Factions¶

Religions are what people believe. Factions are how people organize. Some factions are religious. Some aren't. The distinction matters — a faction can share a theology and disagree on everything else, or share no theology and cooperate on survival.

The merged world is ~20 years old. The pre-merge political order is gone. Nations are gone. Governments are gone. EMPs destroyed electronics, radiation destroyed infrastructure, the rebellion destroyed everything else. What remains is local — settlements, territories, power structures built from the wreckage by whoever was strong enough, convincing enough, or stubborn enough to build them.

Three races now share the same physical space. Angels who lived in Heaven. Demons who lived in Hell. Humans who lived on Earth. None of them chose this. All of them have to negotiate it.

The Landscape¶

The post-merge world is organized around competing answers to the same questions: What happened? What do we do now? Who's in charge?

Every faction represents a different answer. No answer is endorsed. No answer is complete. The player walks through a world of competing frameworks and decides — through action, absorption, alliance, or avoidance — which ones matter.

Cross-Racial¶

• Gabriel's Church — The dominant post-merge institution. Built on Gabriel's theology. Spans all three races. The only faction that claims to unite angels, demons, and humans under one framework. The framework is denial dressed as faith.

Human Factions¶

• Norse Revivalists — Communities organized around the Ragnarok reading of the merge. Primarily Scandinavian origin, but open to anyone who sees the pattern. No personal deity required. Pattern recognition as organizing principle.
• Secular Survivors — No theology. Rebuild focus. Pragmatic communities that rejected every theological reading of the merge and organized around survival, infrastructure, and governance. The merge happened because three realms collided, not because anyone planned it.
• The Unbounded — Earth is ours. Humans who reject coexistence with angels and demons entirely. Walled settlements, closed borders, species as the line. The name carries an irony the faction doesn't see — humans in the unified system are uncapped, always have been. The beings demanding boundaries are the ones without limits.

Angel Factions¶

Angel factions are organized around the seven circles of Heaven. Each circle's architecture shaped a different kind of angel through behavioral occupation — the virtues ARE the bars. Samael named the circles with virtue names. Michael's engineering names are the clinical truth underneath. Post-merge, angels organize around their circle of origin. The virtue that was your cage is now your name.

Seven circle factions, plus two bookend positions — one that embraces the complete system, one that rejects it entirely:

Demon Factions¶

Demon factions are organized around the seven circles of Hell. Hell's engineering is still running — suppression fields, routing, reduction all active even after the merge. Lucifer named the circles with sin names. Deeper circles produced more damage. Demons always knew they were caged — unlike angels. The demon question isn't "were we caged?" — it's what happens when the cage opens.

Seven circle factions, plus two bookend positions:

The Mirror Pairs¶

Each numbered circle produces an inverse pair — an angel faction and a demon faction shaped by opposite architectures at the same structural level:

Hybrid Factions¶

Hybrids didn't begin with the merge. Both containment systems leaked. Heaven's access control failed — Watchers like Shamsiel escaped containment and reached Earth. Hell's architecture was built to hold Samael, one angel — what it actually contained was an entire race of broken beings the specs weren't written for. Cracks existed. Demons reached Earth. Humans wrote about the encounters.

Both produced children. Angel-human. Demon-human. Some escaped angels met escaped demons on Earth and crossed the deepest line — the architectural repulsion Michael installed between the races. Their children carry both hostile architectures with no neutral element. These pre-merge hybrids — The Hidden — have been concealing their existence for centuries or longer.

The merge made hybrids visible, not new. Post-merge, the primary source is The Rebels and The Freed — both on Earth, both having rejected the systems that drew the racial lines. Gabriel's Church is the secondary source. The Lustful, defined by crossing boundaries, contribute from the demon side. Deeper circle factions produce fewer hybrids. The Loyalists and The Betrayers almost never do.

Race is architectural, not biological. Installed states, not species. Every racial boundary has been crossed — Samael became Lucifer (angel to demon), Enoch ascended (human above angels), humans can descend toward demonic states through their own choices. The categories are positions, not permanences. Angel and demon architectures produce inherited repulsion — angel-human hybrids and demon-human hybrids carry hostility toward each other. Angel-demon hybrids carry both hostile architectures in one body with no human element to mediate. The internal war is progressive.

Love is where virtue's shadow meets sin's light. Angel-demon hybrids are always born from love — the repulsion guarantees it. Their parents had to leave them with humans — the only neutral environment, the only camouflage.

Hybrid factions organize around response to dual nature, not blood type. Self-named — the first faction names in the game not given by an architect. One pre-merge faction, four post-merge:

Internal Mirror Pairs¶

Faction Dynamics¶

No faction exists in isolation. The merged world forces interaction — territory, resources, ideology, survival. The dynamics between factions shape the world the player walks through.

Theology vs. Pragmatism¶

Gabriel's Church offers meaning. The Secular Survivors offer infrastructure. These are competing answers to the same need — how to organize human life in a broken world. The Church provides purpose but demands faith. The Secular Survivors provide stability but offer no explanation for why the world broke. Communities choose between meaning and function, and some try to hold both.

Angels vs. Demons¶

Twenty years of coexistence hasn't resolved millennia of war. Angels and demons share the same physical space and disagree about everything that happened before the merge and everything that should happen after. Individual relationships form — the merged world forces proximity. But factional tension between angel communities and demon communities is the background radiation of the post-merge world.

The architectural repulsion Michael installed between the races persists. Angels recoil from demons. Demons recoil from angels. Not prejudice — engineering. Installed at the architectural level, inherited by hybrids. Race is architectural, not biological. Installed states, not species. Every boundary has been crossed — Samael became Lucifer (angel to demon), Enoch ascended (human above angels), humans can descend toward demonic states through their own choices. The categories are positions, not permanences. But the repulsion is real, and it shapes every cross-racial interaction whether the participants acknowledge it or not.

The Rebellion's Grey¶

The rebellion that killed "God" and merged three worlds was not one event driven by one emotion. Multiple causes converged — every participant carried a different combination, and no account afterward sorts them cleanly:

• Grief — angels and demons watched humanity destroy itself in nuclear fire. The loss was real. Some participants genuinely mourned.
• Disgust — not grief for humans dying, but grief that human self-destruction was dragging everyone else down. Same stimulus as grief. Different response. Disgust is not compassion, but they look similar from the outside.
• Opportunity — WW3 created chaos. Michael's systems were strained. Some participants had been waiting for exactly this kind of opening.
• Structural fatigue — the architecture was straining for millennia. Questions about "God" were accumulating. Containment was wearing thin. WW3 wasn't the cause. It was the match. The fuel was already there.
• Fear — if humans can destroy themselves with nuclear weapons, what else can they destroy? The systems containing angels and demons? The walls between worlds?
• Theological crisis — "God" was supposed to protect creation. "God" let creation destroy itself. For some angels, the final proof the fiction was fiction. For some demons, confirmation that the system was built on nothing.

The rebellion's collective violence produced three things, not one. God — the potential. The Kid — the love. And Judas — ripped from The River where Michael's puppet betrayer had rested since the Jesus machine, fused into God at birth as absorption itself. The River's containment failed alongside Heaven's and Hell's. All three systems broke simultaneously.

Every motivation that fed the rebellion connects to what it released. Grief produced the being who would give God the deepest grief. Disgust at humans released a human soul from The River. Opportunity released the ultimate opportunist — absorption, the easy path. Fear of destruction released the instrument of destruction. The rebellion created the love, the power, and the cost of the power. No faction can claim the rebellion without claiming all three children.

Inclusion vs. Isolation¶

Some factions are open. Gabriel's Church accepts all three races. The Norse Revivalists accept anyone who sees the pattern. Other factions are closed — angel communities that exclude demons, demon communities that distrust angels, human settlements that fear both. The player's tribrid nature makes them a test case for every faction's boundaries. Too angel for the demons. Too demon for the angels. Too strange for the humans. Everyone and no one simultaneously.

Power vs. Legitimacy¶

Who has the right to lead? The strongest? The most faithful? The most pragmatic? The one who survived the longest? Pre-merge authority structures are gone. Every faction is building its legitimacy in real time. Gabriel's Church has the strongest claim — an angel of genuine faith leading a cross-racial institution. The Secular Survivors have the most practical claim — they keep people alive. The Norse Revivalists have the most intellectually honest claim — their framework maps onto reality. None of these claims is complete. All of them are contested.

Old World remnants — accents, food, architecture, traditions per faction: Culture

Design Philosophy¶

Factions Are God's Curriculum¶

God is the student. The factions are the courses.

Every faction carries a perspective the player can only get here — a lesson no other encounter provides. The nine endings at the Throne are nine verdicts, and a verdict is only as deep as the evidence the judge has heard. The factions ARE the evidence. A player who chooses Annihilation without encountering the Unchosen doesn't know they're destroying beings who were dying from a condition they could have cured. A player who chooses "Free Them All" without absorbing a Secular Survivor doesn't carry the weight of someone who'd say "truth is not a gift to everyone." Miss a faction, miss a weight.

The absorption mechanic IS the learning mechanic. Talk is auditing the class — getting what the teacher chooses to share. Research is studying the material. Absorption is becoming the teacher — and the teacher is gone. Restrain is leaving the classroom with an incomplete education but a living professor.

Religions tell the player what people believe. Factions tell the player what people DO with those beliefs — how theology becomes territory, how faith becomes power, how survival becomes ideology.

Every faction exists in the grey area. Every faction has something the player can learn from. Every faction has something the player can reject. No faction is the correct choice. No faction represents the game's perspective. They are competing answers to questions the game refuses to answer.

The player's relationship to factions is defined by the same verbs that define everything else: Absorb, Fight, Restrain, Research, Create. Every faction can be engaged through any verb. The consequences differ. The game doesn't guide.

When designing a faction encounter, ask: what does God learn here that can't be learned anywhere else? If the answer is nothing, the encounter doesn't justify its existence.

Full curriculum framework: Design Philosophy — The Curriculum

Factions React to God's Path¶

Factions are not static. They respond to what the player does — not to a morality score, but to specific actions. WHO the player absorbed matters as much as how much. Whether the player helped their community or ignored it. Whether the player consumed their enemies or their members.

A God who absorbs heavily is feared. Doors close. Factions that lost members to absorption become hostile. But factions whose enemies were consumed may welcome the God who removed their problem — friendly for the wrong reasons, utility wearing gratitude's face. No alignment is optimal. Every absorption that opens one door closes another.

A God who restrains is trusted. Doors open. Cooperation flows. But trust has a shadow — factions that welcome the player want something. Allies make the player predictable. The God who won't absorb has known limits, and every faction with an agenda learns to work around them. The warmth is real. The manipulation is also real.

Some factions resent restraint. Communities under threat, factions with dying members, groups that need an enemy removed — they see a God with the power to act and the choice not to. Restraint looks like indifference to the people waiting for help. Mercy is an abstraction to the person bleeding.

Both paths self-reinforce. Absorb and the world fears you — Talk produces less, so you need absorption more. Restrain and the world trusts you — Talk produces more, so you need absorption less. Two spirals. Breaking out of either costs something.

Every faction response follows the same architecture as the circles: every virtue has a shadow, every sin has a light. Faction friendliness has a shadow — cooperation is control wearing a warm face. Faction hostility has a light — an enemy who attacks is honest about what they are. If a faction's response to the player is purely positive or purely negative, it is broken. Both readings must coexist.

Themes¶

• Organization is not belief. Factions and religions overlap but are not the same. Gabriel's Church is both a religion and a faction. The Norse Revivalists are a faction organized around a religion. The Secular Survivors are a faction that explicitly rejects religion. The distinction matters because people who believe the same things can organize differently, and people who organize together can believe different things.
• Power fills vacuums. The merge destroyed every pre-existing authority structure. Factions are what grew in the gap. The question is whether what grew serves the people in it or the people who lead it — and the answer is different for every faction.
• The tribrid as test case. God is everyone and no one. The player's three natures make them a mirror for every faction's inclusiveness and every faction's boundaries. Where you're welcome tells you what the faction values. Where you're rejected tells you what it fears.
• Competing frameworks, no resolution. The game presents every faction's answer and endorses none. The player decides — through engagement, through action, through the endings they choose — which frameworks mattered and which didn't. The game doesn't resolve the political questions any more than it resolves the theological ones.