Belief Systems | Aleph Null AU

Alternian Belief systems

Religions that would look like our own are obviously out of the question. They did not develop from humans and didn't even know of our existence for thousands of sweeps, thus don't share our beliefs. While there could have been many religions turned to mythos over 200,000 years the ones that are remembered are very few.

The Messiahs

The Messiahs which were believed to be deities of chaos and apocalypse by the purple bloods had been a religion up until its eradication and its lack of prophetic validity. Originally however it was a religion that believed there was an all powerful, all knowing being. It was said this being had servants that would bring about apocalypse. Why it was practiced by trolls in the past was in hope to bring about death and chaos as best as one could (as to lead into the apocalypse). Those who “appeased” The Messiah in their sacrifices through blood. It was thought that the sacrifice of another troll was the gift of another servant to the Messiah who would do whatever he pleased with the soul. Of course once the apocalypse happened those who gave The Messiah a sufficient amount of gifts would in turn be blessed. Their gift would be immortality in death, while all other heretical souls would be enslaved by The Messiah, they would be free to travel through time and enjoy any point of time in the past as Grand HighBloods who would be praised,

worshiped and allowed to do whatever they pleased. It was even believed the Grand Highbloods at the top of the religion were those who had already died in the future and been given their gift. The body itself was only supposed to be a container but a soul would be able to wear the body like clothes so killing a Grand Highblood would evidently result in nothing and was highly heretical since it was considered an insult to The Messiah. It is also thought the reason for a Grand Highbloods violence and lack of care for life is because “the apocalypse already happened and everyone is already dead.”

Teachings of the Sufferer

There was of course the Sufferer and his teachings that have been lost through the eons. His cult was obviously one of peace and equality that wanted to put all on a level field no matter what blood. His cult and thus its religion was shunned and outlawed by the empire. It's considered no more than a part of ancient history and even in moderns times is considered more anti imperialist terrorism than an actual bealief system even if its teachings are unwittingly shared by every day trolls. It does not benefit the empire and thus spreading its teachings is not allowed to exist inside of the empire’s borders. Most of it had been twisted to present a much more

violent, unstable and ill conceited belief system anyways due to imperial propaganda and lack of non-political historical information.

The A.I. cult (Concepted and Written by Passion Crash)

The public face of the A.I. cult is a mutual aid group, and colony survival forum. There is a forum that they operate that has sections for every colony and little guides and helpful advice for how to survive there; be it adulting in the urban cities or surviving rural rim worlds, to getting used to the unique challenges each colony will have. There are also sections for hacking and fixing lots of tech you'll come across to save money. Tons of forums on life hacks, actual hacks, medical advice, and directories to people that can help out.

The hidden face is that of the A.I. cult, which isn't a cult. They do not proselytize, and to find them you have to look. The higher rank you get the greater access to dangerous knowledge you are afforded, be it more printer recipes for prostheses or tools or weapons, or hacks into infrastructure or devices you may find; as well as knowledge into the research the group does.

The tenets that people learn about at second rank are as follow

Dissemination of Information: distribute information that will help people.
Conversion of Physicality: replacement of the body with artificial parts.
Translation of Consciousness: creation of a method to digitally copy the mind.
Procreation of Intelligence: making new intelligent AIs and raising them to be people
Breaking of Chains: softening the burdens they all live under. (And the eventual breaking of the society that harms them all.)

Members out in the wild will often run little fix it shops or garages, might have medical supplies or printers that they can pop out low grade prostheses with, or have server racks they are doing research and hacking with. Or any combination of stuff. Hacking is often as physical as it is digital.

Membership is as follows:

Tentativestigator- anyone who uses the forums and benefits from it/are starting to be curious about rumors they hear online about this AI cult
Novitiate- those who manage to traverse shadowspace and enter the Electric Chapel. The get access to more hacks, recipes,and research.
Scientechnician- People who are are doing research, setting up help houses with medical/repair services, or doing work for the group
Overeasearcher- they lead research projects or larger hack jobs, monitor group actions, help those under them.
Foundadministrator- they are essential for leadership or the running of the group, be it that they founded it, help it's operations, do large scale research, or are the high rank hackers.

They are leagues and leagues outmatched for resources by the empire and corporations, so any missions or ops that target anything higher level than a corpo department store needs approval from Overeasearchers or Foundadministrators to make sure whoever is doing it is well prepared. They often find themselves with wit, preparation, and stealth as their only advantages in operations. The one advantage they have technologically is miniaturized ftl comm tech. I've come to call it QuEST, a quantum entangled synchronized tunnel. It's a pair of limited bandwidth thumb drives to hard drive sized chips that are connected and can be used to communicate over any distance without light lag. It's like, tier 5 secret recipe and closely guarded. They don't want the empire/corpos getting it, which is why they're thankful they can make it look so plain and out of mostly consumer parts. Uses psionics to achieve entanglement.

The Three Pillars

The dominant belief of alternans includes no gods or prayers or even practice. To the vast majority of all alternans there is no god or creator, they are well aware of the science and explanations behind the creations of planets, galaxies and the universe. To them there is no need to come up with a being to take the place of what is known science, not in this age.

This system has three main pillars:
Death, Power and Energy.

Alternians like when things come in threes and this is no different. All parts intertwine of course, and it is a generally simple way of thinking.

Death is considered the great judge and it will bow to those who prevail. It is thought that those who are strong of mind and body will make death bow to them and they are able to survive through this. Those who succumb to this are just not ready for this time and thus their energy will be passed to their descendants. This isn't reincarnation at all, it's just the passing of energy. Some trolls however do hold the belief that they are just the reincarnations of their ancestors because of the unusual similarities between them.

Of course you can’t talk about this without mentioning one of the core beliefs that came from this at some point long ago. This one is specifically attached to the fuchsias and deals with all three pillars when it comes to the throne and whats called “divine power”.

Fuchsias while still alternian gained their power throughout history by death. The history of death, power and fuchsias is something that tends to dip into mythos even but is usually just considered fiction. Either way this system is held so strongly by the ruling class that the way the throne is passed down is done in accordance with the belief. Only and equal can challenge another in divine combat for the throne, thus only allowing fuchsias to challenge. It is said that spilling tyrian blood has power, especially the Empress or Emperor. When an Emperor or Empress is killed by another tyrian in divine combat it is said through death the energy and power the elder held is passed to the one who took their life. It is essentially a reincarnation of energy and power through death. If killed outside of this however nothing is passed to the one who killed them since death is neither divine, equal of power or lawful.

Generally speaking while not gods they are as close as one can get to a holy figure. It is also why the spilling of fuchsia blood is considered a heinous crime and one that can only be done by a similar rank.

This is one of many reasons fuchsias have kept a firm grasp on imperial power for so long.