Scheduled vote count started by Cetashwayo on Mar 19, 2022 at 3:02 PM, finished with 56 posts and 40 votes.
[X] The Doctrine of Extinguishment. A doctrine attacking the practice of immolation and Juror philosophy in general, extinguishment is a general critique of the honor and self-sacrificing culture of Juror tradition from a place of intimate familiarity and drawing from the Pasan Ghadi's writings. Pursuing this doctrine will significantly strengthen actions related to negotiating with, appealing to, and converting Jurors. It will however, also be seen by Juror Atamsans and Komandirs everywhere the sect spreads as a threat that must be rooted much earlier than otherwise.
[X] The Doctrine of Relentless Illumination. A doctrine that demands a dedication to missionary effort and appeal to the masses even when they at first reject the words of the sect, Relentless Illumination is drawn from both the precursor to the Pugilists, the great Rav Karogen, and later militant pugilist writers such as Bavan Kina who emphasized the necessity of breadth of belief in order for Pugilism to survive. Relentless Illumination emphasizes an aggression and universalism in movement-building that competing sects and priestly authorities will find threatening.
[X] The Doctrine of Converging Revelation. A doctrine adapting to a disparate and fractured schismatic landscape, Converging Revelation draws from Opernani Myriam's historical apologies for allied Amalist sects made to shore up commonalities. It seeks to exploit vectors of agreement between different sects and inculcate sect alliance as a sacred principle. Converging Revelation makes forming radical alliances easier and allows you to even adopt versions of their own doctrine into your own, at the expense of weakening your appeal to moderate pugilists.
Would have loved to support converging revelation to open our third eye and embrace true confession but we need that juror support to spread our heretical ideology.
I haven't really had the time to write an omake about it, but ever since the women were all handed out guns at the beginning, I've had this idea in my head of a slowly forming firearms-based, largely convent-dominated subsect of pugilism that practices marksmanship as a form of meditation.
I haven't really had the time to write an omake about it, but ever since the women were all handed out guns at the beginning, I've had this idea in my head of a slowly forming firearms-based, largely convent-dominated subsect of pugilism that practices marksmanship as a form of meditation.
If you're okay with it, I would love to incorporate something like this the next update. Not in any great detail in case you get the time to do the omake, but to give it a mention. The idea is sick.
Oh man, a new Cetashwayo quest! This has really been fantastic so far, the worldbuilding and writing is top notch stuff. I'm excited to see whether or not these righteous fists will banish evil and herald in paradise on earth!
I'm glad that the more subtle option won because I certainly agree that to act otherwise would to beat our breasts in a manner unbefitting of our God-given cause.
[X] The Doctrine of Extinguishment. A doctrine attacking the practice of immolation and Juror philosophy in general, extinguishment is a general critique of the honor and self-sacrificing culture of Juror tradition from a place of intimate familiarity and drawing from the Pasan Ghadi's writings. Pursuing this doctrine will significantly strengthen actions related to negotiating with, appealing to, and converting Jurors. It will however, also be seen by Juror Atamsans and Komandirs everywhere the sect spreads as a threat that must be rooted much earlier than otherwise.
[X] As pilgrims, to show honest piety and shame those who would dare to stop us.
The Light and the Darkness
What does it mean to be free?
Pugilism does not believe that the diametrically opposed elements of light and dark and good and evil are separated states. Instead, all matter exists in contradiction, the soul made out of parts light and parts dark. No soul is born pure, but no soul is also born evil. If Confession believes that all existence is a battle between spiritual and material, with humanity spiritual and creation material, then pugilism sees man as both composed of a material and spiritual section. The individual battle is inseparable from the social battle, and the light that shines alone will be smothered in the dark. The material is not to be rued, not to be dominated, not to be escaped, but instead made good in preparation for the world to come, which appears not in an instant but by the gradual and incessant mass alignment to the messianic age.
So as a war is prepared for by the manufacture of arms and the training of arms, so too is the final war prepared for by honing mind and body in mass motion. The ultimate act is the universal angelform, performed simultaneously by all souls on the entire earth at once (this is a metaphor: the sages remind us that there are too many timezones for this to be possible until such time as men have had telegraphs tied to their heads so they may receive messages instantaneously. When that happens, then this topic will be revisited).
To be free, therefore, is to resolve contradiction. The contradiction of the chambers is one: the existence of the higher members of each chamber (especially of the High Priests and the Jurors) is predicated on the suffering of the lower. They exist upon a scale: raise one side, and the second falls. Raise the other side, and the first one falls. The Pugilist is they who breaks the scale.
All of those of the sect, Wendam thus reminds you all, as you gather for departure to Wertag, are free not because of the grace of the Patriarch, nor because you have defeated and slaughtered jurors, or because you have victoriously seized a train from a hapless Dyada (the Dyada herself, listening from the back, waves sheepishly at this and some of the sect laugh). You are free because you have liberated your minds from the bondage of the dark, which is itself an idea of mental subjugation to those who call themselves better. Even if you are clapped in chains, or made penitents again, or even martyred by evil, you will never be slaves again so long as you hold this in your heart.
And those of you, Wendam warns, who believe that the time of judgment will be a time to assert your own authority and tip the scales, are oxen who think because they are strong that they are free. But the yoke of contradiction digs itself into the shoulders of the mighty, and forces them ahead to plow the field of self-destruction.
So, with a cheer, he pronounces you all free, and himself free, and calls for a vote to proclaim the new name of the sect. By this name shall you be known, and by this name shall you do wonders. When you were made penitents eight years ago, the authorities took your old name for you, and now it is bad luck: Let now be a new day, for a new name.
Choose a formal name for your sect. This is the name by which you will be known. There may be nicknames both affectionate and pejorative that emerge for you as you gain in popularity (and among a certain set, infamy).
[] Tzedek [Justice].
[] Write-in.
Names can draw from English or Hebrew as inspirations. You can look to both traditional pre-modern revolutionary movement names as well as Chinese secret societies as inspiration. Tzedek exists as a default name if you can't think of something or just like that particular one, but I thought I'd give people the opportunity to name themselves if they were inspired.
Heathen Mount
The train is loaded. All are taken, wounded put into carriages, men and women often climbing to the top. To the Dyada's horror, a group of souls led by Rector Qanam re-consecrate the train, removing its old name of the Blessed Montane Rose and renaming it to Gagarrak, the Bull of Heaven, carved into the wooden nameplate with bayonets. As said by the righteous railway magnate Rav Kosun: "its roar is a beast's, and it flies on wings of boiling water". Some of the children who have never been on a train scream, while others bunch their faces up against the windows in abject fascination. Old and young, all pray, and change as rapidly as much as you can to something neater, the better to present yourselves as pilgrims.
You move onwards to Wertag, and to one of the great towns of Kutan.
Kutan is an exemplar of the great peaks and low valleys of the missions of Vaspukaran. Conceiving themselves as alchemists of soul, the Ravs created the institution of the mission to serve as a great workshop by which the unrefined lead of heathenry is turned to the burnished gold of orthodox rite. To this end, missions were granted significant leeway, acting almost as independent countries and faiths. Whole heathen literatures were studied and dissected, their contents pulled apart and identified for what would to be kept and discarded. Folk heroes and figures were aligned with the companions of Amalgast or the legends of the Vasp past.
Local elites were drawn into the Mission orders, vast organizations with fewer requirements and lower standards than the High and even Low Priesthood of the Synodic Circles. Native priesthoods were raised up, and native cultures flattered. Schismatic sects were exiled and encouraged to spread among the heathen populace, with the Ravs reasoning that those sects, no matter how dangerous, still sought to change rather than overthrow the Kingdom of God, and thus were in fact essential to its expansion. Deliberation and representation in government through the assemblies of the Vicars General and Particular inspired great loyalty in the local priesthood, and drew them ever closer, while incentives that they would soon be transformed into full souls of the integrated communion drove them on to greater observance.
This was the mechanism by which God's Kingdom quadrupled its territory and more than tripled its population, bringing into millions upon millions of faithful, taxable, souls. When a mission was considered a success, there would be a grand ceremony by which it would be divided into Synodic Circles, its remnant heathen population legally converted to witches at a stroke (to fulfill the commandment that "there will be no non-believers in His Kingdom"), and its rite aligned with the orthodox Sufganarot Rite unless some treaty was organized permitting the continuation of a local vernacular rite (as allowed for a number of special Synodic Circles).
But Kutan resisted this process. Originally a collection of mountain confederacies organized on cloud-mountains, small polities centered around a central valley or mountain from which a community emanated and self-governed, Kutan was laboriously and carefully knitted into a single unified mission under a Vicar Superior, with submissions under Vicars, and further subdivisions under curates and deans, each appointed by their direct superior and affirmed by their local Vicars Particular. With its gold and jade mines, fertile soil, and prosperous and growing population, Kutan blossomed into a 'model mission'. Even the local heathen rebellions were kept in check, and allowed to survive on the margins as release valves for the most recalcitrant of the peasantry and priesthood, occasionally suppressed but mostly allowed to exist as a tacitly ignored parallel society in the deep countryside.
From there, it was meant to have integrated into Vaspukaran, but this was hitched. Kutan, it was said, loved God too much and too enthusiastically in its own way, and had become attached to the Ashamarki Rite which integrated worship of the ancestors, veneration of specific places, and the re-evaluation of ancient Gods and demigods as righteous Ravs. Kutan had been too successful - having so profoundly converted the populace to a unique and to them delightful version of the Amalgastene faith, they could not bear to surrender this. Hoping they could have their rite recognized, as did the neighboring Kazars, they bore their legal case to the Great Synod, drawn from the greatest High Priests in all of Vaspukaran seventy-five years ago and sought to have recognition as a demicephalous circle with limited self-control over worship.
But the Kazars had been granted that rite as a price for peace in the Iconoclast Uprisings, and anyways since then sentiments on further 'surrenders of the faith' had hardened profoundly. The Great Synod not only denied the request but proclaimed the Ashamarki Rite schismatic, retroactively ejecting tens of thousands of vicars from the Order, as no proven schismatic could hold high office in a mission. In revenge, and in keeping with their idiosyncratic nature, the Kuti merely by and large lied, converting en-masse to Sufganarot Rite in great publicized ceremonies even as temples continued to include prayers to the ancestors in normal liturgy. With Patriarchical authority collapsing following the Temple Coup of 747 AA and the Synod unwilling to pick a fight with the richest mission in the country, this was accepted begrudgingly.
But when the confidence of Kutan's vicars overreached, and the mission's effort to prove itself truly modern and independent of central authority by constructing the Atamarka Railway Round turned into a dramatic catastrophe that bankrupted it, the Synod turned to the Jurors to exact their final revenge. In 804 AA, the High Jury of Dvarim invoked its own authority as the primary military authority of the Eastern Marches to perform a coup over the mission. Entire Juror Banners from Karmazan marched into the country and in cooperation with sympathetic local banners and those ultraorthodox portions of Kutan's priesthood took control. Priests were defrocked, vicars imprisoned, and ancient lineages made destitute.
Now truly enforcing the proclamation that Ashamarki Rite is schismatic, persecution has ramped up to the limit just short of provoking rebellion, while the long tax-exempt status of the Mission was revoked. Against the defiant population the new Vicar Superior Ardizman applied the principle of honest poverty: That to break the self-confidence of the schismatic majority would require to pauperize it. That this self-serving and mad principle happened to align with the wishes of revanchist creditors and famished exploiters was no mere coincidence.
But now they have overstepped, for in Wertag the sign of defiance lives on.
The proof of this is that everything you have heard above was recounted explicitly to Guru Wendam by Vicar Wari Tiwakaru in one of the most extraordinary conversations in the history of your sect, perhaps ever. Immediately following your arrival in the town, you expected to be met by panicked officials or armed guards, but so soon as the local station monk made the Vicar aware he called the Guru and a number of disciples to the metropolitan Temple.
There, as Wendam grew increasingly baffled and uncharacteristically confused when his shaky justifications of the sect's antics were waved away. The Vicar said that you were right to do so, that the komandir is lucky to have had such kind captors, and that he would have visited worse. He agrees to a standard ransom without haggling, and asks no further questions. When Wendam asks if they might have passports to Nachivan, the vicar is almost gleeful in calling over the curate to stamp them. When he mentions there are many of their number who might not be on the original penitent rolls (obliquely avoiding mentioning because they were jurors), the vicar offers to add them. When Wendam even presses his luck and asks if the Dyada might have compensation, the vicar shrugs and grants he could do so, though he can offer no charity. He praises you for your neatness and steadrightness, for it will fulfilling his own duty much easier.
Wendam is struck silent. He looks about. The other disciples are also profoundly uncomfortable. The vicar, himself a spectacled man of strong jowls and snaky smile, a pipe always sprouting from his lips lit with yamroot, lies back in his chair, seemingly very proud.
And Guru Wendam's curiosity gets the better of his prudence, and he risks to ask why.
And Vicar Wari Tiwakaru takes the pipe out of his mouth, and his smile drops, and his jowls fall like weights on both his cheeks, in the deepest frown that any of you there have ever seen. Here is the high priest of a proud town that for twenty years has been devastated by punitive taxation and a culture under siege. He himself a native, a soul who boasted when Wendam asked about the paintings and portraits in his temple that on his mother's side he is from a lineage of mummy-speakers, and on his father's side the original dynasty of Vicars Superior. His is a mixed heritage, two snaked, one feathered and one rainbow, intertwined, and yet for the past twenty years he has had to self-deny everything he is on the authority of the Kingdom that claims jurisdiction over his very soul.
He reaches forward, and whispers something just to Wendam that the Guru reported later as:
"My people have a saying: The grove which cannot be saved is always better burned, to refresh the soil."
He winks, and then says he is only doing the Patriarch's work for him, and shepherding pilgrims to the home of heaven. Yawning, he calls for his curates to handle the stamps, as Wendam and the rest of you disciples are escorted out. He tells you it might better to leave now, for there was a riot in the town just three days past over the fact that the Mission is not calling its own sanhedron as is tradition, and the local Juror standard has been deeply distracted hunting stragglers the vicar has advised them are hiding just out of reach in the country.
And it is here that you it begins to dawn on you that the end of days may yet be close at hand.
Blaze a Path to the Heart of Evil
Is it possible anymore to believe in miracles? Is it possible anymore to dream of a better world when this one has become so cruel? For so long it was hard to believe. The Pugilist is not a liar, who self-denies doubt: Doubt is the path by which faith is made stronger. And yet doubt was rife among you, and even in the trip to Wertag fears concussed the faithful. What should happen when we arrive? What if we must fight? What will be of our children if we should die? Who will care for them? And in a second's extraordinary and mercurial generosity, motivated no doubt by the spite of a priest who sees his people under heel, all of that is washed away.
What is left now, then, in its place? Is it triumph? Triumph is often grim in its own way, for it is rarely final. Is it relief? Surely, but that is too weak an emotion. It is as if the whole yoke has been washed away. It is one thing to speak of freedom and its metaphysical property, and another to clutch it in your hand. You are going home. By God, you are going home.
Some still fear a trap, Rector Qanam among them, but as your train blazes into Atamanluk the local Golden Spike monks take one look at your passport and wave you through. Vicar Tiwakaru, they grumble, is getting senile, and has been so caught up in the holy day spirit that he is truly allowing anyone passports. Just three days past, they mutter, he stamped the passports of a group of Amalist Kusri Ronin, who spent a day rampaging through Atamanluk and starting fights with bully jurors harassing local women in the name of chivalry before they were summarily ejected from the city and put on the next train. It is all, the monks say, terribly tedious, and they hope this whole business with the penitents is soon over as it has caused no share of grief to them.
Just like that, the greatest barrier melts away, and then Gagarrak is a streak that barrels past the mountains, down into the declining valleys, and onto the steppe. Days pass as the sect recovers and tries to take stock of what has just happened. It is dawning on them now that they may have been a political weapon: in Kutan, they were an enormous risk, but now they are streaming towards the very center of the Patriarchate. Perhaps it was the intention of the Vicar to punish the Patriarch, or perhaps he wished truly to embarrass the jurors? All the laws they thought they knew, and how they applied, have become loose. When all of you were exiled eight years ago, the country was divided and declining but still solid, like some sea-eroded rock: since then it appears at the cusp of true collapse. But Tanda warns you not to take too many conclusions: Wertag was an extreme, and Xococo another. In Nachivan you will find the heart of evil, and it beats strong and true.
And though they took your home, you will not forget it, and you will soon return: Nachivan is one destination, but your home metropolitan another, and some of your number must prepare to return there and take the movement back to its very origin. One of your sages will go there as well, the better to lay down the groundwork of a vast and expansive network of militant Pugilists preparing for the coming apocalypse.
The thoughts of some members of the sect and now the mass of jurors are much simpler. The Dyada, making her rounds and now fully accepting of her bizarre new existence as the ferrywoman of righteousness, finds Old Strong Belman, a mastodon of a man near to seven feet tall sitting near to the top of the locomotive on a starry autumn night near Ilah, weeping. When she asks him why, Belman says simply that he has built three railroads, but never had the chance to ride them.
If only I had known, he said, what wonders I was building,I would not have felt a slave.
Choose your home city. Some members of your sect will split off from the main group and make their way there, and you will have some pre-existing organization there, allowing for your sect to rapidly expand. Sect chapters (ie sub-sections of the sect in other cities and circles) will be treated as amiable NPCs that will grow your movement for you without direct input from the central sect.
[] Yomri [Axis of the Ralabarak Circle]. One of the largest and most important cities in the central Hadit, Yomri exploded from a provincial backwater into one of the greatest steel producers in the country. A center of heavy industry, the city is rude, crude, and defined by a conflict between a cosmopolitan and prosperous juror garrison and a deeply resentful toiling class and disenfranchised lower priesthood.
[] Ilah [Axis of the Titarkulan Circle]. The core of the Vaani Vernacular Rite, Ilah had a reputation for being sleepy and provincial until the Godspine made it a north-south railway hub and disturbed its traditionalist and comfortable priestly class. An artful and well-planned city center is now surrounded by seething suburbs made especially of increasingly permanent peasant laborers forced out of their villages by mass enclosures.
[] Kedekiah [Axis of the Raditakan Circle]. Situated in the southern extremity of the great 'bowl' formed by the Hamgad Steppe and the Hadit River, Kedekiah remains a city ensconsed in its own ancient past as one of the oldest practictioners of the Vasparak rite and the 'gateway to the sky' of the skyspear railway that goes as far as Mangar. Dusty and increasingly falling behind, a budding anger sprouts from its many priestly artisans.
Choose the sage to return home. They will be temporarily removed from the leaderpool, but only for a few turns: Once they are sure the sect is on firm footing with a local temple re-established they will seek to return to Nachivan, unless events should overtake them.
[] Guru Wendam [+Popularity]. The Guru would like to return home not just to seek out his wife, who was not sent to Hasadaya and who he has not seen in years, but to allow others to take the reins of leadership, lest he become too comfortable in the position. He thinks it would be a fine challenge, and he is especially interested in seeing if they might influence the local Juror Garrison.
[] Baba Tanda [+Discipline]. Baba Tanda grudgingly admits she would not mind reuniting with her grandchildren, but is mostly concerned that creating a focused and organized sect in their hometown by appealing especially to local mouflons and drawing in returning penitents into the sect as soon as possible so they might have a strong foundation to start from.
[] Rector Qanam [+Fervour]. With his status as a Penitent removed the rector believes he should be able to rebuild a network of prayer bulletins and underground printing with other local radical priests by which they might be able to spread the word of God without the same fear of reprisal as they could expect in Nachivan where the reach Patriarch is so close.
(Akov has no connection to your hometown and will stay in Nachivan and in the leaderpool).
HolyMount
After near to five days of continuous travel, stopping only to refuel with coal and water, the sect arrives. And it is here that you grasp the true enormity of what is before you.
Nachivan is no mere city, but the axis of the world. No mere holy ground, but the navel of the cosmos. All roads lead here, all journeys terminate here, all railroads meet here, clasping the center of creation. The radial geometries of Vaspukaran are all right-angles about here. The celestial geographies of Vaspukaran all collide about here. Here, the city of Kineveh, where ruled princes and was erected Artazor Ziggurat which still stands today. Here, Old Nach, where Amalgast fled after his revelation had him chased from Harasdad, here, where he grew his truth. Here, where he gathered seven followers, immortalized in seven giant golems, each towering over their gate of the walls that were built in commemoration. Wife Esther, his most beloved, Brother Boros, his most trusted, Sister Haviva his most dangerous, Ataman Yovan, his strongest, Cham Yataryn, his swiftest, Crowned Urmah, his most cunning, and Priest Sansun, his wisest. Here, where the dead Rohir who he toppled had his body dragged, the better to exile his soul from his native land's salvation, lain in Rohir's Grave. Here is Nachivan, and here is the revelation of God.
Here, here! Where the First Temple stood, that Amalgast himself helped built. Here, where Doshan Castle loomed after the capital moved back to Harasdad, in the early false days of the Patriarchate. Here, to where it was returned. Here is Nachivan, and here is the foundation of God.
Here, with its Heavenly Mount that rises above, the pedestal of God, here, the Muvad Mikdash, the cavernous wonder, the holy temple in which the Sanhedron will be housed. Here, with its legation quarter where dwell the emissaries of the Eyes of the Earth, where you may find Asharei and the Mare and the Great Western Coven and Maganya and the alms-begging servants of one hundred princes, who all look up to the Patriarch. Here are its parks, each sanctifying, commemorating, carving out spaces of creation. Here is Nachivan, and here is the house of God.
Here, with Ulyanan theater and its mighty plays, and its Chazzan Conservatory and its great operas, and its House of Creation and its tremendous Great Synodic debates and Vakiva Seminary and its tremendous art, and Glastabar Abbey and its beautiful hand-crafts. Here, with the great buildings of the Six Ravs: Yatoni Temple, home of holy law, Karogen Academy, home of savage fighters, Zurah and Hastata Yeshivas, home of studious scholars, Tologda Baths, home of wise mystics, Rongen Garden, home of calm sages. Here is the Temple of Mirrors where the Amalists say God looks back at you, and here is Marina Abbey from which the sisters seek to illuminate the world. Here is Nachivan, and here is the light of God.
Here, Tzinhas Barrack, where the Jurors of Nachivan do hold their votes, and here, in Vikrag Prison, where they send those unfortunate for them to vote upon. Here is Kannakerib Hill and Fort Karnak from which the city's flanks are guarded. Here is Targon Monastery, where Tata Targon rules the eastern exarchate suburbs with a velvet strangler's glove. Here, where the Abbots of the Order of the Golden Spike toasts their richness and glory at Dhagan House, and here where the radicals with little means and bigger dreams gather at Habila House. Here is the Witch's Quarter, last home of the witch-prophet Yuhwa in the city, and here is Stari Fort, the slum inside the star. Here is Nachivan, and here is the rifle-chamber of God.
Here, with its Heffer market where the great oxen are driven every year from the Hamgad Steppe, and here, with its Mekel Market, where everyday staples are traded, and here in Sasan Bazaar, where everything is had for sale, and here in Pesselpan Ironshrine where everything is wrought in fire and here the Alangan Yards where everything is shipped and sent and here in the Sosi Warehouses where everything is set and stored. Here are the railroads and their yards, Mazar and Hurgav onto which is loaded the tribute and the manufactures of the continent. Here is Nachivan, and here is the clearinghouse of God.
Here, with three-and-a-half million souls about to become far more as pilgrimage season nears, with its priest students begging for bread while they study and fail their examinations and its monk artisans who riot at their destruction and its mouflon laborers who collapse from work and its children who nurse hands that hurt from hours spinning cotton and its poor sinking into despair and its poor rising into rage and its bread prices that are too high and its wages that are too low and its walls that cut between the souls and its division into four chambers. Here, with crowds that carry portraits of the Patriarch and crowds that carry banners of shattered idols and gangs of yellow-suited toughs that escort wide-brimmed hat witches to the safety of their homes and black-frocked students that hand out pamphlets issued with the evil-warding eye. Here is Nachivan, and here is the tinderbox of God.
Here you arrive, here, to the cauldron of evil seething with bubbling energy long denied of a country, a faith, a civilization on the brink, crying out in a hundred tongues, and four million voices, and in every way and in every manner, their hands held high and their eyes to heaven, they plea to God, oh righteous God, oh good and holy God:
TURN 0: THE SPARK Creation 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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"The Spark" Militant Pugilism.
Discipline. [+Discipline]
Guru Wendam [+Popularity]
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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"The Crack of Dawn"
Take the Komandir hostage and drag him with you to the train.
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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"Immolation"
Take the Wounded [- Discipline, +Popularity] Defend Yourselves [+Fervor]
Verbal Vow of Righteousness [+Fervor]
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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"Railway to Heaven"
(Komandir cashed in) The Doctrine of Extinguishment
As pilgrims
I'll have a proper ledger up for Turn 1, I just wanted to prioritize writing over all the fiddly bits until we had properly launched into the proper quest loop.
I have no thoughts on the rest right now, but for name, hear my proposal:
[X] HaKhofshim (The Free). Justice, it is said, must be blind. To name ourselves justice, we seeing humans, would be the epitome of hubris. Only in God can justice be found. Only in God's will can justice be executed. We cannot be justice, for our hands are fallible, and our eyes cannot but see the world. What we are, as venerable Guru Wendam says, is free. Free, because we have come to let God liberate us from the lie of the Patriarchate. Free, because we reject the jurors and their greed. Free, because no earthly law or debtor's grasp can prevent any sibling of the human family to grasp for the fluttering cloth of the holy Six-Shin-Aluf, in whose folds only freedom can be found. Let the entire world call us HaDakhanim - the Rejecters - for our freedom, for with this act, by raising the Six-Shin-Aluf and denying the Patriarchate, we shall topple every false throne into dust until only God remains.
TURN 0: THE SPARK Creation 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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"The Spark" Militant Pugilism.
Discipline. +Discipline
Guru Wendam +Popularity
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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"The Crack of Dawn"
Take the Komandir hostage and drag him with you to the train.
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...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
"Immolation"
Take the Wounded [- Discipline, +Popularity]
Verbal Vow of Righteousness +Fervor
Defend Yourselves +Fervor
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...
I'll have a proper ledger up for Turn 1, I just wanted to prioritize writing over all the fiddly bits until we had properly launched into the proper quest loop.
I think for Turn 1 since it was asked about I'll also have a simple guide for people who want to make proper characters to roleplay as rather than just amorphous members of the sect. Nothing special, just an aide to help share more ownership of and make people more comfortable in the setting.
Actually thought about it a bit, and I think I'm pretty much set on this:
[X] Yomri [Axis of the Ralabarak Circle]. One of the largest and most important cities in the central Hadit, Yomri exploded from a provincial backwater into one of the greatest steel producers in the country. A center of heavy industry, the city is rude, crude, and defined by a conflict between a cosmopolitan and prosperous juror garrison and a deeply resentful toiling class and disenfranchised lower priesthood.
First off, this reminds me of Tehran, which is a weird thing to think of but it makes me feel more at home with the awfulness. Secondly, steel is important for weaponmaking and I am preparing for armed revolution against the Patriarchate. If we want to make war against the Liar Patriarchate, we will need the steel industry. Finally, a resentful toiling class and disenfranchized lower priesthood are perfect for our sect to spread into, and the prosperous jurors form a perfect opportunity for opposition. This line of thought might be a bit callous, but I think it will serve us well. By presenting an organized front and campaigning tirelessly - something I'd like to note due to the 19th century feel of this quest, lots of these jurors probably do not have any experience doing - creating a popular movement should be more than possible. With God's help, the Six-Shin-Aluf will fly from every tower.
[X] Baba Tanda [+Discipline]. Baba Tanda grudgingly admits she would not mind reuniting with her grandchildren, but is mostly concerned that creating a focused and organized sect in their hometown by appealing especially to local mouflons and drawing in returning penitents into the sect as soon as possible so they might have a strong foundation to start from.
Baba Tanda's focus will combine perfectly with the earlier mentioned objectives, and her appeal to local mouflons will help us create popular support for our revolutionary campaign. Just the act of appealing to the urban poor will be important. Steelworkers, factory workers and all the wretched of the earth must be made to grasp the Six-Shin-Aluf. Seize the banners, you are free from the juror's grasp!
please sir juror i am a resident of the guarded domains you have no right to detain me let me speak to the legation quarter representative this instant
God damn, the feels do not stop coming. We made it! We really made it! Nachivan is a beautiful, horrible mess and we've acquired a map of the place!
Really appreciated the description of what's been inflicted on Kutan, including what felt an awful lot like a religious spin on Malthus. Instead of "the poor need to starve for our greed overpopulation", "the poor need to starve for our greed their spiritual health." Ouch. Go get 'em, Vicar! Or, uh, keep sending 'em to the capital, as it might be.
As for choices: I'm fine with all the options here, but I think I like Ilah the most. Yomri is a juicy opportunity, but it has its risks. Our chapter there would have to navigate a dicey class divide to avoid alienating the workers or becoming a priority target of the local Juror elites. In contrast, Ilah is a vast pool of angry peasants/former peasants who should be receptive to Pugilism.
I think Juror outreach should be a central aspect of our strategy, but we're also going to need a mass base. There's likely going to be a lot of competition for the urban laborers (I suspect some goddamn heretic Confessor is already proposing a sans-culotte army ), but populist Pugilism has natural ties to the peasantry. I think, anyway. Ilah is a nice opportunity to get some numbers and build some support in the region before we start poking at the folks with guns.
[X] Ilah [Axis of the Titarkulan Circle]. The core of the Vaani Vernacular Rite, Ilah had a reputation for being sleepy and provincial until the Godspine made it a north-south railway hub and disturbed its traditionalist and comfortable priestly class. An artful and well-planned city center is now surrounded by seething suburbs made especially of increasingly permanent peasant laborers forced out of their villages by mass enclosures.
As for the leader choice, I'd go with Baba Tanda for reasons similar to Chehrazad. While there's value in cycling through our leaders, I'd rather have Wendam taking a look at the Jurors in Nachivan than messing around with the podunk garrison of some non-Eternal City. And newspapers can be an incredibly powerful tool for mass mobilization, but they're not so great for organization building.
[X] Baba Tanda [+Discipline]. Baba Tanda grudgingly admits she would not mind reuniting with her grandchildren, but is mostly concerned that creating a focused and organized sect in their hometown by appealing especially to local mouflons and drawing in returning penitents into the sect as soon as possible so they might have a strong foundation to start from.
There's likely going to be a lot of competition for the urban laborers (I suspect some goddamn heretic Confessor is already proposing a sans-culotte army ), but populist Pugilism has ties to the peasantry. I think.
Yes, it has its foundations deeply in the peasantry. Urban pugilism is not a new development, but it has not made as many inroads among especially laboring mouflons as other schismatics.
It also has the issue that Confession's Sanhedron integrated artisans into the Low Priesthood by turning their guilds into a holy order which cleaved a major component of the Mouflon Chamber off and created another class-divide.
Also because it was asked, none of these cities have major populations of disaffected Jurors because they are core non-Juror cities with small garrisons and most of the garrison is much more capitalist than they are soldier. These garrisons are more like chambers of commerce and clerks who occasionally get to marshal out and shoot strikers.
I also specifically wanted to not give players a boost to disaffected Jurors and then offer them a choice where one of the options had disaffected Jurors because that would be too obvious. If you want a mass movement you need to go out of your comfort zone and we need to introduce the other chambers as well!
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