Cancer Baby Tree Cult
You pour some human blood onto a tree and it grows babies in sacks where the fruit should be, the amount of babies being relative to the amount of blood provided and sometimes other factors about the blood itself. This sounds like a free means for any group that has the tree to grow its numbers at ridiculous rates except that the babies are clones of whoever's blood is provided except for getting shitloads of mutations, cancer almost always among them.
Despite the tree being constantly provided with blood, on average only a single baby who will actually go on to live a decent-lengthed life is produced every few months. This is compared to it usually producing dozens of babies every minute. It's believed that the less sin there is in your blood, the more likely it is that babies made from your blood will be to live a decent-lengthed life.
This tree is located in Lamara and controlled by the Sect of Brupta, Brupta being a god within the Lamaran pantheon associated with trees and suicide. They believe the tree to exist because of Brupta attempting to gift an infertile ruler with the means to produce their own children in the form of the tree, however the God-Builder - a primordial being who created and rules over the gods (or, more accurately, lets them rule over themselves and then steps in whenever they do things that GB doesn't like) - changed the tree so that the more sin is in one's blood the less likely the tree is to produce viable offspring, turning it from a gift to a test of the virtue of oneself and one's ancestors... which the ruler clearly failed as the only child they got out of it died in their teens to a "malignant growth that ate at their lungs from within" and the ruler then killed themselves by not restraining themselves when cutting their wrists onto the tree.
It seems unfair that Brupta is the one associated with suicide because of that story. It's very obviously the God-Builder's fault.
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Using this with magic people is a terrible idea. Currently, there's an island in the middle of a lake occupied by the result of using Krysa blood. It's been there for over three hundred years despite Krysa not having supernaturally long lifespans (most who die naturally die in their seventies or eighties... they're just a human family with unusual abilities). They send boats full of the corpses of some of the tree-children who die to cancer and other illnesses to its island to keep its hunger satiated.
Any kids who live past the age of ten and, upon thorough medical examination, are expected to live a long time are considered "blessed" children and gifts of Brupta. They're sent to Lamara's Capitol to be raised into high-ranking members of the clergy. In the meantime before then, all children produced by the tree are raised within temples near the tree (including the one built around it), which are dedicated to Jalana, Brupta, Kovok and various other gods and goddesses. Any children confirmed to be lost causes, as in "definitely gonna die", in the bi-monthly medical examinations are sacrificed to the god/goddess of the temple they're being raised in.
"Blessed" children sometimes develop abilities or useful traits, magic or otherwise, that they can pass onto their own children due to their mutations. So far none of these have been that major, in fact developing harmful traits is more common, but there's at least theoretically potential to make whole new and potentially even major magic families with powerful abilities like those of the Brijilds, Tummens or Krysa using this tree.
NOTE: Whether or not the gods in any of the religions of the Trickster's Afterlife actually exist within it is deliberately ambiguous, and as such so are the tree's origins.
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Quick Fire Clarifications:
Q: The babies are in sacks... what? A: They rapidly grow in the sacks, usually only needing a few minutes to grow fully, and then the sacks rip open and the baby falls to the ground. If there's nothing soft for them to land on or nobody there to catch them they die immediately from the fall. Currently there are slaves used in shifts constantly catching babies covered in weird sack fluid. Q: Why did you make this article? What the hell is wrong with you to even be able to come up with this? A: My lawyer says I shouldn't answer either of those questions. Q: Why do they feed the dead babies to that island monster instead of killing it? A: Attempts to kill it have failed (and backfired) and it seems content to chill on the island so long as it has food. It refuses to eat anything but human meat. It's only sent enough to keep it fed. The other dead babies are cremated or buried depending on the circumstances as matches usual Lamaran tradition. This single-handedly holds up some of the local agriculture due to the buried corpses and scattered ashes fertilising the soil. Q: I thought from your other articles that Jalana is the goddess of plants. Why is Brupta the tree god? A: Brupta is a lesser god subservient to Jalana. Q: If they're raised in various temples, how many priests/priestesses form parent-child like bonds only for the kids to die of cancer and genetic disorders? A: A lot. This tree's existence and active use is by far a massive negative from most moral standpoints, as almost all lives it brings into the world are bound to live short - so short they usually don't get to be old enough to even understand what's happening - and painful lives that bring additional pain in the form of grief and trauma to those involved in the process of creating and taking care of them. It's also because of this tree that a nasty monster that's killed a lot of people exists. Q: What is the monster like? What are its abilities etc? A: That's a spoiler within the story I'm writing within the Trickster's Afterlife. But it is the result of a cloned Krysa being horrifically mutated, so if you know what Krysa are go wild imagining what the hell exactly could be the result of a Krysa being horrifically mutated and even after 300 years hasn't been successfully killed by anyone. Q: Is the Krysa monster the only monster made by the tree? A: No. It's just the only one that's lived as long as it has, and the most dangerous.Structure
At the top of the organisation is the Grand Bloodmaster. Their job is to decide whose blood is going onto the tree, including accepting or turning down requests from people for their own blood to be used. The criteria by which the Grand Bloodmaster chooses people is supposed to just be how likely one is to make a "blessed" child, as this is meant to be the goal of throwing all this blood onto the tree and allowing so much suffering to happen in the first place.
Regular Bloodmasters are those who actually put the blood onto and tend to the tree. When the Grand Bloodmaster dies, it's generally one of these who is promoted to being the Grand Bloodmaster. They also help the Grand Bloodmaster with the paperwork associated with picking whose blood to use.
Blood Servants spend about half their time studying to become Bloodmasters, bringing honour and wealth to themselves and their families, and the other half doing what of the remaining tasks (other than military/security, for which regular Temple Guards from among the God-Tongue's armies have got them covered) aren't done by slaves and servants. Becoming a Bloodmaster requires at least 2 years spent as a Blood Servant, and even then it's whoever's been one the longest that is chosen whenever a replacement for a Bloodmaster is needed (currently, there are 15 Bloodmasters at a time).
Regular servants and slaves* handle food, cleaning, catching the babies and so on. Collecting the surviving children and bringing them to different temples is done by the staff of those temples.
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*Slaves are cheaper, however servants are often preferred as they're more likely to actually believe in the religion of the temple they're working at and so take more care when cleaning and maintaining it. Slaves are usually foreigners, criminals, were sold into slavery by their parents as children or were born into slavery due to both of their parents being slaves, although illegal circumstances such as someone simply being kidnapped and nobody believing them when they say they're freefolk are also quite common.
Culture
Considered by outsiders to be callous and morbid. Most working within it take on various coping mechanisms, often very unhealthy ones, or are indifferent to the suffering of others due to having conditions like psychopathy and sociopathy. The turnover rate is often quite high for Blood Servants and regular servants alike, with many quitting, being fired (or transferred into another part of the wider Temple Organisation), or even committing suicide. There's a culture of mistreating new members as a means of quickly pushing out any not mentally equipped to work there.
Public Agenda
Producing more "blessed children" using the tree.
Assets
Cancer baby tree, big temple built around cancer baby tree, funding and security from the wider Temple Organisation.
History
886 years before the current setting, it was found around the end of the Harget War. The Hargets, who regularly engaged in ritual cannibalism, had found it some decades beforehand deep in the ruins of the civilisation they claimed to be the successors of and transported both it and the dirt it was in to their Capitol, alongside other artifacts and goodies.
Capitol life quickly came to be built around this tree. The Hargets, already participants in cannibalism, replaced many of the fields they'd dedicated to livestock with ones dedicated to horticulture (plant stuff) and took on the belief that eating meat that wasn't human was profane, getting most of their meat from mass-producing, killing and cooking babies from the tree.
They used the blood of the magic people among them to make monsters, taming and weaponising those they could while those who couldn't be tamed were either killed or sedated before being placed on rafts that would go downriver to their enemies, the Ilets, whose society was crippled by the problems these monsters created.
The Ilets were one of few groups to have joined the Krysa Empire willingly, becoming a vassal-state beneath them. The Krysa Empire's forces, enriched by Ilet recruits, went upriver and conquered the Hargets in a brutal war that lasted some years. Many of the monsters the Hargets made got loose and killed many on both sides.
When the Harget Capitol was being sieged, it wouldn't fall because they almost immediately slaughtered everyone living in the city's slums to reduce food upkeep and were able to feed the remainder of the population with the human meat they got from the tree. This was only stopped when a magic person, a Powas, was successfully snuck into the city and brought to the tree, which they flooded with their own blood to create many monsters that ripped the city apart from within. The Powas was also killed by the tree's creations.
The city was deliberately left with its gates closed for some years, letting the monsters cannibalise one another and reduce their own numbers over time. However, one of them was intelligent enough to deliberately use the tree, and so the Krysa Empire's hand was forced in completely taking the city and wiping out everything within it.
-> General tries to burn tree
-> Gets assassinated by someone from the Temple instead
-> "That's a holy relic bro no touchie"
The God-Tongue (basically Pope but with more power) at the time set up the Cancer Baby Tree Cult as a sect within the wider Temple Organisation.
Chance for a gift, chance for a burden
Founding Date
Around 874 years before the current setting
Alternative Names
Corpse Breeders
Demonym
Cancer Baby Tree Cultusts
Parent Organization
Related Species
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