Landon

Landon
Landon speaking in a grain hall in Ostralis Apex, 1997
Known for	Founding the Cult of Landon
Born	Unknown
Nationality	Thymaran (presumed)
Occupation	Schoolteacher, preacher
Years active	c. 1995 – present
Movement	Cult of Landon (the Gathering)
Last full interview	2004

Landon (/ˈlæn.dən/) is the founder and central figure of the Cult of Landon, the new religious movement also known as the Gathering, which he began in Ostralis Apex, Thymara, in 1998. A former schoolteacher, he first drew followers through informal evening talks in a disused grain hall in the mid-1990s.^[1]

Landon is one of the most widely liked public figures on Orylia, described even by the movement's critics and by the governments that have banned it as warm, funny, patient and generous. The movement built around him, by contrast, is widely regarded as radical, and has been associated with severed family ties, confrontations with authorities, the Ostholm experiments of a breakaway faction, and the persecution of its members in the Hand Trials. Landon has never publicly endorsed or condemned any of it; his silence is the central question in every study of him.^[2]

Almost nothing about Landon's early life has been verified. He has never published his family name, place of birth or age, and the movement does not record them. He is generally believed to have grown up in the river districts of Ostralis Apex, where he taught at a primary school until the late 1990s. Former pupils remember him as a teacher who learned every child's name on the first day and rarely raised his voice.^[1]

From about 1995 Landon held open evening talks in a disused grain hall near the river. They were informal and often funny, mixing practical advice with reflections on grief in the years after the Epoch of Scarcity Conflicts. Attendance grew by word of mouth from a few dozen to several thousand, drawing many members of the Logic Vanguard.^[1] Transcripts of the talks, later collected in The Book of the Open Hand, contain no doctrine to speak of; their recurring subjects are kindness to strangers, honesty and patience with loss.

In 1998 Kaelen Vora, one of his earliest listeners, drafted a charter that turned the informal circles into a movement with residential houses and vows. Most historians date the movement's radical character to Vora's organisation rather than to Landon's teaching. Landon accepted the role of its figurehead but has taken little visible part in running it.^[2]

Landon's appearances are rare and draw enormous crowds, including many people outside the movement.^{[citation needed]} A televised address in the Republic of Aethelgardia, in which he spoke for forty minutes about his late mother, became one of the most watched broadcasts in that country's history. He gave his last full interview in 2004 and has since spoken in public only a handful of times, usually spending the time talking with children and newcomers rather than addressing the crowd.

Landon has never commented on the movement's harshest practices, on the bans imposed on it, on the Ostholm experiments, or on the Hand Trials in which thousands of his followers have died in the Ulmarkan Empire. His followers describe the silence as grief; critics describe it as complicity. The sociologist Ilse Marrow has argued that he may not know the full extent of what is done in his name; others regard that as impossible.^[3]

Surveys consistently find Landon personally popular even where his movement is not: a 2016 survey in Thymara found 81% of respondents favourable to him and 74% unfavourable to the movement.^{[citation needed]} A parliamentary inquiry in Aethelgardia that recommended banning the movement devoted a full page to praising his character, a passage the press nicknamed "the love letter".^[2]

• Cult of Landon
• Kaelen Vora
• Hand Trials
• Ostholm experiments
• Landonite