So why don’t magicians run everything? After all they can do anything. And while the essence of magecraft is arrogance, it’s not impossible for mages to work together. The answer is because the gods don’t let them. And the principal factors behind that are priests.
What is a god?
A very fuzzy question. A god can be everything from the spirit of an old rock, a mover and shaker like Zeus, way on up to the silent presence of the Judaeo Christian faith. From a magical standpoint, a god is anything that gains power from the belief of their worshipers. A god can have their own power in addition to that, but they gain strength through faith.
Gods tend to have powers relative to the baseline strength of magic, and how well known and popular they are in a realm.
What is a priest?
Again the term is fuzzy, but it boils down to people who the gods use as enforcers of their will. Most gods are a powerful force, and many of them can in fact be in multiple places at once. But it’s still impossible to keep track of everything required to run a realm personally. And a lot of Gods are highly invested in running a realm. You can’t just leave a place like Hellenic Greece, the pre Ragnarok Norse Realms, or even Warring States China and expect it not to change. Humanity is driven to innovate and press forwards. Which means someone’s gotta throw out the foreign weirdos, mages, and conquerors before they ruin your perfectly arranged city states.
Priests serve as the conduits to do that. Unlike mages who have to invest personal power, a priest can just ask their god for backup, and the full might of a deity gets unleashed on the person in smiting range. Assuming the deity wishes to unleash that power of course. Letting humans call upon massive power on a whim leads to indolence and abuse, so most deities limit how often they answer prayers. Either by forcing a cost upon the priest or punishing those who get too greedy.
This leads a lot of priests to learn other talents, such as minor magic or how to manipulate demons and ghosts. This isn’t frowned upon too much in pantheistic systems, but can weaken a monotheistic priest’s faith, depending on the tenets they hold to.
Power from Ignorance
Magicians and priests both rely on belief, but while a magician has to believe in their personal power, a priest believes in the power of their god. Similarly, while a magician needs to understand something to properly wield their magic, frequently the less a priest understands something the more likely they are to believe their god can accomplish it. A priest of Apollo may have an easier time curing ebola than a scraped knee, because it’s easier for them to believe a sickness can be wished away than for a wound they see with their own eyes to just vanish.
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And of course in the end the goal of a priest is to keep their god’s realms running as planned. So in general they’re conservative and strongly invested in the local order. Some deities are exceptions. Hecate doesn’t care if her clerics cause a bit of a fuss, and those chosen by Loki are looking for trouble. But in most realms priests are the boot keeping everyone else down. For better and worse.
Types of Priest
In general there’s three types of priest. Not so much in terms of power or even action, but how they see themselves in relation to the world.
Shamans are considered the oldest type of priest, but they are in no way the most primitive or weakest. The unique feature of these priests is they tend to act more as intermediaries. Shaman type priests often work with smaller deities and spirits, though they can call upon mightier ones as well. This lack of a primary patron means they can’t just toss down a god’s wrath at whim, but it gives them great flexibility. A prime example is Aoi. While she needs to perform tiring rituals to call the gaze of Inari or Amaterasu, nearly every kami in the Immigrant Realm knows and respects her, and she can call upon their favor to do things other priests and even mages would be hard pressed to duplicate. In addition most shamans are mages in their own right, some even crossing over to immortality.
From the Oracle at Delphi or a poor man keeping the village patron shrine, most of the travelers between realms consider the temple priest to be the glue that holds ancient realms together. These priests tend to follow polytheistic faiths, and dedicate themselves to increasing the majesty of their chosen deity. They infight, meddle and generally only work together when they get pointed at something they need to stomp. But because they expect their deities to wreak havoc on a whim, they tend to be very strong. Faith comes easy to them. At least faith in smiting. Helena actually counted as one of these priestesses, before she did some nonsense and shifted to more shamanistic pursuits. Hecate’s more of a ‘do your own smiting’ kinda deity though.
Finally, monks are the most common priest in monotheistic realms, or those with strong Buddhist sensibilities. While monk is an odd term to give to, say, the vicious assholes of the Inquisition, the main difference between these priests and the others is the distance between them and their god. ‘Monks’ tend to believe their gods are all powerful, and usually interact with the world through portents and visions, rather than face to face meetings. Which means their power comes down almost purely to faith. In areas where magic is rampant that faith can quickly be rewarded by shutting down a rival priest or mage. In many realms however that faith is tested by long silence. Inspector Ryan Kilduff technically counts as a monk, though his powers are weak and he’d dismiss the title. Still his faith lets him counter magic and harm ‘evil.’