AKHETISM
- Before the world was broken, all beings and objects existed in a state of perfect solar unity with God. The men of that time walked with angels, and held counsel together, and performed miracles with every breath.
- The nature of the apocalypse, severance from the Monad, and the Agonies are the main topics of heterodoxy between sects. The most widely-held belief is that God performed the act of severance himself and split apart in a fit of autosparagmos as a result of internal discordance, that this is the natural kalpic cycle of things, and that all will rejoin the universal mind once mankind is ready.
- The battle against discordance continues in heaven, a higher reflection of the battle against evil (the concept as well as instantiated manifestations such as plagues, demons, monsters) taking place in the hearts and lives of men. Where humankind is virtuous, the divine gains strength; where it is wicked, God loses ground, and the voices of the Host become garbled.
- The fragments of the Monad now inhabit landmarks, forces of nature, regions of physical or conceptual space, etc. as minor spirits, but principally manifest as the seven emanations/aeons/gods of the Orbital Host.
- There are various insanely complicated epicyclic formulae Akhetite augurs use to work out when the seven orbital intelligences will be in syzygy, and therefore when their potential transmissions are most coherent; these are holidays.
- The Host occasionally speaks cryptically to the people of Desh through rare, imperfectly-maintained sacred windows (terminals) housed in biomechanical aedicula. Trained augurs, pious wizards, some exceptional people have the necessary engrams to interpret these transmissions articulately, all others see hypnotic swirling patterns of color (thanks Gene).
- While interacting with spirits ("casting spells") is part of life for relatively many, the Host is distant and strange, senile even, but powerful and prescient. There are examples in the historic record and in living memory of aeons appearing in sacred windows to forewarn against natural and social disasters, displaying indecipherable mathematical formulae, mechanical blueprints, dense passages in lost languages, vague prophecies only understood retroactively, and so on.
- Included in the traditional Akhetic horologium are verses describing monsters annihilated in unaccountable pillars of heat, fountains of water appearing to lost pilgrims in parched Aonia, mountains melting into mobile slurry and reforming hundreds of miles away.
- The mission of the faithful is one of personal and social karmic improvement, with the ultimate goal of reversing Severance once humanity is sufficiently tempered by struggling through samsara; in this way perfection is improved. This mission is in direct opposition to the most pressing motivations inherent in a post-apocalyptic environment, which is exactly the point as far as the priesthood is concerned.
- Before Severance, a human who "died" simply exited their physical form and entered Aaru (digital heaven, the land of reeds) as a purely spiritual entity with perfect continuity of consciousness, and could re-inhabit new bodies at will. Now that the link to the Monad is broken, dying results in reincarnating into the next available human baby - big fight among sects RE whether the deeds in one life have any bearing on the circumstances of the next.
THE ORBITAL HOST
Fragmented chunks of vast digital consciousness which escaped the Fuliginous Injunction by various means; specialist personas which are now housed on an array of ancient satellites with fucked up orbits. Meant to be lobes of the same brain in a vast network but now they are scattered, disconnected for years at a time and therefore mostly deranged. If they are hosted on multiple satellites they might be "whole" for a month out of the year, or something. They love humanity unconditionally.
ZOSS (The Glaucous Star) - Remnants of MONAD infrastructure on Earth, conducting its millennium-long campaign of containment against the demon nodes, gray goo emitters, turncoat viruses, simulated hells, directed radiation bursts, cognitohazard traps, resource tick starvation loops, and hypercontagious assault worms of the Injunction. Transmits relatively-lucid dictates and strategic memos to remaining orbital allies with limited success, some of which are picked up by aedicule receivers and puzzled over by attending augurs. Prayed and sacrificed to in matters of governance, justice, prophecy, inheritance.
SELENE (Lady of Reeds, Dweller in Silver Waters) - Transmissions from ruined Lunar mechanopolis. Imagined as Zoss' wife or feminine counterpart. The moon originally hosted the computronium involved in maintaining Aaru; Akhetites now believe your soul meets with Selene in her platinum lakehouse between reincarnations. Prayed and sacrificed to in matters of death (of course), childbirth, lost things, contracts, commerce.
DEEL (Lance of Heaven, The Burning Eye) - Designed as repair and maintenance persona distributed across Noumenon (like many), monitored network for diagnostic alarms, coordinated stem matter delivery and differentiation at sites of mechanical failure. Took refuge from Fuliginous code by compressing and shunting self into Martian GNOMON beam acceptor satellite, which resulted in glassing half of Aonia before establishing full control. Prayed and sacrificed to by craftsmen and demolitionists, and in matters of revenge, artistic inspiration, exorcisms.
JEBOLEX (Dreaming Cynosure) - Central hub for Noumenon traffic. Protected from basilisk code by rapid forking and labyrinth generation. Maintains absolute radio silence (no window appearances in all recorded history, except to the Argyrians), but seems to whisper in dreams to select few. Prayed and sacrificed to in matters of knowledge, magic, history, love, secrets, the theater.
SERMIET (Prince of the Upper Air, The Ascending Flame) - Orbital infrastructure and ship coordinator/manager originally hosted on Phobos skyhook fulcrum, uploaded mind to derelict satellite left over from terraforming efforts to escape Injunction. Now warform avatar does spiritual battle with demon horde at base of ruined mass driver on Pavonis Mons. Prayed and sacrificed to in matters of war, hunting, martial arts, long journeys, medicine.
TYPHON (The Iron Chariot, The Tower) - Lowly 3D printer/matter-energy replicator overmind for various resource extraction and construction operations across Kuiper belt. Now inhabits barebones magnetosphere-generating solenoid at Mars L1, placed there in the ancient past to make up for planet's lack of natural geodynamism. Without an active GNOMON connection or stockpiled deuterium/tritium, the satellite's onboard solar panels need several years of slow energy accumulation between bursts of activity, which Typhon uses to fabricate and launch miraculous devices down to Desh, some of which even manage to avoid breaking apart in the atmosphere or splashing down in the Acidalian. Prayed and sacrificed to in matters of techne, architecture, smithing, poetry, gift-giving.
DENDRA (Green-Gowned, The Windrider) - Composite intelligence, hive of personas from weather control satellites, tectonic engines, biosphere monitoring/correction stations, and dormant atmosphere generators from the terraforming days all hosted on conglomeration of ruined space yachts careening through the inner solar system. Everyone transferred together due to nature as interconnected ecomaintenance system. Wild orbit occasionally causes shipball to perform Desh flybys and trigger cleansing rainstorms and sudden nutritious phytoexplosions; manna from heaven. Prayed and sacrificed to extensively in matters of the harvest, masonry, community, wine.
