Celestial Chorus Preview
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 07:48:24 AM
Celestial Chorus Preview: Current Issues
The Chorus’s score experienced more revisions in the previous 20 years than in the prior five centuries. The Chorus forges itself anew and is finding not every singer has found a new home among its sections.
Anchorites and Hermits
While reclusive Choristers in monastic Adyta are noble examples of ascetic practice, supporting such singers is costly. With the Doctrines of Charity and Compassion in place, the Chorus withdrew formal support to Adyta with no Sleeper-facing activities. These groups could stay in the good graces of the Tradition by participating in the three-layer committee structure or by providing Quintessence, research, martial or financial aid. These donations known as apportionments come due roughly every four years. They are staggered across Adyta and the Assembly on Choral Membership redistributes apportionments to the wider Chorus in accordance with the Doctrines of Charity and Foresight. Lone Choristers who Awaken outside a traditional faith community but who find a strong draw to the One often spend early their initial time doing such visitations.
Some Congregations chose to leave the Chorus instead often going to the Order of Hermes, Children of Knowledge, Ngoma, Society of Ether, Verbena, Akashayana, or paradigmatically appropriate group. Departing members take with them much understanding of the Tradition and their new sects are eager to hear what information they may have.
Some Choristers scoffed at allowing anchorites to buy off their obligations, but apportionments are a boon to growing Adyta. In exchange, these communities receive aide, updates on worldly and Awakened news, and inspected to ensure dissonance has not taken hold. Such check-ins became commonplace after both the Cloister of Perpetual Silence near Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territory and the Home of Peace in Karbala, Iraq fell to the Dark Singers.
A Storyteller may allow a Chorister to purchase a modified form of the Requisitions background called Apportionment. Like Requisitions, Apportionment allows the Chorister to temporarily access dots of Allies, Chantry (in the form of temporary lodging with a monastic Adytum), Contacts, Cult, Library, Node (in the form of Tass), Retainers, Wonder, or Resources. This background is less predictable than Requisitions as the Chorus lacks both the Technocracy’s logistical and bureaucratic skill and the Storyteller chooses how requests are fulfilled. For instance, a player may anticipate an upcoming session may involve combat and the character requests martial support using their three dots of Apportionment. The Storyteller may fulfill this request with a two-dot Wonder and a few pawns of Fiery Tass, or the temporary service of a three-dot Ally, or the use of a well-kitted two-dot War-Song Chantry and a Retainer.
Returning Harmonies
Seeing a new Primus, hearing new doctrine, and learning of the departure of the elements behind their expulsion in the first place, many small Congregations returned to active participation. Some were small sects that we declared heresies or Congregations that felt unwelcome during the rise of the Messianic Voices. These Returning Harmonies unbalanced traditional power blocs and made the Chorus overall more varied. These groups were welcome assuming they met the requirements of the Five Doctrines, so far embraced by the returning Druze, First Nations, and Gnostic Congregations. Many knew strange music bizarre to the rest of the Chorus. Still, they’re welcomed.
The rapid turnover in membership resulted in a highly energetic but not yet organized Tradition trying to welcome new groups while still focusing on the Sleeper concerns. Where the previous Chorus strove to be an architect with a top-down structure, the new Chorus is more akin to a gardener as it tries new approaches and weeds those which don’t work. SomeReturning Harmonies will ultimately leave again becoming Crafts or collections of Orphans.
Mortal Belief
The Chorus experienced recent growth, but growth in a world of declining religiosity. “None” or “no affiliation” is the fastest growing belief category. Some faith groups may come to an end making the Chorus a possible refuge for otherwise extinct religions.
Someone will eventually seek our membership who recognizes the One but believes all revelation is simply a strange type of understanding of the natural world. At that point, what would be the difference between that person and a Technocrat? If they were willing to operate a field hospital during a refugee crisis, would it matter?
The Chorus isn’t comfortable declaring whose faith does or doesn’t recognize the One. A few such members from new religious movements like Caodaist High Tower Seekers, and Rastafari Jah’s Chorus have found homes within the Chorus and the Discordian Popes of Eris are under consideration. Rumors abound of Satanist, Dickian Gnostic, or Jedi Catechumen who wish to join. Some members desire Mind magick be employed to verify someone’s faith but to most, Awakening is proof enough.
Quiet and the Mad
Choristers often live their paradigms, integrating belief into every aspect of their lives with intensity. Many Choristers see a world permeated with an all-consuming fight between harmony and dissonance and actively communicate this believe with Sleepers. Sometimes a mage’s resonance becomes potent enough to manifest what appear to be miracles. A mage’s Avatar may acquiesce to pious wrappings and appear as an angel, Ādityá, or Shen. While the Tradition is exceptionally watchful for Nephandic taint, they often miss their kin likely lost to Quiet. Quiet may take the form of traditional Denial or Madness or an apocalyptic or damnation-inflected kind of Morbidity seeing evil, sin, or taint everywhere. Quiet does not necessarily preclude fruitful song, but the Tradition is ill-equipped to identify and deal with it when it does.
Members claiming to receive revelation remain under scrutiny, but this can prove difficult as some Choristers are literally temporal prophets with their access to the Time Sphere. To many the age of prophecy is closed or limited to a specific group. Other groups believe prophecy is very much alive and we as a Tradition do not weigh in. On multiple occasions, a member claimed to have received wisdom from the One, gathered a small congregation, and disappeared into the Umbra, exploded in a cloud of Paradox, or otherwise went missing.
Some singers enter a Quiet they embrace and go full on Marauder. Low-Quiet Marauders are often hard to detect as some manifest their Quiet internally without the regular reality-warping of the Mad. Others certainly manifest Quiet but this may be indistinguishable from Paradox, Resonance, or intentional magick. Many Choristers leave ethereal music, a feeling of divine radiance, or the vague scent of sacred herbs or incense in their wake.
No uniform rules exist on dealing with former Chorister Marauders. Some Choristers advocate killing these perversions of the One’s song on sight. Peacefully inclined singers advocate relocating the Mad to an Umbral Realm or even monastery befitting their Quiet. Madness is not a problem in any way unique to the Chorus, but a host of intrinsic complications makes it more of an issue here than in other Traditions.
The Loss of the Guardian Orders
Before the Great Congregation, the Chorus stood divided as a cacophony of factions drawn together by religion, purpose, or politics. Among them were the guardian orders who took the fight to the enemy of the One’s song. These often-zealous members disproportionately departed under the Declaration of Imminence seeing the Doctrine of Foresight as a luxury the Celestial Chorus lacked. Their departure took much knowledge, might, and magick with them and many went straight to the Knights Templar, or formed their own independent Chantries to fight the enemies of their faiths. The Tradition’s singing is now more in time, but its voices are exposed just when it wishes to make the most change in the world. Some wish to reconstitute a guardian order as a new Vocational Assembly while others think all Choristers should know some War-Song.
The Apocalyptics
Many groups seek a union with the One involving the annihilation of the self. The goal may be to experience a final redemption of a chosen people, freedom from karmic bonds, a revelation of the illusion of reality, or even apotheosis. The Doctrine of Compassion calls for reduction of suffering, but the Apocalyptics argue all moments short of transcendence are moments of suffering outside the presence of the One. Apocalyptics often wish to play a final note which seems quite like the end the Dark Singers desire.
Some believe before the First Age there was a Zero Age where we were in timeless union with the One and are examples of belief in apocatastasis, a restoration to our primordial state. One such group is the Order of Naught who run a campaign dubbed “The Return to Zero.” Their sign is a Greek letter theta with the word “return,” “union,” or “end” replacing the crossbar. They believe the cosmos is in a false vacuum state which if collapsed would usher us into union with the One in an era of light and music. They believe clues on how to collapse reality lay buried in the principles of physics and use cutting edge server clusters to discern the patterns of the heavens.
Well, there you go! A tiny taste of the Celestial Chorus chapter.
Tomorrow, backers will have access to the complete chapter from the approved draft manuscript. We'll be sharing a chapter every Tuesday and Friday for the remainder of the campaign, and backers will be able to read the entire manuscript before any pledges are collected or payments processed.
