The Mahsai is a philosophical and spiritual framework used by many of the people across the May’Kar Dominion. It is a sort of shared language that people of many different faiths can use to connect with one another and to guide their conduct and their lives. It creates a set of shared cultural values and generally promotes tolerance and harmony between disparate groups. Even beyond the borders of the Dominion itself, followers of the Mahsai have a general reputation for being diplomatic and sensitive when dealing with people of foreign beliefs.
The Mahsai originated as a legal court, one of the oldest institutions in May’Kar, which was originally established to counteract the overreach of the Habbatt church. At the time, the church had a stranglehold on the way of life within May’Kar, using water as a tool to reward loyalty and punish disobedience. The court was used to gradually erode their influence, and eventually eased the tensions the church was causing.
The Mahsai’s fundamental purpose is to resolve interfaith matters. Any legal issue in which members of more than one faith are involved fall under the jurisdiction of the Mahsai. This allowed the court to act as an intermediary between the Habbatt and the many other peoples of the Ukor that they were imposing themselves upon. However, in the centuries since, it’s given them a great amount of leeway to involve themselves in a majority of legal matters within May’Kar.
In contrast with the Habbatt church, a religious institution that became a political one, the Mahsai is a political institution that became a religious one. The Mahsai itself has no gods, no dogma, and no creed, but it’s come to be considered the final authority on matters of faith, and it has the full authority to pass and enforce laws in respect to matters of religion. In order to ensure that these laws were just and equitable, it was filled with pious members of various Dominion faiths, and that has eventually led to its position, in which faith and piety is essential, but no particular faith is favored.
In theory, the Mahsai protects peoples of varying faiths, not only from within May’Kar but also for those visiting it from beyond, by ensuring that no ‘legitimate’ belief system is impinged upon by another. In practice, it is the authority that decides what does and does not count as ‘legitimate’. The politics surrounding this judgement has been the source of a great deal of tension in the Dominion’s history.
Being a member of a legitimized faith, typically referred to simply as a ‘Mahsai faith’, is a requirement for a number of powers and privileges across life in Ma’Kar, not least of which is the ability to find membership within the Mahsai itself. Legitimacy is assessed based on a variety of factors, but the main ones include the number of worshipers of a particular faith, the history of the faith both within and outside of May’Kar, and other subjective factors like the ‘compatibility’ of the faith with the rest of the Mahsai.
While the Mahsai has no proper dogma, it still has three tenets which have emerged from it, which are considered to be essential cultural values central to it and to the Dominion:
- All life is sacred. This does not position the Mahsai as an institution of peace, but it does mean that blood must only be spilled when necessary, and that the act of killing is a fundamentally transformative and weighty one.
- Corruption fouls the waters. Everyone has a role to play in society, and it is only when everyone cooperates, that May’Kar can survive and thrive. Through this, the Mahsai justifies its own existence.
- The Priest-King is the one that lives closest to the gods. They do not have the final say on the divine, nor are they unquestionable, but their bloodline endows them with the wisdom to rule well and justly.
The Mahsai ultimately does categorize itself as a faith, and positions the Priest-King of May’Kar as its head. Its judges and advocates are considered clergy, and entitled to the privileges and protections that that affords. It mandates that heads of provinces construct and maintain temples to the Priest-King in their capitals. This provides a local base of operations for judges and advocates to operate out of far from Saresh, where they must be able to act somewhat autonomously to conduct the law in a timely manner, often coordinating with local paladins.
As an additional consequence of this philosophy, any grievances towards the crown, the Mahsai, or the rest of the state are considered to be interfaith matters that fall under the Mahsai. This has ultimately served to create two tiers of justice, in which May’Kar’s government is largely unaccountable to individuals. Ultimately, the system and the judgements of the Mahsai do generally work to the benefit of the average citizen, but when there is chafing with it, it becomes nearly impossible to resolve. The main force which holds the court in place is the collective will of the people. There have been cycles in which the Mahsai has been more obviously unfair in their rulings, resulting in populist uprisings which effectively pushed back against them.
The Mahsai’s existence as both a legal institution and as a philosophy can often create tensions between the spirit and the letter of what it embodies. The court’s position is that faiths are illegitimate until being decreed otherwise, and that only legitimate faiths are worthy of inclusion and consideration. For those lay people truly ‘devoted’ to the Mahsai, the opposite is true, and open-mindedness and acceptance is the default attitude. At times, the court has been much slower to accept a faith than Mahsai followers. At other times, the court has had to intervene to protect people who have too readily placed their trust in others. The political machinations of the court has also led to it making rulings that are at odds with what it seems like they ought to do according to their own stated values. Some people claim a great deal of devotion to the Mahsai as an idea, while rejecting the court itself, despite their intrinsically linked nature.