By The Mirrorball Man (j_hirt@yahoo.com)
The Celestial Crusaders were once a meek and cowardly faction, united by a naïve ideal of compassion and sacrifice. Their old ways and traditions had been lost, and they had accepted heretics among their ranks. They did no longer fear God, but bowed to a pagan demon they called "The One". Their name was the Celestial Chorus, and their voice was growing weaker and weaker in the turmoil of the other Traditions and Conventions. They were accustomed to living in a world that did not care about their ideals, and to help people who despised their beliefs. In the last decades before the dawn of the Void Age, the Chorus had no more than a few dozens adepts, keeping the flame before it would eventually got wiped out by progress.
Fortunately, a small group of young and ambitious Choristers, The Cabal of Pure Soul, did not want their perennial philosophy to perish. They took control of the Chorus, deposed the old leaders, and started to rebuild their Tradition from scratch, following the old ways of God. They punished the heretics who hid among them, and offered some of them to change their ways and join the Army of God. Within years, the Chorus had regained some of its strength. They took over the Vatican and promised Christians that they would conquer the stars in the name of God. The Celestial Crusaders were born.
Soon, Celestial Crusader theologians discovered that their Faith could be their ticket to the Universe. They could travel beyond the speed of light, and cover hundreds of light years in a few hours. All they had to do was to open the Gates of Heaven. Heaven was the center of the universe. All places were connected to it. The love of God was everywhere. If your spaceships went through Heaven, there would be no limit to their range. This group of theologians claimed to have discovered the first of what would soon be called "Soulgates".
From then on, the Celestial Crusaders built hundreds of War Cathedrals, and sent them through Heaven. And beyond Heaven, they discovered and conquered alien worlds. On these planets, they found demons that had to be eliminated. But they also found pagan civilizations that could be saved by the love of God. The Crusaders had a new goal; they would spread their faith in the entire universe. That was the beginning of the Crux Universalis evangelization process.
Nowadays, Crux Universalis has spread on dozens of worlds, and the Crusaders are the most powerful magickal faction in the universe. But they are also the most feared and despised.
Teknolords: Atheist megalomaniacs. Theirs is a world without hope.
Wu Lung: An especially tough lot of Pagan cultists. They belong to the past.
Cybermancers: The human soul should not meld with soulless tools.
Euthanatos: There are secrets that man is not meant to learn.
Freetraders: A necessary evil, even if they are purveyors of luxury and lewdness.
The Order: They have never offended us, but we recognize snakes when we see them.
Progenitors: One should not meddle with the sacred temple that is the human body. However, their techniques have sometimes helped us against pagan creatures.
Dreamspeakers: Nobody speaks with dreams any longer. They are nothing but old legends.
Marauders: Poor creatures possessed by Demons. Probable tools of the Nephandi. We must help them and purify their souls with fire.
Verbena: An old, declining order. Time will take care of them.
(Nephandi are more interesting when they are villains, especially in this day and age.)
There was a time when Nephandi served all kinds of powers, from stupid and capricious Demons to vile personifications of corruption. Now that the Earth is gone, these corrupted masters are no more, and the Fallen only serve the Void. The Void is their hope, their life, their ideal. The Void is perfect, flawless. It has always existed, and will always exist. It is timeless, infinite, indescribable. It is all encompassing, eternal. It isn't flawed with human morals, feelings, or shortcomings of all kinds. It does not erode, it does not change. It is the measure of all things. Nephandi serve the Void faithfully, hoping that someday, it will engulf the entire universe and that Reality will be pure and perfect again.
As they always did, the Dark Ones live in the Void, waiting for their enemies. Sometimes they spend years in contemplation, their skin in contact with the lethal kiss of their master. They might wait for years or even centuries before feeling the need to pursue their mission. Sometimes, imprudent travelers wake them up, and have to face the consequence. . . . Sometimes the Fallen build Realms of corruption, creations devoted to destruction, and they call these places Labyrinths. Sometimes they act alone, sometimes they form tightly-knit groups devoted to the obliteration of reality.
Nephandi are powerful Awakened beings, but they are not pure enough to understand the real way of the Void. They have to follow the advice of more experienced entities, those that existed back when the universe hadn't been corrupted by mind, matter, forces and especially life. These Dark Ones dwell in the outer fringes of the universe. They are malevolent, deeply corrupted creatures, and Nephandi acknowledge them as such. They tend to think that Pure Evil, as close as it is to Nothingness, is still too close to a human feeling. Nevertheless, the Ancient Lords in the Dark follow a dark path of universal annihilation and the Nephandi crave for their knowledge. Both work hand in hand towards active destruction. The Dark Lords use Nephandi as pawns in their perennial soul trade, and the Nephandi use the Old Voices in their quest for purity.
Teknolords: They try to build a lasting system, but nothing lasts forever.
Wu Lung: We will not tolerate the existence of these demon hunters for long.
Cybermancers: They are explorers of the Void -- both internal and external. Soon they'll be ours.
Euthanatos: As long as other Factions mistake them for us, they are no threat.
Freetraders: Masters of corruption. We have interests in common.
The Order: A dangerous lot. They know things even we ignore.
Progenitors: Scientific mercenaries. We could control them if we were interested in small intrigues.
Dreamspeakers: If we don't stop them, they will soon awaken forces that might endanger our cause.
Marauders: There always will be Marauders, up to the last seconds of this universe. They are our worst enemies.
Verbena: They will fade as their trees rot.
The Technocracy was winning the Ascension War. Reality was under control, Deviants were divided, pathetic remnants of times long foregone, and creatures were dying as a new age was coming. Masses were getting accustomed to this new reality, living safely in a perfectly conditioned environment, and the Ascension to the Autochtonian ideal was a certainty.
That was the common feeling among the ranks of the Union, at least. But some Statisticians of Iteration X were not that optimistic. They had foretold a probable future in which Earth would disappear and the Technocratic Union wouldn't be able to survive its ashes. There was absolutely no doubt. This future was most likely to happen, and if it were the case, the catastrophe couldn't -- and wouldn't -- be prevented. There was no chance of stopping the process, and no hope of building a space ark big enough to save the Masses. These Statisticians decided to save what they could of the Technocracy and of Earth's culture and technology. They created the Haven, a foundation made of valuable personnel members, who would have the task of rebuilding a new, stronger Technocracy after the end of the world. The Convention did not want to tell anything to their partners, fearing that they would prevent them from realizing their project. So they resolved to create mini-Conventions inside the Haven, that would mimic the old ones. Biotech members would replace the Progenitors, Eradicators would stand in for the Void Engineers, Controllers would take the place of the NWO, and Liberalists would replace the Syndicate. These new versions of the old Conventions were streamlined, more effective, and were entirely composed of faithful members of Iteration X.
Just a couple of years before Earth was destroyed, the Computer, Iteration X secret leader, ceased to talk to its assistants. It remained silent and prevented anybody from approaching its electronic structure. When it finally broke the silence, it had rebuilt itself as an autonomous entity named the Teknomother, inheritor of the Union's knowledge. The Teknomother took the lead of the Haven.
One thing caused the Teknomother concern. The Celestial Chorus, Wu Lung and Euthanatos had just discovered they could travel faster than the speed of light using "Soulgates", namely, the Afterworlds. And the Technocracy had voted against the existence of Afterworlds. That would prove to be a problem if the new Technocracy was to rule the stars. So the Teknomother ordered Iteration X to build an artificial Soulgate. And that's what they did. They spent years creating the Hyperspace, an alternate dimension in which "distances were shorter". But even if they never knew this, the task was actually impossible. They should not have succeeded. What happened was that even if science failed to build the Hyperspace, their faith in the project was of such a magnitude as to create a new Afterworld. Which means that the foundation act of the new Union was an act of faith.
When the Void Age begun, the Haven successfully turned into an effective Union, which the Teknomother named the United Teknolords.
The Union is divided into five Methodologies. Artifex build machines, cyborgs, robots, spaceships, weapons, etc. It is by far the most powerful Methodology, being the logical inheritor of Iteration X's scientific tradition. Biotech deals with biotechnology, and creates clones, viruses, bioapps and creatures. Unfortunately, its achievements are dwarfed by those of the Progenitors. Controllers are the spies and administrators of the Union. They control Masses, and are responsible for the training of initiates. Eradicators are the shock troops and explorers of the Teknolords. And finally, Liberalists organize the tekno society through the use of money. They give everything a value, and build the base of a constructive competition.
But that credo is valid for mankind only. Other species are different, and all of them are potential threats.
Nephandi: These alien creatures are a constant threat for deep space travelers.
Wu Lung: A well-organized faction. We might learn from them before destroying them.
Cybermancers: A pack of children. Useful but dangerous.
Euthanatos: We have to be careful with the Death Mages, for they hold the keys to powerful forces.
Freetraders: We must work with them in order to establish a universal financial structure.
The Order: Of course we don't trust these masters of intrigue. But we need them.
Progenitors: We'll steal their technology before crushing them.
Dreamspeakers: The primal mages should have disappeared centuries ago. But they have powerful allies.
Marauders: The grain of sand in the clockwork.
Verbena: What could a flying tree do against a Maximus class cruiser?
Some things never change. The Dragon Wizards, who have existed for more than 5000 years, are among these things. Keepers of the old Chinese traditions, these Mages still obey their old ways and are bound together by a strict veneration of their ancestors.
The modern world did the Wu Lung no good. Having been faithful advisors and counselors to the many emperors of China, they had been forced to leave the country when the communist party took the reigns and encouraged people to turn up their nose at traditional ways. Still, although a mere shadow of their former glory, they managed to remain a powerful magickal society, living apart from the Ascension War. They even found ways to keep an influence over some parts of their country, struggling against the Technocracy and Akashic Brotherhood factions. While most of the Dragon Wizards were forced to live in exile, they never gave up and never compromised, keeping a secular culture alive, even if they had to learn to be secretive and to hide in shadows.
When the end of the world was near, Wu Lung wizards did not fear it, and saw it as an opportunity to build a new, better China in the sky. Their dead advisors had warned them long before that they had been chosen to be the rulers of this new era, and that the way to the stars passed through the core of the object of their traditional devotion, namely the Chinese Afterworld.
Shang-Di, the Heavenly Emperor of the Dragon Wizards, was the first to travel through what would later be called a Soulgate. He was given access to the Chinese Afterworld of Huang Chuan. Sailing on a magickal boat, he had a meeting with Yuan-shi tian-zong, The "Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning", creator and keeper of the universe. The Celestial Venerable officially granted the Wu-Lung the right to travel through his kingdom. He encouraged Shang-Di to find a haven in space that would shelter Chinese refugees and that would be worthy to become the new China. Shang-Di resumed his journey and visited the three Heavens and five Hells of myth. Then, leaving Huang-Chuan behind, he set foot on an uninhabited, yet fertile land, which he christened Kun-lun.
When he came back, he told his advisors what he had seen, and he gathered all Dragon Wizards, and ordered them to organize the exile to Kun-lun. The Wu Lung devoted the following years to selecting thousands of Chinese people they found worthy of survival. They also built a palace and a city on Kun Lun, which they called Huang-di. Before the Technocratic Union had realized that Earth would soon cease to exist, 200,000 Chinese people were living on Kun-lun under the rule of the Heavenly Emperor of the Dragon Wizards.
But the journey to Kun-lun was perilous, and many died while trying to reach their new home. The magickal boats of the Wu Lung weren't steady enough to face the unforgiving waters of Huang Chuan. A young Wu Lung named Chi Gu-niang then decided to travel through space on a boat made of parchment and to look for the Lung-wang, the old Dragon kings of myth. She lived many adventures and finally met the Lung-wang in their secret palace. She convinced them to help the Wu Lung, and they agreed to serve the people of China for one thousand years. So Chi Gu-niang came back to Kun-lun, mounting an opalescent Celestial Dragon, and told the Heavenly Emperor what she had done. As a reward, he consented to marry her. The Dragon Wizards were now ready to build a new Chinese empire among the stars.
The Wu Lung rule over the new Chinese Empire according to old Chinese customs. Mages are socially superior to Sleepers. A Sleeper can't rise above his condition without Awakening. For Wu Lung, the world has a natural order. Some are destined to rule, and others are destined to obey. However, realizing that everybody has a role in this hierarchy, they show Sleepers due respect, as long as these servants honor traditional values.
Through venerating their ancestors in Huang Chuan, the Wu Lung gain their power over reality. But this has to be done the proper way, closely following the appropriate ritual and ceremony. Trespassers face dire consequences.
Nephandi: Demon-worshippers. They should be tortured before they perish.
Teknolords: Even if Confucius has inspired their hierarchy, they have sold their souls to the Machine.
Cybermancers: Childish pawns of the Teknolords.
Euthanatos: These vile necromancers don't show due respect to the spirits of the dead.
Freetraders: We have never opposed commerce, so they are welcome in our cities.
The Order: For all we know, they might not even exist.
Progenitors: One should not create life without the blessing of the dead.
Dreamspeakers: They are the protectors of old, threatened cultures. We shall not be their enemies.
Marauders: Nobody should be allowed to live without rules.
Verbena: Fools. They practice magick without true purpose.