| Johannes Moorwhelp, Bishop of Stormwind | |
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Title |
Bishop of Stormwind |
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Affiliations |
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Status |
Alive |
Bishop Moorwhelp, born Johannes Moorwhelp and lovingly known as "Wolpertinger", is hill dwarf who is an ordained and consecrated Bishop of the Church of the Holy Light. He currently serves as the Bishop of Stormwind and sits on the Council of Bishops.
Pre-Conversion[]
Johannes Moorwhelp was born into a wealthy consanguinity of hill dwarves that had their fame as the early cultivators of rams as means of hide, horn, and transportation. They made their home in the alps surrounding the great mountain. As a beardling, young Johannes had a keen for mischief as much as any dwarf boy-child would.
Upon his patriarch's death, he inherited his family's fortune and began a textile merchant coalition. This attracted a wide array of concubine, but none that interested the then-young Moorwhelp. He eventually fell in love with a middle caste Dwarven woman that came from a family of humble fishermen. He continued his very successful trade and gifted his lover's cooperative with a large dowry and married the woman, Bonnie May. Together they ran his mostly honest trade.
Moorwhelp continued this very blessed life until war with the Dark Iron dwarves and the Wildhammer dwarves clashed in the War of the Three Hammers. The two were conscripted into the war by the Bronzebeard patriarch and his thanes, and served as mountaineers on the then-frontiers of the two sides fronts.
A small Dark Iron regiment ambushed the mountaineer regiment as they were drinking, expecting the war to not last but a couple of days until the royalties made treaty, as they usually did. The small camp was taken over by the Dark Iron dwarves, and the inhabitants were gaoled within their own makeshift prisons. Moorwhelp had his beard hacked off by his jailors, the same culturally cruel fate that fell upon other men of success. This sent the other dwarves into a frothing rage. They attempted to break gaol and were killed, the women (his wife inclusive) defiled by the licentious host. Moorwhelp was maimed and let loose as an early example of what heinous atrocities that the Dark Irons were willing to commit in this battle with their kin.
Penance and Conversion of Heart
Moorwhelp later returned to the bloodied scene unaccompanied to bury the ruined bodies of his regiment, including his own wife. Once he had returned the two dozen dwarves to the ground, he wept and contemplated. He returned to his base camp to report this, and returned to service until the end of the war as a drone. He returned to the life of a widowed hill dwarf, but the wealth was no good to him now that he had no wife to share it all with. He gifted his collective estate to his wife's kinship, minus a wagon, a great heirloom horn, two of his prized and sentimental rams, and a lock of his wife's coarse auburn hair.
Upon this he left for the frontiers on the Wetlands. He found no company to the then-unfriendly Wildhammer clan, and wandered. He, in the most early stages of his pilgrimage, blamed himself as a greedy and abominable person, and became obsessed with this idea, and could only dream of what it felt to be liberated from his guilt. Over the course of what is believed to be nearly a century of contemplation and unguided monastic life, he eventually found an end to these self-chastising thoughts that were his first experiences with the Light's basic magics in a time of great need.
He regarded this as nothing less than miraculous. He had seen the Light before in the hands of the traditional priesthood of Ironforge, but nothing came close, in his mind, to the divinity that he had now answered his pentiential wailing of one century.
Now enlightened and eager, he traveled north to discover the earliest Church, which he felt the Light led him to. He was hesitantly taken into the lay employ of the Church as a minstrel. Here he would learn the elven instrument known as the lute, the human psalms and plainsong, and a considerable amount of the human philosophy of the Light. All of this he considered the greatest fulfillment of what he had learned inductively through his hermit lifestyle. He traveled between his duties at the Church and his wife's family to eagerly preach the Light to them and tend to his wife's venerable parents. He continued this lifestyle as he studied the rites and culture of humanity and elfkind.
Priesthood
The dwarven brother was a unique sight in a religion that was indeed open to everyone but whose roots were in the theology of men and thier short though valorous journey. Old theological thought was that when a miracle of the Light was seen, a small essence of the "spirit of the faithful" -- every soul of every human on Azeroth, was taken away. This was an exclusive way of thought, though one that was widely held.
The Church hierarchy, though set in their tradition, were not bigoted. After all, the spirit of the faithful way of thought predated the alliances that were in their cradle among the dwarves and humans. Eventually, due the dwarves and elfs following a similar path as Johannes, (and a little pressure from Kings, who submitted to the Church but wished its ways were more in line with the need for diplomacy) the Church of the Holy Light revised their tradition to be more according to the spirit of the ways of the future Alliance. Though many of the more hardline and tradition-bound bishops retained their wish for segregation, this ultimately lead to the opening up of the sacrfiicial office of the Priesthood being opened more widely to dwarf and elf, and more generally any ensouled creature that wanted to take this path.
Within months of this developement in doctrine, Johannes was chosen by a bishop to begin studies in the Tirisfal Monastery, among the rigid monks and spirirtual clerics of the complex. He received accreditation and was forwarded to the Hall of Lights of Stratholme to complete his studies. There, by a powerful bishop who made his throne in the City of Stratholme, Johannes was ordained to the priesthood. As quickly as he was shipped to the large city, he left it for rural celebration and practice of his priesthood, under a holy order known as the Order of Preachers, a apostolate of the monastery where he received his accreditation, where he was sent abroad to various places to propogate the fire which was smoldering in his stone heart. His order took a special relation to become missionaries to the High Elves of Silvermoon and the surrounding duchies.
Johannes continued this practice for sometime and developed a love for the beauty of the liturgy and all of the ritualism of the Church of the Holy Light.