Tuesday, August 21, 2018

First we had Science-Monks, and now we have Bio-Witches?? (Traveller Tuesday #9)

We're so close! The 1d20 gives us a 14. One of the more unusual options (and one that I've added, as explained before), that means this is a religion of self-worship. It's a path concerned with becoming, realizing, or just being a god your own damn self. You might say it's a form of monolatry ~ the existence of other gods (other people) in actuality or possibility is recognized, but only one (the self) receives devotion. The Spiritual Aim can give us a lot more information about what that means, so let's roll that 2d6+2. An 8 tells us that the religion sees ethical action as their own reward, separate from any other spiritual awards.

Hmmmm . . . so if people are or can become gods, then this religion might preach that they're unable to be controlled or bound. We are all bound to be free, but that freedom is total as apotheosis and near-omnipotence approach. Far from draining ethical questions of meaning (as some might expect), this intensifies their importance, while stacking all of their weight on the decisions and introspections of the individual. The only ethic the faith can teach is that only the individual can decide their ethics and that they have a supreme obligation to do so.

Of the various apotheotic systems I can think of (some Satanisms, Mormonism, Thelema, the Feri/Faery tradition of witchcraft, etc.), I keep thinking that this religion we're creating right now most closely resembles Thelema and Feri/Faery. It could even make some sociohistorical sense, tying into the Freemason/Rosicrucian element of the Rose Brothers.

Another 8 on 2d6+1 reveals a monthly Devotion Required of followers of this faith. Though the form of this is decided a few steps down the line, I imagine this is a ritual designed to trigger memory of or progress towards one's own divinity, probably in some way related to moon-phase rituals of old. With a third 8, we get a loose hierarchy with most decisions made on a local level; the coven is the primary unit of the faith, though initiates of higher degrees do form connections and cultivate some power beyond that level. Those churchly positions carry some weight but lack much power over the covens within their remit. Covens are probably rather larger than many Wiccans would expect: say, maybe, a couple hundred people at the highest end.

We roll 2d6+1 for Liturgical Formality and get a 9. Rather than being transformational rituals, the monthly devotions emphasize communal teaching with limited ritual. Now I'm thinking of mixing in some self-help, inspirational/motivational speaker elements. Like, the theologies and many of the ethics of the faith are drawn from things like Thelema and Feri/Faery, but their monthly services resemble Tony Robbins, Landmark Forum, and things like that ~ imprecations to claim your pre-existing divinity and applying a number of techniques to liberate people from their own blocks that prevent them from stepping into that godhood.

You know, thinking about it, if we vague up that formula a bit, it could also describe the Church of Scientology. There are probably bits of that mixed in here.

Missionary Fervor gets a 5 on 2d6-2: active but intolerant of other sophonts. Once again, “active” here means there are efforts to get the word out but they don't necessarily affect the day-to-day lives of most adherents. I am tempted to make it another human-supremacist religion, what with fairly strong ideas of a heavy mix of human faiths feeding into it. But I think, instead, I'll mix in yet another element: Black Identity religions like the Nation of Islam, Rastafarianism, and the various incarnations of the Nuwaubians.

In my Traveller universe, there's a good century of rampant genetic engineering à la Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase before the Greys manage to answer their lost ship's distress call (à la GURPS Black Ops) and we end up fighting a war against them. The War Against the Greys only ends when a small Spiritualist cult reveals that they have developed John Murray Spears's New Motive Power technology into noosphere-based FTL travel with the aid of the Casey Jones Effect. One legacy of that transhuman era is the widespread presence and use of bioroids (such as the Aslan model developed by the Turkish militry, the Vargr models developed by a Scandinavian company from licensed Aztechnology Xolotl specs, and others) in the early interstellar period. The first conflict of the Galactic Age was a bioroid revolt against their enslavers, seceding to form their own polity.

I'm now seeing the religion we are creating as a Bioroid Identity movement, a religious response to their once and continuing oppression at the hands of the evolved species, and primarily of humans. In that sense, saying that they are “intolerant of other sophonts” is somewhat of a misnomer. They aren't intolerant of humans and evolved species, but it would be as inappropriate as a white Rasta or member of the Nation of Islam.

We roll a 1 on 3d6-5 for the religion's size. Huh, another surprisingly small religious tradition. Whereas the Lost Secrets are small because it's old, this one is small because it's new, putting it in a very similar social position to the Black Identity religions at their origin points. In both cases, they are responses to oppression both fed by and in contrast to an overarching societal optimism. Random.org tells us that there are precisely 67 members of the faith. All of them will be on Ishee, of course.

And finally we roll the dWikipedia for a name: the Barnwell Tradition of Scientological Witchcraft.

The religious landscape of Ishee:
4,966,607 sophonts (31% of the population) atheist/agnostic/non-religious/other
7,690,230 sophonts (48%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners (known as Fellows, Associationists, or Listeners)
6 sophonts (essentially 0%) Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers (generally just called gerontocrats or old fogies)
429,593 sophonts (app. 2.7%) Beaumont Cosmological Computing System (generally called Beaumonters, Algorithmists, or Systemites)
1,506,003 sophonts (9.4%) Azeyrenawt (generally called Azeyrenawti)
656,874 sophonts (4.1%) Clarencian Unit of Monastic Rose Brothers (generally known as Clarencians, Science-Monks, or (the) Unit)
67 members (essentially 0%) Barnwell Tradition of Scientological Witchcraft (generally known as Bio-Witches or Barnwells)
771,974 sophonts (app. 4.8%) not yet accounted for

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