Forbidden Arts and Splinter Groups

Despite house Lyra's best effort not every member wants to follow the program. Be it by practicing and participating in illegal and heretical art forms; or organizing in splinter groups with goals contrary to House Lyra and the Empire at large. These groups tend to be very small and secretive and careful to not be found by House Lyra Keepers or Crux officials.

Dark Arts

 

Vivesective Arts

Vivesective arts are practices that use parts of the living human body to make art. The use of humans for this is highly illegal and use of non humans are frowned upon but technically legal. Example of this includes but is not limited to.

• Gore Painting, using blood, faces, and other elements of gore as materials and paints.
• Macabre Dance, including dance with the dead, dismembered limbs, body parts, etc.
• Body Sculpture, using living or dead bodies as sculptures or sculptural elements, often involving disfigurement, revealed internal organs, etc. Very Much against traditional Lyran themes of honoring the dead and the After.
• Psychic Surgery, separate from any actual use of Psychic powers in a medical/surgical scenario. Levitating bodies, living or dead, inflicting various types of wounds and Psychic trauma upon the target, and dismembering or utilizing previously dismembered parts of animals, aliens, or humans in a Telekinetic performance-art-like way.
• Important Note Use of humans in Vivesective Arts is generally highly illegal, however aliens, retired synths, and some animals have been considered acceptable at various points in Lyran history.

Mind Shaping

The use of an unwilling target to re-compose their thought logic and memories as an art form. The target is first put through a number of demo scenarios (how they react to a certain stimulus, what memories and emotions can be gleaned psychically, etc.). A powerful psychic then attempts to heavily alter the target’s mind regardless of its willingness, and the same stimuli and tests are repeated afterwards to see how the target’s mind has been molded and made different for “artistic” purposes. Mind shaping of humans are strictly illegal by imperial law but mind shaping of non humans is technically legal.

The Apocalypse Method

A highly illegal concept that saw credence most during the reign of the Blood Eagle. Including actions of destruction and death, sometimes en masse, the Apocalypse Method includes but is not limited to:

• Forced spike drive failures on auto-piloted ships, the footage of which is transmitted as digital art through satellite networks. Sometimes robotic life or alien life has been put aboard these ships.
• Transfiguration and disfiguration of parts of worlds or celestial bodies not home to human life, though the effects on alien life are considered to only add to the art.
• Footage of annihilative forces, such as orbital bombardments, large-scale explosive detonations, and the effects of war as artistic beauty.

Lyran Splinter Groups

 

Daughters of the Void

Legal Status: Illegal and Heretical

One of the most ancient and secretive sects in Acheron Rho, possibly pre-dating the Scream, the Daughters of the Void are a group of unknown size and origin that exclusively excepts members who identify as women. Many of their actions and practices remain an enigma, but basic information has been whispered across the sector, almost like scraps of myth.

The Daughters believe the After to be an ancient falsehood created to placate humanity and maintain the Noble Order. They claim instead that the Void is not a hell or purgatory or place of darkness, but rather the prison of an ancient, nameless entity that they seek to free from its bonds. This being is known by many titles, some of which may be fabrications: “That Which Lingers,” “She Who Whispers Through The Dead,” “Bringer of The Silence.” It has been alleged that the being the Daughters worship was responsible for the Scream, perhaps an attempted escape from its prison, and rumor suggests that some amongst the Daughters seek ways to trigger a second Scream.

The Will of the Void

Legal Status: Heretical and borderline illegal

Long ago, during the Silence, there existed a Xeper who rejected the love of the After. They saw the Void a means to an end, a path to perfection through reincarnation. The erasure of one’s self in the Void was not something to be feared, but rather a tool to ensure a never ending fight to a goal. The Xeper was quickly ostracized by society, but not exiled. They soon gathered a band of like minded outcasts from across Lyran society. Noblitiy, freeman, criminals. They collectively threw away that with tied them Here and After to embrace the eternity of the Void. Each had a goal. Some were heroic, others embraced a twisted villainy. However, all swore to find each other in the next life.

The WIll of the Void exists to this day. Few Lyrans know of its persistence, though the tales of its origin live on. The “Reincarnated” lead while loyal followers are selected as common membership to further their goals, as varied as they may be. The Reincarnated rarely meet and often have no idea who the other members are. Meetings are done while masked and names are never said. Instead, they use the name of the “original” member, the past life from the original incarnation.

When a Reincarnated dies, the hunt for their new life begins. Members from all ranks search until it is deemed that the new life has been found. At this point, a dangerous set of tasks is laid out until the new life has proven itself. Reincarnated members are given subtle advantages in life, often set forth by other long lasting members.

The Will of the Void is a chaotic group. Their existence is an affront to Lyran society. However, their actions always seem to put House Lyra first. While their trust in the Void is terrifying and their methods can be heinous, their dedication to the House remains unchanged. Even from the shadows, the Void protects… It Provides… It can be used.

The Circle of Lament

Legal Status: illegal

The Circle of Lament is the name of a group of extremists and Lyran supremacists. They harken back to the time of the Masked One, a time of Lyran prosperity, a cultural renaissance and peace in the Empire. They consider House Lyra the only House suitably qualified to helm the Empire due to their respect and reverence for death, and thus life.

Of course there are many that hold this belief; a nostalgia and reverence regarding the Masked One is not uncommon within the House. It is not this that makes the Circle of Lament. The Circle of Lament are doggedly determined to ensure another Lyran Emperox and believe that in order for the Masked One to return, they must create the same conditions. A state of great strife, disorder and death, a time when mourning is required. Due to this, they seek to sow discord within the Empire in order to create this scenario.

The current climate is ripe, they believe, for this and for a Lyran Emperox to step forward and lead the Empire through another Age of Mourning after the loss of House Cygnus. But they are not many but they are secretive. Their endeavour is to sow discord without anyone attributing that discord to Lyra, consequently, they can never step out of the shadows.

The Artist Manifest

Legal Status: Illegal and heretical

Once a splinter of the High Church, the Artist Manifest is a small sect found almost exclusively on Lyra that believed a Lyran Meret, Meret Lyra Kingdom Jonas, to be the rightful successor to the Imperial Throne after the reign of the Masked Emperox. Meret Lyra Kingdom Jonas set himself up as a religious figure, claiming to have spoken to the First Emperox from before the Scream in his dreams. He created “The Magnum Opus,” a set of rules for living and dying that he believed to be “the true way,” lost during the Scream.

When the Masked Emperox’s reign ended, Kingdom Jonas set himself up as “The True Emperox,” on a low-tech world within the sector, creating the “Empire of Enlightenment.” Some Nobles joined with Jonas on his world, perhaps because they believed he had truly spoken with the First Emperox or because they disliked the Emperox that followed the Masked One. Ultimately, however, Meret Lyra Kingdom Jonas was assassinated in his sleep by an unknown Noble House less than a decade into his reign. That said, followers who saw Jonas’ death as a martyrdom continued to follow the rules laid out in “The Magnum Opus,” under the title of “The Artist Manifest.”

The River’s Judgment

Legal Status: Frowned upon but not technically illegal

The River’s Judgment is not so much a religion or faith as it is a way of thinking about the journey to the After. Followers of The River’s Judgment believe that a person’s actions, and by extension the purity of their soul, must be judged in the Here before they can truly enter the After. This has resulted in a number of unusual practices.

One such practice is the “Paths of Purity.” The Paths of Purity is undertaken by followers of The River’s Judgment when they believe death is drawing near. Three coordinates are given to them, one that leads to safety, one that will render them lost, and a third that can only result in death. An individual does not know where each leads, and must then choose one of the coordinates and execute a spike drive jump to the location. The belief is that the purity of an individual’s soul will guide them to the destination best befitting their actions in life, thus either cleansing the world of their evils or showing them the truth of their actions.

This belief system was started by a Neshmet who claimed to have seen into the After. There they said the spirit of an ancient Emperox told them that the living could discover their ultimate fate by undertaking certain journeys and practices.

The Ouroboros Infinitas

Legal Status: Illegal

A relatively new sect, The Ouroboros Infinitas came into being during the War Against the Artificials as a radical death cult. A concept was put forward by an unknown Lyran figure, now believed to be dead or in hiding, that the genocidal destruction of House Cygnus was both beautiful art and the beginning of a necessary cycle. The unknown Lyran posited that all of the Noble Houses should undergo a cyclical genocide to prevent any one house from rising to power for too long. Every five hundred to a thousand years, a new Noble House would be culled until only a few thousand of its people remained. This cycle would then repeat after each house had been culled once. Following the mass death, a period of mass reproduction would be mandated to replenish the populations of the reduced Houses.

While generally seen as outlandish and foolhardy, the Ouroboros Infinitas created two initiatives that have marked them as dangerous. The first is the belief that House Cygnus should be repopulated now that their genocide is complete. The second is the use of violent, terrorist methods as “punishment” for the Empire not embracing the ways of the Ouroboros. Bizarrely, the Ouroboros Infinitas is believed to have gathered some support in certain corners of the Empire and amongst citizens of some non-Imperial planets.