Children of the Vein

The Children of the Vein are one and yet many, a myriad of clans, fiefs, and tribes bound together in purpose and faith. Originally disparate peoples, drawn by the Beacon’s call, those who would become the Children of the Vein earned their place through strength, resilience, and bloodshed. On the planet Helocytus, the Veins (clans) discovered the tools of creation, gifts of science and understanding in cloning, genetic engineering, and all manner of biotechnologies. And at the source of these boons, the Veins claim to have found the divine, a god, or some path to it.

Through their holy devices, the scientists of the Veins zealously pursue progress, evolution, and growth towards the perfection of life, apotheosis. But there is no single path to this end. What god might be, what it wants from its people, and the genetic lineage of each Vein and soul are a spectrum of limitless diversity. All will seek, an endless competition. Many will fail, a lesson and celebration. But only the strongest shall survive.

Starting truths:

-A cult in service of a dark god

-A people focused as Cloners and Genetic Engineers

-Society broken up into clans and petty fiefdoms

History
The Beacon called to many. For some, it was the invitation of an alien civilization, or the distress signal of a dying race. For others, it was a promise of exploration, treasure, or the beckoning of something greater, a divine power reaching out to its children through the darkness. Many faiths ascribed religious significance to the Beacon when its summons were first discovered, but often these congregations sought only to confirm their own beliefs and scriptures. Some of those who now call themselves Children of the Vein were amongst these, but most who would come to Helocytus were drawn to the Beacon for their own, more secular purposes. Centuries ago, the first of those who would become part of the Children of the Vein arrived in Beacon Space, settlers searching for whatever it was that had called them. By the time they arrived, the Beacon’s source seemed to have fallen silent. Its precise origin could not be determined, and many of the nearby worlds were unpopulated, abandoned, or inhospitable. Nonetheless, some managed to make landfall on a world of astounding beauty - Helocytus.

Helocytus’ air was breathable, its temperature amenable, and a great number of its flora and fauna miraculously edible. From orbit, a towering specimen of megaflora was spotted, the boughs of a great tree stretching thousands of feet into the atmosphere. Landing parties established outposts in the shade of its broad leaves, and researchers were quick to begin studying it, fascinated by the strange, red, blood-like sap that flowed through the tree's limbs, the bodies of smaller trees like it, and into the earth of Helocytus. But as work began, scouting parties started returning wounded or not at all, bringing reports of violently aggressive wildlife with them. Helocytus’ treasures were well guarded. And as many would eventually discover, they were also a rarity within Beacon Space.

The first years of colonization were wearying and deadly. Fighting back the thick, barbed vines and dense jungles of Helocytus expended tools and resources quickly, dulling blades and damaging heavier equipment. The planet’s greatest beasts, forged by nature to survive bleak deserts, jagged mountains, and twisted forests of hungry flora, soaked round after round of ammunition, some needing a dozen or more fighters to bring them down. And with tensions and desperation mounting, groups of settlers began to turn on each other, fighting to make Helocytus their own. The planet was dangerous, but it was livable. And ship after ship of settlers would arrive over the following years, hoping for new lives, but succumbing to violence and bloodshed.

Years passed, and Helocytus earned a reputation as a trap for newcomers to Beacon Space. Many risked death before they even set foot on its surface, flying beasts roaming the skies and anti-air weaponry bristling from what encampments managed to survive long enough to erect them. Walls of fire burned slowly through the deepest forests, set to drive away Helocytus’ beasts, and the flowers of rolling plains were ripped out to make room for agriculture and pastures. But even as much of the planet was at war, curious researchers and scientists sought to discover more about their new world.

The first to study Helocytus and its lifeforms had barely enough time to take samples before the fighting broke out. Whatever they may have discovered was lost, burned, or the work never completed. The bloodiest conflicts would take place in the shade of the great tree over the following years, and any attempts to restart experiments nearby often ended quickly and violently. But as time passed, fighting spread further across Helocytus, alliances solidified, and some hoped studying the nature of the planet could give them an edge towards victory.

Many Veins claim to have been the first to know the truth of Helocytus’ power, but the greatest discoveries predate the formation of the Children of the Vein. Chief amongst these findings was The Blood of God, or Panacea. Within the sap of Helocytus’ great tree was a skeleton key of genetic science, a macromolecule that could open the doorway to engineering, editing, and splicing that had before been thought impossible. To use it would change the fundament of one’s identity, but reveal a seemingly limitless number of new genetic advancements and evolutionary possibilities.

Word spread quickly of the discovery and the experiments that followed. Clans, fiefs, and tribes turned their fighting back towards the great tree of Helocytus, some in defense of the scientists’ work and others hoping to claim it for themselves. People began to cut through the bark and the roots of the great tree to draw out its sap, drinking it and bathing in it. But the Blood of God required careful splicing to have its effects truly realized.

The long war of Helocytus could have once again cut the research short, but the greatest of the clans managed to negotiate a truce, that no fighting should happen in the shade of Helocytus’ great tree. Whether the clans intended to betray each other or truly work together was never clear, but the ceasefire held nonetheless. Members of many clans offered themselves up as subjects for the testing of the Blood of God, and Helocytus itself seemed aware of this change.

The fervor of the planet’s beasts waned in the presence of those who had received the Blood of God. Some remained aggressive, as was their nature, but it was no longer as strong as before. They did not seek out those touched by the Blood of God, hunting them for miles through the twisted forests, as they would new arrivals to Helocytus who dared to enter the wildest lands. And the effects of Helocytus’ pollens were dampened as well, many who had struggled with each breath finding new strength. The first seeds of belief had been planted, that Helocytus was the product of something greater than any had yet understood.

Further discoveries would only reinforce the developing faiths of Helocytus’ peoples. The Blood of God opened the door to genetic enhancements and cloning that allowed the living to evolve, and the dead to live on. The planet’s great tree offered up more gifts in the form of its fruits, used with the tools of science to birth space worthy vessels, and the red amber of its sap. Tunnels were unearthed, winding into unknown depths of Helocytus’ interior, and the very earth itself seemed to resist those who explored them. Some claim the strongest found the deepest caverns, and returned with tales of unspeakable divinity. Others say none have ever returned from the lowest points, their lives given over to Helocytus.

The great tree was named Providence by the faithful, though it knows many names: Wakwak, Eglé, The White Tree, Yggdrasil, amongst others. Homes were shaped into it and around it, from its roots to its highest boughs, and Providence became Helocytus’ first city and capital, one of the few places where the clans would stay their weapons. The people of Helocytus united under faith and purpose, the Children of the Vein, but never truly forsook their competitive and war-storied past. Even as they found their faith, it splintered as the wood of a tree into a thousand shards, each clan interpreting and building upon the fundamental truths of their belief. So, too, would each clan take the gifts of Helocytus, and seek different paths of evolution, change, and replication. Yet from this seemingly anarchical division, the Children of the Vein have built great wonders in the name of God, pursuing divinity as one.

Organization
Each clan, fief, and tribe of the Children of the Vein, known commonly as Veins, have their own internal structuring and hierarchies. Some focus on strength, training to serve as soldiers and guards. Others seek knowledge, working to uncover new secrets and weave new genetic advancements. A number keep their eyes fixed on God, raising priests and debating philosophy. And others still pursue politics, diplomacy, engineering, and the maintenance of the Veins’ way of life. Few clans fixate on any single one of these, but all focus their attention and hone their skills differently to the glory of god.

On a grander scale, the Veins each appoint a member to the two great councils of their united leadership, Pathos (Player Character) and Logos (Non-Player Character), the Hemispheres. The leader of each Vein sits upon Hemisphere Pathos, the lower council. Pathos deals in much of the day-to-day business of the Children of the Vein, and often sees the most heated debates. Each Vein also appoints a special representative to Hemisphere Logos, the higher council, which considers and guides the grander goals and needs of the Veins united.

In moments of great need or dire threat, the Hemispheres may also appoint a single individual, the Ethos (Non-Player Character), through holy trial. The Ethos descends into the deep of Helocytus to commune with God. Only a few are capable of this, those who have woven the greatest portions of the Blood of God into their being. Upon their return, if they return, the Ethos is anointed with great power, to guide the Children of the Vein through any hardship. Once their task is completed, the Ethos must return to the earth, to the deep places, never to return.

In most things, though, the Veins run themselves. They are free to choose the duties and paths of their own lives, the modifications of their own bodies, and the interpretations of their faith’s fundamental principles. Many Veins are not heavily hierarchical, and titles often denote duty or job instead of social status. That said, each Vein will often have similar genetic identities, religious beliefs, cultural norms, or collective purposes. Larger Veins may include a number of divisions devoted to similar or different tasks or beliefs, but even the smallest Veins typically share some common element that binds them together.

Culture
The clans, fiefs, and tribes of the Children of the Vein owe their heritage to a myriad of species and cultures. Rather than melting together into a homogenized identity, many of the Veins have retained or built upon their individual origins, resulting in a complex and labyrinthine sociological footprint. That said, a handful of commonalities are agreed upon by most cultural researchers. All Veins fundamentally believe in the same God and faith, though how each envisions God, how they worship, and what exact tenets they ascribe to can differ wildly. Shared tenets include a “survival of the fittest,” mentality, by which progress is exalted, but death and failure are also accepted and even celebrated. Failure is as much a divine gift as the Blood of God, as it is often only through failure that strength can be achieved. Many Veins also eschew the use of the Bleed or artificial technologies, such as robotics, on the principle that biotechnologies and science are the natural tools of god in the universe. Veins seek to perfect themselves and the natural world, whereas the Bleed and robotics are often viewed as a distortion or “cheating the system.” Most Veins harbor no hatred for those that do use the Bleed in Beacon Space, or for roboticists, a handful of Veins even experimenting with both of these things, but it is religiously and culturally looked down upon within the Children of the Vein.

Alongside their ever-present faith, Veins also uphold the sciences, particularly genetic science, biology, biotechnology, and associated fields. These two elements, science and faith, are not separated as they might be in some cultures, but are inextricably interwoven in most Veins. It is through science and the Blood of God that the Children of Vein can iterate upon their lineages, improving and evolving themselves and their kin towards God’s perfection. Ritualistic elements are common to scientific practices in the Veins, and a healthy competition between clans and fiefs is celebrated, a continuation of Helocytus’ divided history.

But even as the Veins pursue what appears to be a singular goal, their paths to it are explicitly diverse and varied. The Children of the Vein uphold diversity and the singularity of each sapient life, even going so far as to consider each Clone an individual separate from its origin. All life has a value, and as such deserves respect, sapient or not.

God
God’s true nature is unknown to all, but what is known is that it or some piece of it is on Helocytus, deep within its core. What God is doing is unknown, or may even be unknowable to our feeble mortal minds. What we do know is that God’s sacred Blood that flows throughout the planet provides us with life, safety and knowledge. Using its sacred Blood, we have been able to thrive, incorporating its genetics to further our development, in the hope of one day becoming worthy enough to be one with it. It is for this reason we worship, study and tend to it, as without its mercy we would be dust.

Each Vein of our holy order attempts to integrate more of God’s sacred genetics into ourselves to become more worthy of its divinity. Each Vein studies the genetics of the sacred Blood and attempts to discover new ways of integrating it into themselves. The more genetically integrated a member is to the Blood of God, the more worthy they are. The more worthy a member, the more God accepts them and allows them to enter deeper into the planet and not be harmed by its fearsome immune system. When a member of the Children of the Vein dies, most are laid to rest on the planet so that they can be fed back to God, but the most worthy are allowed to ritually die off-world. This ritual death is one of the highest honors anyone can be tasked to do, as it is their Blood that will feed off-world nurseries of our God so that its benevolence may spread for all to prosper.

Because of this, many Veins have also taken the sacred duty of spreading our God’s sacred genes into other societies under the guise of medical tourism. This helps increase the understanding of the Blood of God and our genetic practices in foreign environments. The Veins that undertake this missionary work often return with samples of their discoveries and labors, and place non-Sapient examples into Zoos for presentation and examination.

Unbeknownst to all, God is actually a celestial predator that it embeds itself into the crust of worlds and slowly consumes the actual planet itself, creating a miscible biosphere as a byproduct of its activities. It operates on a timescale of many millennia, where the maturity stage is planetary predation. It seeks out planets of the right size and material and begins the process, consuming the core slowly and converting the materials into gases, minerals, and biomass.

God is most commonly simply referred to as “God,” but it is not uncommon for Veins to have their own names for their deity based on their own languages, cultures, and theological interpretations.

Faith
Faith is interwoven into the culture, lives, and work of members of the Children of the Vein. While Gene-Priests and Carrionites are tasked with focusing their efforts on faith, even Symbiotes and Genetechs have minor religious functions as part of their duties. Some of these are more ritualistic, a visible and practiced respect for nature and life, while others are more functional. Symbiotes, as captains, may have their crew confide in them with doubts and religious questions, and Genetechs may elaborate on finer points of faith to foreign customers or newer members of the Children of the Vein. It is difficult to discern for outsiders if this practice is a cultural norm or a recommended religious practice, but depending on the Vein it may be either or both.

Denominations typically divide along Vein lines, members of a clan all focused towards a particular interpretation of God and their religion, but this is not a hard rule. Larger Veins especially may include several different interpretations of faith and God within them. While it is rare for any Vein to utterly despise another for differing beliefs, that difference in beliefs is an impetus, one amongst many, towards the greater conflicts and competition between clans. Faith is also a deeply personal and individual journey. While members of a single Vein often share many beliefs, it is not uncommon for individuals within a Vein to have small personal variations of theological interpretation and religious practice. This is often noted as one reason for the individualism of clones in the Children of the Vein, as their religious beliefs and practices often draw heavily on learned experiences. Physical texts and scriptures exist, but these works are greatly varied and inconsistently approved by the Hemispheres, so faith is often passed on through example and oral tradition.

Culture and religion are also deeply intertwined for the Children of the Vein, so the cultural elements of “survival of the fittest,” and “failure to be learned from and celebrated,” are significant aspects of faith as well. Competition between Veins, whether in laboratories or on battlefields, is an opportunity to build strength or examine one’s weaknesses, though ulterior motives may always be at play.

The same can be said of faith and science. Genetic scientists are constantly studying and experimenting with new genetic strains and pursuing scientific advancements, not only for the betterment of their science, but also in pursuit of divinity and perfection. Clones, Drones, and Bioships are constantly being adjusted and the practices of their creation modified to better utilize the power of Helocytus and the Blood of God.

All this said, the faiths of Helocytus are as diverse as its Veins and their cultures. While fundamental elements remain true, what god is, how it functions, how it should be worshipped, and what rituals, if any, must be undertaken are products of individual and Vein theology. The goal is the same, a movement towards divinity, but the paths to it and the purpose of each life along that path are a myriad.

Technology
Unlike many of the inhabitants of Beacon Space, the Children of the Vein focus almost exclusively on biotechnologies. Everything from cloning cocoons to buildings and even starships have at least some biotechnological component to them.


 * The Blood of God: A powerful macromolecule, The Blood of God was not created by the Children of the Vein, but is heavily cultivated and utilized by them. Contrary to popular belief, the sap of the great tree Providence and other trees like it contains a number of other chemical properties and applications in addition to the Blood of God, which is one of many elements present in the sap. Incorporating the Blood of God into someone’s genetics does not make them believe in the God of the Children of the Vein or drastically morph their appearance by default, but it can be applied to alter someone’s genetics or allow for more recombinant possibilities. Some scientists term DNA altered by the Blood of God MNA, or Meta-Nucleic Acid, as it is more malleable, and the incorporation of new genetic material, even from other species, is more easily achieved. Those who wish to incorporate the Blood of God into their genetics are often encouraged to come to Helocytus, as the process requires time and large, expensive biomachinery to complete.
 * Bioships: Birthed from the fruits of the great tree of Helocytus, Bioships are sculpted and grown by Void Nurses, shaped towards specific designs from their malleable beginnings. Protected by pseudo-chitinous hulls, bioships require a specific variation of FTL fuel suitable for digestion. Bioships are bonded with a pilot early on, called a Symbiote, who connects with the ship in order to guide it through the void.
 * Bioshells: The mechs of the Children of the Vein, Bioshells are also bonded with their pilot, called a Bond Mate. This connection is somewhat sacred and deeply personal. When a Bioshell perishes, its Bond Mate often undergoes trauma, requiring therapeutic care. When a Bond Mate perishes, but their Bioshell somehow survives, the Bioshell often becomes aggressive and dangerous to even allied soldiers.
 * Clones: Clones are produced in cloning cocoons, most of which are only found on Helocytus. These cocoons use large quantities of the Blood of God to function, and produce Clones at the age of the genetic material they are provided. Some Veins have leaned more heavily into cloning than others, seeking perfection through replication, whereas others barely utilize the technology in favor of variation.
 * Drones: Non-sapient extensions of their creator, drones are effectively biotechnological robots. They perform very specific tasks, as set from initial design, typically operate only at the behest of their creator. It is deeply sacrilegious and illegal for anyone to command another’s Drones without their explicit consent.
 * Bioengineering: Most of the Children of the Vein’s buildings have at least some percentage of biotechnology in their construction. Some buildings are entirely living, open spaces supported by bone-like pillars and electricity provided through nerve-like wiring, whereas others incorporate only specific biotechnological systems.

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