Crooked-Crosses

From The Fifth City Wiki

"The Crooked-Cross is a tempter. He invites the ignorant to knowledge, and opposes any monopoly on morality. He tests the boundaries between right and wrong. He has parted a priest and his faith, convincing the priest to deface the sign of his God."[1]

Crooked-Crosses are missionaries of the counter-church, also known as the Imposter Church.

The Anti-Evangelist[edit | edit source]

"You are permitted a great deal of latitude in your work against complacent faith. Sanctifying the base, demystifying the mysterious, illuminating the darkness and obscuring the light – your remit is change, in all its forms."[2]

Crooked-Crosses seek to make people question their faith, turn them away from complacency, and provoke change and evolution in society.[3] They are armed with a library's worth of texts, historical, philosophical, and scriptural alike, to use as literary fuel for debate.[4] Many choose easy targets within the Anglican Church, singling out new clerical appointees[5] or members of the clergy with a shameful secret, but not everyone takes the path of least resistance.[6] After all, the Church's money could go to much better places, and it would be easy enough to convince someone altruistic of this.[7]

This profession is named after the central tool of its trade: a bent Christian cross that is lacquered in apocyan, the color of memory.[8] The bent shape is a reminder of the corruption and indulgences of the Church: "After all, is God measured in right angles? Isn't a wooden cross as good as a golden one?"[9] The apocyanic lacquer carries its own powers; it is a convenient repository for all of a Crooked-Cross's knowledge and memory,[10] and for some, its light is also a tool for filling in the gaps of memory with whatever should be placed there to facilitate a goal.[11][12]

While typically Crooked-Crosses have a genuine motive, agents of Hell sometimes hire them to sow confusion and religious discord in London.[13] And sometimes, they'd rather mess around and spread the doctrine of a false saint from their dreams.[14] Their prowess in moral and ethical discussions can also be used to handle simpler social conundrums, like failing friendships[15] and overly superstitious zailors.[16]

Crooked-Crosses have two specialized disciplines. Beatificators deconstruct the Anglican framework from within, manipulating truth and belief[17] (through the implantation and fabrication of memories) to allow more perspectives and opinions into the faith.[18] They might dredge up unwritten history from the Waswood, the Parabolan river of the past;[19] or they might canonize entire new saints, with the help of holy relics as a foundation.[12] Schimastics, meanwhile, promote sectarianism and schisms[20] through weaponized rhetoric,[21] as a way to work against Christian complacency[22] and the Anglican Church as a whole.[23] On a practical level, these skills may be applied to wear down delusions[24] and free clients from misguided and residual beliefs.[25]

Even Less Orthodox[edit | edit source]

"The signs have always been there, in the lives of Saint Jude Thaddeus, Saint Vitus, Saint Dympna – they just needed somebody to see them. Rubbery virtues of flexibility and metamorphosis squirm on the pages of the most recent revisions to leave God's Editors."[26]

The work of a Crooked-Cross is centered on the Anglican majority, but does not solely apply to them. Crooked-Crosses have assisted Jewish immigrants from the Surface in adapting their traditions, scholarship, and mysticism to be compatible with the strangeness of the Neath.[27] Since Jewish philosophy and spirituality is centered on debate and reinterpretation, these new arrivals do not need to have their beliefs shaken at all. The counter-missionary practice applies to more species than humans, as well; for instance, Crooked-Crosses have also worked with Rubbery Men who wish to attend church services, allowing them to find a way to express their faith in a language they speak better than English,[28] and finding room within scripture[29] and sainthood[30] for their kind.

Historical and Cultural Inspirations[edit | edit source]

The day-to-day work of a Crooked-Cross contains one of Fallen London's exceedingly few references to Judaism, and this instance is also the most in-depth discussion of the subject in the game - so for anyone bewildered, we have answers.

Starting in the 1880s, waves of violence (e.g. pogroms) drove over two million Jews to flee the Russian Pale of Settlement (which today spans several countries in eastern and northeastern Europe), the historical region of Galicia (now split between Poland and Ukraine), and Romania. Most of these people immigrated to the United States, with a minority going to Ottoman-controlled Palestine. In the world of Fallen London, we see some of them coming to the Neath instead.

Halakha is Jewish rabbinical law, and the Crooked-Cross player's client is the head of a yeshiva, a school of religious study. Topics discussed between the success and failure texts include the Kabbalah (an esoteric discipline of Jewish mysticism, of which the Zohar is a foundational text); numerology (gematria, the practice of encoding numerological ciphers, is not solely a Jewish concept); and the Sabbateans, a 17th-century group who believed a particular Ottoman rabbi was the Messiah. In the more practical sphere, kashrut is the proper term for kosher laws, which certainly would require some adjustment in a place where rats and not-so-fish-like zee-food are significant sources of protein.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Become a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London
  2. ↑ The Business of a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London
  3. ↑ The Business of a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London "You are permitted a great deal of latitude in your work against complacent faith. Sanctifying the base, demystifying the mysterious, illuminating the darkness and obscuring the light – your remit is change, in all its forms."
  4. ↑ The Business of a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London "Your tools are the very bedrock of truth. Shelves of scripture from every faith and denomination. Reams of philosophical treatises. Histories and hagiographies of dubious provenance..."
  5. ↑ Challenge a clergyman's faith, Fallen London "You meet the Fresh-Faced Deacon in the cloisters, assuming the guise of a fellow priest. The instant his eyes snag on the apocyan glory of your cross, you know you have him. He realises how far he has strayed only later, after you have lured him into a particularly heretical interpretation of Matthew 10:28."
  6. ↑ Become a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London "Many of those who seek ordination in the Imposter Church would look for a priest with a secret shame. You, however, choose a good man. A man of sincere faith, profound conscience, and sympathy."
  7. ↑ Become a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London "You put the cross in the Curate's hands so he can feel the weight of the gold. At first, he looks at you as if you were mad, but your questions are reasonable. After all, is God measured in right angles? Isn't a wooden cross as good as a golden one? Think of the good works that the money could be put to. The poor it could feed. The children it could clothe. When the priest takes a hammer to the cross, he does so with the certainty of a saint."
  8. ↑ A Crooked Cross, Fallen London "You've had it in lacquered in pleasing tones of blue and apocyanic. An immeasurable improvement."
  9. ↑ Become a Crooked-Cross, Fallen London "After all, is God measured in right angles? Isn't a wooden cross as good as a golden one? Think of the good works that the money could be put to. The poor it could feed. The children it could clothe."
  10. ↑ Canonise Saint Spicula within the main body of the Church, Fallen London "The apocyan of your cross is not merely ostentation. It is a sacred, curated, repository of truths, all of your jewelled treasures of history imprinted into apocyan filigree and shimmer."
  11. ↑ Canonise Saint Spicula within the main body of the Church, Fallen London "There is holy beauty to the interplay of truths, the gaps between what Is and what Is Not. It is not the facts that are important, but the spaces between [...] Like stars describing complex constellations by their connections through the void, so can the orientations and proximities of truths describe new beliefs. [...] Drawing on the wellspring of memory housed within your cross, you rearrange the heavens. For the briefest moment, truth and belief are malleable as clay. You speak; the world listens."
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Canonise a virtuous ancestor, Fallen London "Under apocyanic light, you swim in the waters of the Devout Ancestor's memory. Her devotion is tangible, a vast upswelling in the tide. Compassion; belief; pragmatic philanthropy. A true unsainted saint of the Fourth City. The shape of her holiness is already present in the facts of her life – except she has been unjustly forgotten. Truth flows into place, after too long spent diverted from its true course."
  13. ↑ Pen a flood of contradictory gospels, Fallen London "Competing truths flow from you like water from a spring. [...] London is submerged in a tide of counter-scripture, the old proverbs lost amongst the new."
  14. ↑ Spread the gospel of a suspect saint, Fallen London "You provide enigmatic answers, elusive and hypnotic. Archangels, novel saints, the Harrowing of Hell. Truths gather in the words you are not saying. A grand and noble effort to convert the goat-demons. New parables to leverage against infernal forces. Saint Trezigor's cloven-tongued laugh echoes in your ears."
  15. ↑ Banish bitter bygones, Fallen London "The academic and the libertine don't have a friendship any more. What they do each have is their own private relationship with the person who the other was [...] It's not your job to reforge the bonds of friendship [...] But you forensically unpick the imagos that they carry with them, until they can finally see each other for who they have become. From there, the choice is theirs."
  16. ↑ Dissuade zailors from their superstitions, Fallen London "Their voyage has been plagued by bad luck. The crew are refusing to set zail until the omens are better [...] | [...] but who is holier – the navigator, or the navigated? By whose sacred skill is the vast reach of the Unterzee tamed? [...] The crew returns to the chapel of their ship. They whisper reverent prayers to the skills of their crewmates, shielded by each other from the vast weight of the zee."
  17. ↑ Canonise Saint Spicula within the main body of the Church, Fallen London "You will become a Beatificator, progenitor of new saints and specialist in subverting truths from within."
  18. ↑ Canonise Saint Spicula within the main body of the Church, Fallen London "People mistake what you do for persuasion, but that is just the face of it. Knowledge is the core. Memory. [...] Your previous work with the Rubbery Flock has made this easier, seeding new truths in convenient dark places. Drawing on the wellspring of memory housed within your cross, you rearrange the heavens. For the briefest moment, truth and belief are malleable as clay. You speak; the world listens."
  19. ↑ Retrieve the hagiographies of the lost and unlived, Fallen London "This tributary shimmers with syncretic convergence – submerged within, the unlived life of a true saint of the Neath. [...] You bathe their story in apocyan. Slowly, delicately, you weave it into the fabric of the true."
  20. ↑ Convert the mob to the Rubbery Flock's syncretic sect, Fallen London "You will become a Schimastic, cleaver of minds from their certainties and expert at discerning the many shades of truth."
  21. ↑ Convert the mob to the Rubbery Flock's syncretic sect, Fallen London "You are the tempter and the wedge, the unclouded eye, the harsh light of dawn. You wield rhetoric like a rapier, pressing and testing your opponents' defences before spearing their certainties with an eye-blink lunge."
  22. ↑ Convert the mob to the Rubbery Flock's syncretic sect, Fallen London "The Church has grown complacent. Tempt their followers into new beliefs and strike a blow at the heart of unthinking."
  23. ↑ Convert the mob to the Rubbery Flock's syncretic sect, Fallen London "The right words, in the right place. A new history unfolds. Your work until this point has rooted the tenets of the Rubbery Flock's beliefs deep within the accepted histories of the church. Like tree roots infiltrating ancient masonry, they have seeded cracks in these holy histories that were not there before. So now, as you sermonise before the cathedral and cleave the Rubbery Flock away from the Anglican Church, huge chunks of theology come with it, too tangled in your truths to resist the pull. It will take more than this to crumble the vast edifice of the Church of England – but you have diminished it, divested it of virtues and saints for the empowerment of others."
  24. ↑ Cleave a madman from his certainties, Fallen London "[...] you turn the crooked workings of his mind to your own ends. Some consciousnesses reject truth; but lies, properly handled, can become truth-shaped. [...] Such sophistry treats symptoms, not causes, but at least now he will wear trousers."
  25. ↑ Sever unwanted allegiances, Fallen London "Some truths are forged from desire; others, belief. The Clay Man desires freedom, but believes that he is bound to his kin. You are a tide of evidence and argument [...] Perhaps, you suggest, he has always been Unfinished? Desire begets a new truth. His mind is a lone holdfast, bright and peaceful."
  26. ↑ Another request from the Rubbery Flock, Fallen London
  27. ↑ Reconcile newcomers to the halakha of the Neath, Fallen London "Jews from Russia, from Romania, from Lithuania arrive constantly in Wolfstack. The traditions they find here, even among their own former countryfolk, are inevitably strange to them. | [...] the Rosh Yeshiva is no stranger to picking apart texts and weaving them anew. Together, you study the texts the newcomers have brought with them. [...] you discern gematria that foreshadow the role of death in the Neath, the adjustments of kashrut, the proper timings of Sabbath. From the Zohar, you draw justifiable guidance on how to interact with devils. It is a touch of your own invention to explain moon-pearls as a provision for lunar time-keeping, and a metaphor for the virtuous soul's alignment to G-d even in the dark."
  28. ↑ Accept a commission from a Rubbery Flock, Fallen London "They are often seen at services in Saint Fiacre's. They have grand ideas for how the church's repertoire of hymns might be… expanded to accommodate their beliefs. [...] Then – a breakthrough. What the Rubbery Men do understand is shapes. Once you switch media to amber, progress is rapid. You identify the strands of the Shapeling experience that ring truest to humanity, and help the Rubbery Flock draw them out in shifting helices."
  29. ↑ Another request from the Rubbery Flock, Fallen London "The signs have always been there, in the lives of Saint Jude Thaddeus, Saint Vitus, Saint Dympna – they just needed somebody to see them. Rubbery virtues of flexibility and metamorphosis squirm on the pages of the most recent revisions to leave God's Editors."
  30. ↑ An audacious request from the Rubbery Flock, Fallen London "Rubbery Men keep no written record of their histories. If there is a repository of the alien epochs of the Shapelings, it is hidden from you, or locked into a resinous form that you lack the senses to properly read. In order to find paragons of Rubbery virtue, therefore, you must skirt the edges of human reporting [...] When you write the history of Saint Spicula, every single word is true – meticulously researched, impeccably cited, and persuasive as gravity. No matter that this hagiography was not true yesterday; it is true now."
Retrieved from "https://thefifthcity.wiki/w/index.php?title=Crooked-Crosses&oldid=19886"