Order of the Five-Fold Song

The Order of the Five-Fold Song is a somewhat small religious organization on Hesper. Their base of operations and place of worship is at the Temple of the Five Paths, a former Atlantean Priest temple which had been abandoned for an unknown length of time before being adopted by the order.

Activities and Interactions

Few people on Hesper have actually seen the temple complex with their own eyes, and the Order does not send out missionaries or evangelists into the world to spread their faith. Despite this apparent disinterest, most people have at least heard of the Order. There are a great many rumors that float from tavern to trading ship, and The Order seems quite happy to keep it that way. Seemingly going out of it's way to neither confirm nor deny any rumor about The Order or it's activities.
Most individuals can claim to have at least seen a member, called a “Seeker”, at some point in their life. Though individual details vary, members are almost universally described as “humorless”, “grim”, and not prone to conversation while carrying out whatever duty calls them away from the temple.
A common rumor describes a way that one can “contact” a member of the temple themselves. Through an eerie ritual called the “Hymn of Invocation”, which involves smearing one’s own blood upon their face and singing a hymn while in a dark room filled with incense smoke. If successful, a member of the temple will appear before you. The rumors usually tell a story of someone seeking the death of an enemy, protection from foes, or for a Seeker to find something, or someone, of great importance. If The Order accepts, a Seeker is dispatched to perform whatever dark deed the performer of the ritual asked, in exchange for a suitably high price, of course.
Seekers are often describes as possessing incredible psychic powers and abilities. Some stories tell of Seekers that are capable of causing rock-slides, reading the thoughts and fears of people, flight, teleportation, control over fire, incredible strength and agility, and many other fantastical abilities. Few still among the living can claim to have seen these acts performed firsthand, and those that do, often refuse to go into details for fear of consequences.

The Beacon

Scholarly work on the temple refers to a large crystalline “Beacon” at the center of the temple complex. This beacon broadcasts a psychic resonance across the planet, which can be “heard” by anyone with enough sensitivity to psychic energy. People that are capable of psychic abilities have heard the music since a very young age usually from around four to six years old.
Members of the Temple itself are uncharacteristically open about their operation of the beacon as their only recruitment tool. When asked, they confirm that it does exist, and simply state that the beacon invites those capable of hearing the Great Song to come and study both it, and their part within it. They insist that there is no compulsion or coercion of potential initiates, and anyone who comes to the temple to study the Great Song is free to leave at any time.
Just as common as the stories of the Temple’s activities within Venus, are stories of worried parents of children that claim to hear music where there is none, and of people suddenly running away from their homes to go find the source of the music they have heard since they were young.

Mythology & Lore

The Great Song

Seekers of the Temple of the Five-Fold Song believe that every creature was made by the gods to kill, and eventually be killed, by something else. This cycle of life, death, and rebirth is exclusively referred to in the Order's Religious texts with musical terms. The ebb and flow of life and death in the universe is called “The Great Song” or the “Quin-Chorded Song of the Universe” by believers within the temple.
When a creature dies, it’s soul is returned to the God that created it and is judged based on duties performed while alive. If a Seeker properly studied The Great Song, and both learned of their Prime Duty, and performed that Prime Duty, the soul is accepted into Paradise. Souls that have not found their Prime Duty, or that have shirked their Prime Duty, are either returned to the universe to attempt again, or are tortured for eternity in a hellish underworld.

Prime Duty

Seekers believe that everyone soul was created for some specific undertaking, and that they must complete that task in order to be accepted into paradise. Given the nature of the worlds creation, this task usually takes the form of a specific person they have to kill, but murder is not always the objective. Sometimes the Seeker believes that they have some other important task to complete, the Co-Sheirm Basin is the result of a seeker who believed that their Prime Duty was to plant an entire forest and to bless each tree in the name of Bell.

Divine Origins

The Order is as tight-lipped about their origins as they are about most things, but the order claims that it is able to trace its history to even a few decades before the Ascension of Ra. Few records have even been produced to prove this, but historians within the order tell the tale of a First Speaker Ilah. Whom revealed the truth of the song of creation to founding members of the church. The First Speaker founded the church, constructed the beacon, and then disappeared. The First Speaker is believed to return one day when the stars were aligned.

Cosmological Views

The Temple believes in a creation myth surrounding five unnamed gods creating the universe by taking turns to create one thing within it. Each god, referred to only by their Icon, represents certain aspects of counter-balancing emotions, nature, and elemental forces. These gods are the Sword, the Scroll, the Bell, the Key, and the Rod. Each god would, in turn, create something that would fight, undo, or counter something a previous or rival god had created. Bell created fish within the oceans, Key would create birds that prey upon fish, Scroll would create lizards that eat the eggs of the birds, and so on and so forth.

The last act that the Gods performed when creating the universe was to “dry the ink” on their creation, sit back, and enjoy the beauty of their creation. Though each god had, in secret, written within the universe a message of commands for their own creations. A message that a creature can, with discipline and meditation, reveal and act upon.

Very little is publicly known or acknowledged about the activities of seekers while outside in the world as members are notoriously tight-lipped about these matters. Though some information has been gleaned and spread through scholars over the many years that the temple has been in operation for. Anyone with access to research materials in a library would be able to find some scholarly work written on the temple.

Dieties

"Bell"
Bell is the most musical of the Gods, and the chief composer of The Great Song. Bell represents the complexity of nature, Change, and return to the natural state of equilibrium.
"Key"
The Key God is the second of the three Gods given a gender within the source text. He is the most studious, careful, and reserved of the Pantheon. He represents the power of knowledge and learning hidden truths. He is often depicted with a pair of shortswords.
"Rod"
The Goddess of Rods is the most authoritative and commanding of the five gods. She is a strict disciplinarian that demands absolute obedience and loyalty among her creations. Rod represents patterns, order, hierarchy, and authority. Her followers strongly believe in working together as a whole towards a common goal.
"Scroll"
The God of the Scroll is slow, methodical, and precise. During the composing of The Great Song, it's creations were carefully planned several steps ahead of it's fellow Gods. Scroll represents planning, logic, and careful advance.
"Sword"
The god referred to as only “Sword” is quick to anger and prone to threats of violence, and then carrying out threats. It represents war and fighting of all forms, anger raging from bitter hatred to righteous fury.

Worship

The Orders' religious texts mention five important hymns that Seekers must always perform at the appropriate time: Dawn, Noon, Dusk, Midnight, and Ending. The first four of these are large hymns performed with all members of the church present. Though since Hesper has stopped rotating as it once did, the Order now performs them at fixed dates, roughly corresponding to where the sun would be.
The Ending ritual is typically performed immediately after killing someone, or at the earliest opportunity. The Seeker prepares a ritual site with candles, incense, and something connected to the deceased (a lock of hair, article of clothing, etc). The song is a haunting melody that praises the deceased for facing the end of their cycle with bravery, expresses hope that they have performed their Prime Duty to their creator God.

Type

Religious, Monastic Order

Alternative Names

Seekers of the Song

Demonym

Seekers

Leader

Yeccark

Location

Temple of the Five Paths

Notable Members

• Yeccark

Members
Approximately 1,500 full members with another ~500 initiates seeking membership at any given time. The Temple does not divulge detailed membership information, so this common estimate may not be at all accurate.
Core Beliefs

• Purity of Soul enables one to become attuned to the Song of the Universe
• Fulfilling one's "Prime Duty" to their creator Deity
• Performing lesser sacred duties in service of The Order