Quote Originally Posted by Metastachydium View Post
Not sure we are on the same page here. Y'see, all I'm saying is that higgh priests in the Stickverse tend to be the heads of a church, and more specifically the church of someone (i.e. some god) in particular, rather than the heads of a national/regional, autocephalous organization, i.e. the church of somewhere (is it inappropriate to bring up the way a real life church is organised as an analogy? It would make my job a lot easier).
For example, each Northern god has one formal high priest(ess), which would imply that Northern gods have separate churches of their own, and each of them has exactly one such formal church. The same seems to be the case with the Dark One, as well as the Western gods (at some point, Malack makes mention of the high priestess of Ishtar, while Wrecan says he works for the church of Marduk).
Since other high priests are the formal heads of the respective churches of their gods, and since the Twelve are worshipped as a unified pantheon, I took the liberty to assume that the (singular, unitary) church of the Twelve is a thing, and therefore the high priest of the Twelve we see in Azure City is indeed the formal high priest of the Southern pantheon, rather than the leader of some local organization(, due to which, in turn, I took the liberty to assume that the Church of the Twelve was headquartered in Azure City at the time of the siege).
In 999, we see that the Southern Pantheon has 12 priests representing their gods. They could be their high priests. But it's notable that they are just 12, and not 13, as one could expect with an added high priest of all the 12 gods. Maybe it's a rotating presidency, or maybe one of the gods, as chief deity, bestows upon his high priest the title of high priest of the 12. Or maybe it takes a special council to have a high priest of the 12, and it wasn't possible to name one in the meantime, or will be named at the end of the Godsmoot.