Machine Cult

The Machine Cult is a religion originating from Nakkalism which arose in the early 1830s with the teaching of the prophet Mahran. Machine Cultists believe themselves to be proper Nakkalites, and worship a deity they call Nakkal, but all other Nakkalites consider the Cult to be an apostate religion, and the academic consensus is that it is a distinct religion.

The Machine Cult began in Calparnia and grew rapidly at first, but was dissipated in the Coal War, and many of its adherents were massacred. However, it was not destroyed; the Cultists scattered across Calparnia and many of the leaders went to other countries to spread their message. The Cult remained a very small but persistent presence across western Inecuria, and since the 1990s their numbers have been steadily climbing. The Cult also has a small but particularly fast-growing community across the western world, as interest in their peculiar ideals is strongest in cosmopolitan western culture.

## Beliefs

The Machine Cult can be broadly described as a transhumanist religion which believes industry and mechanisation to be divinely bestowed gifts, and believes that the union of mortal and machine is the ultimate goal of all folk. Through the Blessed Machine, mortals can gain immortality, power and purity.

Unlike the Nakkalites, the Cult makes no distinction between the Infinite Palace, Heaven, the Underworld or Oblivion; they only believe in one afterlife, which they call the Rest. Those who are dead are said to be Resting. The Rest is a neutral place of neither particular joy nor woe; it is, as the name suggests, merely a resting place until the Resurrection, when the Blessed Machine will restore the body with life and allow the soul to reunite with it. Whereas Nakkalites typically cremate bodies, Machine Cultists go to great lengths to preserve the corpse, so that future technology will enable the body to be reanimated and filled with life and soul again.

To the Machine Cultists, all will be purified in the Blessed Machine when the Resurrection is finally made possible; all will adhere to the commandments of Nakkal fully and willingly. Until then, mortals must strive to do their best to adhere to Nakkal's commands, even though their weak flesh will inevitably fail them. Machine Cultists believe that Nakkal will not punish those who defy His will, as He understands the weakness of their flesh, but He will not grant the Resurrection to the unrepentant.

The Machine Cult venerates the Icons of Industry as sacred divine gifts. Originally, this simply meant coal, and perhaps iron, but modern Machine Cultists also believe oil and uranium to be Icons of Industry. Machines themselves are also considered sacred, and the general concept of machines is referred to as the Blessed Machine - though some Machine Cultists believe that *the* Blessed Machine is the one which will finally allow mortals to unite with machines and resurrect the dead. Although there was some dispute over electrical machines initially, they too are venerated by modern Machine Cultists.

The view of the Cult on Angels is more rooted in the Shurite tradition than the Amekizite one, as they believe the Angels to be mere servants of Nakkal with no inherent power of their own - with the exception of Mirahar, the Lord of Angels, whom they call the Machinist and almost worship as a secondary deity (albeit still one subservient to Nakkal). Mirahar is believed to be the source of the Blessed Machine. The Angels are also not depicted as fleshy creatures in artwork; they are drawn, painted and described as being made of metal, plated in silver and gold and with glowing golden eyes.

## Origins

The traditional story of how the prophet Mahran came to realise the truth of Nakkal's teaching is that he noticed a priest by the name of Mahdud lighting a coal-fire and then performing the rites of blessing over it, thereby transforming it into a holy flame. Mahran venerated the fire and looked into it, and he could see an image of cogs turning within the flames. Mahran was employed at a factory in the city of Chehor as an overseer mere weeks ago, and so he recognised the cogs as some kind of machine. He tried to tell Mahdud what he had seen, but the priest had already left.

When Mahran slept that night, he was visited by vivid dreams of vast industrial furnaces wrought of steel, with a golden light streaming from above and a heavenly choir filling his ears. He informed the priest Mahdud of his visions. Mahdud dismissed the dream as merely a dream, a product of his imagination, but he believed the vision in the fire to be a blessing of his new employment and an encouragement to work hard. Mahran left unsatisfied, and over the next few nights he received the same dream again. Now convinced that it was a message from Nakkal, Mahran wrote down a description of his dream. The next night, he received a different one; he saw a crowd of men made from shining steel and brass prostrating themselves before an Angel. Mahran recognised the Angel as Mirahar, due to his crown and sword, but the Angel's appearance too was metallic, wrought of silver and gold. Mirahar walked to Mahran and embraced him, and as soon as they touched, Mahran awoke.

Mahran was absolutely certain that this was a divine message, and the answers all came to him as he frantically wrote them down. Not trusting the priest Mahdud, Mahran spoke to his coworkers and informed them of his dreams, swearing that they were true on his life. They were unconvinced at first, but when one of his coworkers named Calo (a Divenic immigrant) spoke of also having a dream of a metal man, they concluded that he must be correct. As Mahran's message spread, more people spoke of having dreams of metal men, and the Machine Cult was born.

The Cult quickly attracted negative attention from Nakkalite fundamentalists, who saw these beliefs as not only heretical, but blasphemous. They said that the visions came not from Nakkal, but from Qamura the Fallen, and mobs began shutting down the preachers of the Cult with violence. When Calo, the immigrant, was murdered by a vigilante, the Cult knew it was too dangerous to stay in Chehor, so they moved to the small town of Dahad in 1836 and requested employment at the cannery factory there. The factory owner was disturbed by their beliefs, but was short on workers, so he accepted them. However, the mob tracked them to Chehor and, armed with guns, attacked the Cult. Mahran himself was gravely wounded in this attack, and he struggled on for an entire day before dying the following night. Mahdud the priest was also attacked and killed by the mob, as they assumed he had planted the heretical ideas of the Cult in Mahran's mind.

Although the mob hoped these attacks would destroy the Cult, they only made it stronger, as their prophet had now become a glorious martyr. The town of Dahad was taken over by the Cult, and even the factory owner himself entered into their ranks. In the Coal War, most of Dahad's population was massacred by the Purists, and the Cult was dispersed - but certainly not destroyed.

### Secular Explanation

Scholars who reject the religion of the Machine Cult have come up with several theories as to how exactly it arose, all of which essentially ascribe some kind of mental illness to Mahran himself, which was why he saw the cogs in the flames and had such vivid, powerful dreams. Others do not go so far, simply saying that Mahran mistook his own hyperactive imagination for a divine message.

To explain why others had similar dreams to Mahran, secular scholars give a fairly simple explanation; Mahran was so powerful in his oration, giving such vivid and colourful descriptions, that they inspired the imaginations of those he spoke to, leading to these descriptions becoming manifest in their dreams. This was actually one of the critiques of the Machine Cult at the time of Mahran; an orthodox Amekizite priest named Sahad gave this as the reason for the spread of the religion in an encyclical, warning against allowing the Cult to preach as it only inspired more dreams, noting that nobody had these heretical dreams until they had heard of the Cult's teaching.