Godbound: An Alternative Bright Republic

Basically, 'What if the Bright Republic was a big conspiracy'. Of course, because Godbound is very heavy on its shades of grey, things are a little more complex than the evil corporate overlords and social engineers lording over us for their own greedy end. Its also exactly just that, too. Yet it is also the tale of freedom sacrificed for the sake of sanity and comfort.

Its For Your Own Good 

Art by Roger Creus Dorico

Obey the government. Listen to the media, the experts. They know better than you. Things might not always be perfect, in fact there's not a day without some scandal that last ten minutes or some political problem or societal issue. Yet, overall, for the people of the Bright Republic the world make sense. They are an island nation, living in the present day. Their world is one of technology, of science and reason. That much is known. Pay no attention to this which tell otherwise: they are liars, grifters, conspiracy theorist and peddlers of misinformation.

There are no such things as Gods and Monsters.

Except its all true. Because the Bright Republic exist in Arcem, a Realm in the Godbound universe. Its population is lied to on a constant basis, with subtle mind-altering memetic messages to ensure they believe the world to be a globe, that the wider world is akin to what we'd recognize loosely as modern day Earth and that Gods and monsters aren't real. It isn't that the masterminds behind the Republic are pure evil (although they can indeed be very evil and corrupt): it's that the alternative, the truth, is so terrible that it would shatter the minds of its citizen. Let's say YOU found out, some day, that the Earth is actually a broken shard floating around seas of un-creation where monsters come out of the darkness to unmake reality all because Manmade Gods fought to control Heaven and destroyed the world. How would you react? If you had absolute proof of this? You'd go mad.

When the Bright Republic was established, it was arguably one of the more 'sedated' places in Arcem: its people wanted to build a world where advanced technology would enhance human lives without overriding its existence. These ideals were noble compared to techno eugenics or being forcibly fused into the thought-patterns of Divine Artificial Intelligences. In their rather retro futuristic world, the people of what would become the Bright Republic walked a balanced between the comforts of high technology with the liberty (and limitations) of baseline human existence. In a way, their approach to technology and theurgy was similar to how the Amish do: all technologies had to be considered for a time before being applied to society. In that way, the way of life of people would not be instantly upset and drastically changed in ways which the rulers and people alike would have difficulty coping with.

Innocence Lost

Art by Dan Henk

The current state of Arcem has forced the Bright Republic to ever increasingly lie to its public. The Bright Republic is all which remains of the Arcem of old, as everything else has degraded into the post apocalyptic techno-magical world we know from the Godbound book. Castles and ruins, demons and monsters. Sword and sorcery, you could say. Every piece of information produced within the Bright Republic is a lie. Every scientific data is falsified. Every historical record is falsified. These are produced through Theotechnical wonders (which are rapidly breaking down) and amplified through the technology which is sent from the Etheric Nodes. People who go on vacations to other countries enter planes that take off and then land on small islands off the coast, where their minds are remolded to create false (but interesting and happy) memories.

This state of being was NOT what the founders of the Bright Republic wanted. However as the damage of the war over Heaven accelerated, it increasingly found it difficult to control immigration to its stable, etheric node-controlled lands. Not only that but many people from Kham carried with them transgenic modifications which either enhanced their bodies or minds. These people found themselves forcibly re-altered and 'neutered' to maintain a more egalitarian world view, as heavy transhumanism was taboo in the Bright Republic. In time, the Uncreated night kept creeping. The region which became the Bleak Reaches became increasingly alien and dystopian. It simply reached a point where the outside world was too much of a living nightmare, filled with monsters, mutations and war. Society was at a breaking point. Drastic measures had to be taken,

And so, the Bright Republic sacrificed Freedom for Security. Where once theotechnical means of control over the human mind and soul were illegal in the Bright Republic, it became the norm. Not as a mean to enhance humans but to control them and ensure they were kept 'sane'. Entire centuries of history were rewritten. Records were falsified. Then the nano-eidolon shrouds were released, creeping in everyone's brains to rewrite their mind's pathways. Artificial intelligences were created to help oversee these networks of control. Society and technology in the Bright Republic has been going downward for centuries now but people don't realize it. Since humans live around a maximum of seventy or eighty years, history is regularly rewritten, rebooted and reset. Past centuries are then cast as time of oppression, of war and terror where untold number of people died, reframed as a great narrative. All this to explain the mass extermination and lobotomization of past generations to hide that technology and lifestyles had to be downscaled to meet the limits of the Republic's current and ever-decaying technology.

Cryptids and Conspiracies

Art by Leo Colapietro

Every single conspiracy theory is true in the Bright Republic or, at the very least, make good fuel for an adventure. Cryptids are a good example: the truth is that, as the Celestial Engines are failing, mutations are growing in number. Lesser mutations are blamed on pollution and environmental issues but once in a while, a true monstrosity is born. These become the shaggy ape-men who live in the woods, the sea monsters and other creatures. Those which aren't found quickly are usually those whose twisted nature make them hard to detect even for divine-level beings. They warp time, space and mind around them.

There are shady 'Men in Black' and creepy doctors in white coats scattered across the Republic. These are either people without identity (having been erased from society and history) or artificial life forms. Such transhumanism was once banned in the Bright Republic's previous incarnations but as things have become more and more dire, such beings have been created. Of course, for the most part they don't actually target people who post on the internet about things the media have deemed 'conspiracies'. These are relatively harmless compared to what is classified as an 'Intrusion'. An 'Intrusion' is what happen when something akin to an Uncreated cult has sprung or a local area's laws of physics have started to degrade. These are far more pressing threats than a simple podcast or internet comment.

The threat of Intrusions are real, even if the Bright Republic has become little more than a paranoid and demented totalitarian state in the pocket of elites whose laws are passed to benefit them and no one else. Unfortunately what they don't realize is that this very elitism and abuse of power has fed into the Intrusion. Or maybe some of them do realize but don't care. Pockets of proto-cults to the Uncreated Night have sprung all over the country over the last decade. Even with the ever increasing censorship of information, angry and discontent people with meaningful reasons to be pissed are slowly taken in by the lure of ruinous forces. Desire for reform, freedom and meaningful revolution are twisted into depression, anger, rage and utter discontent for the lives of anyone else. Meanwhile, religious fervor is in upswing as people desperately need something to believe in the face of their society slowly crumbling yet the government and culture has heavily attacked faith, since it demand only faith in the state, the media and institutions. The moment a Godbound emerges within the Bright Republic, for all to see, it will be a reckoning: they could be a saint or a monster but it wouldn't matter so much as people find something to follow and believe in that isn't sterile decadence.

Cults to horrific powers aren't the only ones which have sprung. A few ancient, so-called 'Mystery Cults' have emerged. These are the survivors of older incarnations of the Bright Republic, before it became the one we know today over the last century. These range from ancient, abstract cults to the ancient machine gods of the ancient Din, who are the distant ancestors of the Bright Republic. As the fabric of society unravel, these mystery cults turn to theotechnical and theurgical knowledge which have long been proscribed and erased from culture by the current ruling elites of the Republic. Others are resurgent ancient religion and ideologies of the non-Din folks (such as the Ren, Akeh and other less known minor groups). Rejecting the current society they turn back to what their ancestors believed in and forment coup and plots to assume control over the crumbling Bright Republic, they too having been driven to despair and believing nothing can be saved. Lacking the resources and a complete understanding of their history and own belief system, they are little more than pathetic malcontents which would be laughed at as mere pretenders by the outside world.

Even the media and government aren't immune to the Intrusion: their own selfish greed and desire for adoration and power has left many even more corrupt than people can even imagine as they've started to sell out the Bright Republic to outer powers: some to Uncreated cults too, others to the Atheocracy of Lom. Others sell out not out of ideology but simply believing they will emerge on top once it all crumble and have begun to cut deals with Vissio or the artificial intelligences of Nezdovha, two nations interested in the infrastructure of the Etheric nodes.

The Special Resources Department

The Bright Republic need not be a place for antagonist to exist and oppress people. One must understand the Bright Republic's overlord have done this to survive. Yes, mainly to save their own asses but also the entire population of currently around twelve million. The world as presented in Godbound is a dangerous place: the Uncreated are monsters, dangerous Blighted mutations randomly spring forth and other, even stranger monsters, exist. The Bright Republic's SRD is akin to a cross between the BRPD of Hellboy and the fictional version of the FBI/CIA. They aren't 'heroes' in the modern sense, as their job often require them to be callous with individual lives but they aren't monster out to oppress people.

The important thing to remember to keep things in perspective is that, every time this comes off as 'really creepy', one need to look back at the setting material presented in Godbound and Worlds Without Numbers. These twelve million people aren't ready to face what's outside. Yet, at the same time the sheer monstrosity of the Bright Republic's lies cannot endure.