The Faithless

The Empire generates discontent like a modern factory generates pollution; not by intentionally, but still inevitably. The Empire is built to funnel resources up a pyramid of hierarchy, into fewer and fewer hands.

Despite the fact that iterations of the Empire that distribute resources more broadly being those who last longer, all iterations inevitably concentrate resources into fewer and fewer hands. And as this happens, more and more imperial subjects grow discontent.

And some of the discontented inevitably rebel. 

Some rebels are Crusader Bureaucrats, those who seek to reform the Empire from the inside. They fail of course. But sometimes these Crusader Bureaucrats manage to paper over the inbuilt exploitation of the Empire and buy the Locust King a few more years on a slightly less gilded throne. Some seek salvation in the religions of the Empire like Good Charlatans. They excoriate other subjects of the Empire and implore them to be more noble and more pure. They blame the unavoidable corruption of the Empire on those crushed beneath its heel. Still others cry out anger. Lost Children who realize that their parents have no answers, they protest and march and write letters. They change a few little things from time to time, and often make the Empire marginally less oppressive for short periods. And some ignore these half measures and truly rebel. The Oil Cloth Rebels take arms against the Empire. Sometimes they seek to restore previous incarnations of the Empire, mistaking it for a golden age. Sometimes to merely succeed in replacing the previous incarnation, and thus become the Empire they opposed. A very few manage to oppose the Empire in its entirety.

But the rebels cannot be cleansed from the Empire. The rebels are the inevitable result of the functioning of the Empire. Unless the Empire succeeds in destroying human nature itself, the rebellion will continue. 

  • The Oil Cloth Rebels
  • The Good Charlatans
  • The Crusader Bureaucrats
  • The Lost Children 
  • The Lost Mother