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Confessor

From Sword of Truth Wiki

Confessors were an order of women first created during the Great War as a means of ascertaining the truth beyond doubt. Created by Wizard Merrit, the first Confessor was Magda Searus. The magic of the Confessors destroyed the person touched by their power; in the sense that such a person would lose their sense of self, and would submit their lives to the Confessor.

The Confessors were soon instigated as the rulers of the Midlands, with their leader, the Mother Confessor, acting as the First Chair of the Central Council. However, after a three thousand year long reign, the Confessors were hunted down and murdered in their entirety, excepting the last Mother Confessor Kahlan Amnell.

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[edit] History

[edit] Great War

The Confessors were created in an effort to ensure that truth could be ascertained during situations that called for it. The first Confessor, Magda Searus, volunteered to gain such experimental powers, so as to personally discover the reasons behind the death of her husband, First Wizard Barracus, near to the conclusion of the Great War. Wizard Merrit's magical experiment on Magda Searus proved extremely successful, and as such, an entire order of women was founded for the cultivation and protection of this amazing power. Their order became symbolic of truth as they were vested with the informal power to rule over the Midlands.

Many rulers tried to force Confessors under their command, which caused the Mother Confessor to dethrone these rulers and replace them with ones who understood that Confessors were independent individuals. Removing these rulers required a group of Confessors who would use their power to infiltrate a castle by confessing people of lower rank and working their way up until they reached the King or Queen. The dethroned rulers were forced to live as slaves to the Confessors in Aydindril. They were often brought along on a Confessor's travels as a reminder to everyone they met of a Confessor's power.

[edit] Dark Times

Unfortunately, the full consequences of the powers invested within a Confessor had not been foreseen. For reasons unknown, the Confessor's magic manifested itself differently within the male offspring of the original Confessors, than in the females.

As a protection, the Confessors magic had been designed to ensure that after having been used, the Confessor would require an interval of recovery before their power would return; ensuring that no Confessor had unlimited power. However, the male offspring of the Confessors for some reason did not require a period of recovery after having used their magic, removing the balance of power.

Before their gender genocide, male Confessors caused chaos through the New World, and an age of darkness was said to have followed. The Male Confessors, and the wizards of the New World, engaged each other in a horrible war. By its conclusion, all Male Confessors were dead as were most of the wizards who killed them in an effort to restore the balance of power.

Following this, a new mandate was issued. Any male offspring of a Confessor would immediately be put to death (the male confessor's unquenchable thirst for power and control began prior to adolescence).

With great power, came a great personal sacrifice for the remaining female confessors. A Confessor's power is always "on" and it is only because a Confessor is trained from birth to use her power "at will" that she does not Confess all around her. However, Confessors can lose control and confess people they don't mean to confess. Most notably, whenever Confessors made love with someone that caused a Confessor to enjoy great physical ecstasy, the Confessor lost her ability to control her power. Thus, a Confessor's loved one would lose their individuality after mating with a Confessor. After only one intimate experience, the mate becomes the Confessor's pawn and the mate loses any sense of individuality until the day the confessed person died.

Sadly, the most ethical of Confessors chose to never make love to the man she really loved out of deep respect for his individuality. Confessors, instead, would pick mates for procreation purposes while remaining emotionally close to their true soul mate.

[edit] Later years

After three thousand years in power, the Confessors would fall victim to the evil wizard Darken Rahl, who ordered his quads to hunt them down in their entirety and brutally murder them. Though throughout the reign of the Confessors they did little but sacrifice their lives for the people of the Midlands, these same people had come to hate and fear them due to rumors of the awful power at their disposal.

The one Confessor known to have escaped Rahl's plot was the Mother Confessor at the time, Kahlan Amnell, who proved instrumental in defeating him.

[edit] Confessor's magic

The touch of a Confessor was final. If a Confessor could obtain contact with a person, she could release her power into that person at the speed of thought. A Confessor's power destroyed everything that made up that person. After having been touched, a person lost his or her sense of self and would do anything and everything demanded by the Confessor. A Confessor's power was described as the power of love; in that sense, when their magic was released within a person, that person's ability to love was amplified, whilst he or she lost the ability to feel anything else. In addition, the person lost the ability to focus this adoration on anybody but the Confessor who touched him or her.

Perhaps the one draw back of the Confessor's magic was the fact that after its application, the Confessor became physically weak and required a time of recovery before her power and strength were regained. The time it took for a Confessor's power to be restored to her was indicative of how strong her magic was.

The level of control she had over one touched by her power depended on the strength of the Confessor's magic. Kahlan Amnell, for example, was so strong that she possessed the ability to command a person who had been touched by her power to die upon her command. In addition, only Confessors with an exceptionally strong power were capable of tapping into the opposing portion of their magic.

[edit] The Con Dar

Confessors had an additional power called the Con Dar, which was also known as the "Blood Rage." Confessor's usual power comes from love. But the Con Dar is an oppositional power, with its origin in vengeance and hate.

Only the strongest Confessors possessed this ability. The ancient magic of Con Dar was rarely used and it was previously thought that it could only be taught to a Confessor by her mother once she reached an accepted age. However, Kahlan Amnell entered the Con Dar by instinct, despite having never been taught due to her mother's early death.

The magical origins prohibit the power from being used for a Confessor's personal gain. Thus, Con Dar can be invoked only on behalf of a loved one of the Confessor's. Once a Confessor has entered the Con Dar, they can only subsequently enter it in defense of the person for whom it was initially entered. Since a Confessor's powers are usually rooted in love, using the opposite emotion to invoke magic usually killed a Confessor. But before her death, the Con Dar allowed a Confessor to use her power without touching a person, and also removed the necessity of needing to recover between victims. The Confessor's death restored the balance of power after the Blood Rage completed its course.

[edit] Life of a Confessor

Confessors wear black robes except for the Mother Confessor, who wears white. They have long hair, which is never cut as it is prevented by the magic within them. Their long hair indicates their societal position. Women in the Midlands are not allowed to grow their hair past a certain length to show that they belong to their husbands who have power over them. Therefore Confessors, with their long hair, belong to no one and can roam free throughout the Midlands. Someone other than the Confessor herself must cut or trim her hair. Every Confessor tries to cut her own hair once in her life but upon doing so will experience extreme pain.

A Confessor always travels with a wizard, who is assigned to her. He is there to protect her during the recovery period after she uses her power. They reside in Aydindril.

A Confessor learns from a young age how to 'hold in' her power, which is only released when relaxed. She roams the lands to confess people and are always welcomed into any town or village she enters because refusing the help or stay of a Confessor may be seen as an admission of guilt. As such, Confessors are often the cause of fear, and sometimes hate, among the people of the Midlands. Although they are the final arbiters and are above the law, their power poses a constant threat to anyone near them. Women fear and hate them because of their freedom to do as they please and are scared that a Confessor could take away the men in their lives. Men, in the same way, are fearful of Confessors for this reason.

A Confessor could not love in the traditional sense. This was because if a Confessor was in the throes of passions, she would lose control of her power and consequently destroy her lover's individual soul. If a Confessor wanted to bear a child, she would often choose a mate that she had no qualms controlling with her power. A Confessor could love from afar. But, if she were to make love to the man she loved, the person she fell in love with would be destroyed forever as a consequence for her fleeting moment of passion.

Thus, a Confessor's curse for her power is to never be able to embrace true love in its full human depth. Thus, the Confessor's mate was usually just a person the Confessor believed would provide her a strong daughter. Since the mate also needed to be able to kill his son, should a Confessor give birth to a son, a mate's being controlled by his mistress 100% gave him the ability to destroy his son, if required.

There existed only one way for a man to remain unaffected by the touch of a Confessor; should a man learn to love a Confessor unconditionally and have no foreknowledge that the Confessor's touch would have no effect upon him if he fully loves her, he would not be affected by the Confessor's power as he could not become more devoted to her.

[edit] Known Confessors

[edit] Appearances

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