Shattered Kingdoms

This, in my eyes, is no problem at all.
This - intentionally leaving your faith headless to avoid the headache that is leadership - is grounds for punishment, blemishment and all the wickedness an Imm can come up with

Dulrik has repeatedly shot down the symbol idea, so we shouldn't even go there, IMO. I'm happy to answer symbol prayers all day every day, and I give them out all the time for IC prayers. I tend to ignore the ones that don't even bother to roleplay the request, though.

Why anyone would waste LT on a priest with no spellset is beyond me; you can make one right now and say s/he's the high follower of whomever you want. If a character thought that some God/dess whose essence has been eaten/destroyed/consumed/merged into the current pantheon is going to grant him or her full priest powers (and that the current incarnation of that "legacy immortal" isn't going to be a little displeased at his or her existence), I'd think s/he would be sorely mistaken.

Make a deep-elf shaman and say you're the High Priestess of Yenko.

I would definitely not support favored / high follower flags purchased with LT. Roleplay is required to attain these things.

Zavijah's idea about a quest to be initiated IF there is no active HF is kind of interesting.

I'd be more interested in the the investment quest providing history/stories and overall background to whatever particular deity the quest is related to. Then after the quest is completed the next time an HF logs on they receive a message from one of the NPC priests informing them of the Church seeker (class and race included). The HF can then proceed to hit an "accept investment" button or some such nonsense. Next time the prospective seeker logs in, tadaa, they're in the religion.

This way the HF always knows who is entering the Church, no ninja members. If there isn't an HF present it can be just like normal, an IMM invests, except all they have to do his hit the 'accept button'. Descending upon the mortal is of course preferred, but we all know that isn't always plausible due to log in times/availability. Just my 2 cents.

Afterthought: Would it be possible to link the completion of the quest with posting the seeker's identity in the Seeker thread in the respective religion?

That investment is an RP event strikes me as wishful thinking. I've played several priests. But while I've had some interesting conversations as a seeker, I can't remember one of these HF investment conversations being nontrivial. I've been invested with a one-line tell.

That's not because of bad priest RP. They're obligated to say yes if the OOCly-known religion rules allow, and it's a punishable offense to let investments linger. Nor is this the most exciting conversation for the typical priest player. Keep in mind, the seeker has to show the HF certainty, or he gets rejected. So there's little real content on either side. What's the point?

There's merit to encouraging RP by forcing interaction, as we do for resurrection and holy symbols. But to enforce this very specific interaction, when all the other game incentives are to get it done quickly, just isn't worth the frustration. Let players choose their religion through a command. If you're worried that a newbie will make a quick uninformed choice, you could always require Initiate level.

As someone who has a priest character and spent a week looking for an investment ..I couldn't agree more. I almost dropped the character entirely due to being bored (sorry but when you're hyped to play a character and struggle to get past level 16 because you have no real spells....)

I've waited three weeks to get invested before with a priest.

Does it suck? Yes.

Could I have sent an IC pray, or OOC line to the immortals to get this rectified? Of course. I think that this is the route that should be taken, too. If there are no known followers, then get in touch with an immortal to get a plan going for IC. If there are a couple that can be talked to, then go do that and get an immortal involved. Same with a high follower who is not easy to get a hold of. All told, it shouldn't take more than about four days to get invested if you are willing to get others involved. Write a help file for it and tag the hell out of it so that people can find it easily to do just this.

I am probably in the minority that thinks a quest is not the way to go.

If there is no active HF, I think the quest is actually the best way to go. If there is an HF though, normal channels.

I've never had a problem getting into a religion, even dead ones. All you have to do is send up prayers, PM the immortal who's in charge of said with times you're playing (they'll normally get back to you and set something up to get you invested). What I'm saying here is, if you RP and harass the gods oocly it'll work out for you to get into a religion. Getting HF is another case which involves you preforming peep show after peep show and sometimes sleezy things at the parking lot of the T.A.