Prompt 1: The Thawless

Overseeing the underground city of Cobalt, the home of the Taeniit people, is the Thawless who are both the primary religious and governance body of this city-state.

Before time recorded, ancient scientists barricaded themselves deep in a cave system within an underground bunker. After many years of being cryogenically frozen in order to hopefully live out the cataclysmic ecological collapse happening on the surface, most of those early scientists were thawed. Those people gave rise to the Taeniit people, a new subspecies of human. But a few were never thawed, and to this day two frozen ancient scientists exist within Cobalt. To the Thawless, they are gods. Symbols of the origin of Taeniit, the progenitors, the single most sacred aspect of their history and culture.
While the Thawless worship the two Frozen Ones as deities, their scripture lies within the technical scientific documents they left behind. These documents had to be transcribed over and over, some meaning and sense being lost from so many duplications. But one understanding remained -- that survival comes from data. In the Thawless religion, data is what determines all decisions related to the upkeep and management of Taeniit society. Cold, raw numbers.

6 Tenets of the Thawless

• Emperical Data holds all Truths

• Optimize truths for survival of the System

• Survival of the System is the only factor of true value

• Minimize outputs from the System, as a closed System is more stable for survival

• Each individual is a single element in the greater System

• Every element in the System must serve the Truths

Branches of the church

The primary and traditional branch of the Thawless is that they are to preserve their gods in their icy vessels to continue to honor them as they always had, and look to the optimization of data for running their secluded society. The secondary, dissenting branch of the Thawless religion is relatively new arising but believes that they should actually reanimate one or both of the Frozen Ones and make them their God-King(s). Of course the traditionalists think this is incredibly blasphemous, and even more blasphemous is the increasingly radical idea among this dissenting branch that not only should they thaw their gods and crown them their kings, they should do so and be led to conquer the Bright World (above ground) under this new leadership. The traditionalist Thawless, in their uproar, have publicly accused this dissenting group of being "Thaw-seeking Heretics" to which the group embraced the insult, from then on referring to themselves as the Thawseekers.

Governance under the Thawless

Law enforcement in Cobalt is strict and ever-present, and is carried out by a branch of the Thawless called the Correctors. The Taeniit people live under constant restraints under these laws from the moment they are born till they expire, born into castes assigned to them at birth based on percentages of workforce needed as is described in the religious doctrine. The Thawless don’t provide more than the bare essential social services to the people, as a person’s access to education, healthcare and help with other resources is directly based on their caste and is not freely open to everyone. Taeniit society has a harsh raw data approach to population management, with all decisions based on the suggestive scientific data to value efficiency and greater long-term survival chance above all else, even above citizen comfort or quality of life. Anything that could be considered 'excess' is seen as a misuse of precious resources, and so in this society all expressions of art is illegal.
While this seems dramatic, there is also something to be said about necessity due to the fact Cobalt is inside of a cave system and the Taeniit people are biologically delicate. This means that this society barely produces enough edibles through its underground farming structures – which are limited in growth due to the constraints of living in a cave system and often go through times when not enough food is produced to safely feed the entire population. Thus, due to limited space, no room for growth, and maximized outputs of food – the population of Taeniit in the city is highly regulated to an oppressive degree, with many families living together in tiny apartments that are jealously held and passed down for generations.

Important People of the Church

Frozen Ones

Two mysterious men are in thick tubes of blue ice, each on alters and surrounded by their own industrial-style shrine. They are barely visible through clouded ancient glass and ice, but it is clear that these men do not appear like Taeniit, but instead look like humans who live in the Bright World. This fact makes the Thawless aware that Taeniit are derived from other humans and once looked like them. All other facts about who these men were, including their original names, is lost completely to time. They instead are differentiated by the name of which shrine they reside in: The Shrine of Synthesis and The Shrine of Division.

High Oracle Aurii

Longtime leader of Thawless

Memek the Prophet

Founder of the Thawseekers. He has been executed by the Thawless for dissent, but the ideology he created has lived on.

Summercamp and Novel Progress Page:

Relevance to Nevermet

As it's my goal to world build for Summercamp strictly around my novel outline, here is how the Thawless organization relates to the Nevermet story so far...

The female POV character is a Taeniit that lives in Cobalt and has lived her entire life under the religious laws of the Thawless. During the story, she discovers within herself a compulsion to create art as a way to cope with her complicated emotions. Since making art is strictly forbidden, it becomes her first few acts of rebellion. What she truly desires though is to leave the city and go to the surface world, where she can try to find Kex. But that is also forbidden and essentially impossible. After being approached by the Thawseekers with an insane proposition, she decides to take them up on it -- they'll get her to the surface if she helps them secretly thaw and smuggle out one of the Frozen Ones.

Things to expand on in the future that could be helpful when writing the story:

Briefly design relevant characters within the Thawless and Thawseeker factions.

Describe appearance styles of dress/ornamentation of different castes within the Thawless

Consider creating traditional holidays or rituals within this religion