Sci-Fi Religion

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>>51793565
Come on lads, at least tell me what the Mormons are getting up to in your sci-fi setting?

>>51794647
They mostly died when the US went kablooie.

>>51795096
>mostly
Well I mean, that implies some survived, right?
Has magic underwear spread to the stars?

On a more serious note, who kablooied the US and why?

>>51793565
I like to take inspirations from Esoteric Kekism to see how crazy fusions of ancient pagan traditions and techno-theism could emerge.

>>51795297
As in a (sci-fi)modern event which seems to be precipitated by an antique god?
That's actually not a bad idea, might steal it

>>51795176
Its a near future setting, so no space travel yet. The idea is that the world hit a techno golden age after discovering "magic", a replacement for fossil fuels that advanced technology and was discovered to have effects on the physical world. The golden age hit its peak when the construction of a massive power plant to provide power to the west coast went online, and then everything exploded. There was a chain reaction that caused all power plants using the new source to explode, ripping holes in reality with the larger plants. Then demons invaded from the tears, and a good portion caught in the fallout mutated into feral creatures. The US was hit the hardest, followed by Europe and mainland China.

>>51795423
So I guess Africa, Russia, and the Middle-East are doing pretty well comparatively?
To relate back to the thread, how are mainstream religions dealing with the fact that literal demons are invading places? Are Millenialist cults sprouting up all over the show?

>>51793565
Depdends. Most monotheistic religions are dead mostly, and most are atheist/agnostic. There is a rise in animalistic/simple religions like Taoism, Shinto, etc.
Fun Fact: On the desert world of Jeddah, there was a group of muslim fundiementalists living there. The heat was very unrelenting, and most females died because of heatstroke. So they decided to make a holographic version of the hijab, but the plan mostly backfired, leading to a lot of body exposure in the wrong times. Nowadays, a Holographic Hijabi is used to describe changelings/spies.

>>51795593
I have a similar thing with a "as useless as a Gyroscopic Muslim" denoting pointless redundancy.
Were you in the space shintoism thread?
Either great minds think alike, or I'm flattered to be stolen from

>>51795502
If by well, you mean being overrun by the refugee governments from Europe, then yes.

There was a resurgence of Christian-Judeo beliefs, especially after "angels" started appearing. This lead to the reforming of the Knights Templar to act as defence for humans and to push back against the demons. There is also the rise of Doomsday cults and mysticism related to the use of the new technology, since the philosophy of "fight fire with fire" is strong out of desperation.

The cosmology is that the "demons" is a Burning Legion like organization that invades new worlds and either indoctrinates the newly conquered into their ranks, or uses the weak or stubborn as forced labor until they go extinct. The "angels" are an advanced civilization that have been fighting the demons for ages now. There is a heavy parallel drawn with the Christian mythology, due to actual events rippling through the barriers of reality and psychically influencing humanity. For example, the expulsion of Lucifer from Heaven is how humanity pieced together the coup of one of the angel's greatest generals after he felt the ruling council was too weak to win the war, and then the fleeing of his troops after the attempt failed into contested territory to fight a guerrilla war against both sides.

>>51795662
Huh. What a coincidence! Yeah, I was. I had some ideas similar to this. A famous admiral, I don't remember his name but he was born in some spliter group of Jehovas Witnesses, and he single handedly orchestrated the capture of the cult by authorities when he was a child. He isn't a mary sue, and he has flaws.

>>51795696
>refugee governments from Europe
Please tell me there's a resurgent British Empire based out of ANZAC-land

But no man, that seems like a pretty cool setting.
Who are the players?

>>51795743
Well fair enough, I guess it's a Thrawn-type situation where he's able to help the authorities cause he understands the cult's psychology?

Maybe, you could work that into the guy's M.O., because understanding a mode of thinking brought him such success as at a formative age made him endeavour to always understand his enemies?

>>51795827
Yes. Also, if you are doing a sci-fi setting in your world can you tell me a system:
Heres the Anubis system
>Consists of 7 planets
>Orbiting a red dwarf
>Anubis was discovered by egyptian explorer Muhammad Ali Hussein in the 2340's
>Anubis II is a tidally locked planet which is habitable and a hellhole. Only reason why it is settled is because if mineral reserves
>Anubis III, IV, V are having some mining stations.
>Anubis I is a hot jupiter which contains a top-security prison for the United Terran Commonwealth for high ranking POWS. It also has a small fuel station
>Anubis VI is just a refueling station

Also, yes. He single handedly defeated a Merlod battlefleet through guile and trickery.

>>51793565
We know Islam never makes it into space. Fatwas prohibit Muslims from going to space.

>>51795749
Its still mostly bones. So far, the only part of the British I've developed is the ruins of London is home to an infamous mutant called the Rat King. It runs with large swarms of giant mutant rats, but its name comes from a more medieval source, since its back is covered by a thick coat of hair in which vermin entangle themselves in filth, forming a living cloak of rats on its back.

And what do you mean by players? Key powers, characters in the story, actual players?

>>51795905
Yes. Also, the Cruisers ISTN Apollo, Pride Of Jeddah, Reinbursement, Luck, and the Battleship ISTN Honor.

>>51795905
I'm using Traveller with heavy Stars Without Number influences for the setting.
For a given system:
Alcinous I and II are Venusian Hellholes with not enough minerals to justify any mining or settlement
Alcinous III is a large Belt planetoid, which acts as a trade hub for the small population of Belters.
Alcinous IV/Arete is a Gas Giant ideal for refueling.
Nausicaä is a habitable moon of Arete. It used to be a somewhat arid stop for merchants heading rimwards to the Frontier. However, during the great war, the moon was bombarded and nuked to send a message to the Independents. There are still a few inhabitants eking out a meagre existence.
see what I did there? Subtle, right?
Whoever was in charge of naming was a classics nerd, alright?

>>51795913
>implying religions don't adapt to circumstances

>>51796003
I'm planning to have my small confederacy to use Lunar Seas for it's Battleship names
Like: CSV Mare Imbrium and the CSV Mare Tranquilitatus as a Peacekeeping ship of course.
Dropping the "Mare" for short.

Also, the "CSV Oceanus Procellarum" is the bigass flagship

>>51795928
I mean, I meant the role that you would have your IRL players take.
But also, who are the major political players too?

>>51796096
Yeah. I mostly think of the systems myself. Here is a core system, Alpha Centauri. Royale, the city-planet and one of the main industrial and tourism centers of the UTC. Baltica, a mining world which is cold,desolate,and harsh (siberia in a nutshell). Tokugawa, the agricultural breadbasket of the core. Known for it's massive rice paddies. Then, there is Orbital-base-001.

>>51796137
Yeah. FTL travel is a versoin of the Alcubierre drive. FTL communications is done by ansible with all radio transmissions in the system transported to a small staion or array on a planet and transported across systems through warp.

>Baltica
>Tokugawa

I'm glad I'm not the only one partial to slightly cheesy Earth-based names.
I mean, it's realistic right?

Or at the very least, it's cozy.
When we're out in the black, we'll take anything to remind us of the cool green hills of earth

>>51796255
Yeah. Names are just System faggot IX, Earth name, or name after person.

>>51795913
>>51796096
>implying religions don't adapt to circumstances

Your not really in space if you have the earth below your feet. Enter people selling earth dirt. People are very adapt at bending religions.

>>51796215
>ansible
And you were doing so well anon
I'm a Traveller purist(somewhat)

But, to be serious, what would you say is the biggest organised religion in your setting?
And how big is your setting? Like if Alpha Centauri is a core system, where is the frontier?

>>51796377
the core is 250 lightyears from the Sol system.

>>51796377
I'd say well, Buddhism.

>>51796309
I'm not gonna lie, I was totally planning to have one of my players patrons be a priest asking them to retrieve an important sealed package from a different system, only for it to turn out to be earth-dirt once opened.
The priest is still willing to pay a lot for it, provided it stays sealed

Plus, wasn't that a thing in the Spacer Superstition threads? Keeping a bit of your home's dirt on you, just in case you died in space?
So your spirit could find it's way home, you know?

>>51796377
Yes. Humans tend to live on Orbitals (think o'neil cylinders), planets, frontier outposts, mining settlements. Also, there are nomads there after the economic crisis after the main servers were lost during the battle of eden.

>>51796168
That's what I was thinking you meant. I'm developing the setting for a skirmish wargame, so players would take control of a small force. Right now there's 4 factions written up, with 3~ more that need to be fleshed out.

Right now there's the Knights Templar, the main force for the western world. They use the best equipment and piwer armored troops, but are limited by numbers. The organization takes a very restricted approach to things, fearing to over exert itself and reluctant to use non-tried and true tactics and weapons.

On the other side of the spectrum is the Cabalists, a force that uses what it can to help humanity. They have numbers over the Templars, but lack the training and equipment, forcing them to rely on experimental equipment and questonable technologies to compensate.

Then there's the Cults of the Damned. Not a unified force, they represent the Apocalypse cuts, demon worshipers, fringe militaries that don't support the refugees and see them as invaders of their homes, and the scum taking advantage of the end of the world. They have numbers and devotion in the form of cultists, but have to rely on what they can scrounge up or steal.

The demons are made up the Infernal Legions. The are an eclectic collction of creatures and monsters. There's the more Hellfire traditional demon types, but there's also odder ones, like the surgically altered Bile Legionnaires, the cyclopean Void Priests, and the suicidal Voidlings who explode into a powerful vacuum.

>continued

>>51796558
Those are the fleshed out ones, but there's also the Celestial Host, the powerful angelic force at war with the Legions. Humanity sees them as a symbol of hope and faith, but they are not human's allies. They view us as a convenient resource to expend for their own goals.

And there's the Morlocs, hordes of mutant humans that lurk the ruins of the old world. Alone, they are not much of a threat to trained soldiers, but in packs, especially ones lead by a Morloc King, they can turn into a threat quickly.

Last one is the least fleshed out. The base idea is the remnants of the Asian powers. Due to the way their weapons technology developed and due to extremely limited numbers, they use large power armor suits designed for long deployments into the demon occupied remains of China.

>>51795423
>The golden age hit its peak when the construction of a massive power plant to provide power to the west coast went online,
Something, something, Tesla's tower?

>>51796309
Good luck facing Mecca from the other spinward arm of the galaxy.

>>51796650
Just face wherever the first colony ship touched down. Or where the first Mosque was built.
Or build a gyroscopic prayer mat, if you care that much

>>51796650
Just invent a room where the gravity is angled as such that the ground is always parallel with the general direction towards Earth. You when you sit down to pray you can always be facing it.

Isn't that hard for a civilization with workable FTL to do

>>51796586
As a suggestion:
Celestial Host could be like the Knights, but more so and with more emphasis on melee and decapitation strikes. A skirmish would be something like, 10 guys with holy swords, but they'd cut through a horde like a fine cheese wire and nail their leadership to a cross.

Think toned down Dynasty Warriors with Judeo-Christian overtones.

So a single, bog standard Angel would be a guy with a flaming sword and a Jericho horn, and some decent speed. Said flaming sword would be effectively instant kill on any mook in melee range, but their only ranged option would be the Jericho horn, which kinda suck at it-short range, low damage-and are strictly emergency weapons.

>>51796685
Absolutely haram.

>>51796738
Setting up a gyroscopically-mounted prayer room? I mean, maybe.

But it's still haram to leave the planet where Muhammad died for your sins.

>>51796901
Grandpa, I think your gyroscopic prayer mat making the blood-rush to your head isn't good for one's health, especially someone of your age

>>51796898
That's actually kinda what I am going with them. Low number, high speed elite force that hits hard in melee. The idea for them is ayy lmaos meets the angels from Darksiders. They don't have the best resilience and their ranged is powerful but extremely short ranged. They specialize in the alpha strike, being able to charge in and hit with big firey attacks, and able to control the field a bit with the ability to drop troops onto the fields.

>>51797161
Hmm.
How much does the game-play rely on units granting bonuses to other units?

Because if that's a major part of gameplay, my own vision of the Host would be a faction of assassins-their favored tactic would be getting to those bonus granting units, ganking them, and then mopping up the rest. To that end, they'd sacrifice control of the field for more crowd control and mobility options.

The opposition's objective would be to protect their bonus granting units long enough for the Host to get swarmed under. To that end they'd go for control of the field and limiting enemy mobility.

>>51793565
basically, people are allowed to worship whatever they want in the comfort their own home or private office shrines.

building public places of worship is banned, however. en entire branch of the government is dedicated to inspecting new buildings to ensure there is no religious iconography in the design. public religious ceremonies are similarly banned. protesting religious freedoms will probably get you arrested and exiled, if not executed. (depends on who is responding)

most religious weddings take place in private homes or rented venues like a conference center.

even the leaders of the government are not immune to this, despite one family worshiping a pantheon of 100 goddesses and gods for millennia.

>>51797805
It depends on the faction. The Templars, Cabalists, and Legions are all pretty strong in stats, so most buffs are to make them better but aren't game breaking for them. While the Cults have weak morale, so they rely on strong leadership characters to keep from running away, while Morlocs use their numbers to take down bigger targets, so they get bonuses based on how many other models are helping them, and the initial ideas with the Asian force was that each powersuit would be strong, but would have a few weaker models that support them, so you'd have to be careful as to not drag them into danger with your powersuit.

Another thing that adds to the control aspect is that I took a page from Dark Age when it comes to charging into combat, you just move into range and if you weren't engaged at the start of the move, you get an attack. So you have to choose placement around them carefully, otherwise an angel could bounce its way through your force, picking off weaker models.

>>51796096
>>implying religions don't adapt to circumstances
>Islam caring about practicality or changing anything about itself except to somehow inexplicably get worse

Many of Earth's cultures were preserved by a space dragon that bought it, but they've been flanderdized to absurd levels due to the dragon's strict enforcement of cultural preservation. Now that the majority of humans have left Earth lots of old-earth religions have started to revert to their original state, but you still see people going to church in full crusader getup, and one of the most powerful human factions is straight up modeled after feudal Japan.

>>51795411
In my setting, Mars turned out to be "inhabitable" (actually the prophet was just able to breathe outside a colony) almost a century before the projected terraformation was complete.

>>51793565
A sort of "anti-deism" religion centered around the worship of sapient life as true gods, their very existence being divine spark.

It started out as a purely human religion, before humans had made contact, but quickly spread to become a pan-sapient thing.
Of course, there are still species-specific denominations, humans or other.

>>51798214
>>So you have to choose placement around them carefully, otherwise an angel could bounce its way through your force, picking off weaker models.

Good way to amp that up would be to let some Angels fly so long as they're not engaged, and have them be the only units in the game that can pull a flying melee charge.

>>51798623
Already ahead of you on that one. The idea is fast, hits hard, and fragile. Like how 40k Eldar are supposed to play. But without the issues 40k has in its system. They're also going to be outnumbered by everyone else. Average game I'm shooting for is 6-8 models, the Host will be running with half that.

>>51798617
The best way to describe the tenets would actually be something like "radical subjective free will", in that each individual sapient is considered to be divine, in an atheistic "materialist" sense, and that only fellow sapients are just in exerting their will on others, for they are all divine.

Basically, it was originally a pseudo-theological justification for all human endeavor and thought (the state is holy, anarchy is holy, peace is holy, war is holy, etc...) in order to get around the problem of an objective morality, formalizing subjective ethics and power through sword and will.

Naturally, as contact was made, this would easily transfer into pan-sapiodeism, but at the same time it reignited religious oppression on the part of the original anthropodeists towards all other non-human sapients, and likewise for all the varying sects and species of xenodeists.

TL;DR: It's not really a "religion", per say, it's an ad hoc social engineering project to counter the search for objective morality, reducing ethical judgement solely to the individual and formalizing rule by the sword.

>>51793565
Well, my current setting involves a mass diaspora of various human cultures and ideologies from Earth to the stars during the tumultuous Ideological Wars of the late 21st century, resulting in a myriad of human empires based (consciously and otherwise) on various historical and theoretical Earth nations, and so, as a result, religion is just kinda all over the place. There is one religion though, that has the territory and power to be considered an established star nation: the Stellar Church of Christ, a pacifistic denomination of Christianity that nonetheless maintains a defensive force of space paladins that still yell DEUS VULT (for defensive purposes, of course). As for the rest; Germanic paganism is making a sort of comeback in the Greater Germanic Reich, Old Christianity still goes strong in the Columbian Republic, Hinduism has taken a back seat to rampant scientific pragmatism in the Bharati Directorate, the Republic of Zion subscribes to a sort of militant Judaism, absolutely no-one likes the Universal Caliphate, the Kingdom of Angland has an archaic sort of Christianity that incorporates elements from Celtic and Arthurian mythology, those kooks in the Eternal Aztec Empire do blood sacrifices less to keep the sun alive and more for the hell of it, and the Kingdom of Kemet worships the ancient Egyptian pantheon.

All in all, religion in the year 2399 is as varied as humanity itself.

>>51795593
You need more clothing in the desert to protect against heat and exposure, not less

>>51799010
How do they reconcile the fact that laws exist with the claim that everything is divine? Do you simply need to kill the bolis and every other guy coming after you when you break the law? Do they even have laws? If they do, doesn't that contradict the divine freedom of deciding to go "fuck your court" and arbitrarily execute a criminal or decide to let a proven murderer go free?
If you're aiming for absolute chaos this is good but is otherwise unworkable.

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>>51793565

I don't have different religions as much as I have different schools of thinking/philosophies and human aspirations.

Most of the faiths of sentient alien species are more akin to elaborate mythologies and moral codes more than actual belief systems as well.

That's not to say religious tendencies or a need for the sapient species to experience and express spirituality doesn't exist, it merely does not manifest in religious activity as much as we define them irl.

>>51799692
That's the point, laws themselves are divine, as they are created by sapients, while rebellion against law is also divine, as it is done by sapients.

The entire thing is one big social engineering project that got way out of hand, with the entire intent of religiously formalizing subjective ethics and rule by force.
In essence, it actually doesn't truly "effect" anything, just formalizing things as they already are, as the search for an objective reality is also divine, being the work of a sapient.
On the flip side, rejecting a supposed objective morality out of will is also divine, being the work of a sapient.

From a god's eye perspective, nothing has changed besides adherents now having the option to imbue all their actions, wills, and thoughts with a religious fervor.

>If they do, doesn't that contradict the divine freedom of deciding to go "fuck your court" and arbitrarily execute a criminal or decide to let a proven murderer go free?
Just as the sapient is free to refuse, so to is the state/court (which is divine and holy, having been made by sapients) free to impose its will.

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>the prophet returns

>>51793565
Lots of retarded cults and militaristic religions who force civilians to convert on the pain of death or slavery for power, human resources and tithes.

May or may be just because I want a chaotic setting filled with power greedy assholes and their idiotic knighthoods who either too stupid to realize they have been played for fools are just equally opportunistic.

>>51799622
Yes, but the thing is that they were wearing all black, an covered with layer upon layer.

>>51793565
>savage people from a isolated and extremely hostile jungle world who developed a very peculiar social structure in order to adapt them to their habitat. they worship nature and survival as the one truth above everything

>peaceful, somewhat democratic empire. they worship gods that are actually ancient, extremely advanced, moon sized intelligent constructs with psychic abilities that reaches entire solar systems

>small but strong empire ruled by banks and conglomerates. they are technically atheists, but they have a culture that basically worships money. the general population is mostly culturally brainwashed by their rulers and they religiously believe that religion is wrong

>>51793565
Setting takes place on a ring world that was abandoned by it's rulers after the central AI went rogue. Because of damage during the brief bit of conflict the AI's personality was fractured into multiple AI's each controlling a different subsystem of the ring world. These AIs have grown their own personalities, and the descendants of those left on the ring world after the ruling class left have taken to worshiping them as gods. The AI's themselves present themselves as gods, and at this point many of them are starting to believe it too.

>>51793565
I ran a short traveller game where one of my players cribbed the cult of Bob from EVE Online.

That player does crazy shit all the time, so whatever. But I did like the part about burial in space involving stuffing the casket full of cleaning supplies.
"When you're dead you got lots of free time. And space is dirty."

>>51799746
So it LITERALLY has no importance whatsoever in any way? Why does it even exist in your game world?

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>>51793565
As a posthuman megacivilization religion are very bizarre: From the Omega religion that states that God would be the result of the evolution of all (or some) intelligent life to worship of mathematics itself.

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45bce4b65a4ce
About Transcendence:
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/57ea653da24c4

>>51799726
>A large scale religion which for generations has been using orbit around a specific gas giant into a massive catacomb. A literal ring system composed of human bones.