House Serpens Religion

Faith has long been part of the underlying fabric of House Serpens and its culture. The gift of psychic abilities that comes hand in hand with MES is commonly viewed as a gift from God with deep connections to the souls of the living, rather than simply the effects of a disease. A deep reverence, and at times even worship, of psychics and psionics has evolved through many forms in Serpens’ history alongside this, and the teachings of both the High Church and the Church of Humanity, Repentant have found purchase amongst the nobles and serfs of House Serpens.

History

Pre-Scream - The Visions of Calamity

While any knowledge from before the Scream can be difficult to obtain, bits and pieces have made their way into the present, especially regarding the last few decades before the Scream occurred. The High Church was unrivaled in its power and influence, and most of the Empire, including House Serpens, ascribed to its beliefs. Psionics were studied and well understood from a scientific perspective, and psychics, while revered, were seen more akin to exceptional doctors or scientists than powerful wielders of sorcery. Knowledge was paramount, and much of the mysticism that had existed around psionics and psychics had been surmounted, though traces would always remain.

Several years before the event that we now know as the Scream occurred, some precognitive psychics began to experience a growing number of visions that pointed towards some major, impending shift in the future of the Empire. Among these was High Sophist Kuld Thora, a renowned precognitive psychic and teacher. While most visions were obscure or enigmatic, Sophist Thora beheld a single repeating vision, her interpretation of which she believed to be undeniable.

‘I beheld a field of lights, flickering in darkness. One by one, each was snuffed till only a single remained. Then from that lowly flicker roared forth terror and suffering, all of Hroa, the first to the last, wailing in unquenchable fire. The flames consumed their minds first, the skulls, their bodies untouched, and the wailing grew, louder, greater, until I blinked and there, again, was darkness. And in that darkness there was laughter. Cruel, mad laughter.’ ~Attributed to High Sophist Kuld Thora

Sophist Thora believed this to be a vision of punishment, a culling of humanity that could lead only into suffering and madness. The first lights had become the raging fire, and she believed the punishment would be greater and more dreadful for each light not extinguished. Because the fire had consumed the minds first, Thora believed the coming calamity to be psychic in nature. From this she then inferred that the more psychics there were when the calamity came, the more dreadful and destructive it would be. Those who sacrificed themselves would be saviors, passing on into reincarnation or the After, blessed for their deeds.

But when Thora brought her vision of “Yonaoshi ( 世直し ),” as she dubbed it, before the leadership of Hroa, she was turned away. Few believed her, and none agreed that her interpretation of the vision would prove correct. Even if a calamity was to come, the leaders of House Serpens refused to believe that the mass death of psychics could somehow be the solution. It was too terrifying a prospect to even entertain.

At the same time, the leader of the Church on Hroa, High Priest Aja Pantul, had counseled several parishioners with similarly foreboding visions when word of what Sophist Thora claimed to have seen began to spread. The High Priest sought out Thora, and in listening to the Sophist speak, Aja quickly became convinced that the other visions they had been brought were but pieces of what Sophist Thora had been given. Other visions only seemed to reinforce Sophist Thora’s interpretation, with images of tortured minds and people beset by madness unusually common.

From there, a dangerous and fanatical cult began to grow, the Visitation of Manifest Destiny, wardens of the “Yonaoshi,” that was to come. A doctrine of mandatory self-sacrifice was preached, for every psychic from Sophist Thora to the lowliest initiate would have to take their own lives before the calamity arrived. Those who listened were brought deeper within the cult, and many would be sent out to preach to others. Those who turned a blind eye and rejected the Visitation’s warnings often turned up dead. None knew how many days or months or years would pass before the calamity came, and those who refused to listen to the Visitation’s teachings put the future of humanity at risk. Or so it was believed.

When the Scream came several years later, the Visitation of Manifest Destiny had already spread beyond Hroa and even Tsatsos, reaching ever further across the Empire. High Priest Aja had been stripped of their position for their unsanctioned preachings, but by the time the High Church intervened the damage had already been done. Witnessing another great vision, the nature of which was never learned, Sophist Thora was found dead by her own hand but three days before the Scream occurred. Many others also sacrificed themselves in the following days, but when the Scream came it lashed out with such speed that many believers were caught within it before they could fulfill their own self-sacrifice.

The Scream - Darkness Into Light

The Scream itself was devastating to Hroa and House Serpens’ holdings across the Sector. Psychics died in moments to the destructive, unseeable psionic force that swept across the universe, and those that survived it were rendered incurably insane. Hroa’s infrastructure was crippled, access to neighboring worlds and out of the Tsatsos system nearly impossible. The planet itself quaked, the unknown Doom disturbed within it by the Scream, and amongst the survivors passed rumors and fear that Sophist Thora and the Visitation had been right. The calamity had come, and the sacrifice had not been great enough.

Years passed, Hroa split between the warring remnants of House Serpens as they clambered for survival. Mad psychics, some gone feral, hunted wild across the Serpens homeworld, destroying, killing, and twisting some to their aid with the sheer force of their psychic will. New psychic children were few, but greater in number than elsewhere in the fractured Empire thanks to Hroa’s unique metafield. They were hope, or weapons, or things to be feared, and most were desperately guarded and trained to keep them from going mad or feral as well. Regrettably, some that had known of Sophist Thora and the Manifest Destiny elected to kill all psychics that they found, fearing that their return would only lead to another calamity.

From the raving and the terror eventually emerged five metapsions, their names lost to time. They fought against what mad and feral psychics yet remained, plaguing Hroa and its people, and together with the remnants of House Serpens’ nobility assisted in the reunification of the Hroan people. What families these metapsions came from is also unknown, though some will claim a vague, unproven connection. Hypotheses have come and gone within the House’s inner circles that some of the metapsions became the first Taipan, perhaps an effort by Nobles to consolidate their power, but such thoughts amount to little more than rumors and musings amongst academics.

Hroa would be reunited, the nobles of Serpens again leading its people. Psychics would become revered as heroes, chosen ones, empowered by God to help Hroa recover, and Sophist Thora and the teachings of Manifest Destiny faded into little more than memories. But an even greater darkness was yet to come before Serpens would truly recover.

Post-Scream - Hroa And The Reverence of Psychics

Manifest Destiny left a dark blemish on the history of Hroa, but one that quickly faded. With so much scientific knowledge lost in the Scream, the full nature of psionics was a mystical unknown to all but a few. As new psychics were born, an initial lack of proper education and medication meant it was very easy for them to lose control or push too far, creating even more mad or feral psychics than the Scream had already. The few who could find it within themselves to control their power, many of whom were metapsions, were revered and praised as miracles. Amongst these, the five, nameless metapsions, proved to be exceptional.

As they worked to protect Hroa and its people, the five metapsions sensed the metafield of the planet itself, its subtlety at the very edge of their abilities to detect. They came to believe it guided them, aided them, and perhaps Hroa itself had ushered the remnants of House Serpens through the darkness. They saw their souls as tied to the planet, and themselves as chosen or blessed to be able to control their powers unlike so many others.

From this another belief was born, the echoes of which permeate Serpens society even to this day. The metapsions believed, and a great many with them, that Hroa and those bestowed with psionics were special. If control over their psionics could be maintained, psychics could rise above the rest of humanity and drive out those turned feral or mad. If it could not, they would descend into madness, demons and destroyers set against their own kin. As the Emperox had been bestowed by God before, so were psychics bestowed by Hroa.

The transition was easy. There was no war. Only a rare few dared to voice opposition. Non-psychic nobles were pulled from their seats of power and replaced with the few psychics who had managed to control their powers. Temples were raised up to Hroa, and as time passed to the greatest amongst the psychics as well, chosen emissaries of Hroa’s will. Work turned quickly to the training and treatment of psychics young and old, striving to prevent as many as possible from losing control forever.

How the psychics ruled during this period is difficult to say. Many in the present claim those days were dark, rumors of executions, sacrifices, and enslavement. As time passed and their power grew, the focus of the cult was less and less on Hroa and increasingly on psychics themselves. But when Hroa and Serpens were reunited with the High Church and the slowly-recovering Empire, the cult quickly lost its power. Whether through the work of the High Church and its remnants on Hroa to convert members of House Serpens back to the one true faith or some internal rebellion that had been boiling up for years, the worship of Hroa and the psychics all but evaporated. Purges were done in the dead of night, tearing down the self-titled gods and the zealous, temples burned and buried as though they’d never been built at all. In the present, many fiercely believe this cult to have been wiped from existence, but once in many moons rumors whisper of worshippers in secret, faithful outliers in the dark corners of Hroa, and those who yet bow to Hroa and the might of psionics. If these rumors ever prove true they are quickly silenced, and the secret worshippers disappear, dead, rehabilitated, or worse.

Despite its darker origins, Hroan culture yet retains a certain reverence for psychics and psionics. No longer figures of worship, it is undeniable that the abilities of psychics and the power of psionics is rare and special. Those who lack the blessing of psionics are at times looked down upon or, more cunningly put, not placed quite as high. And though outsiders may look upon this relationship between psychic and non-psychic and find it strange, it is a relationship of respect and honor more than one of hate. This respect can equally be seen in the use of psionics, as great care and consideration is placed upon influencing and affecting the soul of another with psychic abilities. Even into the present, some psychics struggle with the relationship of human and alien for this very reason, as a species’ sentience and the nature of the soul can be a difficult distinction to resolve.