Athar

One of the fifteen Factions who rule the city of Sigil.
Faction Politics:
The Athar are not very popular among the factions of Sigil, and have always been a bit of a lone wolf as factions go. More than one faction feels threatened by the Athar's rejection of the Powers and Temples - in particular the Harmonium, who promote religion as part of good and harmonious culture. They've also run afoul of the Fated in the past, because the Heartless tend to figure that the gods are holding onto their power rather well, so are probably worthy of it.
The Mercykillers likewise tend to be uncomfortable with the Athar. After all, the Athar don't have the healthiest respect for the law. In recent times, they sheltered the notorious criminal, the Grey Vizier, from prompt justice. The Triad was not impressed. Nor was the Sign of One, whose factor had been the target of the Grey Vizier's ire after he woke the lost god Somnos from his sleeping death.
The Society of Sensation doesn't have a philosophical problem with the Athar, but the fact that Factol Erin Montgomery is a cleric doesn't make for the most stable relationship.
One might think that the Athar might be able to form an alliance with the Doomguard to destroy the gods, but Factol Terrance holds reservations about Factol Pentar; she's a bit too fond of destruction, and he's concerned that her plans will only drive more cutters towards the Powers.
The one reliable ally the Lost have is the Believers of the Source (despite historical tensions), because of the friendship between Factol Terrance and Factol Ambar Vergrove.

Structure

The Defiers don't have any special rituals for new initiates. Simply stating that you want to join is enough. That said, Namers are expected to contribute to the faction - either through working as scribes in the temple, distributing the many pamphlets produced by the Lost, or by providing food and lodging to the faction's factotums (also called Athaons). The Athar provide some compensation for the work and any favours, but it rarely covers the costs. The faction isn't rich, after all, and they need everyone to pitch in to get the word out.
Once a Namer has proved themselves, they may be promoted to Athaon (Factotum). A Namer becomes an Athaon in a night ceremony in the Shattered Temple. The basher must bring three articles (weapons, books, or symbols) imbued with the magic of a fraudulent god and destroy them all at the proper time during the rite.

• Composing or copying pamphlets and testimonies while working in the Shattered Temple
• Giving tours of the Shattered Temple
• Proselytizing, or otherwise spreading the word of the Powers' many crimes
• Providing support or encouragement to Clueless who may be doubting everything they were told back in their home Prime about the Powers and the Afterlife
• Investigating temples for possible corruption
• Doing battle with the servants of the gods (outsiders)

Culture

All Athar are united in their belief that the gods are frauds. Not that the gods don't exist, or they don't have power - rather, that the idea of the gods as creatures deserving of worship is just wrong. The Powers don't give mortals anything, according to the Athar; rather, mortals fuel the gods.
As a result, Athar tend to be very "humanist" - they believe in the power of mortals to help themselves, apart from divine intervention (or at least, the intervention of the "Powers" often touted as divinity).
Of course, many of the Lost have also suffered personally at the hands of the Powers, and approach the topic of the Powers with a great deal of bitterness.

Public Agenda

But whatever their attitude, Defilers follow the Rule of Three by having three main goals:

1. to prove publicly the falsity of the so-called gods
2. to lessen or destroy their influence
3. to part the veil of the unknowable to glimpse the truth of divinity

History

The faction began centuries before the Great Upheaval, soon after two cutters - Dunn and Ciro - encountered one another in Sigil amid the ruins of the Shattered Temple. The shrine existed in its broken state even back then, but Dunn and Ciro looked at its decay from very different viewpoints. See, Dunn had been bilked of everything he possessed by the jealous god Poseidon. His wealth lay in the treasury of the sea gods temple in the gate-town of Sylvania. His wife, lured from him by the chief priest, now graced the enclosed pools of that cleric’s Arborean pavilion. His daughter had been swept away to the plane of Arborea by the power’s proxy. Dunn eyed the Shattered Temple seeking a way to make Poseidon as dead as Aoskar, the power once worshiped there.
Ciro had more of a philosophical bent. He, too, had lost his possessions to a god - Loki - and the god's religious hierarchy. But he’d found he liked his unencumbered life. Roaming the multiverse as an itinerant sage suited him more than slaving in a counting house to maintain a modest town house with its oak furnishings. But Ciro wondered why a power should need to bribe his priests with gold, should require the belief of worshipers to feed his immortality, if he were really a god. Surely divine beings, if they existed, followed different rules than the mortals of the planes. They’d be stronger, yes, like the powers are. Yet deities ought to possess fewer weaknesses, too - they shouldn’t need faith as men needed food, and they should ably support their priests through divine means, rather than stripping poor mortals’ hard-earned jink.
Athar historical texts say that Ciro, adrift in mental meandering, would have overlooked Dunn completely had not that basher mistaken the philosopher for a last surviving believer in Aoskar and attacked him! The outcome is well-known: the duel of swords, followed by the duel of words, followed by a mutual pledge to meet among the ruins again in half a year bringing tales of their deeds against the powers, along with a few like-minded recruits.
Their numbers grew slowly, and obscurity marked the early years of the Athar - a fortunate fact for a group with such controversial ideas as destroying worship of the powers. Eventually, the Harmonium, which uses religion to generate conformity and harmony, realized the full weight of Athar philosophy. The Hardheads diverted their patrols to make a full-scale attack on the Shattered Temple, the faction’s de facto headquarters. The Lady of Pain soon put a stop to such blatant proceedings - all it took was sending the factor behind this movement to the Mazes. However, the Harmonium continued the war with discrete guerilla raids for a long time. When physical efforts failed, they moved the dispute into the Hall of Speakers, pulling the Mercykillers and Fated into the fray on their side.
The members of the Athar fought back, both on the streets and in the Hall, but reserved the bulk of their efforts to attack the minds of Sigil’s populace. They started giving tours of their headquarters, and taking cutters out into the Astral to show them the bodies of dead powers. They also began publishing anonymous propaganda pieces designed to “prove” the gods were frauds through reason, comic illustration, or the stories of individuals bilked by the powers. Both initiatives continue to this day.
Long after the Harmonium gave up, the Believers of the Source made new trouble for the Athar. The Godsmen began erecting small shrines for their more prestigious members. Though initially the shrines centered around the Great Foundry, construction soon moved toward the Shattered Temple.
The Godsmen’s invasion of both the Defiers’ mental territory and physical precinct did not sit well.
The Athar responded by training proselytizers of their own to wait at the false altars and accost would-be worshipers. Their first tactic? Distraction. Defiers made up stories to convince the erring berks that they had business elsewhere, perhaps giving them “news” of a friend newly returned to Sigil. If distraction failed, the Lost attempted direct persuasion, elaborating on the folly of revering normal beings as gods. Only when both distraction and persuasion produced no effect might the proselytizer resort to physical violence. The Defiers grew so skilled at turning away prospective tithers, the Godsmen declared the cost of maintaining the personal shrines prohibitive. The altars abandoned, the two factions forgot their hostility: the similarity of their philosophies brought friendlier relations.
Under Factol Terrance relations with the Godsmen have improved and the faction has steered away from its more confrontational methods of proselytizing.

The gods are frauds; the unknowable truth lies beyond the veil.

Alternative Names

Defilers

Leader

Factol Terrance

Leader Title

Factol

Location

Sigil

Notable Members

• Factol Terrance