The Sword of Tian: The Advent of the Holy Exohuman Imperium.
November 28, 1937, 5:39 pm. Zhongshan Convent, off the coast of China.
The island convent was in the middle of a flurry of activity. People raced across the grounds, packing equipment and provisions into the boats. The convent was established a few years ago to convert the Chinese villagers and fishers to Christianity while protecting them from the Maoist communists and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists. Now, with a new threat in the form of the budding Empire of Japan looming in the horizon, everyone agreed that they must leave before the Japanese patrol boats arrive.
Overseeing the evacuation was Missionary John Zhongshan, the leader of the convent. The son of a Chinese father and an Englishwoman, John was capable of bringing hundreds of people together for a common cause. In addition to the Chinese, he also had Europeans, Arabs, Hispanics and even African- and Caucasian-Americans among his flock. Like a microcosm of humanity at its best, each member aided the entire group as best as they could while casting aside delusions of supposed superiority and unfounded inferiority that characterized the chaotic era they lived in. The convent was their slice of utopia… and now it was being threatened with annihilation.
Helping the others load the last of their belongings into the boats, John joined the last of the converts onto the final boat. As the sun dipped below the landmass, the boats continued southeastward for a few hours until they made it to a small island. As the boats were beached upon the shore and the convent have disembarked, someone noticed a strange opening in the side of a large hill. Scanning the skies, John saw that it was about to rain and directed everyone inside.
On the walls of the cave, which seemed to be made of a strange metal that seemed to move as if it have a life of its own, there were glyphs that glowed a faint cyan light. There were also sconces which held spheres made of a glass-like material. When John slid a hand over the pair of glyphs underneath one of the spheres, the objects glowed one after another until the entire corridor was well lit. Believing that they were inside some sort of underground base, the group continued on warily, anxiously looking for traps or possible ambushes. Eventually, they arrived in an oval room full of strange instruments and panels attached to long benches that contoured along the walls. However, these were not the sole objects of the group's interest.
There were mummified corpses sitting in some of the seats and lying on the floor. Wearing torn, dusty clothing that appeared utilitarian in style, possible military or some other type of uniforms, the beings appeared to be humanoid in bone structure and taller than the average human male, though there appeared to be desiccated strands of flesh growing out of the base of their elongated heads in place of hair. By the appearance of shriveled suction cups along each strand, and the lack of hair or fur, one could easily surmise that the beings were related to cephalopods like squids and octopi. No external wounds that would indicate the cause of death were found on the bodies. Looking around, John thought of the room's layout and arrangement of equipment and seat and noticed that it strangely resembled the inside of a ship's bridge. If so, these creatures may have died when this vessel, not base, crashed on this island. But where did it come form? Even a contemporary ship would never be able to plow into an island hard enough to bury itself into the soil while remaining mostly intact. These creatures are unlike anything he'd ever seemed on Earth. Perhaps they came from above…
Suddenly, a swarm of dots sprang from a dais in the center of the room. Thin lines connected each dot to each other and the entire assembly rotated around a very bright center. As the others give the strange projection a wide berth, John cautiously walked toward it, more curious than afraid. Unlike some in his profession, John valued the sciences as much as religion and did not believe that the two were diametrically opposed to each other. He felt that, in certain circumstances, both of them can complement each other. In fact, one of his reasons for joining this profession is to open a school where the sociologists and biologists among his group can aid him in giving the new converts an education. Sensing that the collection of connected dots were nothing more than the product of a science humanity had not quite reached yet, John reached out and touched a dot. Immediately, the entire ship began to shake violently as a whir started to build in pitch. Shouting to the others to hang onto something, John grabbed onto a nearby chair and squeezed his eyes shut. It's a good thing these chairs were attached to the floor.
Outside the ship, a bright light blanketed a large portion of the island moments before a huge chunk of it flew into the darkening sky as a blur, leaving behind a massive crater that immediately began to fill with seawater.
Unknown Time, unknown planet.
When the ship landed on another world, the group exited to find themselves on a large island populated by a strange race of primitive beings with two pairs of fins on the sides of their heads and a single large red eye in the center of their foreheads. Awed by the ship in which the humans arrived and their strange tools, the creatures soon started treating them like gods and John as their leader. However, John was uncomfortable with being worshiped by the natives and, with the help of the others, soon convinced them to treat them like equals. For the next few months the humans and the natives, who are known as the locharae, learned to speak each others' languages. During this time, a new convent was establish around the ship and given the name Lix Abernai after the locharean translation for “New Beginning”. He also named the planet New Terra and the sun after his deceased wife Isabelle. With advice from his sociologists, John preached his beliefs to the locharae, making sure to mesh them with their own in order to make it easier to convert them.
As the months turned into years, the humans subsisted on the native aquatic life after running out of food they brought with them. The strange oils of the sea creatures seemed to improved their brain functioning, causing them to become more intelligent than the average human. This allowed them to more easily reverse engineer and copy technology from the ship, starting a technological revolution on their home island. Better tools and more powerful weapons were manufactured inside newly constructed buildings and better methods of farming and gathering resources were established, which helped the two species thrive as well as protected them against not only ferocious sea predators but the occasional raid from the more aggressive locharian tribes on the nearby islands. However, the oils that blessed the humans with greater intelligence now interfered with the movement of neural signals being sent to their skeletal muscles. This eventually resulted in the humans becoming much weaker than their Earth-bound fellows and much of the heavy menial labor were left to the locharae. As these new traits passed onto the next generation, a question was raised as to whether they still could be considered humans. After much discussion with his trusted advisers, John determined that he and the others were in fact the forebears of a new subspecies of humans. They were to be called exohumans for they were developing in a different direction from normal humanity.
As the years became decades, the humans and locharae established towns on the island and the beginnings of a more unified infrastructure was in the making. After leading the exohumans and locharae through both bountiful and troubled times, John contracted a tropical disease and had to turn over his leadership to the budding Council of New Terra. On his deathbed, John gave the leaders just two final requests. His first request was for the Council to spread their faith peacefully throughout New Terra and to never force anyone to convert at gunpoint. His second request, obviously inspired by the locharae's first reception of him when his convent first arrived here, was a warning not to set anyone they elected up as a being to be worshiped for such is blasphemy in the eyes of God. After making these requests, Missionary John Zhongshan passed away in the evening. After a lengthy funerary ceremony the next day, John was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the sea. A statue of the missionary was raised in the town square of Lix Abernai, the capital.
As the decades went by, the exohumans used sailing ships to spread to other islands to spread their faith to the neighboring locharae. While some were converted, others shooed away the exohumans, sometimes even violently. Nevertheless, the exohumans remembered their deceased leaders last requests and left them alone. Meanwhile, exohuman explorers sailed the seas of New Terra, drawing maps and navigation charts and taking notes of their discoveries. It was soon discovered that New Terra has a much higher percentage of water than Earth, perhaps around 90%. This explained why the locharae make extensive use of rafts and boats and why storms are bigger and longer-lasting. Nevertheless, the tales told by returning explorers sparked a greater interest in the outside world and missionary trips soon surged.
As decades turned into centuries, the Earth languages and pronunciations of the exohumans soon melded with the languages of the locharae and their names soon shifted as well. For example, 'John Zhongshan' soon morphed into 'Jhun Jangshi' and the sun 'Isabelle' became 'Ygsabhelle'. The Asian-styled architecture familiar to the oldest exohumans were melding into the smooth, organic architecture of the locharae to form a new style. Like the new human subspecies they saw themselves as, the exohumans and their descendants soon forgot about Earth and the troubles that led them here in the first place. By the time the last person who was born when John was still alive died, the final link to that past was broken and a new existence awaited the exohumans and locharae. However, the seeds of a dark future were about to sprout.
The locharae who'd rejected the exohumans' faith began to see them as a threat to their way of life and begin amassing their forces. Meanwhile, as the exohumans spread throughout New Terra, they splintered into several groups, each differing in philosophies and beliefs. This came to a head when an alliance of exohuman nations attacked another alliance with the intent of forcefully converting their populace to their perspective. The seas were dyed red with the blood of exohumans, regardless of whether they were soldiers or civilians, and almost each battle would bring suffering to both the victors and the vanquished as the anti-exohuman locharian tribes would often wait at the edges until both sides were weary from the fight to pounce in and slaughter them both. Entire exohuman villages were razed by the locharae and their inhabitants were forcefully expelled off the islands if not outright put to the sword.
It was during this time when an ambitious general named Leos Garreo appeared. Openly proclaiming himself a Divine Child of Ti'an and the spiritual successor of Jhun Jangshi himself, Leos gathered a great army of followers and took the fight to the belligerents. Formerly a psychologist, Leos knew just how to get into the heads of both potential allies and bitter enemies and determine what they desired and feared. Coupled with the naturally high intelligence of the exohumans, Leos was able to attract them to his side while sowing seeds of doubt among those who refused him, making them easier to defeat. During what became known as the Reunion Crusade in which he fought to consolidate the various exohuman nations back into a single country, Leos had made several enemies on the war, with the cult known as the Church of Light being chief among them. They felt that Leos was violating the Prophet Jhun's second prohibition about setting oneself up as a god or some other divine agent. However, their words soon fell on deaf ears as the people became desperate for a symbol of their belief, a tangible sign that Ti'an was still with them, and through Leos' sermons they saw that in him. In the history books of the exohumans, no matter how embellished they are, it was said that this was the day Leos became the first God-Emperor and when the soul of the Holy Exohuman Imperium was born.
As the Church of Light was driven to near extinction by zealots, the Reunification Host fought viciously against the few independent nations and eventually brought them into the fold. Once the last of the dissident voices were silenced, they turned their attention to the hostile locharian tribes. Despite being particularly effective pirates and raiders, even the locharae stood no chance against the unified naval and terrestrial might of the Host and they were pushed deeper into the hidden corners of the world. The villages and towns they left behind were captured by the exohumans and their inhabitants were converted to their faith, sometimes at gunpoint.
Once the war was brought to a bloody close, with enemies far too few and weak to pose a threat, Leos would settle in his new role as God-Emperor of the newly established Holy Exohuman Imperium. He then brought reforms into many areas, particularly in education, society, and religion. He created a school system in which children would be taught at a young age the social and biological sciences along with their typical classes. In this way, Leos hoped that they can be as versed in those areas as Jhun's learned disciples. The system will also teach them to be resilient in mind, body, and soul to make up for their people's physical weakness. That way, should the enemies of the Holy Imperium rise against them in the future, they will find not an easy prey but a species fully prepared and very willing to defend their homes at any cost, even if they must be content with taking as many of them as they can to the afterlife with them. Lastly, the structure and characteristics of the religion of the Holy Exohuman Imperium were changed. First, though the God-Emperor is not to be worshiped directly, he (or she) is to be considered the Divine Child of Ti'an and His Voice. As the representative of the Almighty, the edicts of the God-Emperor are final and can only be repeal by himself or his successors in the Holy Family. The leaders of the sectors on New Terra are to be known as the Great Leaders and they will form the Imperial Church, electing one of their own to lead as Governor until his death or termination from office either by vote among his peers or at the God-Emperor's command. Meanwhile, the Council of New Terra were dissolved and their duties were given to the Imperial Church as well.
As for the locharae, Leos had plans for them. Considering them to be a liability due to their near childlike mentality, the God-Emperor initiated a syncretism breeding program in which the molluscoid species would be bred for traits that would benefit the exohumans. Individuals who showed great body strength were bred with those with gentle dispositions to give birth to offspring that had both. Aphrodisiacs and growth stimulants were given to such locharae so that their can breed and pass on their traits quickly. However, those who showed aggressive tendencies or high amounts of intelligence were secretly isolated onto deserted islands when they would live out their lives in peace. However, there are rumors in the information underground that these aggressive locharae were sterilized before being abandoned to their fates and some had claimed that they were even exterminated. Others claimed that they still lived among their species, only that their tendencies had been brainwashed out of them. Whatever the truth is, Leos' program was a resounding success and the newer generation of locharae were now dull-witted but strong serviles ready to serve the Holy Imperium in a way Ti'an had blessed them through Leos to serve. Though Leos didn't live long enough to see the first fruits of the budding exohuman space program, he was confident that it was the start of a new era for the Holy Exohuman Imperium. Only time will tell whether his descendants succeed in spreading their faith throughout the stars or if the ghosts of the past and future threats bring the legacy of Prophet Jhun Jangshi to an ignoble end.
Prologue
November 28, 1937, 5:39 pm. Zhongshan Convent, off the coast of China.
The island convent was in the middle of a flurry of activity. People raced across the grounds, packing equipment and provisions into the boats. The convent was established a few years ago to convert the Chinese villagers and fishers to Christianity while protecting them from the Maoist communists and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists. Now, with a new threat in the form of the budding Empire of Japan looming in the horizon, everyone agreed that they must leave before the Japanese patrol boats arrive.
Overseeing the evacuation was Missionary John Zhongshan, the leader of the convent. The son of a Chinese father and an Englishwoman, John was capable of bringing hundreds of people together for a common cause. In addition to the Chinese, he also had Europeans, Arabs, Hispanics and even African- and Caucasian-Americans among his flock. Like a microcosm of humanity at its best, each member aided the entire group as best as they could while casting aside delusions of supposed superiority and unfounded inferiority that characterized the chaotic era they lived in. The convent was their slice of utopia… and now it was being threatened with annihilation.
Helping the others load the last of their belongings into the boats, John joined the last of the converts onto the final boat. As the sun dipped below the landmass, the boats continued southeastward for a few hours until they made it to a small island. As the boats were beached upon the shore and the convent have disembarked, someone noticed a strange opening in the side of a large hill. Scanning the skies, John saw that it was about to rain and directed everyone inside.
On the walls of the cave, which seemed to be made of a strange metal that seemed to move as if it have a life of its own, there were glyphs that glowed a faint cyan light. There were also sconces which held spheres made of a glass-like material. When John slid a hand over the pair of glyphs underneath one of the spheres, the objects glowed one after another until the entire corridor was well lit. Believing that they were inside some sort of underground base, the group continued on warily, anxiously looking for traps or possible ambushes. Eventually, they arrived in an oval room full of strange instruments and panels attached to long benches that contoured along the walls. However, these were not the sole objects of the group's interest.
There were mummified corpses sitting in some of the seats and lying on the floor. Wearing torn, dusty clothing that appeared utilitarian in style, possible military or some other type of uniforms, the beings appeared to be humanoid in bone structure and taller than the average human male, though there appeared to be desiccated strands of flesh growing out of the base of their elongated heads in place of hair. By the appearance of shriveled suction cups along each strand, and the lack of hair or fur, one could easily surmise that the beings were related to cephalopods like squids and octopi. No external wounds that would indicate the cause of death were found on the bodies. Looking around, John thought of the room's layout and arrangement of equipment and seat and noticed that it strangely resembled the inside of a ship's bridge. If so, these creatures may have died when this vessel, not base, crashed on this island. But where did it come form? Even a contemporary ship would never be able to plow into an island hard enough to bury itself into the soil while remaining mostly intact. These creatures are unlike anything he'd ever seemed on Earth. Perhaps they came from above…
Suddenly, a swarm of dots sprang from a dais in the center of the room. Thin lines connected each dot to each other and the entire assembly rotated around a very bright center. As the others give the strange projection a wide berth, John cautiously walked toward it, more curious than afraid. Unlike some in his profession, John valued the sciences as much as religion and did not believe that the two were diametrically opposed to each other. He felt that, in certain circumstances, both of them can complement each other. In fact, one of his reasons for joining this profession is to open a school where the sociologists and biologists among his group can aid him in giving the new converts an education. Sensing that the collection of connected dots were nothing more than the product of a science humanity had not quite reached yet, John reached out and touched a dot. Immediately, the entire ship began to shake violently as a whir started to build in pitch. Shouting to the others to hang onto something, John grabbed onto a nearby chair and squeezed his eyes shut. It's a good thing these chairs were attached to the floor.
Outside the ship, a bright light blanketed a large portion of the island moments before a huge chunk of it flew into the darkening sky as a blur, leaving behind a massive crater that immediately began to fill with seawater.
Unknown Time, unknown planet.
When the ship landed on another world, the group exited to find themselves on a large island populated by a strange race of primitive beings with two pairs of fins on the sides of their heads and a single large red eye in the center of their foreheads. Awed by the ship in which the humans arrived and their strange tools, the creatures soon started treating them like gods and John as their leader. However, John was uncomfortable with being worshiped by the natives and, with the help of the others, soon convinced them to treat them like equals. For the next few months the humans and the natives, who are known as the locharae, learned to speak each others' languages. During this time, a new convent was establish around the ship and given the name Lix Abernai after the locharean translation for “New Beginning”. He also named the planet New Terra and the sun after his deceased wife Isabelle. With advice from his sociologists, John preached his beliefs to the locharae, making sure to mesh them with their own in order to make it easier to convert them.
As the months turned into years, the humans subsisted on the native aquatic life after running out of food they brought with them. The strange oils of the sea creatures seemed to improved their brain functioning, causing them to become more intelligent than the average human. This allowed them to more easily reverse engineer and copy technology from the ship, starting a technological revolution on their home island. Better tools and more powerful weapons were manufactured inside newly constructed buildings and better methods of farming and gathering resources were established, which helped the two species thrive as well as protected them against not only ferocious sea predators but the occasional raid from the more aggressive locharian tribes on the nearby islands. However, the oils that blessed the humans with greater intelligence now interfered with the movement of neural signals being sent to their skeletal muscles. This eventually resulted in the humans becoming much weaker than their Earth-bound fellows and much of the heavy menial labor were left to the locharae. As these new traits passed onto the next generation, a question was raised as to whether they still could be considered humans. After much discussion with his trusted advisers, John determined that he and the others were in fact the forebears of a new subspecies of humans. They were to be called exohumans for they were developing in a different direction from normal humanity.
As the years became decades, the humans and locharae established towns on the island and the beginnings of a more unified infrastructure was in the making. After leading the exohumans and locharae through both bountiful and troubled times, John contracted a tropical disease and had to turn over his leadership to the budding Council of New Terra. On his deathbed, John gave the leaders just two final requests. His first request was for the Council to spread their faith peacefully throughout New Terra and to never force anyone to convert at gunpoint. His second request, obviously inspired by the locharae's first reception of him when his convent first arrived here, was a warning not to set anyone they elected up as a being to be worshiped for such is blasphemy in the eyes of God. After making these requests, Missionary John Zhongshan passed away in the evening. After a lengthy funerary ceremony the next day, John was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the sea. A statue of the missionary was raised in the town square of Lix Abernai, the capital.
As the decades went by, the exohumans used sailing ships to spread to other islands to spread their faith to the neighboring locharae. While some were converted, others shooed away the exohumans, sometimes even violently. Nevertheless, the exohumans remembered their deceased leaders last requests and left them alone. Meanwhile, exohuman explorers sailed the seas of New Terra, drawing maps and navigation charts and taking notes of their discoveries. It was soon discovered that New Terra has a much higher percentage of water than Earth, perhaps around 90%. This explained why the locharae make extensive use of rafts and boats and why storms are bigger and longer-lasting. Nevertheless, the tales told by returning explorers sparked a greater interest in the outside world and missionary trips soon surged.
As decades turned into centuries, the Earth languages and pronunciations of the exohumans soon melded with the languages of the locharae and their names soon shifted as well. For example, 'John Zhongshan' soon morphed into 'Jhun Jangshi' and the sun 'Isabelle' became 'Ygsabhelle'. The Asian-styled architecture familiar to the oldest exohumans were melding into the smooth, organic architecture of the locharae to form a new style. Like the new human subspecies they saw themselves as, the exohumans and their descendants soon forgot about Earth and the troubles that led them here in the first place. By the time the last person who was born when John was still alive died, the final link to that past was broken and a new existence awaited the exohumans and locharae. However, the seeds of a dark future were about to sprout.
The locharae who'd rejected the exohumans' faith began to see them as a threat to their way of life and begin amassing their forces. Meanwhile, as the exohumans spread throughout New Terra, they splintered into several groups, each differing in philosophies and beliefs. This came to a head when an alliance of exohuman nations attacked another alliance with the intent of forcefully converting their populace to their perspective. The seas were dyed red with the blood of exohumans, regardless of whether they were soldiers or civilians, and almost each battle would bring suffering to both the victors and the vanquished as the anti-exohuman locharian tribes would often wait at the edges until both sides were weary from the fight to pounce in and slaughter them both. Entire exohuman villages were razed by the locharae and their inhabitants were forcefully expelled off the islands if not outright put to the sword.
It was during this time when an ambitious general named Leos Garreo appeared. Openly proclaiming himself a Divine Child of Ti'an and the spiritual successor of Jhun Jangshi himself, Leos gathered a great army of followers and took the fight to the belligerents. Formerly a psychologist, Leos knew just how to get into the heads of both potential allies and bitter enemies and determine what they desired and feared. Coupled with the naturally high intelligence of the exohumans, Leos was able to attract them to his side while sowing seeds of doubt among those who refused him, making them easier to defeat. During what became known as the Reunion Crusade in which he fought to consolidate the various exohuman nations back into a single country, Leos had made several enemies on the war, with the cult known as the Church of Light being chief among them. They felt that Leos was violating the Prophet Jhun's second prohibition about setting oneself up as a god or some other divine agent. However, their words soon fell on deaf ears as the people became desperate for a symbol of their belief, a tangible sign that Ti'an was still with them, and through Leos' sermons they saw that in him. In the history books of the exohumans, no matter how embellished they are, it was said that this was the day Leos became the first God-Emperor and when the soul of the Holy Exohuman Imperium was born.
As the Church of Light was driven to near extinction by zealots, the Reunification Host fought viciously against the few independent nations and eventually brought them into the fold. Once the last of the dissident voices were silenced, they turned their attention to the hostile locharian tribes. Despite being particularly effective pirates and raiders, even the locharae stood no chance against the unified naval and terrestrial might of the Host and they were pushed deeper into the hidden corners of the world. The villages and towns they left behind were captured by the exohumans and their inhabitants were converted to their faith, sometimes at gunpoint.
Once the war was brought to a bloody close, with enemies far too few and weak to pose a threat, Leos would settle in his new role as God-Emperor of the newly established Holy Exohuman Imperium. He then brought reforms into many areas, particularly in education, society, and religion. He created a school system in which children would be taught at a young age the social and biological sciences along with their typical classes. In this way, Leos hoped that they can be as versed in those areas as Jhun's learned disciples. The system will also teach them to be resilient in mind, body, and soul to make up for their people's physical weakness. That way, should the enemies of the Holy Imperium rise against them in the future, they will find not an easy prey but a species fully prepared and very willing to defend their homes at any cost, even if they must be content with taking as many of them as they can to the afterlife with them. Lastly, the structure and characteristics of the religion of the Holy Exohuman Imperium were changed. First, though the God-Emperor is not to be worshiped directly, he (or she) is to be considered the Divine Child of Ti'an and His Voice. As the representative of the Almighty, the edicts of the God-Emperor are final and can only be repeal by himself or his successors in the Holy Family. The leaders of the sectors on New Terra are to be known as the Great Leaders and they will form the Imperial Church, electing one of their own to lead as Governor until his death or termination from office either by vote among his peers or at the God-Emperor's command. Meanwhile, the Council of New Terra were dissolved and their duties were given to the Imperial Church as well.
As for the locharae, Leos had plans for them. Considering them to be a liability due to their near childlike mentality, the God-Emperor initiated a syncretism breeding program in which the molluscoid species would be bred for traits that would benefit the exohumans. Individuals who showed great body strength were bred with those with gentle dispositions to give birth to offspring that had both. Aphrodisiacs and growth stimulants were given to such locharae so that their can breed and pass on their traits quickly. However, those who showed aggressive tendencies or high amounts of intelligence were secretly isolated onto deserted islands when they would live out their lives in peace. However, there are rumors in the information underground that these aggressive locharae were sterilized before being abandoned to their fates and some had claimed that they were even exterminated. Others claimed that they still lived among their species, only that their tendencies had been brainwashed out of them. Whatever the truth is, Leos' program was a resounding success and the newer generation of locharae were now dull-witted but strong serviles ready to serve the Holy Imperium in a way Ti'an had blessed them through Leos to serve. Though Leos didn't live long enough to see the first fruits of the budding exohuman space program, he was confident that it was the start of a new era for the Holy Exohuman Imperium. Only time will tell whether his descendants succeed in spreading their faith throughout the stars or if the ghosts of the past and future threats bring the legacy of Prophet Jhun Jangshi to an ignoble end.
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