Reverend Dr. Octavia Lemed Mariam (born February 4, 2908) was an Echonian doctor, religious scholar, and political activist and is considered the founder of the Students of God’s Empire. Her sermons and writings on ethics and religion are widely influential on her homeplanet Echo as well as within the Church of Humanity, Repentant.
Apart from her religious writings, Mariam is known for her activism on the rights of serfs, for speaking out against political corruption and persecution, and for encouraging peaceful and nonviolent protest. She was arrested in 2947 on Echo by Conséc but was released soon after, following demonstrations by local Echonians and social activists across the system. After her release she continued to speak publicly about atrocities committed by Empress Aquila Alejandra Ari, often known as the Blood Eagle, and wrote books outlining her religious philosophy. On April 27th, 2950 she was shot and killed by a Conséc assassin.
Early Life[]
Octavia was born on February 4 2908 during the Second Imperial Civil War in the town of Lemed in the continent of Sapphire on the planet Echo. She was given the last name of her mother, Mariam, and given the middle name of her hometown. She received high marks during basic education and demonstrated a propensity for critical thinking and problem solving and was chosen to attend the Caduceus Organization schools on Hroa for medical training at 13.
Career[]
Medical Practice[]
After only seven years of study, Octavia received a bachelor of medicine and surgery, graduating from the Caduceus Organization at 20. She soon returned to Echo to practice medicine, eventually becoming a general practitioner in Talon in one of the planetary capitol’s major medical centers.
It was at this point that Dr. Mariam began keeping a daily written record of her life, a diary in which she described her tasks, thoughts, and problems encountered throughout the day. Over the next several years she wrote about her frustrations with the ongoing civil war, the hypocrisy she perceived in the nobility and the High Church, and remarked that she found it difficult to find any fulfillment in her profession.
After three years as a general practitioner in Talon she requested a transfer to her hometown of Lemed, citing her parents’ declining health. She relocated to Lemed at 23, writing in her journal that she was: “relieved to be going away from the blood and mess of the city, to a place where I can finally think.”
Study with the High Church[]
In 2931, Dr. Mariam became the head general practitioner of the Lemed Care Center, the youngest doctor to ever hold such a position on Echo. There she studied Latin in her free time and began translating the Sacred Texts of the High Church and reading historical records, seeking to find spiritual guidance in her life. With the help of a local priest of the High Church, Dr. Mariam was encouraged to enroll in the acolyte program. She enrolled in 2933, studying during the evening while she worked at the Lemed Care Center, sometimes leaving Echo for extended periods to train in each of the Ten Virtues.
During her training her diary entries still detailed her frustrations with the High Church, its doctrine, and what she characterized as “inherent and unaddressed inequalities in respect to the divine, its virtues, and the empire at large.” Despite her criticisms she was ordained as a Priest of the High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox in 2943. She resigned her position as head general practitioner at the Lemed Care Center and began to lead the Lemed congregation as a priest of the High Church.
Renunciation and the Good Faith and Care Center[]
The Reverend Dr. Miriam’s tenure as an ordained priest was short lived. Her daily sermons and private spiritual consultations often strayed into apocryphal and sometimes heretical areas. She continued translating the Sacred Texts from Latin into the common vernacular, which she would provide to her congregation alongside other texts the church considered apocryphal, but which she gave equal weight and significance. She lead studies that encouraged questioning church doctrine, often exchanged in correspondence with political and social activists throughout the sector, and invited religious philosophers associated with the early beginnings of the Church of Humanity, Repentant to speak at her church in Lemed.
Despite these transgressions against High Church practices, her fellowship grew throughout Echo, often attracting crowds so large that she would hold additional meetings and study groups at the nearby Lemed Care Center, where she would sometimes work as a volunteer.
After a heated discussion with visiting High Church investigators, the Reverend Dr. Miriam gathered her flock outside the Lemed church. There she held up her vestments and articles of ordainment, proclaimed that she renounced the High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox, and nailed them to the door of the church, evoking the tradition in which the High Church nails decrees of excommunication to church doors of Andopheal.
In 2945 Dr. Miriam, with the help of her followers and friends, converted the Lemed Care Center into the Good Faith and Care Center. The newly renovated building contained an annex where people could congregate and study religious texts, and where Dr. Miriam continued to give sermons and began helping to organize political demonstrations throughout the sector.
Activism and Imprisonment[]
Dr. Miriam’s open criticism of the High Church and her growing political activism drew the attention of Conséc, the Blood Eagle’s personal intelligence organization. Conséc began surveilling Dr. Miriam and her followers after her renunciation of the High Church, and their interest only grew as she began to hold independant religious services and organized social movements on Echo.
In 2947 agents of Conséc arrested Dr. Miriam and several of her followers as they gathered to protest human experimentation that was rumored to be occurring at the Claw Prison Camp on Echo. As she was held at a local House Crux processing facility, a large demonstration gathered outside, lead by her followers and other prominent social justice workers. Conséc and Crux chose to wait to transfer Mariam to a secure facility, but as the demonstration grew and more followers joined from the Eriopei system, Conséc released her citing security concerns and the possibility of civil unrest. Dr. Miriam was never formally charged, though several of her followers were beaten and tortured by Conséc agents.
Death[]
After her arrest Dr. Miriam continued to deliver sermons at the Good Faith and Care Center and throughout Echo, and began collecting her sermons and spiritual theories and practices into several books that she published independently, though many would be more formally published by her followers posthumously.
As she was leaving the Good Faith and Care Center on April 27, 2950, an agent of Conséc, posing as a member of her fellowship, approached her and shot her in the chest. Before she died she is rumoured to have forgiven her assassin and commended their soul to God. The Conséc assassin allegedly wept and swore to emulate her life and teachings, and became the first Student of the God’s Empire church.