.

Obviously, it's the duty of faithful priests to combat all these situations these when they're noticed. However, it's a characteristic of the greatest priest-heroes to notice these trends well ahead of the time that they become critical , and to deal with them early in their development, before they can result in serious harm to the priesthood.

For the DM, this is a good way to give the PC priest an opportunity for rapid advancement in his priesthood: If he's the first to notice such a trend and is able to spearhead the movement to correct it, he will be well-regarded by his peers. This is also a good way to establish that an NPC priest is a hero of his faith, if he, in the past, has thwarted such situations.

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