@garphield i have written an omake.
The Promethean Magisterium
In the early years of the Promethean Cult it was an ad-hoc and disorganized affair. Originating in the Kopos coal mines, the American-introduced stories of Prometheus, told in order to provide religious backing to propaganda and safety instruction much to the confusion of the Mycenaeans, who had never heard of Prometheus before, mutated and formed into something that fit into the new and terrifying world that the workers in Mycenaea had been forced to face. The Cult mostly consisted of "priests" that were the oldest surviving members of the workforce that had ritualized various safety procedures and popularized various superstitions.
However a tonal shift would occur in the religion with the construction of the Prometheus Heavy Machinery Plant in Mycenae two years later. The religion had spread through word of mouth from the coal miners to the barge workers transporting the coal, to the factory workers in the city, gaining their interest as they burned the flesh of the god to melt and refine his bones.
The Prometheus Plant quickly became something of a holy site to the Prometheans, who viewed the 'Temple of Tools' as an embodiment of the wonders given to them by their god. And as those working in the plant became more aware and cognizant of the knowledge needed to merely survive in the presence of such power the veteran worker "priests" slowly became priests in actuality. These workers, usually the most literate and willing to learn, often subordinated themselves to the American engineers assigned to the factory, acting as seconds in command and "translators" for the Americans, often couching the engineer's instructions in religious or mystical terms in order to more easily convince skeptical workers of their necessity.
These priests then, fueled by religious fervor, started seeking out engineering educations themselves, wishing to know the objects of their worship as well as their American counterparts did. However, with so little paper and educational material available at the time the few books that they could requisition were not enough for everyone interested to be able to read by themselves, but the solution to this was simple: study groups.
Promethean priests would gather together after work hours and pour over engineering and mathematics textbooks. Much of the difficulty in understanding these textbooks came in the fact that Mycenaean simply didn't have the words to apply to the concepts involved, forcing the prospective students to learn English in order to gain true access to the information they sought, despite the best efforts of the Republic to make such effort unnecessary.
Often taking turns reading the texts aloud and discussing the principles and math involved, then taking their understanding of the subject to the American engineers to fact check their work, these Prometheans slowly cobbled together an understanding of engineering that, while much inferior to American-taught students, far exceeded anything a typical Mycenaean laborer was likely to receive. The result of this expertise meant that instead of immediately deferring to the local American engineer the Promethean priest could intuit a solution to many minor problems or maintenance issues that occurred in the plant, and the other factories that were being constructed. This formed a positive feedback loop where the priest would become an authority on the Makhina and would be asked to fix it, thus gaining more experience in fixing Makhina, thus proving he was an authority to be beseeched. (Though certainly some believe it, the idea that all Prometheans believe that the machines they administer are possessed by spirits is overblown. They
do certainly worship machines, but mostly in the way one worships a mountain. The 'machine spirit' explanation is mostly used to translate the needs and maintenance of the machine to the less educated workers.)
These half-religious, half-academic conclaves would then form the basis of the Promethean councils, as their scope would expand from discussion of engineering, maintenance, and workplace safety instruction, to religious doctrine itself.
Alongside the practical textbooks they read to gain engineering knowledge they also gathered the much more common books on socialist theory, seeking to understand the philosophical underpinnings of their state's ideology. Mostly unable to conceive of the industrial world described in the books except in the most theoretical sense, these discussions quickly turned to the world that they did know, and the gods that they thought inhabited it.
For centuries before Tucson arrived rituals, and the methods to appease the gods and assuage their wrath had been practiced to ward off famine, disease, drought, and other natural disasters, to varying degrees of success. The councils started to view industry and industrialization as a grand ritual itself, one discovered far in the future and brought back with the Americans. A belief they felt was vindicated by the vaccination of the population during the smallpox epidemic, the immensely successful military victory of the Republic during said epidemic, and the rapidly increasing quality of life afforded by the tools and products being created by the factories and chemical plants constructed by the Republic.
The difference in the rituals, they claimed, was that industry placed Man first and foremost. Something many decried as hubris, to which the Prometheans replied 'yes.'
They viewed hubris not as a grave sin, but as a law passed down by the gods, one that was unjust. The true sin in hubris is to not just place yourself above the gods, but above your fellow man as well. Only by raising all of humanity above the divine, they claimed, could humanity truly prevent the wrath of the gods. This, they said, was what made capitalism and monarchy so evil.
The Prometheans were perhaps lucky; had they made this claim before the purge of the priesthood by Aitana Freixa it is likely that they would have used the power of their bureaucratic positions to harshly punish and forbid their literal blasphemy. As it was, the state found their willingness to learn engineering, and pro-state, pro-socialist theology if not desirable, useful, and so took a policy of benign neglect.
So, as Promethean doctrine slowly solidified, so did the structure of the councils become formalized. Based off of the theory they read the councils elected a leader, called a Magister, whose duties were to organize and arbitrate meetings, record decisions, and coordinate with other councils. The local council as a whole is responsible for the administration and enforcement of safety procedures and rituals.
These Magisters gather together to form the Promethean Magisterium, a council of councils formed to codify and coordinate the practices and doctrine of the Promethean religion as a whole.
The Magisterium quickly formed councils in every major city and mining site in the Republic, the rust-red-robed priests becoming respected figures among factory workers and noticeably decreasing death rates from workplace accidents. The PRM government was both dismayed and appreciative of this development, viewing the religious nature of the group with heavy skepticism, but the half-educated personnel with relief, and decided to take a policy of benign neglect. Priests would regularly hold safety instructional sermons to the new hires to the factory, however more veteran workers would also attend these sermons in what quickly became a religious service where the priests would perform auguries for what types of accidents would happen that day, and provide blessings to prevent them.
Prometheanism became an accepted, if not revered, cult in the culture of the PRM, though its thoughts on the gods, ritual, and industry were controversial with the rural and non-industrial population. The Prometheans decried the current rituals conducted by the population as routine societal sabotage, empowering the gods with little in return.
This meant the Prometheans were often harassed outside of the cities for their denigration of the gods and inside the city many were shunned for it. They decried this harassment as anti-socialist sentiment and used their popularity among workers in the factories to stabilize their reputation in the cities, leveraging the government's anti-religious sentiment and success in famine-prevention to demonstrate the people's lack of need for gods. They weren't successful in deinstituting the rituals, but were accepted as 'designated skeptics.' As well, they withheld their expertise in maintenance of agricultural machines to pressure the rurals into mere suspicion and backbiting.
The low simmering tension between the rapidly changing cities and the farms that fed them was not helped by this sniping.
The cultural impact of the Prometheans was not widespread early on, mostly concentrated around the industrial workers and spreading out from them, the most important of their effects being the spiritual traditions built by this new class of workers. However their influence began to grow with the organization of the New Model Farms and the proliferation of agricultural equipment, to the horror of the Maoists pushing these policies.
This caused an early split in doctrine in the cult, as the Prometheans who became successful in the rural areas were much more moderate on their view of the gods, saying that they should still be honored so that they do not punish the farmers for the urbanite's hubris. They viewed society's current lack of industry as described in the theorist's books as a reason to continue to at least appease the gods and encourage the proper rituals that most empower men among the traditional ones.
The row that arose between the Appeasement faction and Abdication faction would become the main political-theological dispute between the various councils for the formative years of the Promethean Cult.