Vasko Giorgadze

Vasko Giorgadze

The son of a priest and a politician, Vasko Goirgadze was trained in oratory and religion from a young age and was slated to become the Charioteer's Principle, before his fall from grace. A charismatic leader and enthusiastic scientist, Giorgadze became frustrated with the rate of technological progress and felt that the restriction placed on sapients by the need to mollify the spiritual aspect was unnatural. In his speech at the 5.438 conclave of minds, Giorgadze asserted that technological progress will be the result of "asserting dominion over the intractible essence of Iron" (as opposed to traditional manufacturing processes' emphasis on co-operating with metallic essences). Shortly after, Giorgadze was expelled from the tmple and stripped of his rank; a move that spurred the creation of the heretical sect of worshippers of the Charioteer ('Ironwrights').
Despite his expulsion from the faith, Giorgadze remained a powerful and influential orator, attracting large crowds of followers, and his proactive attitude towards technology such as the printing press allowed Giorgadze's followers to spread his message rapidly. Though it was not always well-recieved, Giorgadze maintained that "a mind must free itself, and the exercise of dissent is essential to break free from the strictures of faith".

Phenomenism

Followers of Giorgadze named his secular philosophy phenomenism, and called for adherents to reject emotion and magic in all its forms, and dedicate themselves to the purely material world of thought and logic. Althought contemporary phenomenists take pains to distance their philosophy from that of the Ironwrights, many are avowedly anti-theist. In the late 17th cenury, the movement fractured into two primary camps: Ascetic and hedonic phenomenists. Ascetic phenomenists believe that the body is subject to the mind and that dominion over spirit requires absolute self-control. They follow Giorgadze's personal practices: eating for subsistence rather than pleasure, using sedatives to assist dreamless sleep, and following an aggressively minimalist, ascetic lifestyle so as not to make the self beholden to property or ownership. Hedonic phenomenists hold that all physical things exist for the purpose of being used and that to deny the desires of the body is to subjugate the mind to 'false spirituality'.

Ironwrights

Ironwrights maintain a theistic postion, and would still claim to fall under the aegis of the Charioteer, believing that technological advancement and dominion over the physical world is the natural progression in spritual evolution: from void to deity, deity to thinker, thinker to form. For more information, see Ironwrights.

Species

Yutaaq

Date of Birth

392, fifth age

Life

392 469 77 years old