Octopath Traveler II: Temenos and Eerie Similarity
A number of people over time have asked what my professional stressors are like and I always struggle to give an apt comparison because I work in such a unique world. However, I think I finally have an apt video game comparison for my professional life and it comes in the form of Temenos from Octopath Traveler 2. Temenos is the cleric of the religion of the Sacred Flame in Octopath Traveler 2 and he serves as the inquisitor for the pontiff of the faith. This role of inquisitor makes Temenos doubtful and often alone in his concerns. He works in secret until he arrives at a location where there are a few who appreciate his work and many who look at him with suspicion. This has been consistent with my own work experience so I wanted to start my Octopath Traveler 2 reflection with Temenos. I will not do all of these character profiles in order. Octopath Traveler 2 content will be interspersed through the next few months doing 1 profile at a time. Heavy Spoilers for Temenos’ story will follow.
So for those who don’t know my work, I do grant administration and justice education for Catholic congregations in a region called an Archdiocese. This means I support congregations who want to learn about social issues and/or find ways to respond in their own communities. In this position, I have a different religious perspective because I look at situations for how communities are being affected by actions both from within religious organizations and what is happening on the ground. With this introduction, I want to build the compare and contrast with Temenos.
Temenos searching the house for more information about the assassin. Taken from my PS5 via screenshot
The Investigation
Temenos gets a charge in Chapter 1 from the Pontiff to pursue an assassin. This pursuit takes him to a scholar’s house to search for information. What Temenos discovers in this house is the order in which the assassin is killing their targets from the eight gods of old. The order in which they fell to Vide is the order the assassin is using to kill the targets. Finding out this information he rushes to an auction to try to prevent the assassin from striking again. As with all religious language, true intent is often concealed in phrases and coded language. These word puzzles drive the devoted and often look obscure enough to not raise any alarm. The scene below is an example of coded religious language. For the average person, this phrase means nothing and that is entirely the point. Planting nefarious intentions in deceptive phrasing is part of how people use religion to harm others and Octopath Traveler 2 did a very good job of showing how this code works to the public eye and how the Inquisitor has to solve it.
Secret, deceptive, and innocuous to the average listener
Now, one key difference between Temenos and I is that I have no authority whatsoever to do anything investigative. The only reason I have to ask questions is when people from the grassroots ask questions about what is happening in the region. As the justice person, I get a lot of inquiries about whether certain patterns of behavior and activities are just. To try to answer peoples’ questions honestly, I do research and help people think their own relationship of church to themselves. I teach critical engagement and reflection because I want people I lead to be as perceptive as the narrator is at the end of Chapter 2 of Temenos’s story. I want my leaders to be able to see the comma after a period of questionable behavior to look for what is coming next.
Can we see the comma rather than the period and can we know when the period is truly appropriate?
Good faith is one where one can see the good and the bad. In a world of increasing fundamentalism, having people who can see both positive and negative action and potential is hard and often discouraged. The biggest lesson to teach is to find their own voice from what they have seen and heard and to use that voice in responding to the issues in their communities. Temenos does not have this luxury since he has to work in secret to try to lure the separatists from their hiding place. This secrecy to try to respond is because so many people in hierarchical systems find their fortress and get great benefit from using and abusing their positions. Knowledge and obscurity are two sides of the same coin when dealing with internal religious monologue which reinforces hierarchical power. Transparency about what has happened is rare and even moments of transparency which are presented are often this balance of transparency with obscurity to prevent the hierarchical system from toppling.
Dark Relics, secrets galore
It Always Gets Worse
Temenos stumbles into more mysteries, deceptions, and immoral behavior. Throughout Chapters 2 and 3, Temenos finds more secrets and problematic behavior in the people he is investigating. The Church is hiding cursed relics to control people and summon deities to cause havoc in the world. While these may be factions away from the main religious body, their lack of accountability of people causing harmful behavior is really problematic. Temenos gets more frustrated as time goes on with the amount of behavior which is problematic. In addition, he runs into some ruins which highlight a bad history of his own faith.
Religion does have a problem as they like to destroy indigenous and cultural religions.
Knowing that D’arqest performed a demonic ritual which nearly resulted in the destruction of a civilization is a lot to stomach in chapter 3 of Temenos’ story. Vados, who was arrested in chapter 2, is trying to collect the pages which were scattered in the Book of Night to perform the ritual D’arqest failed. Instead of having transparency that the faith had a book of dangerous knowledge, the church kept it hidden and placed the world at risk. The church also lacked transparency about the genocide they attempted to cause Kal’s civilization.
One striking reality for me in my work is to see how much worse things actually are. It has definitely been a heartbreak to see how much suffering many leaders are looking to implement on others in order to keep their way of life. Bowing to donors even when they greatly harm the common good, destroying communities who disagree with the latest theological trends (fundamentalism), minimizing and preventing people from responding to racism, and attempting to minimize the harm caused by religious boarding schools are all situations I have had people in the grassroots share with me. Many people are desperate for money, power, and satisfaction and can only find that through hurting others. Religion in many cases, is just a breeding ground for leaders who would harm the common good and seeing that unfold in real time has changed me. I’m definitely less trusting than I used to be and these experiences have made me find my own character grounded in doubt, discernment, and spirituality.
This is a common question whenever people start digging into harms caused by religion. It is kind of repulsive how many times my faith and character have come into question just for asking questions.
The Smoking Gun
Temenos has gnawing feelings that something is wrong with his church. As the Inquisitor “doubt is what Temenos does”. The pieces come together in chapter 4 of Temenos’s quest. After finding paper scraps, mysterious verses, and deciphering of murals, Temenos ends up at the HQ for the Sacred Guard, the knight faction of the Sacred Flame religion. His investigative friend Crick, pictured above in these scenes, have a tense argument about belief and what is worthy of belief. Temenos’s resolve in this situation to what he has learned throughout this investigation and to hold his doubt and critical engagement is important. He inspires Crick to also keep looking. Crick found the secret opening Temenos needed to find the smoking gun for why the murders have happened and the end goal for the Sacred Guard.
Secret Doors in churches are always fun.
Church basements with lots of tomes always induce a feeling of horror.
The Sacred Guard was hiding a room full of forbidden tomes, including the Book of Night. Cubaryi’s response is important here. Justice is often pitted against piety to a religion. The gods are fundamentally beings who can do no wrong and humans should submit to whatever good or bad happenings occur. Temenos refuses to accept this as a conclusion and defeats Cubaryi. The Sacred Guard has arranged the murders and this is why Temenos got nasty looks from many soldiers in the Guard. He resolves to prevent further suffering by going to the Nameless Village and stopping Kaldena.
In real life, smoking guns are a lot harder to find. First, internal church investigations always try to find sympathetic judges and investigators to prevent too much digging into sensitive matters. Second, most records don’t actually exist because church organizations if they have a “worship” function do not have to report any of their financial dealings to the government. There are some reporting requirements for endowments but even those are minimal. Temenos got a break from a good friend to move the investigation forward. In most real-life situations, inquiries get crushed before they can move because of internal arbitration, or regional PR teams dedicated to removing negative messaging. Breaks are few and far between even when the majority of people know unseemly behavior is going on.
Resolve is important when dealing with corruption.
Conclusion
Temenos has a tough fight to confront Captain Kaldena in order to bring resolution to the series of murders. Kaldena admits to being a heretic only using religion for its access to power. These two images while a few scenes apart are important for their sense of motive. Pious talk is only important to get people to submit to their will. When leaders give pious speeches, it is very easy to take advantage of vulnerable people who come to religion seeking leadership. Kaldena was willing to take advantage to become one with a dark entity bent on destruction.
The other important part of the conclusion of Temenos’ story is that it took outside legal authorities to strip away the religious army’s power. Temenos can bring the investigative image but to actual take the power away, it is up to the state. Even with the best internal investigation, and Temenos is great at investigating, internal investigation is not enough to get action taken against the Sacred Guard. Temenos finds a new identity in doubt. This doubt leads him to find resolve to stand for what is right but from pain points to resolution was a long journey of will and compassion.
Conclusions when reaching out against religious organizations are often messy and don’t lead to long-term change, especially in America. Religion is tied into the American legal fabric so penalties against churches have been minimal, even when regions have hundreds of victims over decades. These victims reported by churches are often only a fraction of those who were abused, such as we have seen with the Illinois Attorney General’s investigation into the Illinois dioceses. The church only reported 1/3 of the victims when going through their public investigations. It is revolting to see information still being obfuscated as to the scale of religious abuse even though so much of the deception and lying are public record. I don’t know what a resolution for what I have seen, heard, and experienced would be like because most other organizations would never get a chance to function again if they had caused as much harm as churches have. Temenos is a character whom I resonate with because I understand his journey, his resolve to get accurate information, the heartbreak of finding what has happened, and each resolution feeling incomplete. There are always more questions and my love of hard questions and the reflective journey is because this quest for knowledge is one key of bettering our world. It is a heartbreaking journey because doubt being a foundation is a very unshaky ground. But we need more who will stand together in community to handle these questions and push forward. Previous generations have not had to have this same level of tenacity, but previous generations also don’t have the catastrophes to solve that younger generations do. Doubt and resolve are vital to the future.
