[ ] Defiance. Established doctrine is wrong, and the words of the Ecclesiarchy a betrayal of the God they claim to revere. Such a clean break makes further changes a lot easier to introduce, but makes you much more vulnerable to accusations of heresy and invites direct opposition.
Wholeness-Restoring Meditation Core, p. 344 Heal conditions which are usually impossible to heal, such as permanent blindness, deafness and so on. Please refer the book for this complex Charm.
Instant Treatment Methodology Core, p. 342 Complete up to an hour of treatment in a handful of seconds at maximum. Lowers treatment time for one Simple-type Medicine Charm.
Body-Sculpting Essence Method Core, p. 344 Functions as Instant Treatment Methodology, but also lowers the convalescence of the patient to seconds. Can be used once per scene, but can be reset by stunting.
Probably, if he's not dead. At the very least we can fix Gulliman without a doubt.
Really, the difficult part is just getting access and permission to treat them.
[X] Defiance. Established doctrine is wrong, and the words of the Ecclesiarchy a betrayal of the God they claim to revere. Such a clean break makes further changes a lot easier to introduce, but makes you much more vulnerable to accusations of heresy and invites direct opposition.
Indeed. To compare basically any historical or modern regime to the Imperium in the scale of abuses it levies against its own people is, bluntly said, laughable to me, and tells me only that we disagree fiercely over the scale of the suffering we are discussing. Even the Nazis didn't have a centuries-old tradition of hunting their own poor for sport as a rite of passage.
Even if the nobility is immoral, the people they hunt and kill still deserve to live.
Arguing that people deserve to die because they live under an oppressive, dystopian regime is nonsensical.
The typical hiveworld is the nobility living high up in their spires, shitting down on 99% of the population living in a mixture of medieval living conditions and a 1984 society. Bad nobles, no matter if they're just oppressive or out and out sadistic, are the norm, and the Imperium doesn't protect from them it protects them against rebellions - because those are of course an attack on the Imperial order!
The Imperium is awful, but it's collapse would lead to the deaths and suffering of trillions. The Imeprium does many things in an awful manner; the solution is not to destroy itand leave nothing to replace it, but to fix it and make it better.
Even if the nobility is immoral, the people they hunt and kill still deserve to live.
Arguing that people deserve to die because they live under an oppressive, dystopian regime is nonsensical.
Open defiance is a great tool to get friends in high places from the clergy's enemies. Philosophy would be more effective at swaying the masses enough that they-who-shit-from-on-high would be facing so much pressure to reform that they actually begin to believe they can't suppress it. I see defiance as, oddly, less a threat to the masses than philosophy, and more a threat to us, and probably whatever military institutions we sway to us.
Open defiance is a great tool to get friends in high places from the clergy's enemies. Philosophy would be more effective at swaying the masses enough that they-who-shit-from-on-high would be facing so much pressure to reform that they actually begin to believe they can't suppress it. I see defiance as, oddly, less a threat to the masses than philosophy, and more a threat to us, and probably whatever military institutions we sway to us.
As I recall, the people who got defenestrated survived their fall. The Catholics said it was because angels caught them midway down. The Protestants said it was because they landed on a pile of dung.
Much later, in fact, yes. So that fanciful Catholic claim is actually more authentic - since I would assume the sight of angels would have been slightly wider reported , it's probably not true, but it is at least a contemporary claim. The dung heap thesis isn't. Nobody at the time mentioned a dung heap. There wasn't a dung heap anywhere near the building.
There is no direct cap on the size of the organization you can improve, but you have to be in charge of it, or at the very least a direct consultant and advisor to the person in charge.
What you are saying then, @Maugan Ra, is that if we do not wish to give people dire Vandire flashbacks, we should then aim to inveigle ourselves as the indispensable advisor and/or right hand of the Lord-Sector. As the Mazarin to the Lord-Sector's Louis XIV, basically.
Which is certainly not too unusual a role for a Cardinal to have.
(edit: best thing about this post was finding a valid way to use the word inveigle)
The seas of Sanguis are a verdant green, stained by the colossal beds of kelp and other aquatic plant life that form the staple diet of much of the planetary population. Billions of tons of such humble foodstuffs are pulled from the oceans every year, harvested by great factory-ships and processed in expansive refinery complexes that dominate the coastal regions. The work is hard and often dangerous, afflicted with a staggeringly high rate of injuries and fatalities about the indentured workforce, and as such it was perhaps inevitable that it would be assigned to those segments of the population at large more readily deemed expendable; the mutants.
The genetically divergent make up a significant fraction of Sanguis' total population, just as they do on every major Imperial world you have ever visited or dwelled upon. Never more than a percentage point or two, an absolute minority in even the most exceptional cases, but when one deals with populations on the scale of a civilized world even such minor proportions translate readily into tens of millions of individual souls. Personally you have always suspected the number to be significantly higher, with the unaccounted difference credited to those mutants fortunate enough to be capable of passing for baseline human with appropriate amounts of effort and figure-hiding clothing.
Such deception is only to be expected, for the life of an acknowledged mutant is cruel, brutal and short in a way that you have always had difficulty truly comprehending. Being deemed 'impure' means at best that one's life will be a tale of prejudice and discrimination, with restrictions on where you can live and eat and work, all enforced at the hands of those who proclaim themselves righteous for the persecution that they enact. At the worst it leads a spot upon the pyre, consumed by the fury of a mob that perceives such genetic abnormalities as ironclad evidence of moral failing deserving of such punishment, as though the state of the flesh could have anything more than tangential connection to the quality of the soul within.
It took you some time to acknowledge for yourself the monstrous cruelty and injustice in such a state of affairs; raised in the bosom of Imperial society, born pure of gene and strong of limb, you lacked any kind of experience with the sheer scale of the problem, let alone the impetus to consider challenging it. It was only after you began your personal crusade, after you formulated your own doctrine and began climbing the ranks of the Ecclesiarchy, that you finally spared a thought for enough time to comprehend the full contemptible extent of the current state of affairs.
Such blinkered ignorance is, perhaps, not your fault… but the actions taken in service to it are sins all the same, ones that demand a measure of penance before you find yourself standing before the Golden Throne once more. You spent years moderating your sermons and pushing for improvements to the legal status of the planet's mutants, behavior which contributed in its way to your trial at the hands of the Witch Hunters, and now that you have been blessed by the Emperor and earned the support of the local church in all its forms you can do so much more.
Duty demands nothing less.
You approach the slum-town surrounding the nearest processing centre at the heart of an armoured convoy, your thoughts of coming on foot in a show of symbolic equality shot down quite thoroughly by the intractable Canoness Galina. The Sororitas appear to have appointed themselves to the collective position of bodyguard and protector for your person, and while the additional security is nice you can already see the many ways in which this new relationship is going to inconvenience you. A bit of trouble is better for heart and soul than getting murdered by a fanatical assassin the Sisters would have intercepted, but it still feels vaguely aggravating.
Still, there are advantages to arriving in true style. Already you know that word will have been sent ahead to the plant, putting the morning shift on hold that you might address the gathered workers before the gaze of the planet, and clipped reports indicate that the broadcasting equipment necessary for such a production has already been set up. Everyone will see what it is you intend to do now; something of a risk, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, but one you would rather embrace than see your message diluted by time and secondhand retelling.
The planet awaits your sermon, and you have quite the work of art ready to unveil.
Your transport slides to a halt, and with a dull thump the hatch opens, greeting you with a wave of bitterly cold air and the stench of oil and sea-salt. You disembark, flanked as always by your squad of Sororitas protectors, and take in the scene before you at a glance. As expected you have been brought to a large plaza outside the actual confines of the industrial area, the sort of place where public addresses are made to the workforce by overseers and administrators on a schedule as reliable as clockwork. The vast iron bulk of the refinery dominates the skyline beyond, and a large stage awaits you halfway around the perimeter, festooned with microphones and broadcast equipment.
The plaza itself is full of mutants.
The work done here demands a level of safety equipment even from those whose lives are felt by their masters to be already forfeit, lest the intake perish before even a full shift of labour can be torn from their wretched bodies, but even beneath the rubber suits and oiled cloaks the twisted shapes of your new flock can easily be seen. Additional limbs, twisted hides, and of course a profusion of eyes that stare in suspicious fear as you begin making your way around the edge of the plaza to take your place upon the stands.
They recognize you, for your face has been broadcast across the planet on many occasions and your robes are ornate enough to leave little doubt, and already a tide of fearful whispering ripples out across the crowd. They think you are here to do them harm. You will have to show them otherwise.
"I want five volunteers," you say softly as you walk, knowing that the auto-senses of your escort's armour will pick up even the quietest whisper from your lips, "members of the crowd, to be escorted onto the stage when I indicate. They are not to be harmed, or given cause to expect such harm at my hands."
One of the Sororitas nods briefly, and you suppose you will have to be content with that. God knows many of these women would rather be slaughtering your audience with fire and bolt-shell than preaching to them as you intend, but for now they are willing to allow the respect they hold for you and your office take precedence over that instinctive drive. You will need to work on bringing them around, but even with the gift of the Emperor such a task will be the work of months at least.
You ascend the steps to the platform, leaving your escort behind, and feel the familiar sense of doubt and nausea as you look out upon the shifting crowd. You have always felt thus, when preparing to address an audience; a lingering fear that you will make a mistake, that your message is not as clear as you might wish, that you will be laughed at or jeered or soundly rejected, but you have been doing this for over a century by now. You will always doubt, but you know from experience that your fears are poorly placed, and once you begin to speak the fire and passion of words spoken in true conviction will brush such fears aside.
There is a faint whining sound as the speaker systems come on line, and at the base of the stage a young priest checks a row of lights and then waves to you in ritual confirmation. The broadcast is live, ready to carry your words to an audience a billion strong.
"People of Sanguis," you begin, folding your arms behind your back and gazing straight into the camera, "my children… I am Cardinal Ignatius of the Adeptus Ministorum, and on my shoulders rest three burdens."
A simple start, made all the stronger for its simplicity. The people of the Imperium have been taught to respond well to talk of duty and the weight of responsibility, so by establishing that common ground you make them receptive to your intended words.
"As a priest, I am charged with ministering to the souls of my flock, with guiding them from the darkness and into the light." You continue, pitching your voice to carry clear across the square without the frothing passion and red-faced bellowing an inferior orator might require, "As a Cardinal, I hold a duty to do what I can for the good of all who dwell beneath the skies of Sanguis. And as a man, I am bound to work for the good of all my kin, bound by blood to all who share a human heart and human souL. It is all three causes that drive my presence here today."
You make a gesture, easily seen as nothing more than a rhetorical flourish but known to be much more by those who control the broadcast. The images being sent out will be coming from another camera, now, one positioned at an angle that will capture both you and the crowd you address directly. Few indeed will miss that you are here in person, preaching to mutants, and fewer still will overlook the presence of the Adepta Sororitas in their shining plate.
"We have been told, again and again, that those twisted in flesh are less than those born clean of limb," you say boldly, warming to your topic, "that it is not merely permissible to hate and oppress those who born different, but righteous. That it is somehow holy to turn our backs upon our kin, to damn them in word and deed for something they have no control over. This is the judgement of doctrine, handed down from on high by priests just like me for ten thousand years or more."
You stop. Close your eyes. Reach deep within yourself, grasp the light that burns within, stoke the flames. Surround yourself in a halo of golden light, don the mantle of power that the God-Emperor chose to bestow. Reveal yourself, to the world, as one blessed by the highest of powers.
You open your eyes, and your voice is a roar that shakes the world.
"They are wrong!"
The crowd recoils, reeling under unexpected emotion as your words kindle feelings in their hearts that they thought never to know in truth, and with another easily missed gesture you beckon for the first of the volunteers to be led up the stairs to the stage. You do not wait for them, but keep speaking, knowing that this is the critical moment; you must maximize the impact here, while your audience are on the back foot, before they have time to rationalize and settle themselves into comfortable patterns of thought once more.
"To divide mankind against itself is the greatest of follies, to do so in service to falsely claimed faith the vilest of sins," you proclaim in a voice of thunder, willingly embracing the bombastic tradition that the people expect to see in a religious speech, "we must look past such divisions, see beneath the flesh to the human soul beneath! Those who tell you otherwise would rather see the people at each other's throats than united in faith and common cause, and this cannot be allowed to stand!"
The first of the volunteers has ascended to the stage now, and as the camera focuses back on that narrow field of view you turn to greet them. The Sororitas, it seems, have chosen a mutant more vile in looks than most, either out of chance or deliberate artifice; it matters not. That the man has arms that scrape the ground, that his skin is mottled and furred, that the left side of his face is fractured like honeycomb, none of it matters. He looks at you with fear and wonder and the first stirrings of hope in his weeping eyes, and that is all you need.
You embrace him like a brother, holding him close before the eyes of billions, and though the act itself is enough to earn you a pyre in half the segmentum you find you do not care.
"The long dark is over, my brother," you say to him, knowing that the words will be caught and carried to every ear, "walk by my side, and we shall find a better world, a place of righteousness held together with our own hands. The road will be long, and there will be many hardships upon the way, but I promise you this; I will be there for you, every step of the way. Will you walk it with me?"
The rasping voice of the mutant… no, of the man, is filled with more emotion than any one heart could surely be asked to bear, but for all that it rings out loud and clear, carried by the artifice of man and the blessing of a god to every ear beneath the sanguine skies.
This was a charisma+performance based inspire roll. It benefitted from double 9s, +3 dice, +1 automatic successes from a charm and +2 more from a burning anima. Technically there was also a 'reroll 1s' effect in there but it was irrelevant.
Ten successes is comfortably above the resolve that even the most disciplined mortal with a defining intimacy towards opposing your influence would be able to muster. However it is still possible to spend a willpower point to deny the feeling, and those who accept the inspiration will still act according to their own natures.
-/-
It's not that easy, of course. Nothing truly worth doing is.
Following the speech, your first major concern is dealing with the fallout. Riots break out in every major urban centre across the planet, protests and demonstrations escalating rapidly into violent confrontations that take a solid week of effort to pacify and subdue. The vast majority of those who saw your speech were won over, but there were still billions who had to hear about it second-hand, and torn between the words of their converted neighbors and a lifetime of officially sanctioned hatred far too many chose to walk the path of blood and death.
Still, with the bulk of the clergy united behind you the seeds of civil unrest are quelled long before they can rise to the level of outright rebellion; there is only so far a man can push himself when neighbor and priest alike unite in telling him otherwise, and eventually the riots are quelled. The populace subsides, grumbling but compliant, and the final death toll only numbers in the thousands.
It is a bitter pill all the same, one made worse by several arguments with the intractable Canoness Galina over whether or not those opposing your dictates are guilty of heresy and deserving of the allotted punishment for such. It takes more work than you are happy with to talk the Sororitas out of butchering the rioters with overwhelming firepower, but on this point you will not relent; you will make the Imperium better, not simply change the name of the boot that grinds the people into the dust.
Only then, with the initial outbreaks of violence pacified, are you free to focus on your true work. As Cardinal you are the supreme legal authority on Sanguis, and you make full use of that power, repealing the worst and most vicious laws that hold your people down and reforming the listed recourse for the rest. You lack the confidence in your own expertise to entirely reform the legal system, but at the very least you can liberate the mutants from their officially designated ghettos and command that accidentally breaking a church window is no longer punishable by public immolation.
It is the process of reviewing the laws surrounding insufficient tithing that brings you back into contact with Deacon Amelia, who has been working hard to find the logistical and economic support for all the projects you have spoken of. Your awareness of the finances underpinning Sanguis has always been somewhat vague; your domain is the final confirmation, the approval or veto, never the actual crafting of budgets and tax law. Being informed of just how complex matters get when theoretically-voluntary tithes are the primary means of funding the planetary administration was something of an eye-opener, and after seeing just how haggard Amelia has started to look you naturally agreed to assist her wherever possible.
It does not take you long to begin feeling the same way. Endless rounds of meetings with guild masters and pilgrim-ship captains, of balance sheets and allocation efforts, of prioritisation and distribution and negotiation… by the end of the month you're feeling increasingly worn down and on the ragged edge, and after a passing comment from one of your Sororitas bodyguards you decide that some kind of break is in order.
Article:
Ignatius has accomplished an immense amount of work over the past few weeks. However, the process of doing so has left him highly worn out. It is time to seek strength and comfort in faith, and spend some time at one of Sanguis' many shrines. Where does he choose to go?
[ ] The Temple-Under. A subterranean network of shrines and catacombs, where the bones of the faithful are interned amid columns of living diamond. You have always felt this place to be a great source of fortitude and strength, just the thing to bolster your will.
[ ] The Nameless Angel. A mountain carved into the shape of an angel, reputed to be an anonymous member of the Adeptus Astartes. The sight of his broad wings and noble countenance has always left you feeling inspired and invigorated.
[ ] The Pilgrim's Path. A series of minor shrines and monasteries, traditionally visited by those who wear masks to preserve their anonymity. Walking the paths as one of the crowds has always filled you with a sense of community and peace, which will allow you to return to your duties appropriately refreshed.
Additionally, over the course of several weeks intensive effort Ignatius has further refined his abilities in some noteworthy way. Which of the following abilities have you improved?
[ ] Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
[ ] Performance. Your efforts to inspire the populace and then to quell the discontent have granted you new skill at oratory.
[ ] War. Witnessing first hand how a planetary peacekeeping operation is conducted, along with the insight offered by Canoness Galina, has been educational.
[X] The Temple-Under. A subterranean network of shrines and catacombs, where the bones of the faithful are interned amid columns of living diamond. You have always felt this place to be a great source of fortitude and strength, just the thing to bolster your will.
[X] Performance. Your efforts to inspire the populace and then to quell the discontent have granted you new skill at oratory.
[X] The Pilgrim's Path. A series of minor shrines and monasteries, traditionally visited by those who wear masks to preserve their anonymity. Walking the paths as one of the crowds has always filled you with a sense of community and peace, which will allow you to return to your duties appropriately refreshed.
[X] War. Witnessing first hand how a planetary peacekeeping operation is conducted, along with the insight offered by Canoness Galina, has been educational.
[X] The Pilgrim's Path. A series of minor shrines and monasteries, traditionally visited by those who wear masks to preserve their anonymity. Walking the paths as one of the crowds has always filled you with a sense of community and peace, which will allow you to return to your duties appropriately refreshed.
[X] Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
[X] Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
Not too fussed about the first choice, but I definitely think that grabbing some charms to deal with the unending hell of Imperial bureaucracy is the right move here.
[X] The Pilgrim's Path. A series of minor shrines and monasteries, traditionally visited by those who wear masks to preserve their anonymity. Walking the paths as one of the crowds has always filled you with a sense of community and peace, which will allow you to return to your duties appropriately refreshed.
[X] Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
