Kingdom of God: A Quest of Holy Revolution

[X] That the Flood was treachery by evil to sabotage the justice of God [Pugilist Opinion & Confessor Opinion].
[X] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Yatoni was the betrayed, and the Ravs are in the right [Orthodox, Pugilist & Confessor opinion].
[X] High Confession was a nightmare that would have smothered the people and the world [Orthodox & Amalist Opinion].
[X] He is a misguided creature of his chamber, trapped within his cloister [Radical Opinion].
[X] The Sanhedron, if used correctly, can lead to the freedom of the people [Popular & Radical Opinion]
 
[X] That the Flood was treachery by evil to sabotage the justice of God [Pugilist Opinion & Confessor Opinion].
[X] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Yatoni was the betrayed, and the Ravs are in the right [Orthodox, Pugilist & Confessor opinion].
[X] High Confession was a dream cut short that we can hope to realize in some form, again [Confessor Opinion].
[X] He is a false shepherd who must not be trusted to lead the people to freedom [Ultraradical Opinion].
[X] The Sanhedron is too easily manipulated and too unsatisfying a tool for liberation [Ultraradical Opinion].
 
[X] That the Flood was a tragedy that delayed the cause of world salvation [Amalist Opinion].
[X] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Both were in the wrong, and their feud divided the faithful [Iconoclast Opinion].
[X] High Confession was a nightmare that would have smothered the people and the world [Orthodox & Amalist Opinion].
[X] He is a misguided creature of his chamber, trapped within his cloister [Radical Opinion].
[X] The Sanhedron is too easily manipulated and too unsatisfying a tool for liberation [Ultraradical Opinion].
 
I must apologize, brothers, and sisters, for all these arguments have thrashed me so soundly I cannot tell if I stand on my feet or my head!
So, instead of trying to think of things in terms of doctines and their effects, I instead wish to think more in terms of how these doctrines will effect someone in the course of their life.

I would argue that the Kingdom of God has been turned into a powder-keg about to explode, by the work of Evil, and that if not countered it will indeed explode, and shatter so much of the Spiral as to delay it for another thousand years! I would cast a suspicious gaze at those who claim that renouncing the Material creates a corresponding gain in the Spirital, for how many in the Kingdom 'enjoy' such a state? Of being berift of Material distractions in their pursuit of the Spiritual? And what do these do?

They pray to God for salvation from their state of wretched poverty! One such as I, who fell ill upon arriving in this holiest of cities from the smoke of factories, could do naught but attempt to listen to the rest of you fighting the fine fight, and bemoan my inability to participate! No! Spiritual or Material, suffering is but the greatest weapon Evil has in denying us all the Spiral of Truth!

But in turn, if suffering is the greatest weapon, then the question I would ask, is how do the Truths we have defend us from falling prey to it's power?
The Amalists and their Rav Obrogas certainly have the better arguement, to my ears, back in their day. And I think it a sad thing if men cannot have an open door to greet the good Rav should he come knocking.

But Evil does exist, and wander, and as we can see in the way the Kingdom of God roils in pain, with a belly upset by delays in the release of foul substances that must be released, the presence of Evil can be felt even if it's true dwelling place is obscured. And so we Pugilists seek to strengthen ourselves, so that when Evil attempts to force it's way in by force, we can repel them. And should Evil be discovered in our homes, we may do as is proper and expel it!

Because Evil is always seeking a new way into our homes, our hearts, and our histories, all humanity must be ready to face and defeat it when it appears. We cannot be reliant on distant men from distant lands to fight Evil for us, for even the finest shot has limits in terms of range and accuracy! In this, I see the argument of the Iconoclasts, that man must not be beholden to great idols of Priesthoods for their Spirits!

And yet, what do we see, in the Kingdom of God? Across it's span, so many cry out from poverty and bereavement. Of men, who must go without, because they gave everything to build railroads, the likes of which we used to come here. I think this, of the Kingdom's state: That the High Confessors put forth an idea, that man should indeed reach out and enforce their will on the material. I would say that such men should take a gun, and extend it from themselves until they loose their balance, and experience the mistake the Kingdom has made. For that is what happened! Yes, many a High Priest has been swayed by Evil, but if it was so simple as Evil dwelling in coins and gold would this not have been an obvious truth?

I see that Evil has made for itself an old threat in a new form. Of a Disunity crafted of the fact that salvation can come in a thousand forms by a thousand different armies, and all are Righteous when examined by even the most critical of men. But, it seems to me that if all men can be warded from evil on an individual level, then Evil will not get the chance to grow insidious and extend it's presence beyond those few unfortunates unready to face it on the battlefield. And true, when the opponent picks the battlefield, to prevail becomes a task fit less for an ordinary man to achieve, and something that only the greatest of us, like Amalgast can succeed in achieving!

And thus, I feel I have spoken enough, today. Perhaps I will find my courage and strength enough to join you properly, brothers and sisters, but for now, I must focus on my recovery so that I may do so.
 
Voting deadline has been set. Now is the time for any last minute arguments or votes.
 
[X] That the Flood was a tragedy that delayed the cause of world salvation [Amalist Opinion].
[X] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Yatoni was the betrayed, and the Ravs are in the right [Orthodox, Pugilist & Confessor opinion].
[X] High Confession was a dream cut short that we can hope to realize in some form, again [Confessor Opinion].
[X] He is a misguided creature of his chamber, trapped within his cloister [Radical Opinion].
[X] The Sanhedron, if used correctly, can lead to the freedom of the people [Popular & Radical Opinion].
 
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[X] That the Flood was treachery by evil to sabotage the justice of God [Pugilist Opinion & Confessor Opinion].
[X] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Obrogras was the betrayed, and the Amalists are in the right [Amalist Opinion].
[X] High Confession was a nightmare that would have smothered the people and the world [Orthodox & Amalist Opinion].
[X] He is a misguided creature of his chamber, trapped within his cloister [Radical Opinion].
[X] The Sanhedron is too easily manipulated and too unsatisfying a tool for liberation [Ultraradical Opinion].
 
I really need to ask what does calling the Sanhedron, that will free us of our penitent status, useless do?

No seriously this is going to the sacred court of law that is going to judge you innocent of all crimes. And people want to respond by marching up to them, then slapping them in the face and calling them illegitimate.

Which inherently makes it so that their ruling that you are innocent also become illegitimate. Which isnt what the Sect believes at all, given that the calling of a Sanhedron literally envigorated them enough to undertake a holy prison break

Like guys, this actually kind of fucks us and makes it easier for the Sword Altar to argue it can just purge us for being heretical scum.
 
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I really need to ask what does calling the Sanhedron, that will free us of our penitent status, useless do?

No seriously this is going to the sacred court of law that is going to judge you innocent of all crimes. And people want to respond by marching up to them, then slapping them in the face and calling them illegitimate.

Which inherently makes it so that their ruling that you are innocent also become illegitimate. Which isnt what the Sect believes at all, given that the calling of a Sanhedron literally envigorated them enough to undertake a holy prison break

Like guys, this actually kind of fucks us and makes it easier for the Sword Altar to argue it can just purge us for being heretical scum.
"The issue is divisive but..." a pause to recount who has spoken for which stance for the fourth time, "there is a narrow majority that the Sanhedron can be a tool that leads to the freedom of the people."
 
Spiral Sanhedron Vote
Scheduled vote count started by Cetashwayo on Apr 3, 2022 at 2:33 PM, finished with 111 posts and 38 votes.
 
Ok so we didn't go off the immediate deep end with the Ultraradical options I can work with that.
 
So I finally got around to reading the last two updates (huge backlog of quests to catch up) and quickly voted before then going through the discussion afterwards, I really cut it close on the deadline. In retrospect I regret voting in favor of high confession, glad that didn't win. Also, still unsure what the deal was with the ravs, but went for the orthodox so as not to be uberradical on something I wasn't sure about.

But I'm very concerned about calling the flood a work of evil by evil against God. Is that implying a supernatural evil and potential external devil figure where before there was none? Because I'm really not super about that, I always felt that was a cop out for mankind to not acknowledge the evil within itself.

Edit: Also, oh glorious author, my immense respect for the audacity of drawing us into your incredibly imaginative and inviting setting, getting us to drop our guard and relax our expectations, and then blindsiding us with the déjà vu out of left field.

That drop at then end was perfect.
 
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But I'm very concerned about calling the flood a work of evil by evil against God. Is that implying a supernatural evil and potential external devil figure where before there was none? Because I'm really not super about that, I always felt that was a cop out for mankind to not acknowledge the evil within itself.
To be fair, I voted on that one while disagreeing with its premise because...it's the Pugilists' opinion and we're playing a Pugilist sect, basing ourselves in the Pugilist neighbourhood :V
 
My mind boggles at how you can endorse radical equality and freedom for all people and consider the Patriarch to be misguided and ignorant, while also endorsing the idea that the Patriarch is literally inhabited by the spirit of the greatest prophet and man of God in history. Like good odds the doctrine of Amalgast's soul mantling the Patriarch is a key part of a "divine right of Kings" doctrine the Infallible Patriarchs promoted, and is directly contradicted by the behavior of multiple Patriarchs conspicuously failing to behave in a way one would expect a great and godly prophet to behave.

Okay yeah it's the "default" Pugilist stance, but you're trying to outgrow Pugilism and that means shedding some of its doctrines, or in this case what is likely just a remnant default background assumption based on Pugilism not being very doctrinally focused to begin with.
 
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My mind boggles at how you can endorse radical equality and freedom for all people and consider the Patriarch to be misguided and ignorant, while also endorsing the idea that the Patriarch is literally inhabited by the spirit of the greatest prophet and man of God in history
The winning vote does not quite elevate Amalgast in that manner, and notable leaves open the notion of an equal or even greater successors. Now this successor, and the position of living vessel of Amalgast, need not necessarily be a singular being :V.

Hell even if singular there are similar OTL radical theorists which does not see & has explained how it could avoid being conflicting, such as those of socialist Shi'ism (Ali Shariati's a notable example of this).
 
So I finally got around to reading the last two updates (huge backlog of quests to catch up) and quickly voted before then going through the discussion afterwards, I really cut it close on the deadline. I'm retrospect I regret voting in favor of high confession, glad that didn't win. Also, still unsure what the deal was with the ravs, but went for the orthodox so as not to be uberradical on something I wasn't sure about.

But I'm very concerned about calling the flood a work of evil by evil against God. Is that implying a supernatural evil and potential external devil figure where before there was none? Because I'm really not super about that, I always felt that was a cop out for mankind to not acknowledge the evil within itself.

It's not really about a devil-figure and more that Babarak was producing such great quantities of evil that the only way God could end it was to cause a flood as all other methods of justice had been exhausted (including even revelation in the highest quarters of its government). It's an emphasis that because God is so powerful and because God is hidden, God's interventions in the world are of monumental consequence. When God, it was believed, intervened against the Gushan Rohirrate, he sent a plague of four elements, water (floods), air (typhoons and tornadoes), earth (drought/famine) and fire (forest fires & disease/pestilence, tied with fire because it is believed to ravage the soul and because it causes fever).

God awakened is a force of nature. Babarak reached a threshold where God intervened directly and by doing so killed millions of people in a flood. The treachery is the killing of Vashti, not a devil figure whispering in God's ear. This was the only way after God's own very just and kind and good prophetess was killed brutally. The treachery is basically embedded in that - they forced God's hand and so his only choice was to take their souls for judgment. It is not a blank tragedy (which Amalism believes in, since Amalism is quasi-polytheistic almost and sees God as a series of 13 attributes composed of the same essence that may act independently, fitting with its syncretism) but it was not also just simple justice, as Iconoclasm and Orthodoxy believes. Radical Iconoclasm tends to speak of the flood as justice in the more abstract or systemic sense, however, especially since they have been unearthing the mass graves of those killed by it and the enormity of it has been fully grasped.

The flood debate which was previously pretty much settled as 'yeah they were bad and died' has been massively complicated by modern archaeological work which shows just how many died (Calculated at 85-95% of the population of the Hadit River Valley). So a lot of the responses and fracturing have come out of that and the conversations about how to resolve that the slaves drowned with the masters.

Morally it's effectively a warning and parable about the necessity of acting to save the souls of the people on this world before God is forced to open up the maw of judgment. This is a significant division with Political Iconoclasm which is centered around and revels in the idea of a metaphysical flood - the destruction is the point, though Iconoclasts aren't kill-people-ists, and it's more based around the necessity of massive and rapid change to destroy the idols of hierarchical relations and monopolized sacrament.
 
But I'm very concerned about calling the flood a work of evil by evil against God. Is that implying a supernatural evil and potential external devil figure where before there was none? Because I'm really not super about that, I always felt that was a cop out for mankind to not acknowledge the evil within itself.
Ceta's explanation is of course really comprehensive, but to summarize why I personally voted the way I did on that, my interpretation is that "evil" in this setting is not an external figure, but something that arises from human free will and ignorance. Much like in many strains of Christianity, the answer to the paradox of theodicy is that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, but human beings are still free to choose to do evil. And as Ceta explained, that evil was killing His prophetess who was sent to save the people from the flood. This is especially important to Pugilist theology as we draw a heavy distinction between the people/the weak and the rulers/the powerful, with the former being a victim, in this story, of the latter's hubris.
 
the monumental sweep of the introduction's first part, utterly grand, but the way an elegy is. the human fire present in every word of the second: banked, glowing as mere embers amidst despair, in fury & fervor, in grasping for freedom.

gosh... the setting is a lot, with its riot of influences, but i was deeply absorbed. the religious language, mystic, revelatory, pursuing sanctification-- the next world will come when we make heaven on earth--

i love this so, so much, @Cetashwayo. i think this is my favorite out of your works.
 
@Cetashwayo Which Mission is the reformist one? and also which autocephalates i guess
Like presumably Kutan is a Conformer vote, what with the, like, juror coup, but I dont think we've had more than a mention of the others?
 
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@Cetashwayo Which Mission is the reformist one? and also which autocephalates i guess

I was waiting for this one!

The reformist mission is Danaan, the youngest, most commercially oriented, and most centered in the needs and demands of the city-states of its mission who have independent traditions centered on their patron mask-gods and deliberative civic assemblies. Danaan is deeply concerned by both the threat of an invasion from the aggressive and expansionist Osogdo to the west and the Mare deciding it wants to take more than just an off-shore island. They desperately need a stronger center to survive.

By comparison, Zarnai is suspiciously isolationist and complaints have come to the center recently that its Vicar Superiors have 'gone heathen', though not much can be proven. Tunturus is a frontier with harsh frontier politics and little interest in what is going on down so far away. And you've seen Kutan.

The two reformist Autocephalates are Kusro and Eykal. Their general position is to reduce the synkrata tax, reorganize the navy, and improve the trade position of the country by ending the Autocephalate-Circle customs wall. But both of the poor elders, the Oracle Shushan Hayasaka of Kusro and Captain Edagar Teoch of Eykal, are appointees, not elected members, and so are deeply limited in fully proposing what they really want, which is to beg the Patriarch to fix their shit because they're not doing any better.
 
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[X] That the Flood was treachery by evil to sabotage the justice of God [Pugilist Opinion & Confessor Opinion].
[x] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Yatoni was the betrayed, and the Ravs are in the right [Orthodox, Pugilist & Confessor opinion].
[x] High Confession was a nightmare that would have smothered the people and the world [Orthodox & Amalist Opinion].
[x] He is a misguided creature of his chamber, trapped within his cloister [Radical Opinion].
[x] The Sanhedron, if used correctly, can lead to the freedom of the people [Popular & Radical Opinion].

After some consideration, this is my vote! Thanks again for the great fun, @Cetashwayo. This quest is amazing and I'm happy to be a part of it.
 
It's not really about a devil-figure and more that Babarak was producing such great quantities of evil that the only way God could end it was to cause a flood as all other methods of justice had been exhausted (including even revelation in the highest quarters of its government).
You know what, Shevah is gonna see about buying a new raincoat and rubber boots....
 
[X] That the Flood was treachery by evil to sabotage the justice of God [Pugilist Opinion & Confessor Opinion].
[X] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
[X] Yatoni was the betrayed, and the Ravs are in the right [Orthodox, Pugilist & Confessor opinion].
[X] High Confession was a dream cut short that we can hope to realize in some form, again [Confessor Opinion].
[X] He is a false shepherd who must not be trusted to lead the people to freedom [Ultraradical Opinion].
[X] The Sanhedron is too easily manipulated and too unsatisfying a tool for liberation [Ultraradical Opinion].
 
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