Editing Ezra (section)

==Meta-Origins==
The Church of Ezra faith is a classic case of garbled and confusing, if not contradictory, information.

Perhaps the first depiction of the Church of Ezra is in "Domains of Dread", the original Ravenloft campaign setting book for [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]]. Here, it is presented in minimalistic detail, noting mostly that the church worships a female deity called Ezra, that the faithful are called upon to protect, aid and comfort others, and that the church is divided between four major sects, covering the three Lawful alignments and True Neutral. It also presented the Anchorite, the [[Cleric]] of Ezra, as its own unique class.

This would be expanded upon in "[[Van Richten]]'s Guide to [[Witch]]es", which was only published as part of "Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium Volume III". Here, it's noted that the Ezra faith calls upon its followers to battle evil and that they are very aggressive in their proselytizing, seeking to become the dominant religion of the demiplane.

Perhaps the clearest example of Ezra information first appeared in the fan-written netbook [[Books of S|"The Book of Secrets"]]. Here, fans were presented with an entire history of the church, as well as a detailed outline of its various tenets, how the differing branches of the faith interpret these tenets, how the church keeps from schisming even further, and a full writeup of the major players and locations of the church.

This article, "Anchors of Faith", was hugely influential for 3rd edition. Whilst the information on the Church of Ezra beyond the bare-bones outline presented in the 3e Ravenloft Campaign Setting (and its 3.5 update, "The Ravenloft Player's Guide") was spread across three different sourcebooks ([[Ravenloft Gazetteer]]s #2-#4), it ultimately boiled down to a condensed version of the same fluff established for the Book of Secrets.

Other major sourcebooks connected to the Ezra faith consist of [[Books of S|"The Book of Sacrifices"]], which presents a Ravenloft villain seeking to destroy the church in the form of Valeri Antonin, and "Heroes of Light", which presents both two [[Prestige Class]]es associated with the Church and a benevolent secret organization that stems from it; the Mordentish Blessed Army of Ezra.
 
in 5E, [[Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft]] Ezra is a open enigma that can have radical interpretations of the Lady of the Mists.