Holy Scriptures

Holy Scriptures are grimoires that collect the legends of the Mythical Era and stand as the sacred texts of those who follow the Goddess of Creation. Passed to humanity by the Goddess herself, they also preserve her precepts. To the eye they look like plain spellbooks, their covers and spines bearing a stylized twin-winged emblem of the Goddess, and the magic cast through them tends to glow a soft green.

Fifteen centuries ago the Goddess granted people texts recounting tales of mythical times, gathered into the Scriptures alongside the teachings the faithful are meant to keep. Within them the spells lie buried as cipher, and humanity has worked since ancient days to decrypt them, with countless priests devoting their lives to the effort. Around the era of the Hero Party's journey, records kept in the Holy City reckoned that mortals had teased barely three percent of the Goddess's magic into the open, while unraveling even a single spell might demand anywhere from a couple of decades to several hundred years.

Copies rest in many a believer's household, where devotees pore over the writings and trade interpretations with fellow worshippers. The buried magic is sorted by chapter: the Great Fire of Condemnation gave up the Three Spears of the Goddess, while Paradise in Heaven and on Earth held an awakening spell. One section, the Time-Traveling Bird, long sat empty with nothing found inside, until Frieren's trip into the past by way of a Monument of the Goddess showed that it held the spell to return home, set off by uttering the incantation Vialathor. Of the precepts themselves little is recorded, save Heiter's remark to Frieren that the text bids its followers to live in good health.

Priests are the foremost wielders of the Scriptures, leaning on them to channel the Magic of the Goddess. A few ordinary mages can manage the simpler spells of that magic when a scripture is within reach, among them Methode and Frieren. Frieren's regard for the book runs less than pious, having once pressed a Holy Scripture into service as a rest for her cooking pot.