It is the year 822 after the death of the prophet Amalgast. His Kingdom of God is failing, beset by enemies within and without that seek to turn its people to mere slaves to greed and inquity. But across the country, the winds of change are coming. In a remote corner of a remote mission, an exiled revolutionary sect performs a prison break.
1st of Alul
822 AA
Nachivan, the Eternal City - The Heavenly Mount
The new year comes with the pious joy to which all great events are accorded in Vaspukaran. Summer had been hot, and the harvest bountiful, and all the augurs and diviners had said that this would be a year of miracles. Atop the Heavenly Mount in the eternal city of Nachivan are gathered all the great people of the country, and all their retainers, and all their servants, and all the ordinary souls and supplicants, arrayed across the central garden glade. Here, high above the eternal city in the complex constructed by the good strong Patriarchs, does Amalgast the Fourtieth born Santsarran welcome the new year with the festival of Iklokart.
There is much to celebrate. For eight-hundred-twenty-two years has the Patriarchate outlasted the ascension to heaven of its founder, the creator, the revelator, the redeemer, Amalgast the Prophet, the inestimable, the immortal. For eight-hundred-twenty two years had Vaspukaran rushed out from its founding core around the Holy Lake Hamgad until at last it had expanded to a civilization of faith that bestrode the continent of Camad. Greatest of the four eyes of the earth who are the great powers of the continent, incalculable in size, near 400 million souls under its protection.
These flocks, impossible to count, are the men and women who have put their trust in God and their trust in the Patriach. They speak in fifty languages; they pray from all cardinal directions towards the sacral capital of Nachivan; they serve in its armies and join in its priesthood and grant their labour to its works. They are all held together with one purpose: the exaltation of the Patriarch and the construction of the Kingdom of God.
The Patriarch is their shepherd, their king, their guide, who by the inheritance of blood and flesh transmigrated holds a mobile portion of the soul of Amalgast. He takes his name and takes his place and takes his kingdom, and all who see him know him as the ladder between the heaven and the earth. Below him are representatives of the four chambers, who define the society of Vaspukaran. The High Priests who sit all around him on the open dais are his foremost servants, for it is from them that come the laws and scriptures upon which all life is governed.
The Jurors who sit further are his blade and rifle guardians, a holy and monastic military order who are granted rights of self-government in exchange for vowing obedience to defend the word of God. It is they who have become the financiers of his railroads and his manufactories, and the owners of great monopolies. The Low Priests who sing hymns and praises are his faithful heart, from which are drawn by exam process the high priests, and to which all virtue is accorded for their humility in maintaining the way of God. And the Mouflon common people, who quake in ecstasy before his light, are each and every one themselves blessed by his light that reaches out to the four corners and embraces them within its eminence.
Each chamber is necessary to the function of Vaspukaran, and each chamber now offers up a gift. The mouflons bring their round-bread foods and woven goods of fur and cloth and hide, the Jurors their products of crafted iron and gilded fabric, the low priests their scholar's studies, on the glory of the Patriarch historic, and the High Priests their legal sacraments, on the glory of the Patriarch contemporary.
After them come the representatives of the seven autocephalates, seven faiths in one communion. All throw their gifts into the immolating fire that sears a fatted calf, a black heifer selected to be perfect for the customary new year's sacrifice. Each of the Autocephalates has signed a treaty with the Patriarch that their God is his God, and so the Patriarch has welcomed them, and demanded only tax and service military in exchange for their freedom of government and worship to which and every one is now entitled. First is far east Kusro, with its cherry blossom sweet, and then proud central Usral, with its firecracker that explodes in a fiery embrace, then southern Hayabiru with its calligraphic glyphs on clay that crackles in the fire, then north Hamadami's furs and north Azam's wooden totems and west Mangar's incense reliquaries and east Eykal's vast and shining oyster pearl, and each are tossed into the fire and smolder up to heaven.
And then come the representatives of the monastic holy orders of the low and high priesthood, who with them bring the fruits of their own labours, all owing loyalty directly to the Patriarch and all in incessant toil to ensure that all in his Kingdom will practice the good works that he has devised, all bureaucrats of piety. Each was founded with a central purpose, and each has done it well. First arrive the scholastic orders, who speak wisely, and then the Artisan Orders, who make brilliantly, and then the observant orders, who watch carefully. All who watch them say to themselves, 'these are the men and women chosen to carry out the works of God', and all agree that they are fine exemplars of the Patriarchical virtue that all the people of his kingdom will enjoy together the prosperity of Heaven.
And finally the missions step forward, who each and every one act in God's name to spread God's name to the peoples not yet welcome into full communion. And here is is the mission of highland Kutan, that brings a gift of jade, and the mission of mountainous Zarnai, that brings a gift of silver, and the mission of frosty Tunturus, that brings a gift of sweet tree syrup, and the mission of sweltering Danaan, that brings a gift of rubber, inordinately stretched over a drum so that when struck it makes a noise that delights all.
And of course the Cheshvan horsemen, who step forward last for it was they who joined first. They bring a great wealth of caterpillar fungus to be burned from the far northwest, and as it burned the people see the visions of the promised heaven, and all who inhale it weep with ecstasy at the approach of God.
And so the Patriarch looks upon his people plentiful and generous and says to them with a voice that echoes outwards, repeated from high towers: These are the gifts that have been given to me, and this is the gift that I will give to you. By the end of Alul there will be a Grand Sanhedron as there has not been for more than a hundred years, and from each chamber we will draw 100 men and women, and from the Autocephalates we will draw 7 men and women, and from the Missions 4 men and women, and I will sit myself over it and preside in judgment over the issues of the Patriarchate. And there we will make war on all the problems of our Heaven. These problems being above all the emissaries of evil: (1) penury, (2) disorder, (3) confusion, (4) heathenry, and (5) heresy. And each evil we will in turn drive out through our Sanhedron, and as in the past, all will be whole again.
And a hoot came out from the crowd, and a shout came out from the crowd, and the people trembled, and the people wept, and the people cried out, here is Patriarch Amalgast the Fourtieth Santsarran, and here is our savior, who rescues the House of God from our awful torpor.
And now, all would know, and all would predict, that things would be well, now, and forever. For this is Vaspukaran, and this now more than ever, is heaven's place on Earth.
11th of Alul
822 AA
Kutan, Submission of Xococo - Hayabasa Penitionary
They bury the boy beside his brothers, in a shallow grave. His name was Kali, and he was a boisterous child who wrestled with the village dogs and got into tremendous trouble. They called him swift moa, for he kicked bravely at anyone who challenged him, and now he is dead. His brother Xaki, who was quiet and a cripple and who Kali defended against village mutts, died two months ago. His other brother Jumi, who all called monkey for his climbing on the village pines, was claimed before him.
The whole village of Xococo has come out in this remote corner of Kutan because Kali was the whole village's boy and they will not let him be swept away into the world to come without a last goodbye. But the tears have been used up and there are none to shed, so some shudder and some moan and some whisper prayers to themselves. The boy's mother is passed and the father is fled to evade taxes and there is nothing left to say. There is no priest to ordain it because the moth-priests have been chased away by the local jurors and the people will not take a Vaspukarani proctor because they refuse it in favor of their heathen rites, and so they sit in silence and some try to mouth the words half-remembered from their shaman's sermons.
Scenes as this repeat across Kutan. For near to two decades this great section of the Atamarka Highlands, long a stable and prosperous mission, has been placed under special debt administration. To cover the dramatic debt taken to construct its railroads the High Jury of Dvarim has voted to repossess the country against the last Patriarch's meek protests, and seized it all to line their pockets. The directive they have given to their puppet Vicar Superior who rules in name over the mission is thus: Kutan will pay, and it will pay with interest.
So every year the taxes grow higher and the people thinner and their supports lesser and now it is all crashing down. The Maranine and Hessenine nuns whose schools and hospitals were necessary to spread the inoculating light of God against ignorance and plague were closed as the mission cannot afford them, and so they have departed even as their younger nuns wept at the children that they left behind.
Now the red death that attacks the lungs has returned, and with it the specter of oblivion. For some among the mission vicars, this is a fine thing, for the people of Kutan are by and large heathens and it may be easier if they die than are converted. For others, it is vile sin, but they cannot act against the whole might of the Jurors and their vast and independent banner armies who occupy the mission's heart. The rebels who hold up in their mummy-courts high in the mountains recede higher every year, and with them recedes a people's future.
Among the village men and women are the exiles of Hasadaya Penitentiary, and these foreigners are you, sent here as a stately punishment. Seven years ago you dared to speak against the authorities who besmirch the name of God and wrote the gospel of the truth in papers passed around your home-metropolitan. For this righteous act your whole sect was stripped of rights and privileges and deported to the place where the air is sparse and winter's bitter chill claims the old and weak, an austere place where they expect your spirit to wither and your resistance shatter. Your souls were declared tainted and your purpose to make right your impurity. All of you are legally penitents in the eyes of God, who must redeem themselves by apology and good works, in the form of hard labour on the railroads and the farms of dying Kutan.
This is the country that the high priests claim is heaven made on earth.
You have not apologized, and you have not done good works. Instead, you have held together your sect that was formed in defiance of the devils who claim heaven. There is no place for good men in that place, and so you are proud to be exiled to its margins where the people spout strange tongues and you must use a compass to find Nachivan's direction for the morning prayer for the alternative is surrender to the lie.
Here are the truths of God's Kingdom: That its people are destroyed by the crushing yoke of a new order that demands their bones broken by machines so the mighty can feast upon their marrow. That its righteous priests are trapped on the alley streets reaching out and begging for bread. That in its garden of earthly delights has been constructed smokestacks that poison the soil and obscure the stars. That its 'good works' are idols of blood and iron, and that it has betrayed everything that it once was.
Amalgast said that "those who let the righteous beg and the wicked feast will be swallowed by the God that eats", and he proved this when he jolted the Rohir of the Gushans from his horse who had oppressed the Vasp for two-hundred years and smote him with a single blow. This was Amalgast the peasant, whose 'servants' call those who till the soil sheep, and draw walls between themselves and the vast faithful from which they declare their all-encompassing piety. Amalgast the hero, who warred against those who would attack Vaspukaran, while worms who have burrowed into the heart of his dominion gaze meekly as enemies destroy it. Amalgast the prophet, who promised a spiral of truth by which the world would be greater with every passing year, while the draggers who have seized his throne wish to pull you all screaming to the muck of hell.
For too long, there has been no chance to resist and see success. But the locusts of inquity which they have unleashed now turn and loot their fields as well. Five years ago, the Patriarchate met obscene disaster at the hands of the Grand Mare, an upstart with no right to such a victory. The Grand Mare sunk Vaspukaran's great fleets and scattered all its armies, and all the evil men who promised victory could do nothing more but gawk and scramble from their fine chairs. Now from high to low, the wool has fallen from the eyes of souls who spot the pestilence, and even the Patriarch who has been confined to a state of impotence has been forced to act.
Ten days ago on the very first day of the 822nd year After Amalgast in the Patriarchial Calendar, in the month of Alul, the Patriarch declared that there would be a Grand Sanhedron and that, as per tradition, all the penitents locked away for reasons schismatic would be freed and their souls made instantly pure in a symbol of his mercy. This is the thing you know, though the penitionary komandir tries to hide it from you, and so you know what you must do.
This is the chance that you have prayed for, the chance that you have beseeched to God and his archangels. This is the chance for freedom for your sect, freedom for your people, freedom for your country. It is a chance, at last, to rebuild in the den of sin, the paradise promised that once was called with such naive exultation, the Kingdom of God.
But first, you must perform a holy prison-break.
Disciples and the Mechanics of Kingdom of God
Welcome to Kingdom of God! This is a quest I have been planning for a very long time and is an iteration on numerous prior but disconnected explorations into the world of Vaspukaran. Thanks to work alongside @100thlurker and @Chehrazad as well as discussions on mechanics with many others (with special thanks to @Godwinson) I have been finally able to develop a specific idea for a "religious revolution" quest, which merges aspects of many revolutionary quests I'm sure you've seen before as well as Magna Graecia, my city state quest where players represented the citizen body of an ancient Greek city state.
Here's the score: In Kingdom of God you play as the collective voice of the Sect, an organized religious cadre in the Patriarchate of Vaspukaran where secular authority has been superseded by a spiritual conception of life. Each player represents an individual member of the sect, and their debates reflect in-character debates between the members of the sect. You may speak in-character as a member of the sect, and you are in fact encouraged as I will be incorporating the debates and arguments between the players into the direct narrative and progression of the quest.
Together you will guide the sect into revolution or ruin as the Patriarchate of Vaspukaran begins to spin apart from decades of institutional decay and growing contradictions between its multifarious and wildly disparate factions and agendas. Against you will be arrayed active factions and agents each with their own agenda, some allies, some enemies, some neutral or suspicious. As the quest starts, you are tiny, a few dozen to a hundred exiles huddling in a half-frozen fort in the highlands of Kutan, far to the northeast, but with wise choices and a bit of luck you may propel yourselves to the axis of the world.
Decisions in Kingdom of God will be in-character choices made as the sect with limited information. You will be forced to rely on imperfect and biased sources for your decision-making and sometimes be forced to make choices on short time-scales in crises that represent the real chaos and tumultuous confusion of a revolution. Without spoiling anything: be prepare to be surprised, and consider it, and failure, as a lesson rather than a punishment.
Players are welcome to ask many, many questions about the world and setting and I will answer any and all without reservation insofar as you might have that information. Although some parts of the setting are very set, I am open to adapting to player choices and decisionmaking, and incorporating player roleplay into the living history of that world itself.
But that's enough for now - let's get it started. Welcome to Vaspukaran on the eve of the Fourth Grand Sanhedron, and welcome to your destiny.
Sects are secretive religious orders founded upon the basis of a common doctrine organized in a model first put forward by the outlaw Prelate Fadi Barujaq in his seminal work of reformationary subterfuge, The Path to Heaven. Each sect is organized on common elective means by which members of the sect take holy vows, contribute dues, and share in common secrets and agenda. All issues are resolved through votes and discourse, and debate is both required and demanded. Sects are imagined in relation to the mass and the sage. The mass is the mass organization and movement to which the sect acts as leadership for and guides in its holy war against falsehood, without which nothing would have purpose, for the sect is no cult, and pursues an agenda of true transformation.
The sage, or more accurately sages, are those leaders imparted with special authority or respect to work on behalf of the sect and to establish its teachings. The sect, Barujaq emphasizes, does not stand alone, and he identifies that every failed movement against the Patriarchate of Vaspukaran and its monopoly of faith has been lacking in some element necessary for success. Perhaps their sages were overbearing or lackluster, or the sect was too disorganized, or the mass was not enthusiastic enough to spread the message and maintain discipline in the face of their repression.
Throughout Vaspukaran's history, sects have been major agents of change and religious reformation. Official sects have often been the center of temple coups and defined the boundaries of factions of Vaspukaran's ever-turning temporal contest for power. Schismatic sects, meanwhile, have defined religious dogma and even forced several fundamental redevelopments of the Sufganarot, the official orthodox legal code of Vaspukaran's priesthood that defines the customs, rules, and rituals of religion. The four greatest of these have been Amalism, Iconoclasm, Pugilism, and Confessionalism. All four movements went so far as to directly challenge the Patriarchical power structure, and all came close to toppling it outright.
All four were only brought into line through a combination of decisive ecclesiastical repression and accommodation. Amalism helped redefine the entire basis of the Patriarchate, saved the country from near dissolution four-hundred fifty by ending the warlord era of the Weeping Years. It was as a result of their efforts that the High Priests became the undisputed rulers of the entire country, a social fact that continues to this day, though perhaps if only in scripture. The three famed Grand Sanhedrons, whose outcomes put an end to wars and religious strife, were each in relation to the three latter great schismatic movements.
Each of these movements were, however, eventually defeated. Amalism was betrayed and then reformed as an entirely and less confrontational faith, and granted official toleration. Iconoclasm was integrated theologically into the aesthetic and legal preferences of the country, while its more radical elements were utterly expunged. Pugilism was defanged and disarmed, commodified as a condoned form of peaceful martial arts practiced even by the more conservative and orthodox members of the clergy for its purported health benefits. Confession was made into the official ideology of the Orders, a new arm of the Patriarchate loyal only to the Patriarch himself who expanded the Patriarchate's vision and reach far deeper into the countryside before their hopes were dashed by a sudden temple coup near seventy-five years ago.
Not all members of these movements surrendered themselves to the immense capacity of the Patriarchate to accommodate and assimilate threats to its dominion. Surviving on in organized and small sects on the margins of society, appealing especially to those declared as legal witches, exiled penitents, desperate mouflon workers and peasants and destitute low priests and priestesses, the embers of their former radicalism lived on. These sects, utopian, violent, secretive and exclusionary, were excellent at self-perpetuation but could not hope to expand during periods in which first the Patriarch and then the military jurors rapidly consolidated power. The new industrial era brought new recruits, but also new methods of suppression, and those isolated revolts which did occur were wiped out quickly and the blasphemers punished in accordance with the most severe practices.
You are part of a new branch of sect growing up in an era in which the Patriarchate's growing dysfunction has opened new options. No longer able to maintain the simmering resentments of the rapidly growing cities where overcrowding and under-governing has made true control impossible, and with a countryside climbing in militant fervour and millenarian sentiment with every passing year as the High Priests and Jurors seek to undermine the landholding rights of the peasantry, sects have re-emerged, wedging themselves into the cracks of Patriarchical power. Still weak, disparate, internally divided and pathetically disorganized, these challenges to the Patriarch have been buoyed especially since the War with the Grand Mare not five years past, even right-thinking souls have started to openly question the righteousness of the Patriarchate as it has stood for near to four-hundred years.
The ground has not been more fertile since the end of the Weeping Years, when the Seven Ravs swept the land in a reformationary fervour that destroyed the reactionary Melik elite of feudal landholders and decisively ended one old order. For you, it offers the greatest chance that might be possible to escape your exile as indentured servant penitents and re-enter the theological battleground just as the Patriarch has made his opening gambit to free the country, for the first time in over a century, to debate its future.
But then, who are you? From whence did your sect come? From what obscure corner, what strange and bizarre ideology, do you hail? Even though your sect has outlived these origins and become more than just an offshoot, they will help define the broadest boundaries of your philosophy and to whom you will look to for converts first. Many of those among the domesticated flock of Pugilists, Iconoclasts, Amalists and Confessors will nevertheless be among the most receptive to a message that already resonated with them and their fore-fathers and fore-mothers. It is only a question of from what lineage does your own sect descend.
Choose one origin theology. Members of this theology's parent faith will be more receptive to your doctrine.
[] Mystic Amalism. Mystic Amalism is an offshoot of the oldest and most persistent splinter of the Sufganarot Faith. Believing in a community of all humanity, Mystic Amalism through aggressive and deliberate syncretism seeks to unite the entire world and its oppressed masses under a single super-faith and force heaven down to earth through their sheer alignment, where all will be united.
[] Militant Pugilism. Militant Pugilism is the unbroken remnants of the Pugilist Rebellions that nearly brought down the Patriarchate in the 5th century. Unapologetically populist, militant pugilism believes in self-disciplining martial arts and a people's struggle against evil that will result in a final apocalyptic battle with oppression that will presage a new messianic age, where all will have plenty.
[] Political Iconoclasm. Political Iconoclasm is the outlawed portion of the 7th century Iconoclast movement that directly challenged the Patriarchate's institutions. Believing that a spiritual flood is necessary to restore human freedom, political Iconoclasm seeks the total destruction of existing institutions and their replacement by those closer to the state of creation, where all will be free.
[] True Confession. True Confession is the holdout defender of the section of 8th century Confessional doctrine that believes in an existential war with the Kingdom of the Lie. Seeking to organize all Vaspukaran under rational, honest principles, true confession seeks to create a fully literate and progress-oriented society governed by a priesthood of all believers, where all will be equal.
Revelation
Sentenced as a entire sect to deportation by the authorities in your home Metropolitan, many of you were assigned elsewhere and scattered across the whole frontier of the country. By luck or mere incompetence, however, a large number of your core sect were simply placed together in Hasadaya Penitentiary. Rather than serving as an end, therefore, the actions of the Patriarchate have if anything massively strengthened the unity of all you disciples through the shared struggle.
The local Juror garrison, the Black Elephant Standard (or brigade), is a retirement program for old soldiers that after the end of the War with the Mare five years ago in 817 AA also became a home for crippled veterans, malcontents and shellshocked rejects whose pensions were squandered in bad investments. These men, of the chamber of the Grand Jury, are obligated to bear arms in defense of Vaspukaran, which has brought them no great virtue. They have little to no will to enforce themselves on you, busying themselves mostly with bossing about and cajoling the local criminal penitents, who differ from the schismatics in that they have been exiled for crimes against the faithful rather than crimes against the faith.
The lines between you, the criminals, and the local people, the village of Xococo a few leagues from the ruins of some ancient city long since abandoned, are very thin. People and goods pass freely in between, and the jurors know very well that the isolation of this place, and their control over the local rail terminal not too far from here, means that anyone who seeks to desert will surely die in the highland scrub, or else soon be given over to the authorities by villagers fearful of harboring a fugitive.
In this atmosphere you have been able to maintain your bonds and even advance the qualities of your doctrine. Printed books and prayer bulletins are smuggled in through routes that the jurors themselves maintain so they might make some money on the side. There is even a printing press here, though it is ostensibly only for official documentation. As a result, you and yours have been able to maintain an almost obsessive focus on plotting and planning your return, and refined one specific aspect of the prescriptions for successful sects by Fadi Barujaq.
Barujaq highlighted these three great elements as: 1) Fervour, the energy of the sect for radical and necessary change in the face of overwhelming odds, trusting only in God, 2) Discipline, the ability of the sect to guide both its sages and its masses towards the same goal and 3) Popularity, the ability of the sect to spread its word and reach out to every section of the people in search of adherents.
In particular, your sect has concluded that you must, above all, maintain a superiority in one of these elements.
Choose one. Note that you will gain a permanent bonus to actions taken which require the usage of this focus. Note also that the mechanical system of Kingdom of God to determine action results works on a combination of fiat, some dice rolls, and modifiers, meaning that the permanent bonus taken will have important effects on the progress and success of your sect beyond a number value.
[] Fervour.
[] Discipline.
[] Popularity.
Any sect worth its salt and roundbread also cultivates great sages. These leaders, like the Pasan Ghadi who led the original Pugilist Rebellion, or the Rav Obragras who transformed Amalism into a missionary faith, are nothing without the people who support them. Barujaq also warns that the sect that too-much venerates its leaders will face doom, for leaders seek power as well as pious revelation, and are made useful only by their control by those who vest them in the robes of power. Your own sect has no formal leadership, but there are specific men and women who can be called sages, and to which you owe much in these trying times to help maintain the unity of your singular defiance.
Foremost are three of your greatest men and women: Baba Tanda, a relentless former nun involved in six heists, four robberies, and three hunger strikes. Known for her iron will, Baba Tanda has a backbone like no other in the sect, and has held it together through countless disputations. Baba Tanda has a particular skill for organization, and has been known to have a general's skill for the logistics of direct action and the usage of a sudden and surprising strike by skirmishers to surprise the unprepared authorities.
Guru Wendam, who deserted from his duty as a juror after being ordered to fire on striking fabric workers, and who subsequently went on to spread the word of the sect under several incredible disguises, is infamously known for being the most funny member of the sect. Above all, Wendam survived for years before your exile by his unique and careful understanding of each and every custom and social situation to which he is placed, allowing him to blend into places where he otherwise might have been in grave danger of arrest or capture.
Finally, Rector Qanam, who made a name for himself when he viciously denounced the Patriarchate as a representative of a student who was claimed to have cheated on his priestly exam, has a mouth that runs at the speed of a great steam train and stirs the fiery coals of all the hearts of men. Ruthlessly honest and completely without fear, Rector Qanam has had the most military experience of all three, as he served as a penitent on the northwest frontier as a young man and even fought against the Great Western Coven's witch-armies.
Who among these men and women do you most trust to lead you now, in preparation of your most decisive hour? Note that each sage will continue to exist as part of the sect even if you do not choose them, but will not be taking on a leadership role in the sect at this time. Each sage also has an attached modifier to one of the key focuses which will affect the success of actions where they are assigned and that focus is relevant.
[] Baba Tanda, Steel Immortal Grandmother [+Discipline].
[] Guru Wendam, Great Proud Disgrace [+Popularity].
[] Rector Qanam, Never-Bowed Preacher [+Fervour].
Redemption
There is nothing left to do now but to act, and to act with the vigor of the wholly awakened sect. Komandir Varan of Hasadaya Petitionary has received a telegram order from Nachivan delivered by horse from Xococo railway station, an order given to the whole country, to declare a schismatic jubilee and let all penitents exiled for crimes against the faith to return home free. The Komandir has hidden this message and commanded his men to reinforce the railroad station. No doubt he fears a loss of revenue in letting an entire sect go free would be disastrous for his career and standing, and risk him being voted out by his own Black Elephant Standard at the next jury hearing. Tonight he will fear far more than that.
The plan as executed is thus: After seizing the arsenal and sending the local demoralized jurors into rout, your sect will organize and march out to the railway station where there are right now only a few jurors on duty, as the requested reinforcements shall have to arrive from Xahn. Here, you will seize control of the railway station, await the coming train (which is many hours ride away from the nearest station that might warn it of your seizure), and then hijack the train and ride it as far as God will take you. Even if the juror garrison is dispatched after you, they will be unable to obscure what you have just done, and word of your act shall spread across the country, shaming Komandir Varan into letting you go free.
And then from there the entire mission will either spread into spontaneous rebellion (as some more excited and younger members of your sect claim) or more likely simply protest your continued unjust penitence in the face of an explicit pardon from the Patriarch. By manipulating the power structure's own prerogatives, you will force it to allow you free, and from there you will be able to go straight to Nachivan in time for the Sanhedron, where you will have a chance to sway and guide the people towards the righteous path.
For this plan to work a number of things must be executed well, but the members of your sect have been preparing for this for years now, in anticipation of some moment where God will grant you a sign that the time is nigh to break your chains and also out of sheer boredom, as the moa and sheep are not great intellectual company.
Now, all that is left to do to place a last piece on the board and pull into your machinations a group with which you have been scheming for some time. To do so will greatly increase the chances of success but also the risks, and require the cooperation of outside elements. But, as has been pointed out by your own sages and wise Burajaq in his Path to Heaven, the sect that cannot mobilize others to act in service of its goals does not deserve the name.
To whom have you reached out to and secured support from in your plan to overthrow the Komandir of Hasadaya and ride the rails to liberation? Only one of these options can have been prepared for.
[] The Black Elephant Standard. Exhausted, demoralized, and penniless, individual jurors have pledged themselves in support to you in exchange for safe passage to the nearest town where they might more easily desert. Taking them on will grant you many great advantages in overwhelming the local forces and seizing the arsenal, but will also present political difficulties in what to do with them should they wish to stay with you, and uncertainty in how much they can be trusted if you are unable to find a way out of a deserter's execution for them all.
[] The Village of Xococo. Building rapport with the local villagers was no easy task, but you have managed to gain guarantees that the whole village will rise up in your support against the Hasadaya Penitentiary. However, their support is given on the understanding that theirs is an effort to reclaim their dignity in the face of despair, and they know very well what will come for them if the Mission of Kutan sees them as rebels and not defenders of the Patriarch's own orders. To put them in harm's way is to leave them in God's grace when you finally escape.
[] The Criminals of Hasadaya. Mercenary and coarse vagabonds, the criminals of Hasadaya nevertheless are no less happy than you by their continued bondage. With much of Hasadaya's plantation fields tended to by these men and women, their support would be invaluable and they would surely be indebted to you: you may even be able to spread the gospel of the sect among them. However, they are still sinners, and suspicious men, and do see you more as opportunistic allies than true friends, whose loyalties may last as long as they see no alternative escape.
Discipline {Focus}: Low. The movement has been inundated by thousands of new disciples and needs reform. Fervour: Absolute. An infectious energy and the ecstasy of possibility overwhelms all sense. Popularity: Over 15,000 members. The movement has a significant base in Nachivan and its first chapter outside.
The Three Stolen Tools of the Foolish Master
Wealth: Overflowing. You have more money than you know what to do with from donations and loot. Influence: Considerable. You have unexpected friends in high places, at least in Nachivan. Doctrine: Prosaic. Your triumphs and discipline draw others but your doctrine leaves much to be desired.
HaKhofshim Relics, Institutions, Traditions
These are the physical or symbolic anchors of the sect and represent its shared heritage, history, and bonds.
Six-Shin Aluf [Relic]. The sacred angel-flag that flies in defiance of evil. Steels the hearts of all who see it. Sefer Ghadi [Relic]. A precious and sacred illuminated manuscript of the Book of Ghadi. An icon of artistic righteousness.
The Spirit of Hasadaya [Tradition]. The founding myth of the HaKhofshim, a heroic prison break immortalized in sect memory. Crimson Headbands [Tradition]. Blood-red headbands reflect the blood of martyrs and the cleansing of the strain of evil. Storming of Vikrag [Tradition]. The victory of the gunpowder eucharist over Sword-Altar shall carry forward to eternity.
Black Sheep Printing Covenant [Institution]. You operate a contracted printing press which allows you to magnify your popularity. The Guns of Nachivan [Institution]. You are the most armed sect in Nachivan per disciple, with a veritable stockpile of weaponry. HaKhofshim Mekdash [Institution]. A modest but beautified temple, which strengthens internal discipline.
HaKhofshim Fundaments
Fundaments represent the originating beliefs and philosophical tenets of the sect. They cannot be invested into or improved, and are more difficult to change without consequences.
Pasan Ghadi's Legacy (Metaphysics): You are a sect of the Pugilist schism, believing in the dualism of the soul into parts light and darkness, the war against five evils, martial arts training, and the necessity of personal and collective alignment to hasten the apocalypse and the world to come. Increased affinity with other pugilist sects.
Sayings of Guru Myriam (Theopolitics): You are a sect of the militant pugilist splinter of the Pugilists, interpreting the world to come as a call to action. You believe that the world to come will be achieved only by a dramatic transformation of real conditions and the levelling of social relations and equality of the human soul. Increased affinity with militant Pugilist sects and other radicals.
Flood as Treachery (Theodicy): Holding that God is intrinsically good but that the Flood was a result of the treachery of evil that forced the direct intervention of God, you argue that it is essential to work to expel and destroy evil within the souls of humanity in order to prevent terrible intervention from the righteous judge. Increased affinity with Pugilist and Confessional sects.
Transmigration (Apotheosis): You agree with the position of Rav Yatoni and the Second Patriarchate that the Patriarchs Amalgast really do possess a portion of the soul of the prophet Amalgast, and that it is possible by election or selection to elevate a figure or entity to supernatural power. Increased affinity with Confessors, Pugilists, and the non-Amalist masses.
Amalgast the Accelerant(Prophecy): You place Amalgast within the broader Spiral of Truth as simply the greatest of prophets so far rather than as a being different in kind as well as degree. Greater affinity with all radicals and with foreigners, decreased affinity with the orthodox masses.
Low Disavowal (Eschatology): You deny and despise the works and doctrines of High Confession, seeing its prioritization of a Patriarch-led and totalizing vision of existence as anathema to the possibilities of freedom offered by the world to come. You have far less affinity with High Confessor sects.
HaKhofshim Doctrine
Doctrines represent politically focused and present-oriented positions elaborated on from the sect's fundamental tenets. Doctrines are separated into tiers by order of power. Investment of doctrine points increase effects.
Doctrine of Extinguishment (Tier II): A powerful attack on the institution of the Grand Jury as it is currently constituted, on the practice of immolation, and Juror self-sacrifice. Significantly increases Juror recruitment but also attracts negative attention from their commanders.
Abolition of the Threefold Tithe (Tier I): An elementary attack on the threefold tithe for its fundamental unfairness and robbery from the lower to the upper chambers, and advocacy for its total abolition. [DEFUNCT - THIS IDEA IS NO LONGER RELEVANT]
Light of the Sanhedron (Tier I): Your sect believes that the Sanhedron, if used correctly, can act as a tool of freedom for the people and for the rescuing of the country from its place of bondage. This is a popular position with the masses.
Incapacity of Cloister (Tier I): Your sect argues that the Patriarch, both because of his background as a High Priest and his captivity, cannot be counted on to be a faithful friend of the flock. This is a radical position, and will mark you as such to both the masses and other sects. [DEFUNCT - THIS DOCTRINE IS NO LONGER RELEVANT]
Truths of Light and Darkness (Tier I): An argument from first principles that light and darkness are not just metaphysical but social principles that derive from material conditions, and that altering them requires altering the conditions and society which fosters them.
The Mosaic Principle (Tier I): Your sect argues that the Autocephalates should be significantly reformed and changed in favor of fairer and more equal systems, but deny the necessity of a unified rite or a radical transformation in the nature of Autocephalous autonomy.
HaKhofshim Sages
Sages are leaders and notables of the sect who serve to grant the sect connections, represent mass sections, and assist in actions undertaken.
Guru Wendam [+Popularity, +Wealth]. Former Juror and sect sage with strong experience in subterfuge and smuggling. Available.
Starshy Akov [+Fervour, +Discipline]. Juror defector from Nesra, leader of the Scourge of God, officer of the Mass Jury. Prioritizing Scourge of God actions.
Kendanaya Dvorah [+Doctrine, Influence]. High Priest's daughter, accomplished schismatic writer, influencer within the radical movement. Available.
Baba Tanda [+Discipline, +Popularity]. Well-armed low priestess grandmother, organizer, and famed fighter on the streets of Nachivan. Available.
Galavani Chana [+Fervour]. Young radical, leader of the Gunpowder Eucharist, stormer of Vikrag and emblem of the Deluge. Prioritizing Gunpowder Eucharist actions.
Vardar Bukak [+Discipline] Gruff labour leader, railway monk and Grand Rav of the Ravs of Labour, builder of barricades. Prioritizing Ravs of Labour actions.
HaKhofshim Mass Sections
Mass Sections represent affiliated organizations and orders of the sect with missions, purposes, and ambitions.
Scourge of God [Heterodox Underground Juror Standard-Cult]
Ambition: Embed themselves deeply into the mass jury and fight against the old order. Relations: Content. The Scourge of God are pleased by the priority placed on extinguishment, the possibilities of the Mass Jury, and the commitment to fight the remaining pieces of the old order.
Convent of the Gunpowder Eucharist [Militant Religious Feminism]
Ambition: Advance radical gains in womanly rites. Reach out to the women of Vaspukaran. Relations: Restless. The Gunpowder Eucharist has made great victories on the battlefield but seeks to ensure these victories mean something for the women of Vaspukaran, who remain slaves to the darkness of their households.
Ravs of Labour [Mystic Labour Federation]
Ambition: Keep the Sect focused on Labour issues. Expand into the newly flattened artisan orders. Relations: Restless. The Ravs of Labour are pleased by the labour victories made since the 30th of Tislev but wish for the sect to better prioritize toil and its issues into doctrine and organize in the artisan orders.
HaKhofshim Chapters
Chapters represent individual sub-sects established across the Kingdom of God. Chapters self-govern but send a share of member dues to the central sect. Ralabarak Chapter [Established]
Size: ~6,000 Leader: Ghami Pola, a working weaver and veteran disciple of HaKhofshim.
A disciplined section of HaKhofshim formed out of the original core of membership. Work in tandem with the Ravs of Labour and prioritize issues of toil and toilers. Form an organized bloc among the mouflon elders of Ralabarak'sLower Sanhedron.
HaKhofshim Allies & Connections
Allies
Ma'on [Ally]: A nearby all-male Pugilist sect that works to police the neighborhoods of the Western Navel alongside its toughs and braves and that is working with HaKhofshim on all matters in the Western Navel, devastated as it is by the 30 of Tislev.
Elder Varhan Sarbadgar [Ally]: A hard-bitten elder and radical juror, and komandir of the Mass Jury of Vaspukaran. One of the most powerful people in the country. Took the Mushad Bridge oath alongside Chana.
Esterkezy Oshana[Ally]: Radical intellectual and exile focused on the rites of women and the detonation of idolatrous institutions, disciple of the Iconoclast sect Makabam. Took the Mushad Bridge oath alongside Chana.
Cantor Ghadan Nasir[Ally]: Pedantic and scholarly leader of the sect of Ohr and editor of the popular sectarian epistle Ayn Soph. Took the Mushad Bridge oath alongside Chana.
Rector Qanam [Ally]: Rector of the sect, on a mission to the Metamoa revolt on the Ischak Plateau to spread the teachings of HaKhofshim and assist Maryam Vashti in her holy people's war.
Connections
Yeladada Merchant Clan [Connection]: A smuggling family of Amalist merchants with which Wendam is working on circumventing the city's customs walls with.
Elder Kardon Hadi [Connection]: An elder of the Sanhedron representing Vadashta for the Low Priesthood, he is an oblate serfdom abolitionist, champion of free silver and gabbi of the ecumenical rationalist sect Kedesh.
Girls of Eglantine Mill [Connection]: Brave mill-girls passing messages and information from within Eglantine Mill and picking up the pieces after the 30 Tislev has obliterated their owner and replaced him with a patriarchal agent.
Use these reference questions to help you answer Qs you might have on Vaspukaran if you're not sure about something in a main update. This is meant to act as a helpful reference and should not be required reading - use it to refresh or clarify something you're not sure on.
Theopolitics
Q: What exactly is the Kingdom of God/Vaspukaran and how is it organized?
The Kingdom of God, also called Vaspukaran is an immense elective theocracy of almost 400 million souls (people) founded by the prophet and first Patriarch Amalgast over 800 years before the present. It is ruled by Patriarchs who claim to, through victory in an election by the high priesthood, absorb a portion of Patriarch Amalgast's immortal soul and are partly possessed by his spirit. Hence each Patriarch has a numbered name ("Patriarch Amalgast the 40th") and a birth name (Santsarran). Governed entirely by religious law, Vaspukaran claims to be a heaven on Earth.
The Patriarch, at least in theory, is the temporal and sacral head of Vaspukaran, but their power has waxed and waned and it is now at a low ebb, with the Patriarch in functional captivity ("the cloister"). Below the Patriarch are the 'four chambers' of the country, social categories somewhere between class and caste: The High Priesthood, the Grand Jury, the Low Priesthood, and the Mouflons. Each has an ideal role within an ideal society organized on the basis of scripture, with the High Priesthood forming the administration and judges, the Grand Jury holy militia, the Low Priesthood pastors and spiritual teachers, and Mouflons the docile flock of the faithful.
In reality, centuries of social, political, economic and cultural development have rendered these ideals a fantasy.
Q: Who Rules Vaspukaran?
The actual governance of the country is heavily divided between the High Priesthood and the Grand Jury. The eternal cities of Nachivan and Vadashta are directly ruled by the Patriarch. The Patriarch has the power to issue Bulls and edicts which change the laws of the country, subject to certain restrictions formal and informal. Assisting the Patriarch and directly swearing loyalty to him are the Observant, Mendicant, Artisan and Scholastic monastic orders. Led by High Priest abbots and staffed mostly by Low Priest monks, these orders are Kingdom-wide and semi-autonomous organizations founded on a central purpose.
The Observant orders are temple bureaucrats, censors, and secret policemen. The Mendicant Orders are teachers, nurses, and other alms workers. The Artisan Orders represent all craftsmen in the country, organized into guild-syndicates, along with some uniquely strategic professions such as railroad workers, telegraph workers, canalworkers and roadworkers. The Scholastic Orders represent all academics in the country, and are organized by yeshiva (major learning institutions akin to universities). All of these orders are to a lesser (artisan) or greater (scholastic) extent reliant on Patriarchal funding to survive and succeed in their mission.
Most of the country is composed of Synodic Circles, ruled by synods (assemblies) of High Priests called Archdeacons. Circles are divided into deaconates, and deaconates into proctorates, which represent village-level subdivisions. Small cities and towns are controlled by prelates who answer to their local deacon, but larger towns and cities are self-governing Metropolitans, ruled by a Pontiff-Prelate and with greater local power. The highest legal authority in the country is (most of the time) the Great Synod, a court of 77 High Priests called Archdeacons from the 62 Synodic Circles. Low Priests and Mouflons are governed by the laws set and created by the High Priesthood.
However, Jurors are governed by separate laws, and do not answer to the Great Synod. Instead, Jurors have a parallel and messy power structure. In peacetime, the greatest legal authorities are the High Juries, of which there are five, governing five regions (North, South, East, West, Center), and entrusted with their defense. All legal appeals end at the local High Jury. Below the High Juries are the Circle Juries, a confederate assembly of all Jurors in a Synodic Circle that swears loyalty to that circle.
Below the Circle Juries are the Palatine Juries and Civic Juries. Palatines are free military territories perpetually granted to the Jurors as a source of income and land, and are also self-governing and run by their own assemblies. Civic Juries, or Garrison Juries, are the very lowest level of Jury, and represent the local Juror Garrison in a town, deaconate, or city. Unlike the High Priesthood, Juror hierarchy is very loose, and civic and palatine juries often openly defy their superiors.
All juries are also organized into military divisions called standards and banners. A standard is often one, or a few civic juries, composed of a few thousand men, and is called after an animal or symbol combined with some adjective (Black Elephant, Gilded Eagle). Some standards are synonymous with one specific civic jury and so the jury is called that interchangeably with its peacetime title (e.g. Sword-Altar Standard is also the Jury of Nachivan). Banners are much larger and are barely used except during wartime or on the frontier, and can range from anywhere between 10-100,000 men. Standards are often venerated for their historical legend and standard-cults are popular.
A civic Jury, standard, or palatine elects a komandir, and then that komandir elects an Ataman for the Circle. Then, through complicated and often corrupt elections, the regional atamans elect a High Ataman, to represent the High Jury. There are five High Atamans, who answer to their High Juries, and they are the most powerful Jurors in the country (and some of the most powerful men, too).
Q: What are Rites?
Rites are the series of religious laws and scriptures which define an individual or community's rules for life. All of Vaspukaran is governed by specific rites, and instead of speaking about "rights" in the modern sense, "rites", the freedom to a specific rite, and the contents of a rite, are what is important. The most important rite is the Sufganarot Rite, which is a basic and orthodox rite, set at the beginning of the Second Patriarchate 450 years ago. Established by the High Priesthood and with special sections governing the rules of juries, low priests, and mouflons, the Sufganarot Rite is the most important rite in Vaspukaran. The whole totality of Vaspukaran's religious law is referred to as its covenant with God.
However, it is not universal. There are some major rites created as legal compromises or historic agreements. Tranquil Rite loosens some of the rules regarding witches but also allows the institution of oblate serfdom and holds in the south of Vaspukaran. Outside of Circles following Tranquil Rite, oblate serfdom is banned and strictly illegal. Folk Rite reinforces protection for Mouflon lands, gives their communal village authorities legal power, and allows them to bear arms in self-defense. Autocephalous and Mission Rites are entirely separate rites following the special rules for those regions.
Further, there are vernacular rites. These rites are effectively concessions to religious federalism, bowing to the demands of a religious or cultural minority in a specific region. Vernacular rites allow for limited legal self-governance and demicephalous governance. Some are minor and vestigial, granting small tax exemptions or special vestments. Others are dramatic in scope, changing significant parts of how the circle is governed.
The four chambers are the four basic social classes of the country. They are formally recognized in all law. Each class has special legal privileges and obligations, is subject to different levels of taxation, and represents different parts of the country's social makeup. They do not recognize, together, every soul in Vaspukaran - far from it. Witches, Penitents, those in Missions and those in Autocephalates are subject to different laws and do not operate under the same laws.
The High Priesthood is the first chamber. High Priests are clerics chosen by a combination of exam, recommendation by an existing high priest and test before other high priests. The process is exacting, extremely difficult, and hard to pass - unless you are either coming from a family of high priests or are extremely wealthy, in which case you can buy your way into the High Priesthood. Once within the High Priesthood, two paths are open: The Path of the Scholar and the Path of the Sage. Scholars pursue a career in the monastic orders, and can rise to become Pontiff-Prelate or Abbot/Abbess Superior, controlling their own order or Yeshiva. Sages pursue a legal career, rising up the ranks of the rural administration from prelate (the lowest level of high priest) to deacon to archdeacon of a Circle Synod to archdeacon of the Great Synod. High Priests can often become very wealthy, and re-invest that wealth either especially into land or industrial investment. High Priests justify their right to rule by their education and scriptural knowledge: none are as wise as them in the ways of scripture.
The Grand Jury is the second chamber. Jurors are militia soldiers with the right to bear arms who take a vow to defend Vaspukaran as its soldiery. To join a Jury, you must be born on a Palatine, marry into a Juror family, or be referred to join by the majority support of the local Jury. Male Jurors (as female Jurors count but do not vote) can vote to elect their komandirs and have specific protections from taxation or prosecution which makes their position valuable. The Grand Jury also has monopolies in iron, salt, coal and saltpeter which it has transformed into massively powerful industrial enterprises. Many Juries, having not fought wars in years, have transformed themselves into mercantile councils who practice shooting on the weekends, while other juries have been rendered destitute by the former group. The lack of any customs barriers between Palatines, allowed the Grand Jury to develop the fruits of industry in between the less fertile ground of the synodic circles. Exilic Jurors, who are working away from their home garrison, lose the privilege to vote for either their home jury or the jury of their place of work.
The Low Priesthood is the third chamber. Low Priests represent not just low clerics (such as rectors, the lowest level, and proctors, a village or temple priest), but also almost all professions (law, medicine) and artisan work in the country. Becoming a Low Priest requires either passing a craft exam (which would enter you into the monastic order for that craft) or passing a professional exam. Low Priests represent a very significant and large class of people and much of the urban population of Vaspukaran. In some areas they also represent free smallholding farmers, labeled as 'proctors' but with no village to govern. Governed in hierarchical relationships where they are mostly shut out of any authority despite their significant education and power of sacrament, many Low Priests form the most militant and radical section of the country. Simultaneously expanding because of Vaspukaran's rapidly growing population and under pressure because of the decline of the traditional artisan trades, the Low Priesthood is in a spiritual, economic, and political crisis.
The Mouflons are the fourth chamber. Mouflons represent 'everyone else', and are the majority of the core population of the country. Subject to the highest burden in taxation, especially the manifestly unequal threefold tithe which taxes Mouflons and grants stipends to the other three chambers, Mouflons are further sub-divided. At the top are the 'marginalia', so-called because they preside at an awkward border, being often wealthier than many Jurors and Low Priests. These are merchants, shopkeepers, peddlers, and a few random professions not integrated into the Low Priesthood. Below this are toilers and tillers, wage laborers who have no special privileges beyond the most basic such as freedom of movement. Free peasants are organized into minyanim, a type of corporate village where land is held in common, gains are shared between the villagers, and most aspects of life are communal, with major decisions conducted by minyan assembly and presided by a baba, a wise elder woman of the village. Finally, oblate serfs are tied to the land and sworn to a specific deacon, jury, or holy order. Their status is inherited and they cannot move out of their position unless freed from serfdom. In much of the south, most mouflons are oblates.
Q: What is the world outside Vaspukaran like?
Vaspukaran is situated on the eastern end of a massive continent called Camad. Camad is often called the world continent, but it is not the only one: other smaller continents and archipelagos exist, but Camad is just short of a supercontinent, a kind of Laurasia or Gondwana, and so it is the focus of most attention. On Camad, there are four major great powers, called the Four Eyes of the Earth. From west to east, the Grand Mare is a constitutional state ruled by a harem which overthrew its sultan and instituted a parliamentary system. The Guarded Domains (called Asharei after their most known region) are an ancient dominion of federated princes and satrapies with a tripartite caste system based on profession, heavenly division, and a 'coil of literacy' whereby increased understanding of arcane linguistics accords greater status. The Great Western Coven, which calls itself the Collegium or Simurgshahr, is a web of different assemblies and institutions binding the center of continent into a theocratic Yuhwaist commonwealth while simultaneously hosting princes from half the continent within its college assemblies.
There are smaller or rising powers as well. Bordering Vaspukaran, one may name Osogdo, Maganya, Gontagora. Osogdo is a militaristic kingdom advised by a council of elders. Maganya is a divine and ancient empire claiming unbroken lineage to the time of Babarak and adopting a form of Amalism. Gontagora is an expanionist imamate ruled by the third shehu, a prophet of a new faith.
Further afield, one may name Tsakharia, Zunisdan, and Patranesia. Tsakharia is the eternal rival to the Guarded Domains to its south, constantly feuding over their shared border. Zunisdan is a trust-federation of villages that sprawls across the eastern edge of the Kavanar Mosaic, a region of uniquely collective village councils arranged into corporations and princedoms. Patranesia is a newly united republican confederacy of western islands and rival to the Mare.
Mass Culture
Q: What do the people of Vaspukaran Wear?
Clothing styles in Vaspukaran vary widely from region to region but there are some specific standards. In particular, each chamber has its own 'uniform'. High Priests wear vestments similar to the ancient Hebrew Kohen Gadol, sans breastplate, with a white or blue robe and golden overcoat or vest and white turban. However, this style has developed into more ostentatious fabrics, and the stark white is often embroidered or bejeweled to further denote wealth and status. Jurors wear four-cornered hats that look somewhere between a quadcorn or a modern graduation cap, a black or gray coat with a central spine of buttons, and tough boots. Frontier Jurors may prefer outfits like this. Most of the color in their outfits is in a fine sash or a cape or cloak, which will depict the symbol of their standard, banner, or civic jury. The style of the Low Priesthood is similarly severe, preferring modest blacks, whites, and blues in their coats and shirts, with the standing collar very popular.
Vaspukaran uses a variation on the historical Jewish calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar with a leap month every two or three years to keep it synchronized. It is called the Mushad Calendar. The new month starts with the new moon and also broadly follows the seasons. This calendar was devised during the period of the Infallible Patriarchs a century ago. The months of the calendar, with broad seasons following both dry and wet season and the four-season calendar temperate climates in Vaspukaran are more familiar with:
In addition to this, every circle has its own special calendar, every Autocephalate has a calendar, and every mission has a calendar. Most minority faiths also have their own calendars, though they are not afforded official endorsement. There are no standard timezones, though the Order of the Golden Spike, the railroad order, has introduced timetables which have made this more standard, and many cities have adopted these timetables for industrial efficacy.
Q: What currency does Vaspukaran use?
Vaspukaran has two official currencies, often referred to pejoratively as the 'bifurcated standard'. The older and more prestigious is the gold dirham, which is based on a standard measurement of gold per dirham and backed by an equivalent reserve of lucre. However, the general deflationary nature of gold combined with hoarding by High Priests of gold funneled into vaults has meant that gold dirhams have rapidly risen in value and have become hard to come by, causing a catastrophic deflationary spiral which suits Vaspukaran's creditors and is ruining its debtors wealthy and poor alike. The War with the Mare was started in part because Vasparak industrialization was causing such a draining of gold into the ever-devoring maw of the Patriarchate that the Mare needed to force import controls and massive reparations in specie to stop its own reserves from being depleted.
The younger and now universally disliked is the god-backed scrip. Introduced as a scheme to tie a currency's value to something other than gold or silver, god-backed scrip was initially tied to the value of railroad land, which was rising, with each scrip being a paper guarantee to some parcel of land. Patriarch Petrifor issued such scrip eagerly, and with reckless abandon. When railroad land prices dropped following the War with the Mare, however, scrip also dramatically dropped in value, and a lack of understanding of monetary theory led to Petrifor printing more to make up the difference.
As a result Vaspukaran is simultaneously in an inflationary and deflationary spiral. Until recent events the Patriarch was running out of gold reserves and was paying the salaries of Vaspukaran's massive priesthood from god-backed scrip, while major lending institutions did not accept scrip as payment for debt. The result is that debtors are on the hook for increasingly expensive gold dirham debts and are unable to get more, and the circulating god-backed scrip has a value that is approaching worthless.
In addition, the autocephalates of Usral, Eykal, and Kusro each have their own currencies. There is no standard exchange rate between these currencies and gold dirhams, and Kusro's silver dirham and Eykal's electrum doubloon in particular are rapidly and catastrophically fluctuating because of attempts to make more with less by shaving and cutting the content of precious metals in each.
Q: What about weights and measures?
Vaspukaran's standard weights and measures system is still based on a number of lines from scripture. In this regard Vaspukaran has a relatively centralized if not very rational system of weights and measures controlled from Nachivan, but three-quarters of a century of neglect have led to rampant local variation mostly for the basis of cheating and manipulating tithe requirements. Many circles have introduced their own measures which are theoretically the same as the talent, mina, and shekel system but are actually wildly different while using the same names, in order to either confuse taxing authorities or simply out of whatever expediency they can retrieve. The High Juries each their own system of weights and measures meant to increase competence in their authority, and each Autocephalate has its own weights and measures system based on obscure and local tradition. It has been described by some as 'confusing', and others as a 'living nightmare upon this holy earth'.
Q: What are the specifics of each Vernacular Rite?
Q: What are Autocephalates and Missions?
Q: What are the basics of Theology?
Q: What are the Four Schisms and what are the Sanhedrons?
Q: What is the state of the economy?
Q: How are Women treated?
Q: What are Witches and Penitents?
[x] Boxer Rebellion
-[x] Militant Pugilism.
-[x] Discipline. All other things fail or pervert their aims. Discipline has kept us true and faithful.
-[x] Guru Wendam
-[x] The Black Elephant Standard
[X] No Historical Parallels
-[X] True Confession. True Confession is the holdout defender of the section of 8th century Confessional doctrine that believes in an existential war with the Kingdom of the Lie. Seeking to organize all Vaspukaran under rational, honest principles, true confession seeks to create a fully literate and progress-oriented society governed by a priesthood of all believers, where all will be equal.
-[X] Discipline.
-[X] Rector Qanam, Never-Bowed Preacher [+Fervour]. -[X]The Black Elephant Standard. Exhausted, demoralized, and penniless, individual jurors have pledged themselves in support to you in exchange for safe passage to the nearest town where they might more easily desert. Taking them on will grant you many great advantages in overwhelming the local forces and seizing the arsenal, but will also present political difficulties in what to do with them should they wish to stay with you, and uncertainty in how much they can be trusted if you are unable to find a way out of a deserter's execution for them all.
[X] Plan Populist Gnosticism
-[X] True Confession. True Confession is the holdout defender of the section of 8th century Confessional doctrine that believes in an existential war with the Kingdom of the Lie. Seeking to organize all Vaspukaran under rational, honest principles, true confession seeks to create a fully literate and progress-oriented society governed by a priesthood of all believers, where all will be equal.
-[X] Popularity. -[X] Baba Tanda, Steel Immortal Grandmother [+Discipline]. -[X] The Village of Xococo
[X] You will be Assimilated
-[X] Mystic Amalism. Mystic Amalism is an offshoot of the oldest and most persistent splinter of the Sufganarot Faith. Believing in a community of all humanity, Mystic Amalism through aggressive and deliberate syncretism seeks to unite the entire world and its oppressed masses under a single super-faith and force heaven down to earth through their sheer alignment, where all will be united
-[X] Popularity. -[X] Baba Tanda, Steel Immortal Grandmother [+Discipline]. -[X]The Black Elephant Standard. Exhausted, demoralized, and penniless, individual jurors have pledged themselves in support to you in exchange for safe passage to the nearest town where they might more easily desert. Taking them on will grant you many great advantages in overwhelming the local forces and seizing the arsenal, but will also present political difficulties in what to do with them should they wish to stay with you, and uncertainty in how much they can be trusted if you are unable to find a way out of a deserter's execution for them all.
[X] Mother who?
-[X] Political Iconoclasm. Political Iconoclasm is the outlawed portion of the 7th century Iconoclast movement that directly challenged the Patriarchate's institutions. Believing that a spiritual flood is necessary to restore human freedom, political Iconoclasm seeks the total destruction of existing institutions and their replacement by those closer to the state of creation, where all will be free.
-[X] Popularity. -[X] Baba Tanda, Steel Immortal Grandmother [+Discipline]. -[X]The Black Elephant Standard. Exhausted, demoralized, and penniless, individual jurors have pledged themselves in support to you in exchange for safe passage to the nearest town where they might more easily desert. Taking them on will grant you many great advantages in overwhelming the local forces and seizing the arsenal, but will also present political difficulties in what to do with them should they wish to stay with you, and uncertainty in how much they can be trusted if you are unable to find a way out of a deserter's execution for them all.
[X] Plan Secret Criminal Martial Arts Rebellion
-[X] Militant Pugilism. Militant Pugilism is the unbroken remnants of the Pugilist Rebellions that nearly brought down the Patriarchate in the 5th century. Unapologetically populist, militant pugilism believes in self-disciplining martial arts and a people's struggle against evil that will result in a final apocalyptic battle with oppression that will presage a new messianic age, where all will have plenty.
-[X] Discipline.
-[X] Guru Werdam, Great Proud Disgrace [+Popularity].
-[X] The Criminals of Hasadaya. Mercenary and coarse vagabonds, the criminals of Hasadaya nevertheless are no less happy than you by their continued bondage. With much of Hasadaya's plantation fields tended to by these men and women, their support would be invaluable and they would surely be indebted to you: you may even be able to spread the gospel of the sect among them. However, they are still sinners, and suspicious men, and do see you more as opportunistic allies than true friends, whose loyalties may last as long as they see no alternative escape.
[X] Faith and Reason
-[X] True Confession. True Confession is the holdout defender of the section of 8th century Confessional doctrine that believes in an existential war with the Kingdom of the Lie. Seeking to organize all Vaspukaran under rational, honest principles, true confession seeks to create a fully literate and progress-oriented society governed by a priesthood of all believers, where all will be equal.
-[X] Discipline.
-[X] Guru Werdam, Great Proud Disgrace [+Popularity]. -[X]The Black Elephant Standard. Exhausted, demoralized, and penniless, individual jurors have pledged themselves in support to you in exchange for safe passage to the nearest town where they might more easily desert. Taking them on will grant you many great advantages in overwhelming the local forces and seizing the arsenal, but will also present political difficulties in what to do with them should they wish to stay with you, and uncertainty in how much they can be trusted if you are unable to find a way out of a deserter's execution for them all.
What is the Kingdom of God's stances on slavery, usury and debt inheritance. Are there any doctrinal imperatives for handling of the dead or is it left to cultural discretion?
Slavery as defined as the purchase and sale of human beings as property is outlawed and a mortal sin. It has been totally eradicated within the territory controlled by the Patriarchate of Vaspukaran (also referred to as the Kingdom of God internally) except for isolated instances and local traditions in marginal areas, and even there it is exceedingly rare. This is something that the Kingdom is very proud of and it uses to distinguish itself. Slavery is seen as impure and disgusting and an example of the evil of Babarak, an ancient legendary state that serves as a kind of analogy of pure evil, and which was wiped out by a real flood which totally changed the whole history of the sub-continent that is now Vaspukaran and served as an early foundation for pre-Amalgastene faith in the region.
However, coerced labour is obviously common, whether in the forms of obligated labour [unpaid labour as a form of tax, the historical corvee], serfdom, and penitence [a form of remedial indentured servitude]. Many penitents are those who have been forced to become so in order to pay their debt.
There are laws regulating usury to more acceptable levels both to protect souls from penury and to establish more realistic forms of credit and debit financing. Jurors are the main lenders in the country, developing from a purely military role into bankers, financiers, merchants, investors and businessmen and women. Their monastic communities, once meant to be groups of sworn brothers and sisters on the old frontier, have turned into banking establishments that lend, borrow and invest their treasuries at will. Their palatines [areas of inviolable sacred Juror land that was granted to them in perpetuity] serve as untouchable sources of investment and development as well as rent.
Also related to usury is that the Patriarch is expected to occasionally grant debt jubilees in order to alleviate it. There has been no such jubilee for over a hundred years and any Patriarch who dared without significantly increasing their power would be overthrown in a temple coup by the Jurors.
As for handling the dead the general rule is that the dead must be buried. However, there are numerous outs, cultural allowances, and tricky loopholes which were put into the communion treaties that the Patriarchate signed with many states and peoples that it encountered and integrated. Patriarchical doctrine is deliberately and intentionally theologically flexible, being based in the first instance on a premise that God is a mystery unveiled by progressive investigation and interpretation (the spiral of truth), which allows to re-adapt and update theology to new premises and cultures.
Sufganarot Rite (the core rite without any treaty allowances) cleaves strictly to simple, austere burials of the dead, usually in a cedar coffin. There are prayers and hymns to read and someone is assigned to watch the dead - sometimes they bury themselves halfway beside the dead as if to place themselves in a liminal space between this world and the next, and to aid them in passing on.
@Cetashwayo What is the current state of weaponry within the Kingdom of God? Rifling, matchlocks, gatlings etc.? Presumably there are some nice big cannons for sieging and such.
Without putting a firm date on it, late 19th century, pre-electrification. I may give or take from this estimate based on whether I think something is cooler or less cool, but it is absolutely at least 1850. There are many many thousands of kilometers of railroad and the longest railroad (the Godspine from) is absolutely obscene. I am terrified to put actual kilometer numbers in because it will kill me to start then retroactively calculating whether one thing or another makes sense and if the country is too big or small, but it is definitely comparable in length to something like the American trans-continental lines or a shorter Trans-Siberian.
Vaspukaran's railway infrastructure (the gold lines on the map) is its most impressive and most notable industrial accomplishment, but also its most expensive, and a major cause of a number of its current issues. Railways were seen as sacral lines comparable to Inca ceques, ritual pathways radiating from Cusco that tied the entire Empire into a singular cosmic geography. However, they also cost a fuckload of money. For Kutan Mission - too much. Building their very impressive round line made the most prosperous mission into a financial basketcase whose government was couped by the Dvarim High Jury meant to protect them so they could get a return on investment.
[x] Boxer Rebellion
-[x] Militant Pugilism.
-[x] Discipline. All other things fail or pervert their aims. Discipline has kept us true and faithful.
-[x] Guru Wendam
-[x] The Black Elephant Standard
Relevation's Fist
So said Pasan Ghadi: "Revelation is a fist to the jaw of Evil."
When the Grand Mouflon began his uprising, he did so for the sake of all humanity. After he had been touched by the angel Simurgh and told to go forth and free the people, he emerged from his tent and looked down on those gathered around him, a few hundred peasants and their wagonloads of grain and palty gunpowder, and said: "when God came to Amalgast he said to him, look upon the people all around who are trodden on the ground, bowed and weak, and look up to see the beasts who harm them. Smite them those that rule and protect them those that bow. The sword of heaven is your level, and the wrath of God your ruler." And Pasan Ghadi asked among those gathered if they felt that the Prophet's work was done, and they cried nay, and so he ordered each and every one to draw their level.
But if the philosophy of Pasan Ghadi was merely to bathe in blood it would not have survived the spilling of his own. You are alive and fierce today because the Mouflon and his greatest follower the witch-woman Opernani Myriam wrote down his beliefs and his proclamations and added to them the following great facts: 1) that this world is imperfect and flawed, and will be replaced by the perfect world in the world to come, 2) that the world to come will come only by the acts of man, 3) that this action is taken by destroying the five evils.
The five evils are the sins which must be destroyed by righteous action. In sum they demand all followers of the Pasan Ghadi to 1) self-discipline and elevate the mind and body, 2) align themselves with the sacred, 3) bring up the weak and level the strong , 4) elevate and unite the communes of the people, and 5) bring forth the world to come. The world to come is a state in which souls are freed from material and spiritual want and united in a congregation of congregations that comprises all the world, and it demands the strongest will and the application of the greatest revelations of God's mysteries of creation to accomplish. The Pugilists do not disdain the new tools of this age but their use, for it was said by the Pasan Ghadi that "Do not hate the lash, but seize it for yourself and turn it on the wicked." It is only by the action of all communities that this world is gained - for the soul who is an island will be lost in a sea of suffering.
In 536 AA, it was the Pasan Ghadi who made these commitments and vows and so began his war against injustice. Today, it is your turn to take a step towards the messianic age.
It begins with an anointing.
Be not Afraid
Guru Wendam is a stout energetic man at the cusp of middling age with a bristling moustache, short-cropped black hair and a trickster's grin. When he talks to you he smiles and his eyes shine as if you are his love and joy, and tonight you have put your fate in his weathered hands. As the day starts to turn there is a great meeting of the sect, ostensibly to observe the end-of-sabbath ceremony. This night has been chosen because on every other day you work, and so tonight all will be ready for the day of liberation.
First, Guru Wendam performs the angelforms, the sacred and mystic moves practiced and perfected by the members of the sect. The forms were all devised by the Pasan Ghadi in reference to dreams and visions granted to him by the angels, and so have embedded in them a mystic and powerful quality. Wendam dances and cheers, and all join in a perfect hora, spinning 'round and 'round, tears falling because all know some of you will not meet again for morning prayer.
Then Baba Tanda comes and cradles something close, and many more begin to burst into tears as they see it is the last of their sect's old anointing oil, sealed with the sacred Pei and concocted from plants that could never be fetched here. It is the last little jar, and tonight she will expend it to anoint a troop of holy warriors. All know, then, that this last piece of home is gone. You have no choice but to reclaim enough oil for you all to bathe in (not that you would do as to do so would be outrageously sacrilegious and impure, it is a metaphor, oh God).
Rector Qanam gives a stirring and long speech outlining the reasons for injustice and the ways to rectify it. He outlines the ways in which you sought to stop it before, that each option was expended, that you were subject to abuse, that the villagers of Xococo are being choked to death, the other prisoners worked to death, that here there is no future and a profound slavery. He sentences those who fight against you to death, and that their deaths are just if they cannot be avoided. And then he commands you to look forward, and not merely bask in revenge, but remember your oath, the oath you took for this sect: that the world to come is built by love and not by blood.
And then there is an incident as Guru Wendam starts to draw up the battle plan, as the women of the sect make ruckus, and some of the men grumble, eight years of exile dulling them into domesticity. The women rebuke them rightly and say: tonight, we wish tonight for guns, and not for sons. There is stillness in the air, and Guru Wendam steps forward and inspects the women each and every one, and looks back to the men, and grips a bolt-action in his hand and shoves it into the youngest woman's arms. And he says: My brother, does she not have hands to grip and eyes to aim and ears to hear and mouth to shout and teeth to bite? So why then, should she be left behind when she can fight?
And Baba Tanda walks up, and takes another rifle, and places into another woman's hand, and says to her: here is your son. And the woman replies, and may I take good care of him.
And so it was that the plan was set, and then at last, Wendam made the order, and a group of men went with shovels to a far-marked spot on a nearby moor. From there, they retrieved and unburied from a hidden place, a piece of cloth smuggled on the inside of an infant's swaddling clothes all those years ago. On the inside:
SIX-SHIN-ALUF, the square sacred banner of the calligraphic expression of the six wings of the seraph angel interposed around the first letter of the name of Amalgast. Seven is a holy number to all in Vaspukaran, and it is by seven that all change is made. Here is a banner so feared that in the immediate aftermath of rebellion its unfurling was punishable by death, and it was buried rather than burned for fear its vapors would be inhaled and curse the burner. To wave the Six-Shin-Aluf is to declare a challenge to the established order and an appeal to divine liberation. By the Six-Shin are a million made one, before the angel's gold. All make a prayer and run a finger in a circle on their chests, and then the warriors, man and women are anointed, a dab of oil on the heart and one above the brow.
And all make a vow to fight injustice, and all make a vow to fight the calf of gold that rules in Nachivan, and all make a vow to fight for freedom, and the world to come.
For there is nothing else worth fighting for.
Midnight
It comes to pass at midnight. Wendam meets with the Jurors who had come and they tell him of the secret routes into the old castle, which in olden times had been a frontier fort to control the boundary of Kutan when the country was still independent but now was too vast for its depleted garrison. They show him a place where there was a gap of collapsed wall and the jurors were too lazy to repair it, near enough to the arsenal. And when Wendam interrogates these men who could be untrustworthy why they would betray their brothers, they say only they had been betrayed first, placed to rot here as humiliating to an order that left them behind. They are all detritus, waiting only to die: why not live, instead?
So Wendam accepts it, and gains a good rapport off trading barracks stories and mocking the pointless brutality of all frontier komandirs. Varan is particularly unpleasant: many of the jurors hate especially that he and his officers mocked and had beaten the 'tremblers', those jurors who had never properly returned from the War with the Mare. It was not right and not to the Jurors' code to behave such a way, but on the frontier this was barely observed, and these days they were all seen as surplus souls and not righteous soldiers. The village and the sect already knew his behavior to them: neglectful in upholding law and exacting in retrieving tribute, he had become meaner with his Kuti wife Tekala's death. For it is said that jurors are ruled by their wives, and she was a much better ruler than he.
It was decided that they would act by pale moonlight, for many great things happen under the protective light of the full moon, and so a number of souls steal into the arsenal in the darkness. A distraction is made by way of a fire burning in an abandoned hut, and then the jurors are all running with buckets while others gawk and peek, and this provides cover for the men. They rob the arsenal of a vast portion of its armaments (d100=86+10 [Wendam]=96) without delay and then Wendam forges another distraction by having a particularly crafty traitor juror rush off and tell the other triers (as jurors often call themselves) to alert the Komandir that the village is in revolt.
In a surprise to all including Wendam, there was indeed something odd with the village, for so soon as the distraction fire was lit the villagers fled towards the abandoned ancient ruin on the hill, and none can explain why. One of the traitor jurors mentions that the villagers have been storing crates of smuggled potatoes for bad winters where the Komandir cannot see it, but a sudden lust for spuds, Wendam points out, does not explain the movement. Noting it, Wendam sees the distraction work even better than hoped for, and the fortress is soon even further depleted. Only a few men need be killed or disabled before they can alert the rest, and then all the arsenal is taken away to be distributed to the warriors waiting behind a nearby hill as they prepare for an attack with dawn's early light.
It is all extraordinary and well-executed, but an errant sneeze in the cold of early dawn and then a failed shout to quiet it alerts a patrolling mounted juror riding nearby (d100+20 [sect discipline]=32). A shot is fired and then the fortress is alerted too early. The warriors of the sect, though do not break or panic. Baba Tanda kills the patroling juror with the single shot of a revolver, and then Qanam steals his horse and makes a bloodcurdling battlecry he learned from Gushans he was captured by, and as the first rays peek on the edge of the horizon the armed warriors of the sect march in a terrible near-silence as the jurors watch them approach nearly mute with fading spirits that God has abandoned them for the demon-fists below. Nevertheless, lives are lost and a few drop dead from shots fired down. Thankfully, most of the weapons of this place are outdated or in poor condition, and much of the garrison left behind are the worst of shots.
The nearest battlements, not meant for defending with this few, are immediately scattered, and those who stand and fight are shot to death (d100+20 [sect discipline]=100] (A/N: holy fuck lol). Many of the sect's warriors, however, are less disciplined in the breach as they are no soldiers, and it quickly devolves into a mob melee and errant chaos while Qanam, Wendam and the jurors push through. The Komandir, observing all this in increasing panic from his tower dons a ceremonial sword and adjusts his four-cornered hat, ready to die, but about halfway down the rickety steps he trips and hits his head and is dragged out unconscious while most of the remaining jurors lay down their arms and either surrender or outright flee.
The fortress, such as it is, is yours.
Standoff
As dawn cracks across the horizon, the six-shin-aluf flies atop Hasadaya, and the Black Elephant Standard has been crossed with black paint, signifying the capture of the Komandir and the standard's surrender, put forward by Hyanaki Akov, the most enthusiastic of the turncoats.
But now, there is a problem. The remaining jurors are outside Hasadaya, a good portion of their force drawn by the distractions or else reforming after flight. Despite proclamations by Qanam riding proudly on his newfound horse that this is the beginning of everlasting universal freedom, all stands on a knife's edge. On the one hand, if you charge now, you will surely rout the force, save time, and keep the Komandir as a critical hostage.
Akov, however, proposes an alternative: if you hold a trial in the Juror tradition, and legitimate the downfall of the Komandir, the remainder will surrender and refuse to fight you until a new Komandir is elected, which could take weeks for a quorum to assemble and therefore could disable the whole force if Akov's deception holds. There is also a deep urge among a number of the sect to see him put on trial for his crimes, and have justice be done the proper way and not to walk in the path of the skulldugger. It would also avoid the risk now of confrontation with the Jurors, and perhaps some might even join you if they see you holding to their customs. Wendam is supportive as he fears that a fight with the remnants of the loyal Standard will risk more lives.
It is the concern of Qanam and Tanda, though, that delay is death, and that even if the Black Elephant does not fight, other Jurors might. Juror trials in the field are not long, but it will still be hours lost. Varan will almost certainly be executed for he was short to being killed already and that will not be taken kindly, no matter the tradition, and you will lose the chance for ransom. To do so will burn valuable time and risk some of the Jurors trying to break tradition and reorganize against you even after or more likely stealing away and warning the rail station. It is also unknown what is happening with the village, as it is now almost fully deserted and there is smoke rising from the fortress ruin in the distance. And the criminals, it may be said, should be now waking up, and may soon gather as well, with their scythes and pitchforks.
There is little time for a debate, and yet the sect is having one regardless, because this is the way. A hurried shouting match, to be sure, but still a debate. Someone says that maybe young Yoni shouldn't have sneezed, and Yoni turns red and says that Chana shouldn't have shushed him, and Wendam laughs because if he does not laugh he will weep that God has entrusted him with the lives of all his good brothers and sweet sisters and they may well all die by day's end if they do not make right decisions. A few have died already, and there are none more he can bear to spare. A prayer is whispered facing Nachivan, and now is the hour.
Haltingly, he demands a tally. Who is for the trial of the Komandir, to be held upon the walls, and who is now against? Let all those who wish to thrust up their hands to vote one way or another do so, for it is by the hand that the world is remade.
Should the Sect hold a trial for the Komandir?
[] Hold a Trial in the Juror Tradition.
[] Take the Komandir hostage and drag him with you to the train.
[X] Take the Komandir hostage and drag him with you to the train.
Hollow Men
A man has to stand up.
The sect debates and the sect decides, and with its decision comes the fate of the Black Elephant Standard, disallowed from deciding its own fate to its own traditions. The turncoat jurors are glum and their spokesman Hyanaki Akov has to frown, especially at one sect member swatted behind the ears by Baba Tanda for speaking blithely of becoming a machine of killing. As it was written by Opernani Myriam: Peace is a hand, closed tight atop the foolish mouth. But the members of the sect still disagree most viciously, and it is only by a narrow show of hands that Wendam declares the involuntary pilgrimage of Komandir Varan, as one grinning member put it, to be the favored option.
The message is sent out by the shout of men and women from the walls, transmitted to a juror envoy down below who transmits it to his fellows. The sect is in a strong position to defend, if the jurors dare to charge. They have no cannons or another implements by which to force them, and even now it is clear that though they number several dozen that their strength is flagging. A debate is had on their own side that is too far to hear and then, gathering into a ragged offensive line on this hot day, their rifles at their sides, they send two-thirds of their men of their men forward (d100+10=67). With their rifles dropped and hands held on their neck's nape in the prisoner's yoke they shuffle forward, ashen and defeated, and are pushed brusquely into Hasadaya's half-fortified gate. The members of the sect are all too aware of the potential of what the great Rav Karogen called the wartime art of "funny business", having been amateurs in it themselves just the night before.
And then the remainder on the field hoist up their standard and unexpectedly begin to sing, and it is a song of home.
A pond of Eel
and a heart to steal,
three smart daughters.
And three strong sons
a mount of bread
and a vale of rum
The jurors on the field clap one another on the shoulder, form a great huddle, and perform a brother's embrace, kissing and squeezing one another's shoulders. They step forwards with their hands raised high and their arms locked, approaching to the walls. As they do, they sing.
no titheman there to bleed me dry
no hangman there to make me fly
a wreath of thorns and a wreath of gold
that I'll wear like the chiefs of old!
Several of the turncoat jurors on the battlements hum along on instinct until hushed by their own neighbors and then at last the jurors on the field belt out the last, trembling beats, as they hoist the black elephant standard high on its wooden pole and fix their bayonets:
My dear Nesra, where have you gone?
My dear Nesra, so beloved by God?
And then they ignite the standard, and it bursts to flames. The battlements grow still, and every breath is held, for all know that this is an immolation.
The Jurors have always been more than just the sword and shield, and later musket and cannon, of old Vaspukaran. More than a martial order, they are a culture that lives and breathes through its status, set apart and unique for generation upon generation. Souls live and die as jurors without ever knowing war, and standards survive for centuries, collecting prestige, accolades, sacraments and holy dust. Each standard is gathered from the same region, the same area, the same village, town, parish, congregation. Each votes on its own komandirs, its star-shy officers, its own elective justice. They guard jealously their privileges of non-appeal and non-taxation and on the frontier take seriously their obligations as the only souls called to service on behalf of God to protect the boundaries of his Kingdom.
And yet it was not enough when they fought the Mare. The Mare, with its modern well-trained armies, and its garden corps, and its ships of wrought black iron was oblivion to the unprepared and poorly organized juries of the eastern shore. When the Mare came and besieged Eykshir and the Patriarch ordered the city be relieved, whole standards were wiped. Juror charges in the style of old heroes were torn apart by bulletspitters. Juror squares so well practiced in the instruction of the legendary Ataman Kutensi were blown apart by the new artillery. Those priests who gave them blessed sacraments that the righteous cannot falter did them cruelest injury for on the field in those wicked days they felt that they were trapped to live as false men or die true and honest deaths.
No way out except to perish, no way home except at the time of messianic resurrection. In these circumstances, to save the honor of their standards, to save their own personal honor, to ensure that they had a last martyr's path to heaven, that their widows and their sons and daughters would at least not know them to be cowards, they committed to the principle of immolation. Against reason, against logic, against hope, this was the chance to deny the facts of their world's demise. After the standard is lit, the juror in the man is already dead: there is no choice but for the rest to follow.
A martyr's charge, without reason, without point, without purpose, but to die with glory in the name of God. And now, today, at this moment, as the smoke of the burning standard wafts to heaven, three-dozen men who have been discarded and whose culture slides away and who never left Eykshir in those wicked days decide that they have no future but the one that God will find for them in the world to come. It is the despair of the old juror and his mad world of songs and heroes' honor consigned by history to obliteration.
And so Guru Wendam makes a prayer of forgiveness, though for whom he is not certain, and so Guru Wendam gives the order to present, and so the sect opens fire.
In the aftermath, as men and women cry from their wounds and their lost friends, and the turncoat jurors wander the field littered by the smears of brothers, there still stands held erect by the piled bodies of the men who bore it the tilted and burnt flagstaff of a culture called Black Elephant.
The last thought of its bearers was of home.
By Your Blood Shall You Live
What can any soul say in relation to such carnage? So says Pasan Ghadi: Look past the battlefield and to eternal salvation, for by salvation we shall abolish battlefields. Immolation is the gasp of despairing men: Pugilism is despair's mortal enemy that demands men stand up. Those who could not and would not are the men too broken by a world that tills them as an ox does infertile soil. But always grasp the outstretched hand, for those who are denied redemption will turn to immolation. This is the lesson of today, Guru Wendam proclaims with confidence, as he tries to hide his shaking and the people put themselves all back together again. The turncoat jurors wander like lost ghosts, while the calls of triumph so common before are gone quiet on this cold and breezy autumn day on the high dry plain. But the turncoats have made a choice, and they are alive: this is the first step to fight against the surrender of despair.
After the bodies are placed neatly and buried in shallow graves and with simple sacraments, that Wendam pulls you all together again. He calls a meeting outside Hasadaya, and hands out bolts of red cloth saved up over years from torn garments and smuggled fabrics, and he instructs each soul of the sect to tie it on the heads of their closest neighbor. Then he turns to the turncoat jurors, and instructs them to do the same, and to have it tied onto their heads by the members of the sect. Here is the sect, he says, to the sect, and here is the mass, he says to the jurors, and he orders each member of the sect to clasp each member of the mass, for today we are all brothers and we are all sisters. Not the survivors of massacre and war, not the oppressed and oppressed, but one movement, all together.
There are rites made to induct the jurors, including a performance of katas and a sacrament by Qanam, along with a vow of silence. Nesra is not gone, Wendam shouts, although he is Kokabi and his dreams of home are of Sufgar and its dusty plains and face-tree groves. Nesra is still there, and one day it will be ours again.
One day soon, for now, now, at this time, at this second, we prepare to march. To march to the railway station that will take us away. To march from the darkness of this doomed oblivion. To march all for one, for freedom.
There is a cheer from the sect, and a ragged cheer from the jurors who have become the mass, as they find new courage. Members rush to and fro to secure their children from the places they told them to hide the night before and replace their ammunition bandoliers with tight clothes onto which to hitch their infants and their things. Many of the children have never seen anything but Hasadaya, and they ask their parents with sparkles in their eyes as the wagons are loaded and the moas and horses reined where Nachivan is upon a map. Many of the mothers laugh and say they are not sure either, while the more learned members of the sect who act as teachers call the children over and distract with tales of distant lands while the vanguard argues over one last and sore subject.
The wounded and the imprisoned of Hasadaya have been left inside the castle in a group at the center, moaning and sulking and praying to God he will forgive that they did not join their brothers on the field. Hayanaki Akov would at least like to take the wounded with the caravan, arguing that they might be able to talk down the jurors at the railway station if they show that they are merciful. Baba Tanda growls that they are finished with favors for the ataman's dogs, and Akov reminds her sternly that he may be an eternal brother of the mass but to do so he committed fratricide. There are also a number of 'trembler' Jurors who have had their heads touched by the evil of the Mare: they mean no harm to anybody but are defenseless in the face of abuse, and need care at a Hessenine nunnery where they might be cured of their 'craven's shakes'. There is no doubt, though that the prisoners need to be left behind, as they are worth nothing in a juror's ransom.
The wounded are not safe here, Akov argues: Between the villagers and the criminals there is no telling if they should accidentally 'die', by the time help arrives. Qanam points out that this will further slow them down by overburdening the wagons, but Wendam again seems supportive, especially after what he had just seen with the immolated men. The rampaging and suicidal immolaters had not, thank God, killed many of those defending the gate (d50+20=70) but their wide eyes and careless attacks had worried all. Such ferocity was not expected from such demoralized and disorganized men, and he does not wish to test that they can withstand it a second time. Still, there is widespread unhappiness to take on men who had just tried to killed them and had been pressing down on them for years before. Turn the other cheek, indeed, but do it with a slap, so said the Pasan Ghadi.
The sect will debate it as they move on the road, for no one wishes to stay here a second longer. This has become a cursed fortress, and with the komandir in hand and their ranks swelled by armed if despondent new recruits, the sect is as ready as it could ever be to ride the rails to freedom.
Should the sect take the wounded and the ill among the Jurors with them to the railway station, or leave them behind? Modifiers to fervour and popularity are temporary, lasting to the railway station. Each modifier is a +10/-10.
[] Take the wounded on the sect's wagons [-Discipline, +Popularity].
[] Leave the wounded behind here with the prisoners [+Discipline, -Popularity].
Crime and Punishment
The next step on the road are the criminals and here the sect finds itself unwelcome. It is the command of Pasan Ghadi to sanctify bandits, but destroy banditry: in this way it is understood that individuals may commit crimes, but for righteous reasons; the act of crime itself is forbidden. Those who do crimes for venal and petty reasons are seen as awful filth, creatures who scuttle at the edges of the vision of the good and hope to bring it down. The witch does not choose to be born a witch but is forced into it by nothing more than what the Patriarch proclaims as tainted soul. The criminal, however, chooses by their own will to act in their way, and so it is difficult for the sect to sympathize with these mercenaries who by their hands attack not up but sideways at their fellow man.
Neither do the criminals sympathize with them. They hold to the old rite: their crimes are against the faithful, not the faith, and they think you all a group of heretical cretins who will doom them all. There were efforts early on to remedy this gap, in order to apply the principles of organization and charity, but they were shrugged off and both sides surrendered not to understand the other. So as the sect comes by, though they are armed, the criminals shout and curse.
Some spit; a mother cradling her babe calls the armed women harlots and the armed men robbers before God. It almost comes to blows when one of the former jurors inducted into the mass is recognized by an old and enormous criminal. He makes one combative gesture and the former juror starts to rush towards him with his rifle butt. He is held behind only by the pressure of several members of the sect, who remind him that one of his oaths was to combat the five evils, and to exercise self-discipline against unrighteous anger.
The confrontation comes to a climax near the edge of the penitent village, where a trio of a short man, an old woman, and a tall man accost the sect.
They say to the caravan: You look at us and see nothing more than dirt. You do not say it but you think it every day, and surely pray that we would be replaced by better souls, the easier to include in your witches' coven. And yet here you bring into your number those who smash our noses in and exact every cruelty, and all you have for us is stares and 'righteous' whispers. We have made a life here, such a life as it is, and in your arrogance you seek to bring it down. What will they say when they come here and find you gone and us here? Do you think they will think us pure? We are not pure by the Patriarch's own decree, and we are all easy for them to blame for each and every issue. I sold yamroot without a stamp and Uya stabbed a dishonorable priest and Atoni shot down the local deacon's holy bird who ate his son and yet we are tainted souls. You forget God, and you forget your neighbors, and you forget yourselves. So then go, and go to hell, you Gushan-loving, Mare-riding, boot-kissing shit-for-nothing demon-fists.
Baba Tanda spits back. Rector Qanam chews the inside of his mouth so as not to immediately launch into a denunciatory sermon. Guru Wendam, though, is considerate and thoughtful, and he only sighs, slumping forward on his stolen horse. He looks back to the sect. Should they say nothing to do this, he seems to ask, should they respond, should they rebuke them?
Choose an option among the three. This will be an implicit debate, where the voter's discussion won't be reflected as an in-character debate but the thought process of the whole sect in responding to the penitents left behind. Modifiers to fervour and popularity are temporary, lasting to the railway station. Each modifier is a +10/-10. A ++ means a +20 modifier temporarily.
[] Say nothing and move on. [-Fervour, +Discipline].
[] Defend yourselves [+Fervour].
[] Rebuke them [++Fervour].
Formal write-ins of what each option might contain will not be accepted, but players may absolutely write in what they think the option of 'rebuke' or 'defend yourselves' might be and if I like it I will incorporate it into the final option.
Cloud-Mountain
It is said in the holy scripture that Amalgast, when he was first building his rebellion of tillers and toilers against the Gushan Rohirrate that would found God's Kingdom, went through many trials. That he fell before he rose, that he faced every setback and every challenge, and the path to heaven was everywhere lined with the thorns of evil. It is hoped by the sect that these, too, are trials, for none are very happy. The road is bare and empty, and as the village is left behind all thoughts are of the railway station and salvation. But God is not inclined to grant the righteous rest from trouble, and trouble you will find one more time.
This, at last, though is a special, unexpected trouble. As the caravan marches along the road it approaches the ruin that has always loomed above Xococo, a place long abandoned unnamed by the people of the village. It is not abandoned, now, though, and the high hill which it occupies brims not with the frightened refugees you expected but confident, armed men of the village wielding modern arms, not muskets, and there is a sudden panic among the caravan and a shudder through the former jurors as Akov goes stark-white and realizes that what Xococo has been smuggling has not been potatoes, and that this Xococo is not just a story of how a culture dies. Again, the sect curses internally for forgetting one of the maxims of Fadi Burajaq: That reformation is a ship steering in the misty sea of God, and that they neither control the currents nor the routes of other ships they cannot see within the fog.
From the hill there is a screeching heathen flute like none have ever heard and then a rider on the greatest moa all have ever seen, taller than two men at the neck. Bedecked with a headdress of brilliant rainbow parrot and eagle feathers, the rider steers his moa on the hill's flank expertly, sitting back upon its saddle, a fine bolt-action carved with sacral symbols manufactured by the factories of Dvarim cradled in his lap. He wears a death mask of ironwood and jade configured into a frozen roar of outrage, with demon's fangs and brows of plucked yak-hair. His armor is of black ironwood, and he wears a fine and warmly-woven cloak of gold and purple beneath it. Beside him, another rider descends upon a horse, bearing the standard of the rainbow serpent, not seen this far from the mountains in a hundred years. These are not men of the village, but men of old Kutan, and they who were supposed to recede into the mists of oblivion seem here very much alive.
All of the sect makes protective circles on their chests, and a few of the more superstitious tremble and make quaking prayers to protect themselves from evil. The Pasan Ghadi always saw his movement as setting an exemplar to the heathens, but you do not seem seem very impressive compared to this bird-rider.
The death-masked heathen shouts down and proclaims himself as speaker of Shaktu, son of Shilpak, the mummy of Khimu, a fine cloud-mountain, a city, now destroyed. The people of Xococo have been dying a long time, so he will stop them dying and take him under his protection. He has been in the village in deception for many moons, but has been forced to act, and now you have done much of his work for him. For this the speaker of Shaktu is so thankful. And also, that you respect their customs, and you paid respect at the funeral of Kali, who was a good boy. This is why Xococo is leaving: So that the titheman does not take more potatoes and maize, and so that no more little boys will die.
But still, there is a price, for you carry with you juror-men that the death-god Kukay would like to add to his bone-meal. He speaks in a difficult to grasp dialect of Vasp, and it is clear he is still new to it, for sometimes his pronounciations need to be corrected by the standard-bearer.
Wendam responds he will not give the jurors off, especially as he refused to accept those into the mass who had been the great abusers of the garrison. The speaker of Shaktu bobs his head slowly. He explains that he is not here to fight, but to demonstrate. You are not his enemy, but you trod on his land. You call this place Kutan, but it is home of ten thousand mountains: it has been forced into one by your god-kingdom. Very well then, he says with the sign of a smile in his visible eyes, then we shall be one, and we shall see how it works out for the sheep-herder that you call Patriarch. As for this village: Xococo the place will disappear, but a cloud-mountain may shift with the wind, and the true Xococo is not a place but its people. It would be good if this, though, was not assumed.
Wendam understands it now, and explains it to the rest of the sect. The whole native village is evacuating away, out of the bounds and sight of the Patriarchate. And now they need a token of your trust to show that you will not speak of this. They trust you enough, the speaker says, you strange-but-not-so-bad-punch-people, which is apparently the literal translation of Pugilist from his language.
Wendam asks what token the speaker wants, and the speaker clicks his tongue and shrugs. He points out the komandir you surely have in your possession, if he is not already dead, or else some of the imprisoned jurors, if you have any, or else something of dear value. He points to the banner of the Six-Shin-Aluf, and some of the young women gather protectively around it as if terrified that the mere gaze of the heathen at it will put it into his possession. Baba Tanda sighs: there is still much education to be done to break all of the old prejudices.
The sect must decide. To give the speaker no guarantee is an enormous risk, but can be done: you would instead attempt to outline the true righteousness of your cause and vow solidarity. Probably better, though, mutters Wendam sarcastically, would be an actual sacrifice. Surrendering the Komandir would be a bitter pill after the immolation, and surrendering the Juror prisoners, although none have fond thoughts of them, would be another. But to give away the Six-Shin-Aluf...there are ways to grasp it as a sacrifice of such sheer selfless and ascetic piety that it would spoken of for a thousand years, but on the other hand it may be terrible fortune to give away the banner of their victory.
There may be other things the sect might think up of giving away, but in any case, they are given time to stew on their decisions. The speaker says he knows you people are always talking, which is why their nickname for the shepherd's souls are the always-talking people.
Kuti culture appears deeply literal, Wendam remarks with a wry smile, to which the speaker responds blankly, yes.
How should the Sect prove its loyalty to the village of Xococo and the speaker of Shaktu? Modifiers to fervour and popularity are temporary, lasting to the railway station. Each modifier is a +10/-10.
[] Make a verbal vow of righteousness [+Fervour but success is no guarantee].
[] Give over the Komandir [Lose the Komandir as a hostage].
[] Inform them of the prisoners [-Popularity].
[] Give away the Six-Shin-Aluf [-Fervour].
[] Write-in [must have some significant cost to justify being a viable option].
