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[Kaleigh Doyle]

Quick thanks to Lyn for providing that link, it was very helpful.  One point that kinda jumped out at me was this quote:

The gates of paradise will open for you one time only; woe to the soul who dares to knock twice."
- The Scriptures, Book of Missions 5:14

The way this cult would interpret reincarnation would be that when a body dies, the soul/spirit would be reborn in a new person, and continue this process until the soul has been fulfilled (intentionally vague there), then it meets the pearly gates of Heaven. So in essence, life is the trial and salvation from this cycle only comes when their souls achieve true understanding. The idea of releasing sinners, unbelievers, and heretics from the mortal coil would be to free them from their tormented state and give the soul another opportunity to redeem itself.

Also, the cloning concept would be understood to be a method of direct and controlled soul transference. It helps the devoted cultists achieve their goal and sacrifice much easier.

I read the Godflesh chronicle again, Lallara, to re-acquaint myself with the details. The big part I caught was the following exerpt:

Without breaking her gaze, Bethora got up and stood very close to the doctor. "You are not listening to me," she said in a quiet tone. "Or yourself. There is something you can do. A new body."

The doctor stared at her. Then he bubbled, "That's, no, that's unheard of. Amarr royal skin is absolutely sacred."

"Is yours?" Bethora said.

The implications here being that those of royal bloodline are too sacred to be cloned. I'll be sure not to kill any heirs!

From the reincarnation concept, the cult could conceive that the royal heirs, the Empress, and Khanid King serve another role as voices of God and will go to the gates of paradise when they die.

[Lyn Farel]

I like the idea.

[lallara zhuul]

If the whole religious experience and path is very personal, then as a building block for a society this would not work.

You are not connected in any way to others, just to your reincarnation cycle where you level up when you get more karmic experience points.

Of course the way around that is to make the tasks that give you karmic experience points something that would bind a group of people together, but thats cheating.

[Chell Charon]

Two things.

On the excerpt. Am I only one reading the question as a possible threat?

Second. How closely is the inheritance tracked. And since it is possible for a house to be elevated to the council..

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Hey,

Just because the cult is based on text of the Scripture doesn't mean that it has to be compatible with Amarrian orthodoxy or to be some heterodox, but acceptable cult.

There's always the option of being heretic. So, I wouldn't really mind the Godflesh-doctrine that much. Also, the doctrine of sacred flesh says that the felsh of the royals is sacred - not that cloning it is abomination, the latter is 'merely' an interpretation of what the former means. (See Amarr succession: "Since the Amarrians believe royal flesh to be sacred, cloning it is seen as blasphemy and therefore strictly forbidden.") So, the ban of cloning seems to be more alike to a church rule. There's some space there to maneuver.

I would see such a kind of cult as being entirely possible, especially if you don't insist on it being non-heretic in Amarrian eyes...

[lallara zhuul]

So, the ban of cloning seems to be more alike to a church rule.
There's some space there to maneuver.

When the culture and the society is defined by the church, no there is not.

[Lyn Farel]

Amarr Empire =/= Spanish Inquisition.

[lallara zhuul]

When you have racism as such an integral part of the religion then the purity of the bloodline/flesh is quite a central concept that you have to work with.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

Also, please keep in mind that the character involved in this is going to be of Khanid origin. The region and ethnic group, that is. The Khanid seem to be more embracing of external cultural influences; do we know anything about their background and how they differ from the Empire culturally? (other than they steal gallente slaves and work with Caldari)

[lallara zhuul]

There is very little outside of the char creation process.

It seems that they do accept their lesser status in the Amarrian religion for not being True Amarr and do not mind being the agents between the other lesser races and the True Amarrians. (Most of the trade between the other Empires is funneled to the Amarrian one through the Khanid Kingdom.)

There is never given the reason why they were so easily Reclaimed on Athra, only the reason for the Ni-Kunni being able to adjust to their servitude in the Empire has been explained and that is by stating that their original religion was pretty much the same that the Amarrians were selling, perhaps this is the case when it comes to the Khanid.

The strange thing is that there is no Khanid saints in the PF at all, there are Ni-Kunni ones and even Ammatar ones, but I have not come across any Khanid ones. Perhaps they are just so hellbent on destruction that following a path to salvation that gives it to them through battle is fine to them, and always has been.

Also, just the fact that the Khanid deal with the external cultures does not mean that they do not feel that their own culture is much more superior than the one that they are dealing with, hence the natural cross pollination of cultures between peers does not necessarily happen.

Of course the character is yours and the choices that it does as well, so pretty much everything here is just practice for the smack that you will receive on IGS.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

Oh. Well, I really don't have any intention of posting on the Summit.

Also, from what I read on the character creator was the Khanid people were never enslaved, but integrated into Amarrian society. You could interpret the wording on that, but from my thinking they were never enslaved. It also mentions how they were revered in Amarrian society and generally a pretty gung ho people. But really, I am curious more about the Khanid since the King took his own slice of heaven and parted from the Empire. How religious was his empire to begin with and has anything changed since then? What's been going on since then?!

[lallara zhuul]

You're as much in the dark as the rest of the playerbase.

All we have is extrapolation from little tidbits of information through the same avenues that logic follows in real life.

There has been some events in the Kingdom, I think Arderich took part in them.

Most of the stuff is in this thread.

You are absolutely right about the 'special' nature of Khanid as being the only race that has not been enslaved by the Amarrians in the Reclaiming. You can see some of the Khanid stuff on former threads here, can't be arsed to dig them up, where we did circle around the nature of the Kingdom. How religious it was or how religious it wasn't.

Do remember that the Tetrimon hid in the Kingdom (and still probably does) which may give a certain kind of perspective on the mentality of the Kingdom.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

I don't agree to the slightest that racism has a central part of Amarrian religion: It certainly has that in their culture, but even slavery doesn't stop at the racial borders. One should make the mistake here and confuse consequence and cause. It doesn't seem to me that Amarrians are racist because of their religion, but rather that they use their religion in racist ways, because they're racists. Anyway, racism isn't reslly the big theme of the Amarr, I think. People just make it so because they fancy playing along the lines of the Third Reich.

Also, even in the middle ages within the Christian clerus itself while you were staying in the church state, there was room to maneuver in/around different questions. In their terms the sacredness of flesh would be a doctrine, while the resulting ban of cloning would 'merely' be a church rule. Giving you room with the latter. And this is especially true if your had some weird cults, there.
And as this is about such a weird cult, I think that Kaleigh has some room to maneuver. If she'd want to play along the lines of traditional Amarrian orthodoxy, there'd be no need for a cult in the first place.

And while the background doesn't say much about the religiosity in the Khanid Empire, I think it had been stated somewhere that Khanid didn't accept the TC's authority to be greater than his in religious questions. I think that implies a similar situation as with the English crown and the catholic church: English king doesn't accept the papal authority - result wasn't that you suddenly had a bunch of pagans and atheists in the British kingdom, but the Anglican church, with the King of England as the (formal) head of it.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

I really like how you relate the Anglican Church with the King's secession from the Empire,  Nico. Although it presents a new challenge; without a clear understanding of the difference between the orthodox Amarr religion and khanid, making a cult might be more difficult.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

I found an interesting tidbit of information from the Khanid chronicle that I overlooked before:

Many other notable differences can be seen between the kingdom and the empire - the Dark Amarrians embrace technology, including cloning, much more willingly than the Amarr brethrens and even if most Amarrian traditions and customs still exist within the kingdom, they’ve been modified so that Dark Amarrian society is much more dynamic and robust than that of the Amarr Empire.

If anything, Khanid interpretations of cloning and technology are much less strict than traditional Amarrians. Hence why one of the major backgrounds for the Khanid ethnic group is the Cyberknight, or a heavily technologically augmented individual. So in retrospect, I think picking a Khanid was a good choice.