Post by Annabelle Devonshire on May 7, 2020 5:08:57 GMT -5
The Factions
Faustian
The Faustians have observed the power of human faith and have concluded that, even trapped in an unfaceted singular world, the Children of Adam have power that is of the same nature as God’s. Admittedly, their degree of power is miniscule, but every child born carries a spark of holy fire. Gather enough sparks together, and the fire could one day eclipse the sun.
Faustians find the general state of humankind greatly reduced since Edenic times - like grouchy grandparents, they are convinced that people today are weaker, stupider, sillier, less reasonable, less respectful… just generally devolved from the times they recall. But at the same time, humankind’s aggregate ability to define the reality around them is, if anything, stronger than it was when they numbered in millions instead of billions. Yet humans are using most of their greatest strength to repress themselves! Their greatest faith is placed in proof - the one thing that doesn’t need faith to be true. Consequently, even as their grasp on the world gets stronger, that very grasp constricts and constrains reality into ever tighter, even narrower instances. It’s possible that if they continue on this course, faith may define itself right out of existence, leaving behind a cold world of absolute, mechanical certainty.
While such a world has no place for God, it also lacks a niche for demons, and is therefore intolerable to the Faustians.
Humanity, as found in the fallen world, is a bonfire smouldering out of control, rapidly using up the obvious sources of fuel and in danger of guttering out. The Faustian philosophy is based on harnessing and husbanding this power - controlling the burn, renewing the fuel and building energies that can focus humanity’s divine energies outward instead of inward. It will take careful guidance and leadership, of course, but in the end, human faith is, itself, the best hope of freeing the world from God.
Rivals
Faustians have a bemused tolerance for Reconcilers. True, Reconcilers cling to a foolish belief that they can make up with The Almighty, but once they get over that adolescent optimism, they might grow up to more mature (that is, Faustian) goals. Luciferans get much the same treatment. They may be taking the wrong road to victory against Heaven, but at least they’ve got the map out.
The Faustian ambition to perfect the human rebellion against God (or, depending on which Faustian you ask, to enslave humanity for a spiritual rebellion against God) runs directly counter to the Ravener policy of wrecking everything and killing everyone. Consequently, Ravener demons are strongly encouraged to set aside their mindless wrath and regain hope. Failing that, the Faustians tend to sic their faithful humans on them.
A more subtle oppositions exists with the Cryptics. The Faustians are quite confident that they’ve got it all figured out, and nagging questioners are more than just pests - they can imperil the resolve of the fallen doing the great work of building the future. Worse still, they can cast doubt into the hearts of mortal followers.
While Faustians despise Raveners as agents of chaos and destruction, their aggravation with Cryptics is deeper and more irksome because the Cryptics are so resistant to persuasion. To a zealous Faustian, an inconvenient question is worse than a Ravener’s claw to the throat.
Houses
The grandeur and scope of the Faustian scheme appeals to many ambitious demons. Having humans do most of the heavy lifting narrows that appeal, limiting it to those who are comfortable with getting others to do their dirty work. But for those who fit both categories, Faustianism is a perfect philosophy.
Devils, as the one time order-givers for the Universe, are certainly used to seeing others do what they say, and as the First House they have the confidence to dare much. Defilers, too, have always had great hopes for the collective power of humanity: Inspiring them to apotheosis seems a captivating adventure. Finally, there are many Faustian Malefactors. For them, the appeal is not so much in the scope of the plan, but in its pragmatism. The Faustians have a plan, with concrete goals, that can be achieved now. The Malefactors’ tremendous abilities to tempt and manipulate humans is just icing on the cake.
The only House that is notably absent from the Faustian edifice is the Second. Scourges are keenly - perhaps morbidly - aware of the frail, frightened and failing nature of humankind. Relying on such weak links looks (to them) like a recipe for failure.
Goals
Generally, Faustians are in favour of world peace and opposed to contraception - not for any benevolent reasons, but because they want more humans around, period.
Cryptic
Spending uncounted ages imprisoned in a lightless, soundless, sensationless void is a pretty harsh punishment, but it does provide one thing.
It provides a lot of time to think.
After the initial shock of defeat - after the horror and agony of Hell - even after the despair of untold eventless eons - some fallen have taken a step back and reconsidered their initial assumptions. Some have contemplated, taken stock and tried to puzzle out what went so disastrously wrong.
These inquisitive Elohim have reached some startling conclusions.
First and foremost, God’s perspective is either omniscient or so removed and all-pervasive as to be nearly omniscient - especially when compared to such limited beings as humans and even angels. If a lowly light like Ahrimal could see trouble brewing, God surely foresaw it ages before that.
Secondly, God is either perfect or (again) close enough to make no odds. Therefore, the angels He created must have been either a perfect model of His desires, or as close to that model as reality could tolerate. While it’s possible that the gross stuff of the material world was too weak to support perfect servants, it is unthinkable that God would allow that imperfection to take the form of disobedience… unless rebellion was not an imperfection.
Thirdly, Lucifer - as the first among angels and the closest to God in power - must, by virtue of his power and position, be closer to God’s ideal than any other. The observed fact that he was the first and best of the rebels is the clinching argument that the rebellion - with the consequent corruption of reality and ghastly punishment of men and Elohim - was actually the enactment of God’s plan, rather than a deviation from it.
Now that they are freed from their durance, these Cryptics have taken their logical premises and used them as the foundation for new questions.
If God knew about the rebellion, surely He knew about the demons’ eventual escape from the abyss. What, then, is His new plan for His unwitting servants?
Since Lucifer was not imprisoned and he answers no summons, what was the Morningstar’s fate? Personal destruction for his role as leader? Some other torment, possibly even worse than Hell? Or - most likely - did he escape punishment because he was privy to God’s plan all along?
Finally, and most importantly - if the fallen have been God’s pawns all this time, is there any way to escape that fate in the future?
Or should they even try?
Rivals
The Cryptics aren’t terribly fond of the Raveners - what’s to like? - but they see the Raveners’ mad, thoughtless flailing as ultimately meaningless. Like ants on a kicked-over hill, they mill about wildly but accomplish nothing.
The Reconcilers are too idealistic, but at least they’re asking questions instead of trumpeting specious answers. No, the factions that really bother the Cryptics are the Luciferans and the Faustians.
Both groups have the same problems. They talk and they don’t listen. They make proud declarations, which mostly reveal the gaps in their logic. They’ve got their eyes and minds shut, and they pity anyone who lacks their sense of blind, misled mission.
If the Raveners are milling chaotically and the Reconcilers are moping confusedly, the Luciferans and Faustians are building industriously - either the same anthill that got kicked las time, or an entirely new one. Neither is pausing to ask what their goals should really be.
Houses
Many Malefactors find their way to the questioner clique. It’s a natural fit for their steady, methodical tendencies. Making up perhaps the most pragmatic House of all, angels of the House of the Fundament seem unusually able toe examine their fundamental assumptions without castigating themselves for error. One can almost see them shrug and hear them mutter, “It didn’t work. What will?”
A more fervently inquisitive House is that of the Slayers. While they may ask the same questions as the Malefactors, they have a wounding personal stake in the answers. In the war they were made to bring the atrocity of death upon their beloved humanity, and the guilt and sorrow they still feel demands answers.
Goals
Access to information - demonic, scientific, human historic, mythological or “other” - is an over-arching Cryptic urge. Any particular datum could hold a vital clue.
Cryptics have a point of having strong defensive positions near large airports, as to preserve their mobility - and their ability to monitor the travels of other fallen. Their immediate goal is to create an inventory of every fallen who walks the Earth. Learning of the Earthbound has made finding those demons a priority as well.
These master lists - the Scelestinomicon (Book of the Rebels) for fallen, and the Crucianomicon (Book of the Tormented) for Earthbound - are meant initially to form the nucleus of an information network for all fallen. As the Cryptic faction grows, use of them may become more defined - or less open.
Luciferan
Angels are undying creatures, and when compassed by the span of an infinite lifetime, any setback short of destruction is a temporary thing.
Not every Hell-bound spirit lost faith. Not every fallen angel gave up hope. Even in defeat, some stayed true to the principles that led them to rebel. Love for mankind. Loyalty to Lucifer. A committed belief that their cause was right, and that Heaven and the obedient Host were wrong.
The Luciferans are as ready to do battle for their beliefs today as they were when they were hurled, spitting defiance, into their gloomy prison. While many are bowed, bitter and tormented, they are unbroken. Indeed, many find much encouragement in their new circumstances.
The world may be ruined, singular and mechanistic, but by the same token, there seem to be no angels left running the show. Even a vastly weakened army can triumph if it takes the field unopposed.
Add to that the heartening fact that they were able to escape imprisonment in the first place. If they are truly anathema to God, hated in His eyes and, by the words of His messenger, condemned to eternal torture… how has it come to pass that so many have re-entered the world of men? The Cryptics may mutter about divine subterfuge, but isn’t it simpler to think that God’s power is simply fading? That the demons of Hell find freedom because God’s cages have lost their strength?
Most important, they point in triumph to Lucifer’s absence from Hell. The Luciferans believe, not that he merited some unique punishment, but that he escaped punishment altogether. Perhaps their strongest stayed free, because their foes were unable to confine him! Perhaps the sundering of the Abyss is his doing! Perhaps the Adversary waits even now, watching to see who is still ready to fight… and who will prove too weak.
Rivals
The Luciferans are surprisingly tolerant toward the Raveners. Since the Raveners retain their military bent, Luciferans tend to regard them as soldiers with admirable zest. They just need some discipline, and they’ll be useful once again.
The same sort of condescension and backhanded goodwill extends to the Faustians, only in reverse. To a Luciferans, A Faustian has sufficient discipline and the right general idea - they just need to remember who’s boss.
No, the factions that earn Luciferans ire are the hesitant, the cowardly, the middle-aged and indecisive: the Cryptics and the Reconcilers.
Cryptics are like swimmers who question the dive in midair. They’re so obsessed with sorting through myriad possibilities that they give little thought to the facts on the ground and the here and now. Neurasthenic navel-gazing is beneath the dignity of any Elohim, but that’s nonetheless the Cryptics’ main preoccupation. To the action-oriented Luciferans, the contemplative questioners are ultimately useless and weak.
The only thing worse than being weak is being treacherous. Therefore, the only thing worse than a quivering Cryptic is an ass-kissing Reconciler. These pathetic, deluded Elohim are like swimmers who turn in mid dive and try to climb back on the diving board! Apparently they weren’t paying attention when the full implications of rebellion were discussed, nor when the Heavenly Host damned them to the Abyss. You’d think a term in Hell would show them the truth about God’s forgiveness, but instead they cling like lampreys to the idea of making peace with Him.
Houses
Lucifer ruled the First House, and Angelic loyalties die with difficulty. Many Devils still rally to the banner of their once (and future?) lord. Some may simply believe that, as Dawn Spirits themselves, their place in the Morningstar’s new world will be a high one. Others - though they would never admit it - look to Lucifer to fill the void left by God’s rejection. They crave orders to carry, and the Adversary was always good at giving them.
Some Devourers who fought well in the war remain loyal, buoyed up by memories of glory and hopes for revenge. By and large, these Devourers are less burdened by Torment than their fellows in the Ravener camp. Unlike the nihilists, Luciferans Devourers still have hope that something can be built from the world - once all the clutter is cleared away, of course.
Scourges are also attracted to the Luciferan cause for many of the same reasons as Devils. As the second rank of nobility among the Houses, there’s a certain appeal to siding with the onetime Highest Angel. More than that, there’s a profound appeal to believing that the Unholy Host is not just rising again, but that it never really fell. If that’s true, then maybe the punishments meted out by God and declared by Michael can be foiled as well - particularly the devastating curse of human decay and death.
Despite this promise, few Slayers are Luciferan. As members of the Last House, there’s no snob factor to appeal to them. More than that, though, the Slayers, whose punishment are arguably the most horrifying, seem the least able to believe that the first war was anything other than a decisive loss for the rebels.
Goals
The primary goal of the Luciferan faction is, obviously, the location of their leader. Accomplishing this involves a threefold plan. First, the Luciferan outriders are sent to scour the globe for any sign of demonic activity. Initially they were sent individually, but too many lone wolves got picked off by Earthbound, hostile demon factions or more mysterious beings. Now they’re sent in packs.
Secondly, the Luciferans are keeping a close watch on the media. Specifically, they’re trying to invest money in it and gain influential media thralls in order to get first dibs on incoming news that might involve demons. It also gives them an advantage covering up Luciferan activities, as well as a platform for sending out covert messages. But, as with the outriders, the Luciferans have found unusual opposition in the media as well.
Thirdly, the Luciferans are mounting an aggressive communications campaign among the fallen. Lucifer himself hasn’t answered the call, but sooner or later, every Hell-damned Elohim whose name is remembered by a Luciferan can expect an invocation asking for information.
Ravener
The Age of Wrath was long and hard. A lot of good people and valiant Elohim suffered and died. Illusions were lost. Honour gave way to pragmatism, which in turn sank beneath the weight of vengeance and anger and simple despair. Men discovered evil, and angels learned to embrace hatred. By the end of the war, many among the fallen had become little more than living engines of destruction, their joy in creation perverted into a love only of annihilation.
They were crazed, vicious and debased before the war was lost. Before they were stripped of the greater part of their power. Before they were condemned to a maddening Hell of isolation and loss for a term that felt like forever even to eternal beings.
Now, those bitter and wrathful Elohim have emerged from ages spent with no distraction save the pain of their own sanity eating itself… and they find a world as loathsome and corrupted as they themselves have been. Beholding a fouled planet, a debased and cruel humanity and a cosmos struck into a withered husk of its onetime glory, they see only one meaningful act.
Destroy.
Destroy everything.
Wipe away this cruel mockery of the Paradise they once designed. Give humanity the merciful silence of the grave. Destroy the works of God at any and all times, hoping perhaps to provoke Him into finally annihilating them.
Victory is impossible for the fallen, but they may yet be strong enough to wreck the prize - the world - even as it is wrested from the grasping claws.
Rivals
As the most radical faction, the Raveners have the most enemies.
They hate the Luciferans for being wilfully misled. If Lucifer engineered the Great Escape, just where is he? It’s nauseating to watch beings who were once the lords of Creation scuttling around looking for a new bearded patriarch to lead them to glory, smite the wicked and tuck them into bed at night. They might as well wait for God as for their precious Morningstar.
Perhaps the only spectacle more repulsive than Elohim acting like children is Elohim acting like parents. The Faustians have gone from serving God, to opposing God, to being brutalised by God… to thinking they can replace God? The Raveners find this train of reasoning laughable, especially since the Faustians think they’re the crazy ones.
Whilst the Faustians and Luciferans are insane to think they can still make any kind of serious assault against God, they at least understand that there’s a war going on and that it didn’t stop just because one side was beaten into submission for a million years. The Reconcilers are, perhaps, the winners of the hotly contested “Most Despised by Ravener” label simply because they are the most optimistic.
About the only faction the Raveners even tolerate is the Cryptics, simply because they don’t (yet) stand for much. Raveners figure they’ll eventually get fed up with asking “Why?” and start smashing stuff. It’s the only natural course for a realist.
Houses
The ravening Devourer is a stereotype for a good reason. Devourers are perhaps the least inclined toward deliberate reflection, and Raveners are the faction of action. Unlike every other group, the Raveners hold out no hope for eventual victory, so why bother with plans for a hundred years from now or ten or even one? Living hard and dying harder are honourable goals to the virile Devourers.
The subtler Raveners are the Defilers who became soured on beauty by war and exile. Now dedicated to taking an ugly world and making it uglier, they are the oft-unseen velvet glove moving in the shadow of a Devourer’s iron fist. A ravening Devourer who finds you will probably just kill you. A ravening Defiler is more likely to craft you into someone who destroys himself - after undermining or outright wrecking everything you once valued.
Arrayed against the Raveners are the majority of Malefactors. Perhaps their attunement to the Earth’s depths makes the surface decay less offensive to them. Perhaps staid and careful natures used to working on geological time are uncomfortable with the faction’s perceived spontaneity. Or perhaps they cannot repress their ultimately creative natures enough to pledge allegiance to destruction.
Goals
While Raveners have a reputation for mindless carnage, they are actually fairly careful to choose targets that can be isolated and assaulted without reprisal. Raveners are particularly active in war-torn regions, where their viciousness can easily be blamed on either side (or, ideally, blamed on each by the other). To perform these missions, however, requires a safe base to which they can return.
Reconciler
Angels are, by nature, creatures of virtue. Even the fallen remember their uncorrupted nature.
Some virtues come easily to beings of godlike wisdom and power. But the virtue of humility is not one of them.
Nonetheless, the silence of the Abyss gives much time for reflection. Like the Cryptics, the Reconcilers spent their time of imprisonment contemplating deep questions. But where the Cryptics looked outward and back, the Reconcilers looked inward… and forward.
Their most essential question was: What if we were wrong?
What if? What if the rebellion was as evil as Michael and the loyal Host said? What if God’s punishing touch was somehow justified by the disobedience of His servants and children? What if Usiel and Lailah were right all along - that by trying to avoid the Age of Wrath, the Unholy Host only made it real?
If so - if the construction of Hell was necessary, if the sundering of the facets was merited, if the condemnation of the fallen was just - then what do the fallen do now?
Some believe that even in the eleventh hour, the mercy of God can be found. These Reconcilers listen with hope to the stories of Jesus, of Mohammed, of other human prophets and saviours. Maybe God has forgiven mankind. And if He can forgive them, might not His mercy extend to penitent servants as well?
Even if His punishment is eternal, and the Elohim are barred forever from His presence… well, might not the Earth be repaired? Perhaps not restored to the Paradise it was, but something great, and glorious, and maybe even pure, could be raised from the ashes. The fallen have lost much of their power, true, but the world is smaller as well. Surely a third of the Heavenly Host can still improve the universe, can still help and serve humanity?
This is the Reconciler’s hope: to make peace with their Maker and jailer. Failing that, the hope to make peace with unending exile.
Rivals
The Reconcilers are modestly friendly toward the Faustians. After all, they share the goal of directly improving the world, even if they don’t see eye-to-eye on how to do it or why. They are also open to Cryptics because they think the questions eventually lead to Reconciler answers.
No, the Reconcilers consider their main enemies to be the Luciferans and the Raveners, The Luciferans because their opposition to God is their primary, stated goal. (Granted, it’s a goal for the Faustians too, but it seems ancillary to their self-aggrandizement.) That sort of concerted, organised resistance is the sort of thing that makes reconciliation much less likely.
If the Luciferans are despised for their orderly, stupid refusal to face facts, the Raveners are worse for their reckless, chaotic despair and nihilism. It’s pathetic when a onetime minister of existence can’t conceive a better goal than, “Shit on everything I made.”
Houses
As the least destructive goal, reconciliation holds little appeal for antsy Devourers. While the idea of remaking the world might seem tempting to them, the Faustian program - which tends to be more active and less contemplative - gets those Devourers who still retain interest in improving things.
The abstract and long-term nature of the Reconcilers’ goals tend to attract more thoughtful and conceptual demons, particularly those of the Second and Last Houses. Scourges and Slayers are both closely tied to human (and cosmic) decay and death, so the promise of renewal and reinvention is clearly attractive to them. Additionally, both Houses tend to feel guilt over the mortality and decline they inflicted on mankind. Of all fallen goals, Reconciliation holds out the most promise of making it up to them.
Goals
The immediate goal of the Reconcilers is to take stock of the cosmos and learn as much as possible about its current condition. Doing so means exploring the human condition, so many Reconcilers are travellers, seeking a balanced view of mankind and man’s world. They don’t stop at the edge of human experience, though. They are seeking the truth about the supernatural as well. Have all the loyal angels really abandoned the world, or do any facets remain, even partially?