In the Rudolstadt Colloquy, internal tensions within the Lutheran community are contrasted and displayed. In addition to their mainstream Lutheran church, Grantville sends representatives from two smaller up-time Lutheran sects, the Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Throughout Europe, both Catholic and Protestant countries either have heads of state attending in person or by proxy by sending a personal envoy to the long theological debate, which is chaired by the Graf Ludwig Guenther, Count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt happen to be among the very nearest neighbors to Grantville's geographic position. Schwarzburg, in the fictional canon, in fact is so close that the Ring of Fire (ROF) transfer of territory between space-time continuums actually cuts through the outlying houses of the town, and several more that did not go to West Virginia in OTL 2000 AD, slid down the "newly formed" destabilized cliff that resulted immediately after the ROF, as is told in detail in "Schwarza Falls". Towards the end of the novel , Gustavus has charged Graf Ludwig with chairing and adjudicating an even larger colloquy in the city of Magdeburg (The Magdeburg Colloquy) to settle larger issues within his new realm.