Iconoclasts

The Iconoclasts, sometimes shorthandedly called Iconos, are a group largely comprised of formerly religious people who now have decided to purge the galaxy of remaining faith in gods proven to exist. Some do this out of spite, as a sort of forced "awakening" on people they once called brothers or sisters in faith. Others believe that a god's number of worshipers is directly tied to them having additional power, so the only way to free the universe is to eliminate worship of gods through any means necessary. And others still essentially long for a way to restore and relocate the pre-Godbomb means that were allegedly able to kill gods.
Some of them see themselves as heroes seeking to liberate the Ealdremen Galaxy from a terrible fate of being subjected to the whims of gods that do not care for them. Others acknowledge readily that they simply seek to destroy the "corrupt religious institutions" for their own sake. Their leader is said to be an antipaladin detlimse who actually survived the Godbomb and has been sustaining themselves with necromancy, but no one outside of their order has ever met them to know if this is true or not.
Very rarely do they accept people who do not truly and personally comprehend the core tenet of their group, which is essentially "You may have fallen, but you do not fall alone." Someone who was always an atheist or never revered a god has nowhere to fall from, and so they would be unlikely to be able to join without proving their dedication to the Iconoclasts' goal on a more personal level. Furthermore, for obvious reasons, they are not well-liked among religious populaces. As such, they are very rarely found on Sigzlor (where the god-revering sallowpaws can easily root them out) or Beyne (where the population is mostly atheist or otherwise does not care for gods; their numbers would dwindle too quickly in such a remote place, and it would make it difficult to access religious institutions so far away). It's said that they hide out mostly in Manhoush, the Gerualdian land of the kannars, as there is no truly strong government to eliminate them there and the kannars who find them barely tolerate them due to the Iconoclasts finding "enlightenment" in their own way. Once the local kannars cease to tolerate the Iconoclasts, they move on to another area within Manhoush; the land is big enough and the populations so nomadic that they can essentially exist in relative peace like this.
Iconoclasts found within other countries are treated with immense suspicion at best and violent hostility at worst. Even people who don't care for gods very rarely approve of the Iconoclasts' tendency to cause destruction very publicly. They're not the type to do things quietly, as they very much want the whole galaxy to be free of influence. Iconoclasts almost never care for worship of mythological gods, as they see these as fake cultural gods that do little harm comparatively, but this opinion can turn around extremely quickly should they see a connection between worship of a cultural god and a god proven to exist. Their religious scholars are said to be second to none, and they tend to send people off on missions to "liberate" the galaxy in small groups, going essentially religion by religion for disruption and destruction, to avoid being all caught at once. They are overall exactly the kind of people who see negative opinions towards them as proof that this galaxy needs to be freed from the thrall of gods; those who cannot see the benefit of what they're doing are proof of the problem and why the Iconoclasts need to do what they do. Thankfully, they are generally too small, too out of the way, and too extremist for them to be as much of a problem as sallowpaws, which is a group that continues to snowball in membership and has actively made the Iconoclasts an enemy that they will root out and destroy at any given opportunity.
Some splinter groups of the Iconoclasts exist, and there are non-antipaladin Iconoclasts as well (such as former clerics who have taken up another class, so to speak, with the loss of their divine power from forsaking their god). They have also been known to "save" children from orphanages connected to religious organizations and raise them for their own, and they do not take deserters lightly.
Category:Groups
Category:No Spoilers