Godbound: Cults and Demiurges of the (Alternate) Bright Republic

This post is (hopefully) a work of fiction.

A continuation of the (depressing) post from last time on an alternate Bright Republic where society is about to collapse and everyone is breaking at the seams, only what's coming is the cruel realities of the world of Godbound and its realm, Arcem. These are cult, cabals and malcontents of the Bright Republics. Everything is ten minutes from midnight. Society is at a breaking point. In a world where divine power and transhumanism exist, this can lead many down to a darker path.

The Khamite Ascendency

Art by Tiago Baltar

The Polyarchy of Kham was the nation/people which the Ancalian and others descend and they were quite focused on transhumanism. In the Bright Republic, advanced transhumanism beyond attempts at restoring a body to its original function through medical means are generally banned. Knowledge of human modifying their bodies and souls to greater, immortal beings is generally something that is seen as the purview of science fiction novels. The various movements of Khamite Ascendency wish to return humanity to a state closer to this Godhood.

Too bad they are crazy, bigoted assholes working off incomplete information and cooky theories. The Khamite Ascendancy movements believe that their ancestors were unfairly stripped of their divine perfection, enslaved and turned from immortals to mere mortal slaves. What they don't know/forgot is that the ancient Akeh people which fled to the proto Bright Republic were those who had come to regret the excess of the Polyarchy. Perfected bodies free of diseases are one thing but the Polyarchy took this transhumanist movement to absolute extremes, modifying themselves into beings utterly removed from humanity. These dangerous modifications created beings known as the Fey/Cousins (see: Ancalia the Broken Towers) who became so unstable once natural laws began to shift that they degenerated into mad monsters or even flat out died. The various Ascendency movements are working off incomplete and incorrect information, based off an idealized mythical past and a lot of wishful thinking. This has led them to become intensely racially segregated at best and, at worst, they have begun to practice soft eugenics.

A few powerful businessmen with Akeh ancestors have backed up many of these would-be attempts at eugenics, funding underground both clinics. These attempted process at creating super men of 'pure genetic heritage' have been met with intense failure usually resulting in rather mundane problems such as genetic defect and increased cancer. With little success in these clinics, they have turned to poorer urban and rural populations and young, ill educated malcontents. Their rhetoric is clad in righteous indignation at supposed past transgression but the heads of these movements don't really feel any sense of loyalty to fellow Akeh-descended folks. They see all flesh and all colors as nothing but fuel for the great fire of genetic rebirth which awaits them, fully committed to the fact the moment they will succeed their creation will deem them all impure. Already, they have begun incubating fast-growing embryo which they believe to be 'purified Akeh', based off illegally obtained genetic material from Ancalia...

The Machination Cults and Cyber-Gods

Art by Tsvetomir Georgiev

Where the Akeh tried to advance the human form and flesh to godhood, the Din sought to create great mechanism to control the world. These ranged from what we would recognize as technological marvels of our age or near future to more complex systems, including synthetic life and mechanical gods. Where the Khamite Ascendancies movements are angry malcontents, people with a victim complex and feeding off a sense of 'divinity denied', these various Din-derived movements are much stranger. Much of the Bright Republic's culture is Din in origin and much of Din 'mythology' is built around recognizable modernist ideas that technology and science will improve life. Many Din-descended folks thought that their society was an ideal through its technological superiority and, given the constant crackdowns against any technology the government cannot control and regulate, there's been a growing sense that the Bright Republic has "rejected the Din ideals".

While these movements and cults are rooted in Din cultural ideals, there is no racial component to these cults. The core of their ideologies is that mankind can build devices and discover new ways to interact with the world. As technology decays in the Bright Republic and every advance is stifled and/or controlled by government and corporate lobbies (as to not strain the etheric nodes or risk damaging them if modifications would be needed to make use of the invention), more and more scientists grow discontent. As fate would have it, discontent mad scientists and ancient cooky ideological cults of 'Din ideals' met one day in a back alley and things have escalated out of control. Under the nose of (or sometimes with the illegal support of) the Bright Republic's government, there have arisen cults of would-be 'futurist'.

In some circumstances, these could have been a good thing. Unfortunately, at some point, the ideas that man's progress and rights "Shall not be infringed" have definitely become warped. That is because these cults have succeeded much faster than the Khamite ascendants, since the basis of their theurgical knowledge already existed in society. Rural militias, would be entrepreneur, garage inventors, hackers, punks and more these people aren't dangerous by themselves. Underneath the control network of the Bright Republic, however, these people have created/awakened divine intelligences. They are incubating a new generation of technological demiurges. Should they attempt a revolution in the name of personal liberty, access to knowledge and advancement of sciences their victory could be short lived as the machine gods overtake the Etheric Nodes, the internet and their own devices. That is because, you see, this type of research has been done before. In the Bleack Reaches and Nezdhova...

The Procyon Project

Art by Deepak Dhawan

Known under a variety of names, all covert and all secretly illegal, the Procyon Project is the brainchild of several institutes within the Bright Republic government. It operates hidden under their nose and is dedicated to projects which go against the core tenets and agenda of the current (and all future?) administration. They've been at it for decades, now. The project heads and founders are part of the various factions which believe the Bright Republic to be completely lost and beyond repair. Under their secretive orders, entire facilities have been relocated, experts kidnapped and brainwashed and massive ton of materials displaced to secret locations. All in the name of the Procyon Project, the 'Great Gateway'.

The heads of the project have located a fairly isolated chunk of Heaven. While heavily damaged and mostly ripped out of its Celestial Engines, it remain stable, self contained and seemingly away from the gaze of powerful entities. It is, for all intent and purpose, empty and secret. Under the auspice of dimensional studies, the Procyon Project has spent the last few decades preparing to relocate its people and their resources to this part of Heaven. They have acquired samples of most of the population (which the government already had for gene-tracking), which is enough genetic material to recreate mankind. Since the Bright Republic is going down in flame and Arcem is likely to crumble, they have deemed it to be a lost cause. In order to ensure the survival of humanity (read: themselves), the Procyon project has spared no expenses in trying to terraform this relatively small shard of Heaven. It is believed, by their experts, that it will remain stable in its core functions within the next ten thousand years. This is, they believe, enough time to develop the means to restore more of its function and laws.

Because they require access to a Night Road to get there, much of the research of the Procyon Project is responsible for the eruption of small pockets of Uncreated activity within the Republic. Their experiments require them to 'punch holes' in reality and experts estimate that, as they continue to approach the 'promised time' that Uncreated activity will only increase.

Other Cults and Conspiracies

These are but a mere sample of what is going on in the Bright Republic. Truth is, just about everyone is either willingly or unwillingly the puppet of one or more organization or conspiracy. Everyone is a tool and everyone is bought to someone, somewhere they just don't know it. There is a growing list of groups and/or problems which add fuel the fire of the Bright Republic burning down.

• The Atheocracy of Lom and their cult of True Reason has grown in power. Social fabric in the Bright Republic was always on the more cold and rational side, which align perfectly given the two societies are of Din origin. The removal of God/Gods as the final arbiter of all thing in favor of impersonal state forces and organizations mean that the people of the Bright Republic are one step away from being like the Atheocracy.
• There are people in the Bright Republic who are of Ren descent and their ancestor-cults and worship of the True King have re-emerged, just like some Akeh have flirted with transhumanism and the Din turn back to synthetic gods. Their loyalty may not be to the Republic.
• The political and entertainment elites regularly get a pass to defy or ignore any and all government regulations, such as limitations on buying meat, going on vacations during periods of lockdown and suppression and more. They gorge themselves and enjoy life even during times when the common people can't enjoy life. The production of the resources and energy department in the Bright Republic are extremely one sided. This is coated in fearmongering and economic policies framed as people consuming less to help the poor yet in practice it isn't that.
• The poor which try to apply to a variety of government programs which claim to help them are sometimes never seen again. In truth many of these people are sent to extermination camps, genetic research facilities or even sold to slavery to other states in Arcem after having their minds scrubbed. This is to constantly purge and cut down on the population.
• Human trafficking has always been a problem but with cut down on population and a 'planned reduction', there has been an increase in human chattel and sexual slavery. The rich politician and actors have mind scrubbed slaves. The rest are used as raw materials or the aforementioned slave trade. Some have begun to research means to turn human souls into energy to sustain the Etheric Nodes.
• Meat is increasingly illegal in the Bright Republic in order to cut down on food spent on livestock and the 'printing' of synthetic meat. Vegan lifestyles are being encouraged and the cost/taxes on meat are ever increasing, all in the name of helping society in the environment. A sizeable portion of the meat on the market might be human meat.
• Hidden beneath the island are ruins of past incarnations of the Republic and shattered pocket-realms leading into Night Roads. These are haven of mutants and degraded scum. As the mutant kingdoms are organizing, the Bright Republic is increasingly unable to hide their existence and placate them.
• Religious resurgence is an issue in the Bright Republic, as classic religious values clash with blind obedience to an immoral state with no virtues. While the people who cling to religious values and a return to sanity aren't bad people, in the societal confusion of the collapsing Bright Republic many could become swayed by a 'false messiah' which could be an Uncreated entity or a particularly vicious and self-serving Godbound.

Ultimately, either the people in power or people at the bottom will snap. The Bright Republic will come undone by not only the sheer weight of lies it peddled but by a complete loss if faith in it as an idea. When everything become subjective and faith is lost in its wholeness as a county and as an institution (and people already have lost faith) the the street will run red with blood. Then the lives, livelihood and very soul of twelve million people become nothing more than a prize for monsters, crazed godlings, demented demagogues, irrational social engineers and criminal scum.