NationStates Jolt Archive

Port Allanea, Allanea, Haven

No one could tell precisely how or when the preacher had arrived, and he was not in the habit of telling anyone. He only told that he was a ‘Prior of the Orii.’ Each day, he would stand out in public, dressed in white and dull cream robes, carrying a staff with some form of light blue stone the size of a man’s fist built into it, and reading from a book.

The book, of which he had copies, was called the Book of Origin, contained tales, fables, legends and myths. He preached without self-confidence or self-aggrandisement, with a quiet fanaticism that would be called disturbing by many. He didn’t preach of death or destruction, but now and then, scattered among his words, were words of praise for flame and fire, a central icon of his religion, as would eventually be revealed. In the Book of Origin, fire was not the symbol of destruction and consumption of many religions, but instead a source of light, heat and warmth.

The Book of Origin fell suit with many religions, weaving its narrative with characters that were easily identifiable to the common man. All the parables and stories taught meditation on ones’ worth and significance, the path of righteousness towards ascension to becoming a higher being.

Of course, one Prior, an individual well on the path to enlightenment, who had given himself to the flames, was not a problem or significance in himself. But he was not the only one who had come to this nation, by the dozen, then hundred, these missionaries had arrived in Allanea, preaching their word daily in public places, turning aside criticism with inclusive rhetoric of their path to enlightenment and suffering indifference with their own indifference. The Priors knew the things that their gods would bring on those who did not believe in the way to enlightenment.

Those who did not accept the way of the Orii were simply damned, and would, in time, stand before the fire and suffer judgement.

The Prior had arrived at a strangely good time for religion - but has not made his pitch right. As Allanea sought restoration from the horrors of the Civil War, many turned to religion - but Christianity. It was the Christians, coming from allied countries like Reichskamphen and Derscon, that invested effort and charity in the ruined nation. Pastors, priests, reverends were everywhere, providing comfort, help and solace for those who lost something or someone in the terrible hostilities. Combined with religions like satanism, neo-paganism, and Sirithilism, about one in five Allaneans were already ‘cornered’. The rest simply didn’t care.

Some came to the Prior’s call. Old, wizened half-elves that lost their families decades ago in terrible atrocities. Valaquine, who spent centuries wandering the universe without homes. Ex-military Dohwar, unemployed after the dibanding of their unit. Humans who had their kin slaughtered by the Javivalentira. They needed solace and warmth - and reached out for the fire of the Book of Origin.

Those, however, were few and far between. The new religion went generally unnoticed among the kaleidoscope-like mix of different communities, hobbies, insanities that was Port-Allanea. The Prior was merely an unnoticeable fleck of colour among the furries, trekkies, Star Wars fans, metalheads, gamers and otaku’s walking through the city. In fact, his suit was not much different from that of a cosplayer or tolkienist. Sometimes, he was actually mistaken for one.

In the meanwhile, the Allaneans continued in their generally relaxed life. Their main enemy, Edolia, disappeared from the map. Their ancestral lands were recaptured. Perhaps for the first time after centuries of warfare, the Confederate States would be able to finally relax it’s collective stance. People partied. People travelled abroad. In general, Allaneans have finally begun to settle down.

Finally, peace has come to Haven.

Of course, the priors were pleased with this humble congregation, but they found the rival religions in Allanea to be most infuriating. Those who would lead the people away from the Path were of course evil. But for a time, the Priors would be patient. They did what they could for the faithful, providing comforting words that often, despite the good intent, seemed to fall a little short of the mark. Many of the parables of the Book of Origin could be spun and twisted to fit different situations.

They did however; offer the keystone of any evangelist religion. They offered hope, that any who kept to the path laid down by the kindness of the Orii could become like the Orii, a higher being who was immune to the sufferings and travails of mortal-kind.

They continued their preaching, but in time, the darker side of their mythology began to show. The Christians were, it was decided, too much of a threat to be spared wrath, and so, gathering their thoughts together, the Priors began preaching, in moderation, a word here and there, against the Christians.

It wasn’t blatant though, they didn’t accuse Christian preachers of malevolence or deliberate evil, they simply emphasised that their Path was the true way of seeking enlightenment, and that Christianity, and its like, were distorted paths that drew one away from that ultimate goal.

The Prior of Port Allanea, the leader of those that had joined the nation, was concerned though, that such things would not be enough. Over time, he began using what one would call parlour tricks, nothing particularly unusual or impressive in most nations, but a step from words to actions. Phantom winds to catch attention, telekinetic taps on the shoulders of passers by, strange telepathic emphasis on certain pieces of his preaching.

It was a revelation that ultimately the Priors would fan the flames of faith in any way they had to…

Slowly, slowly, the ranks of the Prior’s followers grew. By the end of the first week, there were only ten. By the end of the fourth, two hundred. But once he began his ‘parlour tricks’, the number skyrocketed. Kind of. Another week - and there were one thousand. By the end of the eighth week, the prior had ten thousand followers within the city. Those people began to generate donations. Money flowed - or rather, trickled - to the Prior, for the purpose of constructing a temple of his faith in Port-Allanea.

And so it was built - and it stood, unnoticeable in the long ranks of strange temples, convention halls, and gaming stores - not to forget hobby shops, of course. As per the authorities, they never cared about strange religions, and certainly not now - the post-war unemployment, economic blight, and the re-emerging spectre of violent crime were far bigger problems. In a country where unemployed war veterans walked the streets in tattered grey uniforms, holding up stores with their service rifles, yet another band of strange preachers was
not a source of any major concern.

The Christians didn’t care about the Priors, either. They didn’t see them as a big competitor - not yet, anyway. If they cared of any of the minor religions, it was probably groups like the Church of Scientology - or, even more, the United Church of Satan, and the Third Coven, the two biggest satanist groups in the city of Port-Allanea. To the other cities, the Book of Origins has not yet spread much. Only two thousand worshippers were to be found outside the capital - compared to the ten thousand within it.

In a fashion, the Confederacy was a perfect place to a person who wanted to disappear. The varied spread of strange sects, hobbies, fashions throughout the nation was such as nearly anybody could mingle in and never be noticed. It was estimated that only about 20% of Allaneans did not belong to a fan club, a strange hobbyist society, or something to this style. So being unnoticed in Allanea was an extremely easy task. Being noticed was what the Priors wanted.

Inside the first temple, things were rather unlike those of most religions. Priors worked tirelessly translating and reprinting the Book of Origin to make it more accessible. It was, however, not just that, but an open-air gathering place. The Priors were certainly no fools, and they were wise enough to know that the full and strict interpretation of their religion, with weekly six-hour prostration sessions, was not for converts. Instead, they were wise enough to make certain to preach only very liberally in the first weeks.

The Priors did not miss the growing street crime in Allanea, and as more of them began to enter the city, spreading the word of Origin, they began to address their preaching towards this problem. Proclaiming that those who harmed others were harming the path, they began proclaiming that criminals should be treated as harshly as possible.

And that wasn’t all. In the seedier back streets near the Temple of the Orii, street crime at night was soon eliminated, however, the number of blackened bodies apparently caused by that strange phenomenon of ‘spontaneous human combustion’ (or Valaquine, or Dohwar) rose by orders of magnitude. Perhaps it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that this vigilantism was the doing of the Priors, but they were careful to avoid leaving evidence, or intervening so drastically in the affairs of criminals when there were potential eyewitnesses…

But such a glimmer into the world and mindset of the Priors would be telling to any who were concerned with their behaviour, if these so called missionaries found the desire to destroy one group they branded to have fallen from their Path, how long could it be before they moved on to other ‘evils.’

One of the more surprising rumours that was recorded, was that the lead Prior of the temple had saved someone from these same criminals. Not that this was uncommon in Allanea, it was frequent enough for people to be involved in fire fights against the burgeoning criminal fraternity. This person, however, had already been shot dead when saved. After the resurrection, so it was rumoured, the Prior’s words were simply, “Do not thank me, thank the Orii…”

And as time passed, their indictments of those who were against the Orii grew. Certain vices, calculated to not dissuade too many of the local followers, such as, ironically, intolerance, discrimination and other forms of sin, which the less interesting portions of the Book of Origin enumerated upon at great length, were condemned by the Priors.

Trek-Town, Port-Allanea

The police cruiser halted sharply outside Joe’s Own Liquor And Ammo Store, as two figures in grey - the dirty remains of military uniforms - dodged out of the shop, one holding his rifle, the other with his weapon slinged, and carrying two plastic bags, each filled with bottles of expensive wine. The absence of gunfire from inside the shop meant only one thing - the robbers did not bother threatening the owner. They just shot him. Detective Johann Rosenberg did not even need to check that. He felt anger. His vision was obscured by a strange red mist… there would be no arrests made in this one. There would be no need to make them.

He nodded to his partner. ‘Go, Fleer-aine.’ The Valaquine’s entire body straightened itself, propelling the Valaquine into a jump high above the open automobile. ‘Stop! Police!’ - blared Johann’s loudspeakers. They didn’t stop. The one with the bottles jerked momentarily, trying to swipe at the Valaquine with one of the sacks - perhaps afraid to drop them both lest he lose both sets of bottles and the precious liquid within. The Valaquine wasn’t even fazed by this as it’s sheer weight propelled the criminal onto his back. The elongated, glistening head jerked forward, shooting the secondary jaws out forward, through what only seconds ago used to be the man’s face. Rosenberg didn’t look.

He was too busy with the other man. This thug - very possibly the smarter one of the two, lifted his rifle at face level, firing a burst in Rosenberg’s direction - half a second after Johann threw himself flat on the vehicle seat. As he heard the loud, familiar ringing sound of an ABR-8 magazine dropping to the ground, he straightened himself to a sitting position, bringing the police-issue Webley Mk V to bear on the target. And fired once, destroying one of the man’s elbows. His hand hung limp, and the replacement magazine dropped to the ground. Still, he was holding a rifle. Legally, he was still resisting arrest. And thus, what Fleer-aine did next was absolutely and perfectly legal.

The Valaquine’s slender, long tail wrapped itself around the thug’s legs and jerked him, hard. As he fell onto Fleer-aine, one of the policeman’s elongated, clawed palms snapped around his head, then moved, flaying the criminal’s face with a single masterful movement. Screaming, flailing, with his eyed flowing down his face like egg yolks, the robber was still alive when Fleer-aine started feasting on his brain.

Rosenberg closed his eyes. It seemed to him that his Ramen noodles were about to go out the way they came.

* * *

"You see, Johann?" - asked the Valaquine, pointing at the storekeeper’s body. The old man was lying on his back - just where he was thrown against the wall by the hail of .308 rounds the two robbers unleashed on him. In one hand, he was clutching a now-useless Ingram. - "And you think I am disgusting."

Johann stood there, solemnly. No, he didn’t really think Fleer-aine was all that disgusting. The Valaquine simply had no sense of disgust as known to humans. Johann on the other hand did not have the stomach to flay a man like the Valaquine did - and in those days of near-anarchy, it sometimes was the only recourse.

"Oh well. Robbery case, number 456 this year, closed."

"Anyway, Fleer. Heard of the Burning BadGuys yet?"

"No, Johann", shrugged the Valaquine. "Is it in our jurisdiction?"

"Not yet. Seems there’s lots of known crooks burning up on Preachers’ Lane. Spontaneous combustion, but lots of it. All in the neighbourhood of the Origins Temple."

"So they think the Origins boys are going all Death Wish? Hell, looking at what they preach, it could be. Remember that paedofreak we caught last year? Didn’t even give him The Chair, did they? I wouldn’t wonder if the Origins folks decided to up the ante a little bit. And dammit, I don’t think I would mind, either."

‘What?"

"Well, I would, if this was a normal time and we could Miranda them and everything. Dammit, the streets are a warzone - you can’t drive from home to work without being shot at. I think at this time, folks like this should be our last priority. Not that we should ignore them altogether - you know, even robbers have rights… but let’s just say even if the Origins preachers went Bronson, they shouldn’t be at the top of our priority list at this time. Or nowhere near it."

Rosenberg laughed.

"A-men to that, brother."

“Docii,” said the head Prior, in the secluded City of the Gods, on the Planes of Celestus. The sanctum was Spartan enough, a simple room, with table, chair, and marbled walls. One wall was a set of wrought iron gates, looking out over a vertical plane of flame that seemed to stretch infinitely.

A man in robes similar to those of the Priors, but more elaborate, including a chiselled metal collar that flared and rose behind his head turned, “Hallowed are the Orii…” he said.

The Prior bowed, “Hallowed, are the Orii.”

“The gods are growing impatient. They command that you bring their timetable forward. Begin attacking other religions in that land immediately.”

The Prior seemed hesitant, “I do not believe that wise…” he said, “it may have negative effects.”

Docii raised his immaculately white eyebrow, “You question the will of the gods?”

“Of course not, I shall do as they command.”


And so, the Priors began their most foolish move yet. Overt attacks, verbal at first, began against followers of other religions. The concept that guiding followers away from the path was wrong was stressed more and more, and Priors began encouraging the Allaneans to blame their multitudinous woes on such sources of evil.

At first that was all, but soon they began to ratchet up their efforts, exhorting their followers to openly invade the privacy of and disrespect their rivals. Though this was likely to loose them much support, the Orii Cult pressed ahead heedless of local concerns, urging their followers to show their devotion to the Path by persuading those who followed, in their ignorance, evil, to convert.

Now perhaps, the Allaneans would begin to realise the nature of the beast.

Only a few hundred meters away from the temple of the Origins stood the offices of the Church of Scientology - it’s main Haven offices - a big, white, multi-story building, survivng war after war due to a constant flow of many from supporters and from the church’s various enterprises abroad. The High Auditor of Allanea was a slightly… ‘paranoid person’, even by Allanean standards. An armed guard stood at the entrance to the office building, Thompson hanging off a sling. Six more, in a hidden room near the entrance, with loaded CAR-15’s. Throughout the building, more guards. A helicopter on the roof. A stockpile of various explosives and heavy weapons in the basement. Add to that the fact the building was constructed by a military fortification expert - and you will understand why those who worked in the offices did not care
all that much about the raging crime outside.

As per the Orii’s tactics, they were simply unnoticed - lost in the mix of the usual crimes, violence, and petty offences that are so common in a war-ravaged country. Someone tried to beat up a rabbi and was scared away by warning shots. Someone spraypainted an office of the United Church of Satan with some form religious slogans. Someone threw a brick through a church window. For the police - and for most of society - there were more important problems out there deal with.

On the day the UCS offices were vandalised, Fleer-aine and his partner were responding to an armed robbery call on Jefferson Avenue, two hours of driving away from there. The offenders were, as usually, heavily armed, and fire support had to be called in. Obviously enough, Rosenberg and Fleer-aine decided to move the UCS graffiti down a notch or six in their scale of priorities. One couldn’t even blame them that much for it.

Even as the Orii Chruch proclaimed the infidelity and wickedness of its rivals, another group of proiors was hard at work. Called the Priors of Procuation, they filled a new role, distancing themselves from the other Piriors, they did not appear to the congregation at large but instead concentrated their efforts on the task of suborning criminals and the corrupt to serve the Orii. This they did with spectacular success, arranging attacks and bribing police officers to look the other way at a rate of knots. Their major targets were the Christians, on the accurate but idealistic reasoning that the Christians were forbidden from retaliation. But the Christians were not the only subject of these attentions, the Priors of Procuration also attacked their other enemies, such as the Satanists, the Scientologists and other ‘Evil’ faiths.

The Orii and the Priors who served them were at heart, equal opportunity oppressors.

One evening, late at night, the Priors escalated their violence a notch by deciding the time had come to take drastic action. The Priors of Procuation were informed, and through them, criminals were paid, police paid off, and those of the press who could be suborned, paid to keep their noses out. It was a simple enough affair, two single use grenade launchers, fired from a vehicle that sped off after the fact. It wasn’t quite that amateurish however, as at the same time, an anti-aircraft missile was used against the Scientologists helicopter. The kind of money that the Priors had bought a lot of guns, if one wished it to.

At the same time, elsewhere in the city, demolitions experts, formerly of the once grand Allanean armies were employed in destruction of three of the larger Christian churches, blasting the corners of the buildings apart with carefully placed satchel-sized explosives.

The priest fell sideways slowly as three red dots appeared on his robe. They were not too big - caused by a 5.7mm semiautomatic handgun, they were nothing more than wicked punctures - but inside the priest’s body, they expanded into horrible cavities, as if carved inside the man’s body with a table-spoon. He struggled back on his feet, looking at the two rags-wearing men as they fled down the alley - rags that were once the proud uniform of the CSAF. He was still alive - and he wasn’t going alone. He drew - well, more like, ‘raised’ - his gun, a sawed-down Remington 570 shotgun - aiming, as he thought, at the torso of one of the attackers. He fired. Maybe he held too low, maybe his hand was growing week, but the overpowered charge merely struck an attacker’s ankle, vaporising it entirely. The man squealed as a gutted pig, dropping on his back. The priest fell, too, the scene before him suddenly replaced by the open, blue sky.

* * *

He did not know how long it took… but he eventually came to hear footstep’s approaching. Look, Joe! Here’s a priest… and lookie what we got here… I think we know what happened here… someone laughed. The priest tried to move his head to look… but he couldn’t. Too much blood loss… perhaps… some weird wound after-effects… he did not know. He tried to scream. He was dying, and help was at hand. Then, his head twitched slightly, and he was no longer there for the Orii to oppress.

The footsteps came closer. One of the cops came close to the attacker, still twisting and turning on the ground in pain, his foot entirely torn off by the high-explosive shotgun round. "Help me… please… someone.." - he knew they were cops. He also knew right now, they were supposed to bandage him up, arrest him, and take him into a station where he would be warm… and not cold… so cold that he was freezing to death here, uniform or not.

Instead of all that, he suddenly heard one of the beat cops talking. One wonders where he got this expensive gun to go with those new-ass designer clothes, eh Joe? they laughed. Then someone lifted the FN Five-Seven Collector’s Edition lying next to his outstreched fingers - and dropped something else next to him. Excellent, Rick. Now get the brass. The thug tried to move to look what they were doing - and found that he was too weak. ‘Must be blood loss… or something.[/I]. Then they came close. Okay, Joe, now what do we do with him? The other man laughed. Jeeze, man, I don’t know. Read him his rights and take him to the station, I suppose? His partner sounded surprised. You sound like that’s a *bad* thing, Joe. Now, ‘Joe’ was laughing openly. Who do you think he works for, with a gun of this kind? Want him to talk and unravel the entire thing? Is that what you want, Ricky-boy? Rick coughed - somewhere so far that it might have as well been in outer space. The criminal looked up into the city sky. Somewhere out there, a Conestoga-class freighter left for another colony - perhaps ferrying Dohwar for the ice-covered Igaruo, perhaps humans and Teleri for New-Idaho. ‘I wish I went for one of those when I had the chance…’ - he thought, then he saw two gun barrels appear very close to his face. Then there was nothing.

The report would not mention the FN Five-Seven, the capping, or the criminal being already dying when the police got to the scene. Officially, the criminal fired at the priest with a .25 Raven automatic, hitting several times, then got hit by fire from both the policemen and the priest. The priest, through some strange freak accident of medicine, died in five minutes, before the brave officers Rick Pickardy and Joe Robertson had ever had the chance to call an ambulance. It was never explained how the .25 jacketed hollowpoint rounds - that never existed, of course - managed to pierce the thick wool clothing the priest was wearing. Robertson got a commendation. The forensics department, understaffed, underfunded, and overtasked, never examined the body, putting it in cold storage together with those of the auditor, pastor, and the Third Coven cleric killed in the past week.

Of course, calling what remained of the auditor a body was quite the stretch. Maybe five or six kilograms of flesh - that the forensics workers hazarded was his head at some point. This man has died in the crash of the Church helicopter a few days earlier. There was no bribery involved in this police investigation - well, except of course the order to transfer the investigation to a different detective after the first one suggested ‘rival sects’. Now, the semi-legitimate money flows of the Church of Scientology in Allanea were under scrutiny -as a possible motive for assassination. The inefficient grenade attack against the thick, reinforced-concrete concrete walls of the Port-Allanea offices of the church was discounted as vandalism - it failed to do much more than chip the paint off the structure.

And still, people failed to see a pattern. The murders of the priests, clerics, auditors, and pastors were seen as just another unfortunate part of the general violence of the city. In part, it was a honest mistake. In part, it was corruption… the effect was the same.

* * * * *

Damn you all thrice to hell! - screamed Johann Rosenberg, dropping the photographs of a dead priest, auditor, and Sephardic rabbi on the table. Doesn’t anybody see a pattern?

The other men at the station looked at him. There was a moment of silence, and then one of them - a fat man by the name of Gray Bastidas - replied:

No, Johann. We don’t. Are you sure you don’t need a day off?