Yin Brotherhood

Darien and Moyin Van Hauge could only watch as their children melted away.

Though brilliant physicians and scientists, the Van Hauges were powerless to stop Greyfire from eating through Grace and Lucas. For months the disease wasted their children’s skin and organs, caused by a known malformation of the children’s genetic code. The condition required replicative gene therapy to cure—but under Imperial law, cloning and all associated scientific knowledge were strictly forbidden, as cloning was known to have brought about the unpredictable and rage-prone nature of the Mahact kings.

That their children’s treatment existed but was locked away behind Imperial protocol made the Van Hauges’ fury unspeakable. After burying their children, they resigned their prestigious positions at the Hospitaler Clinic in New Moscow and left the Sol system, secretly making arrangements to travel to the third moon of Emelpar. Moyin’s training as a xenoarchaeologist guided them for six months of searching the barren surfaces before they unearthed, in a long-abandoned vault, a half-corrupted archive containing ancient Mahact biostudies with the potential for a cure.

Returning to Jord under the guise of having taken a sabbatical, Darien and Moyin opened their own clinic and used the income to put their brilliance to work. Using Moyin’s embryos and Darien’s access to advanced Sol databases, the Van Hauges made great strides on cloning techniques. To outsiders, the Van Hauges were simply brilliant clinicians who could cure diseases others couldn’t—their terrible secret stayed hidden in the basement beneath their offices.

Success led to success, and the Van Hauges became a beacon for the hopeless, who brought them their sick and dying relatives and friends. Darien and Moyin worked tirelessly on miracle cures, harnessing their knowledge to save hundreds of lives.

But even miracles fail. When Darien couldn’t save an infant, the anguished parents broke into the Van Hauges’ laboratory looking for incriminating evidence of malfeasance. They found rows upon rows of vats containing cloned cells, tissues, even organs, and immediately alerted Sol authorities.

Fleeing Jord with a few of their most trusted friends, the Van Hauges lived out their years as fugitives from both the Federation and the Lazax. Eventually their little group found passage with religious pilgrims to the remote planet of Lael, having decided to settle down as part of that community. On Lael’s windy plains and with their newfound faith, the Van Hauges eventually managed to find some manner of closure from their loss, and for a time it seemed they might find happiness.

Until Moyin developed Greyfire.

In the desperate months that followed, all of Darien’s genius could not save her. Before her death, she implored him to harvest as many of her eggs as he could. All but one had been scarred by Greyfire—only a single viable egg remained.

In the decades that followed, Darien cloned Moyin’s egg thousands of times, eventually managing to produce child after child from his seed and her eggs. Despite his apparently mastery of cloning, Darien was never able to clone a daughter, and neither could he find a way to eradicate his children’s genetic susceptibility to Greyfire. He got as far as neutralizing its lethality, but still all his sons developed it eventually. It grayed their skin and other topical tissues, leaving their complexions ashen and wavelike.

When Darien finally died, his sons diligently continued his work. They buried him next to Moyin on the hill of Grace, and the stone he placed upon her grave became the foundation stone of the first monastery of Lucas. Taking a page from the settlers who had come to Lael, Darien and Moyin’s sons turned to faith and religion to seek purpose and order.

Their mother’s egg, which they called the “Yin,” eventually became the progenitor of nearly two billion clones. Over the centuries, the Brotherhood of Yin turned the monastery of Lucas into a vast cloning facility, renamed the planet Darien in their father’s honor, established new monasteries on the moons and surrounding systems, and emerged as a civilization in their own right around the end of the Age of Dusk.

The Yin Brotherhood Today

Life in the Brotherhood is simple and orderly, consisting of prayer, ritual, teaching, research work, or military training, according to how a member is blessed by the various liturgies and observances the Yin use to determine their fate. But despite their simple lives, within each brother, Untouched and Blessed by Greyfire alike, burns a deeper, inner flame, fed by faith and stoked by the constant reminder of their persecution by galactic society.

Though the Brotherhood’s records are strictly for their eyes only, galactic historians theorize that since their blessed Yin mother was touched by Greyfire and Darien was not, the brothers see Greyfire as something to aspire to, each striving their whole life in order to earn their mother’s Blessing, or else die in a way that benefits the Brotherhood. They see their blessed genome as pure and perfect, delivered to them from a higher power. Even the Humans they descend from are seen as lesser designs, much less the rest of the galaxy at large.

Blessed Brothers form the inner sanctum of elders and councilors of Yin society, with the Elder Brother chosen by holy sacrament from among the conclave of the Blessed. Once chosen, the Elder Brother is responsible for guiding all his Brotherhood, and he is uniquely blessed with intimate understanding of the emotions and aspirations of all his brothers.

An Untouched Brother spends his life in prayer and doing works for his brothers, hoping through his deeds to earn Yin’s Blessing. Untouched are commonly assigned to work with off-worlders. Both on and off Darien, they are the face of the Brotherhood, serving as ambassadors, as trade contacts, or in their elite military.

Goals of the Yin Brotherhood

Members of other species report that while as a whole the brothers of the Yin are polite, generous, and kind to a fault, their zeal and devotion are both paramount and absolute. Reports exist of local authorities attempting to arrest a brother only to face attack by dozens of identical fair-skinned clones, while prison transports containing brothers have often disappeared shortly after coming into contact with Yin attack ships. Sometimes the debris reports show that the Yin intentionally rammed the offending transport, sacrificing the lives of all on both ships.

This encapsulation of the Brotherhood’s with-us-or-against-us worldview extends to their dealings with the other Great Civilizations. They’re happy to trade, provide military support, or draw up mutually beneficial territorial agreements—until their allies inevitably violate some ineffable Brotherhood edict and find themselves ostracized for all time.

As a result, most beings view the Brotherhood as dangerous fanatics and fair-weather allies. But some see their monolithic paradigm as aspirational. Visitors to Darien are often religious pilgrims hoping to find meaning on one of the holier planets in the galaxy, or are simply looking for a life unadorned, with nothing but safety and simplicity, rite and righteousness. Some even become novitiates and spokespeople for the Brotherhood, extolling its virtues to all who will listen.

The Brotherhood seeks to carry out its continued work, to bring about the times when its message will be gospel across the galaxy, and all will live under the loving embrace of the Brotherhood of Yin.