Ateanism

“What harm can there be in the delight of knowing? In the joy of witnessing beauty or appreciating genius?”
—Durlis Talin, Hive Infernis Prefect, burned for heresy 265.M41
There are things it is better not to know, things best left
uncontemplated and unconsidered, certain truths it is
better never to face. Humankind, unfortunately, has
ever been inquisitive, always thirsting to know what secrets
lie hidden behind the curtain of ignorance. To the Ruinous
Powers, such desires are an invitation to reward the seeker
of truth with what he craves and in the process destroy him
utterly. The folly of Ateanism is a warning that it is not only
the malign cultist who can bring on the storm of Chaos but
also the follies of the weak, the vain, and the arrogant.
Ateanism is a school of thought and a scholastic and artistic
theory. It holds beauty and the pure achievement of the mind
above all other goals and believes that at the heart of the drive
to perfection and purity in any field lies a single magnificent
truth. To this end, Ateanists strive to use a set of formulae
and processes that grant them a glimpse of the majesty of the
truth that lies beneath all of man’s greatest works. Sadly for
these deluded fools, the revealed truth they seek is a lie wed
to the powers of depravity and hubris that echo in the warp.
In applying their flawed and blasphemous patterns, Ateanists
constantly court a blind dance with corruption, destruction,
and damnation.
==The Obsession of Julius Ateanos==
Ateanism is named for Ateanos, the damned founder of this
school of thought. Ateanos was an archivist and scholar
whose hubris would unleash a tradition that has violated
souls without control since his death over two centuries ago.
Scholar, savant, archivist, and illuminator, Julius Ateanos was
chief curator of the Library of Knowing on Fenksworld. The
echoing vaults of the Library were Ateanos’s home, and its
stacks of books, parchment rolls, and data stores were his
beloved charges. Yet, for all his learning and intellect, Ateanos
did not understand a fundamental truth---that to be a curator
of knowledge in the Imperium is to keep it contained and
confined from those who should not have it. Had he treated
the knowledge at his disposal with the suspicion of a gaoler,
many souls might have been saved.
Ateanos’s first steps to damnation were the fault of his
own flawed character, his complete confidence in his own
intellectual abilities, and his belief in the purity of intellectual
endeavor. For decades he had pored over the works in his
charge. He had read of great thinkers who had built the
foundations of knowledge, been dazzled by the beauty of
ancient Terran poets whose names are lost, and felt the tingle
of illicit pleasure at secretly reading proscribed works in the
dark watches of the night.
In his quest, Ateanos crossed the boundary of necessary
knowledge and in time he became not simply content to
absorb the achievements of others and dreamed of being like
the ancient champions of art and truth. This dream became
Ateanos’s warm and comforting companion in the grey
drudgery of his mundane work, and it sustained him as he
obeyed the orders of what he considered to be lesser men.
After long years of discontent, he decided to follow his dream
to fruition, and took a step into nightmare, not beauty.
Perhaps inspired by fragments of the work of an ancient
philosopher, Ateanos came to the conclusion that a complex
but common property underpinned all great art, thought, and
human expression. It was this unknown property expressed in
the form and proportion of sculpture, the cadence of poetry,
or the elegance of theory, he believed, that spoke to the
depths of the soul and spurred humanity to achieve all that
was great and admirable.
What was more, Ateanos was convinced that this property
could be expressed and separated from those works of which
it was the fundamental but hidden part. It would be perfection
itself rendered to its supreme and absolute form. The means
of revealing this property would be Ateanos’s great gift to
human knowledge. He fantasized about it as the making of
his immortality and fame, and thus was the focus of a deep
and secret obsession in the last decade of his life.
==The Truth Revealed==
Unfortunately, Ateanos had stumbled upon a truth, though
not the truth that he expected. As he poured himself into
his work, exploring obscure areas of knowledge and diverse
disciplines, he was spurred on by glimpsed snatches of his
glorious goal. Long after the departure of his underlings
from the library, Ateanos labored by failing lights, furtively
musing over hidden works. He became a haggard figure, his
eyes hooded by fatigue, his sight ruined by long secret hours
of work. Finally, his labor was done and he basked in the
warmth of a man close to having his life’s work vindicated.
The product of his long labor was a strange formula
written in symbols almost lost to human understanding. It
was his key to the magnificence of things created by art and
contemplation, for he was sure that the strange formulae
would reveal the hidden property behind all truth and beauty.
Perhaps, buried deep beneath his obsession, he knew what he
had formulated in the symbols of dead men was something
terrible, for he delayed the final proof of his work. Instead he
laid out all he had done in a secret journal and he labored
over rendering the Eris Transform, as he dubbed it, and the
theoretical method of its applications onto the finest Terran
vellum. Each page was a wonder of the illuminator’s craft that
gleamed with golf leaf, fractal-etched adamantine, and the
deep hues of rare inks. Once all embellishment was done came
a moment when Ateanos could delay the proof of his work
no more. He began the first application of the Eris Transform.
What Ateanos chose to first apply the Transform to remains
unrecorded, but whether it was a renowned sculpture or the
work of a long dead poet, it had an effect more wondrous and
terrible than Ateanos could have dreamed.
As the final stroke of the Transform’s application was
completed, the world changed around and within Julius
Ateanos. A feeling of infinite doors of possibility opened
to him, smothering his mind, and his being ran with an
understanding of the untapped beauty of all things. He heard
beautiful yet discordant sounds that made the soul ache and
weep at their impossibility. He felt transported to a higher,
more refined realm where things worked in different ways,
and where experience of any kind was like gazing into a
kaleidoscope in space and time from which he could not
look away.
However, even as he reached this peak of rapture he felt
the lie to his bliss and the cold greasy feeling of touching
something monstrous and mocking. His surroundings blurred
and flowed like wax, lithe faces leered from the corners of
his sight, and the air became thick with the smell of sweet
corruption overlaid with a thousand cloying scents. Ateanos
records his final experiences in his journal in a crazed, shaking
hand, writing at the last that something was coming for
his soul.
The fate of this foolish genius is not known. A whispered
tale exists amongst servants of the Ordos who chase the
fragments of Ateanos’s legacy that if one were to find the
original manuscript of the Eris Transform, he would find in the
illuminated margins a tiny robed figure, screaming.
After Ateanos vanished, the manuscript of his rendered
work was first recorded in his successor’s papers and then
swiftly disappeared amid scandal and a spate of mysterious
deaths. Meanwhile, his journal was discovered and seized by
the Holy Ordos. Since then, the manuscript has spread in
often-incomplete copies and fragments between the hands of
warp dabblers, jaded artists, and overweening scholars. The
original has long been lost, and its damning power has been
weakened by errors and omissions in inferior successors, but
to those with sufficient faculties and learning, its application
represents a blissful release from drudgery and mundane toil.
To a scribe who labors over the copying of a book that
will never be read or to the artist who’s imaginative reach
goes beyond the grasp of their talent, Ateanism represents the
possibility of beauty, bliss, and rapture.
Ateanists are often desperate or jaded people who seek
out and apply its proscribed formulae compulsively to all
manner of subjects in the hope of being granted a moment
of pure perfection. Many never experience what they crave,
their application or copy of the Eris Transform being in some
way imperfect or incomplete. Some unfortunately do receive
what they desire, and from that moment forward they are
compelled to repeat the process by an infernal addiction more
powerful than that inflicted by any chemical.
== The Eris Transform and its Application ==
A practitioner of Ateanism is chiefly concerned with the
application of the Eris Transform to works of art and intellect,
such as a work of literature or music. To have any use,
however, the would-be Ateanist also requires the connected
methodology---a cipher which is made up of a mass of strange
translation tables as well as geometrical and occult diagrams of
equivalence. These elements can appear together or separately
and occur in many forms, from scrolls to encoded data slates.
Many works also contain additional notes by previous users
and commentaries on the exact method of application.
Ateanism is not a unified movement but a chain of
individuals and small groups linked only by the passing of
copies of the Eris Transform. Those copies and the lore that
passes with them are of variable quality, and many do not
work at all or will only work with the most imaginative
handling. The quirks of practice that have crept into Ateanism
over the centuries (over what it should be applied to, in what
circumstances, the use of mirrors, special accompaniments,
and so on) have even led to schism and murder between
its followers.
Almost all Ateanists are ignorant of the daemonic influence
they open themselves to by their acts, as if some external
force was preventing those involved from discovering the
truth (which may, in fact, be the case). Instead, most think of
Ateanism as the pursuit of truth and beauty in a universe of
drab repetition and crushing, philistine dogma.
Cost and Availability: Copies of the Eris Transform are
usually exchanged between friends, fellow aesthetes, or
academic contacts and are not generally traded items or sold
on the open market for money. If one were to try and obtain a
copy it would entail several thousand Thrones at the very least.
The Eris Transform is a highly proscribed item, and obtaining
a copy is a matter of moving within the circles through which
it passes. It therefore has no Availability value, as obtaining it
should never be a matter of simply rolling dice.
Application: A character wishing to apply the Eris Transform
must have the Logic (Int) Skill and be Literate in the language
of the copy methodology he is using. He must also have an
object of intellect or creativity to apply it to. Attempting an
application takes 1d10 hours minus the applier’s Intelligence
Bonus, to a minimum of one hour.
Effects: At the end of the time required for the application, the
applier makes a Logic (Int) or Trade (Artist) Test. Such Tests
should have a base value of Hard (–20), further modified by
circumstance and the quality of the Eris Transform he is using.
If the Test is failed, there are no effects. If the Test is passed,
the effects are determined by the degree of success (see Table
4-7: The Effects of Applied Ateanism). A GM may, of
course, decide on an effect that he feels to be appropriate
rather than using the chart.
==Inquisitorial Threat Briefing==
The Inquisition knows of Ateanism, it knows its threat, and
it knows how it spreads. This knowledge has not stopped
Ateanism being one of the most subtle and persistent problems
faced by the Ordo Malleus in the Calixis Sector. There have
been 87 recorded incidents relating to the use of the Eris
Transform in the centuries since Ateanos’s disappearance.
Since Ateanism is not a cult in the common sense, it is even
more resistant to purging and is incredibly difficult to uproot.
All that is needed for Ateanism to continue to exist is for
copies of the Eris Transform to change hands between deluded
and willing fools. These copies are often made by hand and
so preventing their production is almost impossible, which is
not to say the Inquisition is any less resolute in trying.
Like the most endemic of weeds, Ateanism is a constant
problem for the Holy Ordos that can bear the most
horrific fruit, and though its adherents are often little more
than pompous, deluded fools, their actions can have dire
consequences. Therefore, they are shown no mercy.