he Church of Shagras is not given to
ostentatious rites, except on its major holy days, when the
Pontification of the Red Warrior is said in the Temple of Shagras in
Dalos amid a veritable sea of crimson-clad Men of Valor. Rather,
efficiency and even brevity are considered virtues for the rites of
the Men of Valor, the advantage of which approach was immortalized in
a song written long ago by a forgotten bard on the matter of the Stand
of Saint Celia, who, while being pursued by a terrible creature from
The Maw, was able to slit the back of her left hand (thus invoking the
presence of the Red Lady much as She had invoked the Men of Valor),
kill a nearby wolf with the swift and deadly sweep of her axe (thus
paying homage to the Red Lady for her gift of Strength, without which
Man would not be master of the world around him), and strike an
awe-inspiring pose (which event was not arranged for Her benefit, but
presumably for the bard's, and may have led to the circumstances
described in the second stanza of his song, in which he and Celia
spent the following night together, and in the third, written by a
friend of his, describing his death of exhaustion two days later...)
all in, as the bard said, less than 5.4 seconds, leaving her ample
time, so fortified by the favor of the Red Lady, to chant one more
spell and thus annihilate the creature with a column of crimson flame.
The typical Man of Valor, aside from his service in Her cause, demonstrates his devotion to Shagras in two ways --- first, he gives thanks to Her each morning for the food that Her strength, expressed through him, has provided, and second, in the evening, he offers his deepest regret to Her for any blood not of the Men of Valor which he has spilled that day. This may seem odd to the reader who is unfamiliar with the origins of Men, but the Men of Valor believe that, as their forefathers were created when Her blood first stained the earth, the blood spilt of Men now brings forth into the world the tendencies and beliefs of the one whose blood runs to the earth, and while they believe it is a necessary evil to spill the blood of other Men onto the earth, they prefer to bludgeon their opponents to death where possible. This belief on the part of the Men of Valor has led to the erroneous conclusion by outsiders that the Men of Valor are never so brutal as when they fight each other; in truth, though each follower of the Red Lady knows that dismemberment is the price of defeat, they wouldn't want it any other way. When given the opportunity to dispose of the bodies of their slain opponents, the Men of Valor burn them. The Cult of the All-Father in particular occasionally launches a diatribe to the effect that such behaviors are barbaric and sinful, in response to which the Church of Shagras occasionally launches a crusade to the effect that the Cult of the All-Father is toast. Neither has been successful in imposing its will on the other, though it is commonly held that the Church of Shagras is more proficient at toasting members of the Cult of the All-Father than the Cult is at convincing the Men of Valor to change their ways.
As a note of purely academic interest, more than one past editor of the Encyclopedia Tzalmirica has attempted to rewrite this entry using gender-neutral language in the interest of political convenience. Each time, however, women of the Church of Shagras have maintained that changing ``he'' to ``he and she'' is cumbersome and, its point being obvious already, a waste of trees (which, they say as a side note, should all be saved for use in the manufacture of various missile weapons and ammunition), that advancement in the Church is strictly a matter of strength and subtlety (they also claim that they're just as strong as the men are, but more subtle), and that anybody who is at all confused on the point is welcome to come on down to the Temple for a demonstration.