The Lustration
Though Guardians are loathe to reveal too many truths to their Elanni charges about the nature of their own souls, the cycle of rebirth, and the Gardeners, they must nevertheless discern the proper balance between truth and allegory, both in word and deed. This delicate balancing act can often prove difficult to manage, and as Guardians lose narrative control over religion and mythology they can become mistrusted by the very ones they are trying to protect.
On Maverot, this resulted in severe factionalism among followers of the Guardians, both between the disparate religions and between the religiously devout and the secular, which the Guardians were ill-prepared to deal with. Even as their own relationships grew closer - and unfortunately, more insular - their Elanni grew further apart. Religions which had previously regarded one another as companions searching for truth developed opposing dogmas and became increasingly antagonistic. Socio-economic grudges developed as the sense of religious community fractured and grew partisan and charitable giving became subject to religious purity tests. This was exacerbated by the Guardians' growing reluctance to engage with the Elanni at all, confused and frightened by their previous failures of communication.
As the Elanni grew more distant from both their Guardians and each other, the traditions of purification of Cystrisen became confused or forgotten. Evil creatures multiplied on the surface of the planet and were left unchecked. Souls of Elanni passed into the Sea of Blood darkened with prejudice and selfishness and left their poisons there, weakening the reincarnation cycle and burdening Maverot with their increasing dependence for rebirth.
As the fledgling Gardener strained to sustain both its own developing life and the lives of its Elanni charges, the Guardians watched in helpless horror, their every intervention seeming only to worsen the divisions. It became apparent that without drastic change, Maverot would soon devote all of its energy to the reincarnation of its children, while the Gardener itself starved to death.
In the midst of their distress, as though in answer to their desperate need, came Sepiter. The endless, magnetic hunger for Elanni souls possessed by the first and greatest Vat-Ceron was palpable to the Guardians of Maverot, and an awful solution wormed its way into their minds. If souls hopelessly mired in evil were killing Maverot, and if those souls had, over many generations, failed to change, then the only possible way to save both the Gardener and as many souls as possible would be to kill the evil ones . . . and let Sepiter take them.
Leveraging the existing political and religious divides was a simple matter. The Guardians worked together in secret, creating tests designed to target Elanni who had been deemed too problematic to save and cloaking them in religious dogma. The Elanni took to them immediately, each faction wishing to prove their purity over the others. To the Guardians' dismay, everyone who took the tests failed. The original intention had been a sort of inquisition, weeding out the truly evil and executing them as Sepiter passed by, but the outcome was disaster. Once instituted, the tests became matters of religious devotion to the devout and sanctioned heresy to the skeptic. Now divisions between factions became divisions within, and many who had been in good standing before suddenly found themselves heretics, hunted by the clergy and forced to submit to the flawed tests, which they inevitably failed. Chaos reigned as ad hoc groups rapidly formed and splintered until finally, a war swept every settlement on the planet, from the largest cities to the remotest villages. Not a single place was spared; all ran red with blood.
It was swift and brutal. The killing lasted only a few weeks before the Maverotians, experiencing the horrors of full-scale war for the first time, grew sickened by their own actions and retreated from one another in terrified shame. Hundreds of thousands of souls, both good and evil, were pulled into Sepiter's hungry orbit and damned there. The vast creature drifted away, but the terrible feeding had not accomplished the Guardians' purpose.
In the aftermath of the war the children of Maverot were left shaken and traumatized by their experience. They did not trust themselves, each other, and - most of all - did not trust their Guardians, who had encouraged this senseless violence. The Guardians, for their part, withdrew into their private sanctums, stunned at their own cruelty and by the abject failure of their plan. A half-hearted effort was made to salvage the calamity by naming the war "The Lustration," implying that somehow all the blood shed had wiped away some hidden darkness. The name stuck, but no one believed it. If Maverot had been in danger before, now it was doomed.
As the Elanni grew more distant from both their Guardians and each other, the traditions of purification of Cystrisen became confused or forgotten. Evil creatures multiplied on the surface of the planet and were left unchecked. Souls of Elanni passed into the Sea of Blood darkened with prejudice and selfishness and left their poisons there, weakening the reincarnation cycle and burdening Maverot with their increasing dependence for rebirth.
As the fledgling Gardener strained to sustain both its own developing life and the lives of its Elanni charges, the Guardians watched in helpless horror, their every intervention seeming only to worsen the divisions. It became apparent that without drastic change, Maverot would soon devote all of its energy to the reincarnation of its children, while the Gardener itself starved to death.
In the midst of their distress, as though in answer to their desperate need, came Sepiter. The endless, magnetic hunger for Elanni souls possessed by the first and greatest Vat-Ceron was palpable to the Guardians of Maverot, and an awful solution wormed its way into their minds. If souls hopelessly mired in evil were killing Maverot, and if those souls had, over many generations, failed to change, then the only possible way to save both the Gardener and as many souls as possible would be to kill the evil ones . . . and let Sepiter take them.
Leveraging the existing political and religious divides was a simple matter. The Guardians worked together in secret, creating tests designed to target Elanni who had been deemed too problematic to save and cloaking them in religious dogma. The Elanni took to them immediately, each faction wishing to prove their purity over the others. To the Guardians' dismay, everyone who took the tests failed. The original intention had been a sort of inquisition, weeding out the truly evil and executing them as Sepiter passed by, but the outcome was disaster. Once instituted, the tests became matters of religious devotion to the devout and sanctioned heresy to the skeptic. Now divisions between factions became divisions within, and many who had been in good standing before suddenly found themselves heretics, hunted by the clergy and forced to submit to the flawed tests, which they inevitably failed. Chaos reigned as ad hoc groups rapidly formed and splintered until finally, a war swept every settlement on the planet, from the largest cities to the remotest villages. Not a single place was spared; all ran red with blood.
It was swift and brutal. The killing lasted only a few weeks before the Maverotians, experiencing the horrors of full-scale war for the first time, grew sickened by their own actions and retreated from one another in terrified shame. Hundreds of thousands of souls, both good and evil, were pulled into Sepiter's hungry orbit and damned there. The vast creature drifted away, but the terrible feeding had not accomplished the Guardians' purpose.
In the aftermath of the war the children of Maverot were left shaken and traumatized by their experience. They did not trust themselves, each other, and - most of all - did not trust their Guardians, who had encouraged this senseless violence. The Guardians, for their part, withdrew into their private sanctums, stunned at their own cruelty and by the abject failure of their plan. A half-hearted effort was made to salvage the calamity by naming the war "The Lustration," implying that somehow all the blood shed had wiped away some hidden darkness. The name stuck, but no one believed it. If Maverot had been in danger before, now it was doomed.
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments