History:

Before and After the Deluge

The Luminary are a breed of warriors who found their connection in the idea of a philosopher and now considered Oracle or King of the Gods in human form, Vicente Seventus Speritis, "Seventh Spirit is Victorious". No one can quite claim the exact time Vicente began injecting the ideas and teachings into the great people of the land now called the Luminary. The meaning of the Luminary are to remind the people that they are of artificial light, they are Gods playing the role of human beings in a material existence. Thus his teachings call upon the people to always remember they are in fact the Gods of All, because they have accepted the greatest challenge of them all; to exist within human events becoming Gods, instead of being Gods interfering with human events. Vicente holds the position that their game is much more superior than the game of those above them, and in this idea he sparked an entire people to unite as a single entity striving to become Gods under the banner, Luminaria.

Before the flood, Luminaria successfully had liberated three neighbors and enslaved an entire population of Southerners. They would use these slaves to begin reinforcing their infrastructure while still sustaining conquest outside the borders. Each Luminary is a warrior, but each also holds at least one other occupation when not fighting, and their warriors rotate service every 6 months. Before the Luminary could reach the height of their campaign objective, the beasts arrived, and the attention of the Luminary focused on the beasts as a way to display their superiority to spite the Gods above. The Luminary wanted to mock the Gods above so much at times, that they would decapitate the heads of the fallen beasts and stick them on pikes alongside the roads of their country. They would even practice community burnings as to send the dismembered parts of the beasts back to the stars from which they descended from as a celebration of power over the Gods who sent them.

The beast wars solidified the Luminaries position as a nation of Godlike ideals and boost their identity to unprecedented levels, until the rain fell. Unfortunately the infrastructure of Luminaria could only hold on for so long before it began to find itself under water, in a last ditch effort, although it struck a chord with the Luminary, they decided to submit defeat to the crying Gods and retreated to highlands to wait out the tantrum. Once the Gods ceased their childlike act, the Luminary created a new meaning out of the Deluge; a "bitch-fit" of the Gods they would claim, a testament to their inferiority. Vicente Seventus Speritis would rise on a major island in between two great land masses and begin right where Luminary left off, rebuilding once again the vision he had originally maintained before the deluge. It did not take long before Luminary found itself expanding out on all sides and to all other lands around them.

The Luminary maintain the philosophy that they were once Gods as those above, but because of their superior nature wished to play a more challenging game. To play the role of humans becoming Gods in the material realm built by them and the others above. It is in this idea their behavior can be clearly seen as movement to Power. They see other humans as simply expressions of all the other Gods, and are always given the option to bow to the Luminary as the Gods of All or to be tested by the trials of combat in order to maintain a worthy position in their mind of existing in the world.

Some important teachings of Vicente Seventus Speritis (More to come) - Philosopher and Oracle of the Luminary:

1) Kinship and Community

"The blood of our ancestors race through the veins of our brothers and sisters, let this be the bond we follow with our hearts, as the blood follows the veins to our heart, in this way we move our bodies as instruments for the purpose of becoming what we are not today, but to what we are becoming tomorrow...Gods of All."

2) Honesty

"We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our hands, taste with our tongues, and smell with our nose, but even we know each of these faculties can deceive us in any given moment...how unique the material world we live in is, how unique of a world we have built for ourselves. I say though, but what of breath? It is breath we find the bridge between who we really are and what we are pretending to be, let us not pretend to be and instead be the breath of our spirit, so all other senses will follow honestly."

3) Truth

"There is truth in all things, but not all things are true, it does not concern you or I what is full truth, but to live as true to you as one may know how in the times they live in, and remember, life is not knowing but experiencing, death is not experiencing but knowing, we are truly the Gods of All."

4) Justice

"The material world is fair, even, balanced, and as spirits playing the game of mortals we adhere to the natural laws or the rules of the game. We must show fairness, and balance to our kin as expressions of the Gods. Let us follow the mortal tale of our accuser and doer, let us walk with them, and let us discover together the response with which we can all agree is even to the action done to another."

5) Strength

"To reach the height of our becoming, we find strength in the relationships with each other, we each share the burden of social living, we each are a limb in which the entire body of our kind uses to progress. Strength is in our power to use one another to move forward and progress our kind as one single entity expressing itself among many, so I say to you, find your place, fulfill your role, and experience the strength of being the Gods of All."

6) Expressions of the Others - Slavery

"If another is to be defeated in combat and does not testify to their inferiority after, then they are to become the slaves of our Will. They are to remain as controlled expressions of their decided God, but work for ours. It is in this way we call upon their God to show itself to us and challenge our becoming, otherwise, we conclude their God is weak, and the expressions of weak Gods deserve no free will."

Fluffy Quotes:

"To fight a Luminary is like fighting an ocean tide lit up by the moon's dark night sky, the waves rise higher than the last casting more power behind the other as each one meets the rocky shore with great strength. We are the rocks sir, swept up, buried, and destroyed, but the restless waves ever dominating...oh how futile our efforts are, these are terrifying bastions of the Divine."

- A soldier left alive after the battle of Imes, speaking to the general of his country.

In the words of Balliste Seventus Speritis after the Deluge:

"In this world we do not play the role of one God or among the Gods, but we play as the Gods of All in the world among man. It is in this world we find ourselves greater than those who pretend to shine above us, for we admit it is more fulfilling to start below than above. It is an easy task to be above, it is a difficult one to be below. In this sense we are becoming, and not simply being. It is obvious from our point of view the Gods are weaker than us, look no further than the events of our past. The beasts march in our world sent from the Gods as a way to punish us, and we succeed in burying their imperfection. Then we find them crying over the weak beasts they sent onto us, and although the deluge presented great challenges, here we stand with the same purpose in mind...still becoming the Gods of All man."

@Dinh AaronMk Good to hear he's feeling better. Any word on the discord? What with the multinational nature of my faction I'd like to communicate with some people before I continue posting

@PsyKick

The way you write the history before and after the Deluge I get the impression you believe it was a brief period that a single generation could live through, and not the century or so of rain, and the centuries of time before then and now with much of what was washed or drowned beneath the new sea.

@Ekreture
Oh, right. I'll get to that. I'll send a PM out to everyone who has posted in IC.

@Dinh AaronMk

My apologies for my shitty clarity, I honestly just negated explaining the entire concept of Vicente Seventus Speritis because of time constraints, and I think doing so would clear up the concern. Its about to get real confusing, maybe not, wish me luck!

1) Vicente Seventus Speritis is not a man or woman and cannot die, because it is an idea created and sustained by the Luminary.

2) The one with the name Vicente Seventus Speritis is really just claiming - The Seventh Spirit is Victorious. This title is an "idea of the King of Gods." The Luminary are all Gods, playing the game of mortals. Their ideology has no changing leader, because every leader who rises in the circle of the original teachings are renamed as Vicente Seventus Speritis. It is not the man or woman who is seen as a leader, but the image and idea they embody.

3) Anyone who is a teacher of the Seventh Spirit will have Seventus Speritis attached as their middle and last name. Their first name is the one they were born with or given to them by the network of teachers who embody the core philosophy of Vicente Seventus Speritis. Example: "Balliste" Seventus Speritis

Vicente Seventus Speritis is not a lineage or single generation, it is the image of perfection and a claim that the Seventh Spirit is Victorious over all others. This is how Vicente Seventus Speritis emerged on an island after the Deluge, the individual embodies the image, the teachers acknowledge that individual (those who survived), and the individual then begins spreading word of their existence as Vicente Seventus Speritis. This idea immediately ignites the purpose and motivation of those in the surrounding land to gather behind the image once more and quickly start right where they left off.

@PsyKick

That's fine and all, but given nearly a century of rain bringing on turmoil I din't think any sort of broader institution as your suggestion would be able to just pick up and say, "We back to where we were before". This sounds like it would only really be a religious cult of the ruling class, since I doubt the lowly peasant with one change of clothes, no shoes, and who's probably living bare subsistence would feasibly care whether or not they're a god in a man's skin. And when the pressure builds over the course the deluge they'd likely turn on their worldly gods to get a few scraps of food, or protect whatever it is they can get, or over all the whole program becoming disconnected from one another socially or politically it'd naturally divide itself up: say someone somewhere, not knowing what's going on elsewhere declares themselves a Vicente Seventus Speritis, and begins the existence of an autonomous counter-office, and by post-deluge it's something of its own thing, because the people responsible have found out about the political and/or material power that gives them.

If you want to run a whole large-scale cult thing where everyone's a god that's fine. But I seriously doubt it would be as large as you're claiming it to be. Neither would when everything is over they up and decide to go back, other factors may have come into play that divided the land up, or seriously weaken it.

@Dinh AaronMk

I respect your opinion and appreciate the follow up, I could counter your concerns, but this is your roleplay, and not my world. I saw your idea as a fictional setting to explore in with my own idea, gods crying over dead beasts that create a flood, I wasn't expecting much realism to be involved in that sort of pitch. People unite quickly in large ways for all sorts of reasons, I gave a reason for the nation to exist, but it doesn't sit well with what you want in your world and thats cool. I'll throw it away, I genuinely look forward to reading the content.

Thanks for the reply and my best!

@PsyKick

I don't not want you in here, I rather would. But the concept you're trying to feel is a bit too much for want you want to do and there might be a number of better ways that I don't think are being considered. Or what is being proposed up front isn't being thought about all that well.

But I understand if you don't want to drop it, so it's your choice if you don't want to plum the depths of possibilities here.