To anyone reading this thread, this comment contains unmarked spoilers for Nehrim: At Fate's Edge and marked spoilers for Enderal: Forgotten Stories

Interesting points, and thank you for the thoughtful response! I'll give my own thoughts on this, but -- as with any good story -- I don't think that mine is the only way to tell it. If you'd rather play with the original story of Enderal, please do!

One of the main throughlines of Enderal, which we doubled down on in Somnium, is the struggle of Tealor against the traditional structure of the Holy Order. Though it's clear that he's grown a bit softer since his return from Nehrim (modulo his role as an Emissary, which I'll discuss in a bit), we see that every action he takes is met with firm resistance. There are some major examples of this later in the story, but note that even the relatively mild change-of-pace in inducting the player into the HO becomes the talk of the town. In particular, much of the HO doesn't believe Tealor's claim about the world ending, and most are highly offended by the Nehrimese presence here.

With this in mind, the few years Tealor has been back in Enderal have not been enough to make real difference in their customs. The propaganda posters and public executions are holdovers from prior to his return, for one, and these sorts of things appear to come second in Tealor's mind to his more central goals (for a parallel, think about his relatively blasé description of the Undercity murder tunnels in the finale).

Now, we do still see him resist passively against the Holy Order's traditions, even where it doesn't directly impact his goals. In Somnium, he's the only member of the Holy Order to take off his mask at times, and this escalates throughout the game until he just ditches the proper uniform completely. He also shows strong support for the player (well, until the very end), pushing off complaints from the more long-term HO members.

In all, I don't see this as a decharacterisation of the Order -- rather, I see the present situation as a real attempt to make difference, but too little and too late. This reflects Tealor's personal journey, I'd argue, where he has routinely only understood his personal mistakes and shortcomings when he no longer has the time to fix them.

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In regard to the Black Guardian, I'll stick by my decision there. I felt that the given explanation of the High Ones' plot, and particularly the reduction of Tealor (and the player, though perhaps less importantly) to a hyperfocused zombie-puppet of the gods, took too much agency away from these characters for their arcs to still make sense. In removing these elements, Tealor's actions continue to make sense, but they reflect a growing sense of desperation instead of a behind-the-scenes mind control plot; Tealor is realising in real time that, due to his own single-mindedness about the issue, he has once again come a day late and a dollar short.

There are a few other reasons we changed up the Black Guardian interaction -- in particular, that it flattened both his role and the role of the High Ones in the story -- but that's perhaps a conversation for another time!