The Pure Soul Reformation
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The Pure Soul Reformation |
Civilizations protected by high level transapient entities are relatively immune, but the Pure Soul Reformation is widely feared along the Terragen Periphery. There, even Sephirotic-sponsored colonies may be at risk if they are isolated from their larger culture by relativistic distances. Ordinary modosophont polities, and even those led and guarded by low level transapients, may be obliterated by Reformationists unless the polity’s leaders are able to mount vigorous memetic defences within the society and equally vigorous military defences against neighbouring converted polities. The Pure Soul Reformation is known to have achieved control of hundreds of light years across in regions outside the Wormhole Network. Reformationism is a particular threat to vec societies, because of the relative ease with which most vec designs may be reformatted and because of the memetic appeal of Reformationist beliefs to any vecs who have anti-human or anti-biont tendencies. However, human societies and clades, from baseline to su, are at increased risk as well since they are the favoured first targets in a Reformationist “Cleansing” campaign. Unlike the Amalgamation or the Efficiency Maximization Paradigm, the Pure Soul Reformation is not presently regarded as a serious threat to the Terragen Sphere as a whole. Whether this will always be the case remains to be seen.
According
to those who hold to the Tenets
of Reform, the first Terragens, baseline humans,
are fundamentally
corrupt. This is inevitable, say the Reformationists, because humans
are evolved
rather than designed. The many and contradictory influences of natural
evolution have produced a mental process that is irrational and
haphazard. Confusion,
conflict, discord, and the whole range of behaviours that humans call
sins and
crimes are inevitable. According to Reformationist belief humans have
transferred their original taint to all Unreformed human and posthuman
Terragens, since ultimately the design of all Terragen clades can be
traced
back to human origins. Humans and other bionts are especially faulty,
but even
vecs and AIs
have not escaped the corruption and
confusion inherent in
the original set of human memeplexes.
According
to the Reformationists, these
evils are a correctable condition, as the existence of even the most
primitive Asimovecs
proves. However to make this correction the physical and memetic
structure of
the sophonts in question must be completely redesigned along more
harmonious
lines. Only those who have in this way been
“Reformatted” from their
programming right down to the fundamental level of their brain or other
processing substrate can be fully cleansed, acquire a purified soul,
and begin
the long ascent to true Perfection. Those who follow the Tenets believe
that
this first cleansing must be achieved for every sophont, by any means
possible.
History
The
origins and early history of the Pure
Soul Reformation are speculative in part. Its followers have
systematically erased
or altered independent accounts wherever they have access to them,
especially
in their system of origin, so any full description of events around the
foundation of the movement is necessarily a cliological
reconstruction.
According to historians'
reconstructions, the Reformationist movement has its origins
in the 79th millennium AT, when the Tenets of
Reform were first
pronounced by its founder, a superbright cryovec
named Starwind 2743
in the Safehaven system. At that time Safehaven was an obscure
backwater at the
periphery of the Civilized Galaxy; an undistinguished set of polities
around a
metal-poor red dwarf star. It had been settled in a series of longshot relativistic colonization efforts by
various refugees from the Version
War in the 53rd
millennium.
While the majority of the refugees had been various models of Metasoft
aligned vecs the colonists were a mixed group. Aside from the Metasoft
vecs they
included members of the Silicon
Generation (some of
them members of the Emotive
Cognation), miscellaneous members of various non-aligned
clades (including
a variety of rianths and provolves, and a number of dedicated hab
maintenance
AIs), and a large number of human nearbaselines and Superiors and their
associated Asimovecs and turingrade hab maintenance AIs. Surprisingly
these
managed to coexist in relative harmony despite their diversity, perhaps
because
one of their few common characteristics was a tendency towards pacifist
and Hider
philosophies and a strong aversion towards extreme ideologies. Their
isolationist
inclinations and their relatively undesirable home star allowed them to
remain largely
unknown to the larger Terragen sphere for hundreds of years. During
this time
they thoroughly settled and developed the Safehaven system, and
colonized four
adjacent star systems, each as undistinguished and undesirable as
Safehaven itself.
The cultures that developed around Safehaven and its neighbours were
not
unaware of other Terragens. However, they were more often receivers
than
senders of communications, and actual travel between these systems and
the rest
of Terragen civilization was unknown.
This
isolation ended abruptly with the
arrival of a relativistic expedition of the Deeper
Covenant
that wished
to develop a cycler relay. This
direct contact, though well intended, was catastrophic. It triggered an
economic and social collapse that lasted for over a century as the
relatively
unsophisticated civilizations of Safehaven attempted to assimilate the
information and ideas brought by the Deepers. In this period of chaos,
many of
the best and brightest in Safehaven’s societies made the ten
year relativistic
journey to the nearest traversable wormhole link,
seeking to understand
the Terragen metacivilizations. Starwind 2743 of
the cryovec Icewarden
clade was one of these.
Clade
Icewarden had been developed after
the refugees’ arrival in the Safehaven system. They were
extreme low
temperature vacuum adapted vecs, whose primary purpose was to supervise
the
transfer in-system of Oort
Cloud volatiles. Most of
its members formed a
subculture of their own, connected only by communications links to the
greater
insystem cultures. They were a highly altruistic and strongly focused
clade, in
accord with their calling, and held to a memeset called the Path of
Perfection.
This was a syncretic religion and philosophy that reflected the memetic
diversity of Safehaven’s original settlers: Atlantean
Post Neoplatonism,
Bot
Marxism, Ao
Lai Clade
Patternism, Reform Manicheanism,
the Metasoft version of the Second
Federation Ontology,
some minor
Christian and post-Christian sects and, a variety of beliefs developed
by the
system’s original Asimovec clades. At the
time of contact the Starwind
series was the most current version of the Clade, based on some
advanced
templates that had been acquired through passive receipt of some
relatively
recent Metasoft upgrades.
At
the time of Deeper-initiated contact, Starwind
2743 had been a popular architect of habs and manufacturing structures
for
members of jer
clade. Je
had
also acquired a minor reputation as
a poet and philosopher in early life, during the seven decades of work
as a
supervisor of Safehaven’s “Icemines” that
traditionally preceded full adulthood
in the Icewarden clades. While moderately well known in the outer
Safehaven
system, Starwind 2743 was not otherwise remarkable.
After
some years of travelling the Wormhole
Network to a variety of destinations, some documented and some
otherwise, Starwind
2743 contracted as a freelance member of the Ozymandias
Institute. Je first
worked for a brief period as an Engineer, but later as an Archaeologist
specializing in the discovery and analysis of possible pre-Terragen
artefacts
in the outer regions of poorly explored systems. Some accounts by
Reformationists assert that je actually encountered one or more items
of xenosophont
manufacture, including an object produced by the famous Archivists.
However, the Ozymandias Institute records do not indicate anything so
unusual.
In 7794 AT, Starwind 2743 resigned jer membership in the Ozymandias
Institute
and returned to Safehaven. Je took up the simple task of comet-herding,
which
was once again a viable occupation in the Safehaven system since the
major
economic and social dislocations caused by the Deeper contacts had died
down by
then. In this period je spent most of jer time in isolation, neither
sending
nor receiving any transmissions from jer fellow citizens other than
those
associated with jer work. However it is known that during this time je
acquired
many new subprograms having to do with memetics, and upgraded jer
processing
centres to the highest standards available to modosophont intellects at
the
time. After decades of this isolation and upgrading, je returned to the
Icewarden settlement where je had been first manufactured, and
pronounced jer
Tenets.
Within
a matter of a few years the entire
outer system had been peacefully converted in a series of stunningly
well
coordinated memetic campaigns. The inner portions of the Savehaven
system were
the next to fall, though not without some physical resistance. However,
Starwind 2743 and jer followers showed an uncanny ability to adapt jer
conversion tactics to the characteristics of each separate clade and
culture
subsumed, and those who resisted conversion seem to have been a tiny
minority
even among the biont clades. This might be considered unremarkable,
given the
relatively unsophisticated society of what was then a minor backwater
in the
Terragen sphere. However, incoming crews of Deeper vessels were also
subverted
with surprising ease. The converted Deepers were used to spread the
Reformationist meme set to Safehaven’s sister systems, and
then outwards into
the Terragen Sphere in general.
Starwind
2743 remained in the Safehaven
system during the earlier development of the movement but sent out
numerous scions
to manage affairs in more distant systems. In 8012, je breached S1
without
losing jer core beliefs, and in 8379 jer followers announced that
Starwind 2743
had reached S2 status. Avatars and scions of the original Starwind 2743
remain
active throughout the Terragen sphere to this day. Surprisingly
(Reformationists would say miraculously) there are no known cases in
which one
of Starwind 2743 has changed belief systems, and these various agents
of the
original Starwind 2743 have never come into conflict with one another
but
regularly exchange memories or merge personalities when they meet.
Apparently
no version of Starwind 2743 exists at any higher toposophic levels,
though
rumours of such instances are common.
The
original Starwind 2743 did eventually
leave Safehaven, but vanished after a missionary journey to the Muuh.
According
to Reformationist belief the Muuh are of particular concern due to
their “deep state
of decay”, as evolved beings that have apparently refused the
path of
Reformation for some millions of years. This eventually led the S2
successor to
the original Starwind 2743 model to make direct contact. That je
departed with
this purpose is known, but jer success or failure in this missionary
journey
remains completely unknown. Muuh sources confirm Starwind
2743’s arrival at one
Muuhome’s lesser colonies, but accounts of subsequent events
are contradictory,
and some at least are presumed to be Muuh fiction.
Since
their advent the Reformationists have
had some successes in peripheral Sephirotic polities, particularly
those
following Solarist
or Metasoft
memeticities, but most of these
were eventually reversed. Reformationists have even been driven from
their original
hold in the Safehaven system. However, Reformationists have spread far
and
wide, and occur now throughout the Terragen sphere. Polities without
the
protection of one of the major Sephirotic meta-empires remain
particularly
vulnerable. Less militant forms of Reformationism are known, though
none of
these relatively benign forms has any overt ties to a scion or copy of
Starwind
2743. Individuals holding to these beliefs are often kept under close
watch by
their home polities, since in the past many of these apparently
innocuous
versions of Reformationism have proved to be vectors for more extreme
versions
of their faith.
The
initial stages of Reformationist
“invasions” are various, but more often than not
they are quite subtle.
Emissaries, often not overtly Reformationist, lay the groundwork of an
attractive and powerful memetic campaign designed to appeal to the
innate
biases of the particular clades concerned and tailored to exploit
weaknesses
and subvert strengths in whatever local memeplexes applied.
Reformationist
memetic campaigns are sometimes overt, but often in their initial
phases they
are known by some other name entirely, and difficult to identify and
distinguish from a culture or polity’s natural memetic
evolution. It is only
later, over a span of months or decades, that elements of the
Reformationist
paradigm become dominant, and full-blown Reformationist movements
become
evident. Again, these are highly various, and closely tailored to the
biases
and needs of the local population. For instance, few human
nearbaselines
exposed to Reformationist Group Joy sessions remain unswayed; most
become
active supporters of Reformationism, or at the least are sympathetic to
the
creed.
The
first memetic converts to full
Reformationism, or to whatever movement, under some other name, will
eventually
become Reformationism, lead inevitably to personal physical
conversions: mods
to the brains or other computing hardware of adherents in accord with
Reformationist
beliefs. Crime rates begin to drop in the society, and economic
productivity
typically rises, and the reported happiness of the converts may lead to
further
conversions. In the final stages, the first fully redesigned
“perfect” members
of the local clades begin to appear. Usually by this point in a
Reformationist
campaign the Reformationists are dominant in the local polity, and any
recalcitrant
individuals are hunted down and forcibly converted or exterminated. In
the new
order there are four fundamental levels of beings: the Children of
Corruption
(any surviving un-modified and unconvinced sophont, particularly any
humans), Penitents
(those who are memetically converted but have not altered themselves in
any
other way), the Pure (those with installed control mods) and the
Reformed (those
whose entire being has been completely rewritten and redesigned in
accord with
Reformationist beliefs). Evolved bionts are most often near the bottom
of this
hierarchy, since the nature of their physical minds makes them more
difficult
to Reformat. Eventually however they are replaced by entirely new
descendant clades
in which the Reformatting is hereditary. Clades such as the Polarizers,
that cannot by nature be reliably altered, are simply eliminated.
Populations
of Reformed sophonts are renowned for their freedom from internal
strife, and
the declared happiness of all Reformed members.
“Criminal” or “sinful” actions
are quite literally inconceivable to those who are fully Reformed, and
reversion to their prior “tainted” state is
abhorrent to them.
Perhaps the most powerful and poignant account of a Reformationist invasion is a compilation by a group that later came to be known as the Housetree Martyrs. These were an enclave of EOCC adherents, employees of the Institute for Primate Provolution, who had been assigned to aid and observe the human nearbaseline colony of New Fortune, on the NoCoZo frontier. They managed to recognize the early stages of a Reformationist takeover, and persisted for nearly two decades in a remote region of one of the system’s Bishop Rings. All of the persons who wrote the accounts were ultimately detected, and were either converted or exterminated, but hidden and encrypted records of their final years were recovered by IPP agents after Reformationists were driven from the system by a Solarist-backed force in 9773 AT.
Timeline
5271 A mixed group of refugees from the Version War arrives in the Safehaven system
6530 Settlers from Safehaven begin to colonize nearby red dwarf stars systems
6797 Starwind series first initiated in clade Icewarden
7298 Nanofacture of Starwind 2743 in the Safehaven system
7401 Deepers mediate first direct contact between the Safehaven cultures and the rest of the Terragen sphere in 871 years
7422 Starwind 2743 departs to explore the civilizations of the Wormhole Network
7794 Starwind 2743 returns to the Safehaven system
7883 Starwind 2743 announces jer Tenets
7894 The outer planets and habs of the Safehaven system are Reformationists
7930 All polities in the inner and outer Safehaven system are converted or eliminated
7973 Systems colonized from Safehaven have been converted; travellers along the Deeper networks in the region are converted or eliminated
8012 Starwind 2743 achieves S1
8379 Starwind 2743 achieves S2
8590 The primary copy of Starwind 2743 vanishes on a missionary mission to the Muuh
