The Friends of Yakiyah

The Friends of Yakiyah (FoY)
Sponsoring Org of SERAPH, Former member of the UPC
Motto	"Blood Begets Blood, Tenfold"
Ideology	Radical Egalitarian, Pacifist, Synth-rights, Anti-Ecclesiastical Authority
Spokes-person	Dr. Beaks

The Friends of Yakiyah (FoY) is a religious minority as well as a philosophical and political organization of members known as "Friends." Based on the planet Yakiyah in the Tsatsos system, they have deep roots in the agricultural planet. The Friends sought to protect their ancestral home by counseling and guiding the new revolutionary movement that took control of Yakiyah. They are supporters of and have members in the Society for Ethical Reform through Aid, Protection, and Humanitarianism, a network of charitable organizations based on Cabina.

Origins

The Friends lived on Yakiyah in peace for many years. Pacifist farmers, they created a close-knit community within which they could lead lives free from inequality and without the need to swear oaths of fealty to the Emperor or the High Church. However, seeking official ecclesiastical independence from the overbearing Imperial Church, the Friends banded together and sought out the UPC to be able to ethically lead their lives among the truly free. After joining the UPC, the Friends have taken on a more external outlook rather than being secluded as they were in the past. To this day, they seek to advise and counsel organizations, governments, and everyday Yakiyans to support the rights of all life and to stop any blood from being spilled, for violence would surely be returned on rural Yakiyah tenfold.

Hierarchy

The Friends of Yakiyah have no formal leadership, as per the egalitarian doctrines of the Friends.

Within the loose structure of the Friends of Yakiyah, there is one rank known as "Friend". Unlike other faiths, the Friends have no ecclesiastical structure. Instead of the episcopal government by religious leaders, the Friends organize their faithful around a set of informal meetings that are regularly held at local community centers. At these meetings members participate in individual prayer as well as active conversation and debate on theological/philosophical matters. In rural and isolated sections of the planet, Friend communes run their communities with direct democracy.

See also: Sects of the Friends of Yakiyah

Theists

The majority of Friends are members of a religiously minded ideological sect. These Friends believe that God has given inalienable rights to every life and that there is a spark of God's light within us all. Outsiders often treat them as a Repentant sect.

Non-Theists

The non-theists are a solely philosophical branch of the Friends of Yakiyah who use their own moral compasses to follow the Friends ethical guidelines.

Beliefs of the Friends

• All people are equal. People includes synths and aliens.
• Every individual has a sense of Good and Evil.
• People have the ability to choose between Good and Evil, for we have the capacity to do both.
• The Good of people will always be fostered when everyone has a voice and people can operate in a directly democratic way striving for consensus.
• A hierarchical system always ends up producing violence and harms both the oppressor and the oppressed.
• The Friends have an obligation to help and side with the oppressed.
• The use of violence always creates more problems than it solves; we should endeavor to avoid its use.
• Rely upon the better nature within every person.
• Most wrongs can be solved through a process of mediation, compensation, and restorative justice.
• Create a better world for yourself and others.

Education

The Friends are strong advocates of education and believe that education is one of the main ways to counteract hierarchical structures in society. If someone wants to learn how to do something a Friend has an obligation to teach it to them if they can. This spreads knowledge to whoever wants it helps in breaking down the gap between those who have knowledge and those who do not.

Views on Violence, Synths, and Aliens

Violence

Friends are ardent pacifists and may not commit any act of violence. Friends believe in nonviolent direct action should be the way to achieve extraordinary change. The Friends do work with groups that do not share these commitments to nonviolence and although the Friends disprove of these violent actions the Friends don't outright condemn them. The Friends are generally okay with small amounts of property damage during nonviolent protest as long as no one get hurt.

Synths

Friends have no reason not to see Synths as people, therefore, they should be equal to all other people. The FoY support and will help synth rights and synth liberation in whatever form that takes. However, the ultimate liberation of Synths and what that liberation looks like should come from Synths themselves.

Aliens

Friends have not had much contact with Aliens. They are inclined to support alien rights but don't focus on the issue much due to there not being aliens on Yakiyah (as far as they are aware of).

Former Goals of the Friends

When still a member of the revolutionary Unified People's Collective, the Friends sought the following goals:

1. Find peaceable solutions to the conflicts brewing in the sector, protecting the home planet of Yakiyah from possible attack.
2. Convince the masses of the Empire to revolt and force the creation of a constitution for the rights of ALL within the sector, where everyone has an equal vote under a Direct Democracy on each system
3. Sway the opinion of the people of the sector for the need to the right of religious freedom.
4. Convince the people of the need to remove the High Church as the ecclesiastical head of the Empire due to bouts of corruption, moral laxity, and inequality.
5. Spread the Friends of Yakiyah to other planets, expanding the network of staunchly egalitarian, pacifist interstellar activists.
6. Seek independence for Yakiyah from A.C.R.E., becoming its own agricultural producer.

Relationship to the Churches of the Empire

The High Church of Messiah-as-Emperor

Both factions of the Friends, theist and non-theists, see their ideology as incompatible with The High Church of Messiah-as-Emperox because of perceived corruption and moral laxity. They are equally dismayed by the fact that the High Church is enmeshed in the maintenance of the hierarchy supporting the Imperial Throne and Noble Houses over the people of Acheron Rho, as exemplified in oppressive, hollow virtues such as Faith or Propriety.

Thus, the Friends of Yakiyah seek to gain ecclesiastical independence from the High Church to create a truly equal society, as well as the rights to preach or philosophize all over the Empire free from harm and claims of "insurrectionist" heresy.

Repentant Faith

As supporters of the rights of all people, the Friends believed that The Church of Humanity, Repentant (CHR) were moral and upstanding people. While most in the CHR were not sworn pacifists, it is well known that many members and Repentant sects sought peace within and without, for which many Friends considered them comrades-in-arms. However, the Friends actively encouraged the Repentant to give up the ecclesiastical, hierarchical baggage of their split and become truly egalitarian.

While some non-theists find the use of theology distasteful when morality and logic will do, at large the Friends saw The CHR as potential allies in a future theological conflict that would eventually come to pass during the Conflict of 3200.

With the dissolution of The Church of Humanity, Repentant in the wake of that conflict, the Friends remain supportive of many independent sects of The Repentant Faith on Yakiyah. Friends now often bemoan the Church’s needless hierarchies and power-structures as the cause of its downfall. This doubt in the Repentant Church’s moral authority allowed the Friends of Yakiyah both during and after the conflict to condemn many of the Church’s actions, and to distance themselves from its more radical positions and any more radical remaining Repentant sects. Members of the Friends have further separated themselves from it as forces of the Empire continue to challenge Repentant expression, extremist sects,the former CHR leaders, and the dissolved Church’s former allies.

Post-UPC

The Death of the UPC in late 3200 did not bring the fist of the Empire on to the Friends like was brought onto violent and more outspoken subfactions. Presence of the High Exarch and The Argo Machine, drove many prominent Friends off of the planet to the fringes of the sector, but many remained. Economic attacks by the Houses Minor and the High Church left Yakiyah and the nascent Yakiyahn Mandate vulnerable. Friends who had survived the troubles turned to aid their neighbors to bring relief to their communities, but Yakiyah remained in the sights of the Empire.

SERAPH

A few months later, Eridanii sanctions against the Yakiyahn Mandate, redoubled the FoY's charitable efforts. Here, aid from SERAPH gave Friends the help they needed as the price of food sky-rocketed. In exchange for access to the wider portion of the Yakiyan populace and public support of the charitable network, Friends received vital assistance in its humanitarian efforts. Through SERAPH’s outreach centers and in the Hearth Valley Economic Relief Zone, Yakiyans received medical services from Gran Panacea Charitable Foundation and general welfare programs from AIDSERFS. When the Yakiyahn Mandate failed to supply welfare services under Eridanii pressure, SERAPH was a life-line for all Yakiyans.

FoY’s public sponsorship of SERAPH was not in whole cloth. As a non-centralized organization, individual members and communities have varying degrees of support. Those that do have connected SERAPH with influential contacts and assisted in programs to better the lives of all Yakiyans. In exchange these members enjoy access to the extensive charitable network and have gained a powerful voice that could potentially check the new House Eridanus-led government of Yakiyah. For other, more skeptical Friends the new status quo on Yakiyah is disheartening, but the path of nonviolent action and egalitarian empathy is unwavering for all members, even under Imperial rule.

Friends of the Sector

• Friend Altara
• Friend Worra
• Dr. Beaks
• Friend Archie Foxe