Church of the Silent Ascension

The Church of the Silent Ascension is an eschatological religious sect based in the Rasp. Members believe that the Vault Supernal is a graveyard for gods forgotten and dead, worshiping the godstombs that meander silently through the bleak sky as monuments to these deities.

Culture

Members of the Church of the Silent Ascension believe that gods do not truly die but are instead "perfected" in death, where they come to inhabit a realm of paradise beyond the far reaches of the mortal plane. They revere death as a path to being reunited with their dead gods in paradise, but not every death is the same. To the believers, only a proper death upon being freed of all earthly tethers can convey the souls of the faithful into the arms of their lost gods.
Believers renounce all earthly possessions and attachments, spending time in reflection, introspection, and meditation in the hopes of shrugging off the shackles that bind their souls to the mortal realm. By doing these things, they believe they can gain enlightenment that will allow them to navigate the passageways of death, thereby making their way to the paradise where they believe their gods await them.
Upon attaining enlightenment, members of the Church of the Silent Ascension embark on a ritual meant to gradually separate their soul from their earthly body through extreme fasting and the ingestion of potent hallucinogenics. The process is meant to induce a trancelike state before the individual succumbs to starvation, whereupon their body is ritually cremated.

Quietus

Members of the Church of the Silent Ascension believe the Quietus to be the byproduct of their lost gods' purification through death. They believe it to contain all the negative emotions that the gods might have experienced before death, as well as fragments of their lingering will. They revere the Quietus but also keep a respectful distance, believing that should an unenlightened person perish because of it, the earthly attachments that burden their soul will prevent them from escaping the grasp of the malevolence within, condemning them to an eternity of suffering.

Tombcalls

Believers revere tombcalls as the summons of their dead gods. The Church spends considerable resources predicting the paths of the godstombs and marking the times and dates of tombcalls that will pass directly over the Church's ritual grounds. Though most faithful will attain reunion with their gods through the asceticism of the Church, it is believed that some are possessed of a devotion and love strong enough that their gods call upon them to lift them out of the mortal plane. This is the Church's eponymous Silent Ascension, and all members aspire to be called to paradise in such a way.

Eschatology

Members of the Church of the Silent Ascension believe that one day, all gods will die. When this happens, the collective malevolence they leave behind will cause the Quietus to billow out of the Vault Supernal, spreading it to every corner of the cosmos and obliterating all life. Only those who have gained enlightenment will be saved, buffeted toward paradise by the roiling of the Quietus as their souls are torn from their mortal bodies. The unenlightened, on the other hand, will be dragged into the Quietus to spend the rest of eternity in a tempest of tortured souls, reliving the agony of death over and over again, far from the light of the gods.

History

The Church of the Silent Ascension was founded by the Architect R'humāk. Known to members by the title of "Grand Catechist," R'humāk was a priest of a now-forgotten Architect religion whose god died in the calamity that killed the Architects' gods and drove their peoples from their homes.
Though not the most devout of believers, R'humāk possessed an earnest and abiding belief in his god. When others turned away from their native faiths in the absence of their gods, R'humāk and a handful of like-minded Architects continued to practice their respective religions, believing that their faithfulness would be rewarded upon their gods' return.
Though eons passed, the Architects saw no sign of their gods returning from the dead. One by one, those few that kept the old ways alive lost hope and gave up on their gods. R'humāk, too, teetered on the brink of resignation but stubbornly persisted, clinging to a final ember of hope.
It was the discovery of the Vault Supernal that changed everything. As soon as the Architects beheld the great spheres of Deadiron that drifted through the haze of Quietus, R'humāk felt a presence in the silence and knew then that though their gods were dead, they were not gone.
In his joy, R'humāk told his people of his discovery. He begged his fellow Architects to feel the song of the silence, to hear in it the words of their dead gods, but few listened. These few were the faithful that had held on to the bitter end, the ones that had heard the voices in the silence, and together with R'humāk, they founded the Church of the Silent Ascension in the hopes that they might one day be reunited with their dead gods.

Follow the Call of the Silent Ones

Type

Religious, Organised Religion

Subsidiary Organizations

• Vāhagla Circle

Location

The Rasp

Related Species

• Architect