The Keepers of the Cave

**The Keepers of the Cave** are an extremist faction which believes that the discoveries science have turned mankind away from his natural place. No one knows when they began, only that they take their name from a Dawn Era proclamation of the Philosopher King, which stated that humanity is trapped in a dark cave, filled with the evils of ignorance, and that through science, reason, and cooperation, the exit will be illuminated. The Keepers of the Cave call this notion "The First Great Heresey", and believe that it is from this which all suffering stems.

In the primitive world, they claim, suffering was simple, brief, and known. By shining the "Light" of Science into the cave, they assert, the Philosopher King is leading humanity into the place of danger in which he must not tread. The researchers of Kallipolis University are playing the part of the Gods, delving into forbidden secrets which will only be mankind's undoing. They cite the weapons which have come from advanced civilization's wars as proof of this. By the end of the Golden Age, they had been neutralized as a threat, but the events of the Great War lead to a resurgence of them.

The Nonbelievers are currently attempting to wipe all scientific advancement from the world, and have no qualms about killing bystanders for the greater good. They work in secret, running out of dimly-lit caves dug beneath city infrastructures, and infiltrating scientific circles to take them down from the inside, while spreading sedition against the ideas of science and progress to the masses. These are typically not well received, but in the right environment, they've made whole cities fall into uprisings against the science, burning great libraries to the ground. They do not care which faction they do this to, and have gone as far as killing Tallet engineers and burning the wagons of book-merchants in The Family Hearth caravans, but their greatest hatred has always been for the Shining Kingdom, it's co-conspirators in the Circle of Friends, and since it's inheritance of the Light in the Postclassical Era, the Technocracy.

The Technocracy is well aware of their adversary among their ranks, and their very existence is considered to be a major security concern.

## The Code of the Cave Walls

* Writing is one of their evils, the code must only be taken down in pictures.
* In nature, there are no contracts, only the strength of the brutal.
* No Man is innocent in the eyes of the Old Gods.
* Show no mercy to those who shine the Light.
* The light is a corrupting force, use it as a tool, but do not let the source within you.
* The light will continue to expand until the shiners are stopped.
* Math is Evil. Nature is Pure.

## Known Attacks

The Keepers of the Cave are few in number, tend to be willfully ignorant of scientific fact, and eschew the means which would allow them to be a true civilizational threat, but they are still ruthless and determined in their quest to snuff out the Light, and see no borders when doing so.

### The Shining Kingdom

In the Early Preclassical, before the First Goran War, several movements rose up around misinformation surrounding what the scientists of Kallipolis were doing. These were quelled with information, but not after death and destruction had been wrought. Late Historians believe this to be some of the early work of the group which would later become the Keepers.

### The Goran

For a brief period, the Goran worked with the Keepers. Within the century, however, a plot was discovered in which they had been murdering scientists and archivists and were attempting to destroy the knowledge that was the Goran Religion itself. The Fire God immediately declared them an avatar of the Void and has made purging them a priority of the Goran.

### The Circle

The Circle has had to deal with their attempts at destroying the school system for centuries. However, once The Circle had formed in the Classical Era, the Princess began working alongside her co-leaders to try new approaches to fighting them. The Princesses ability to empathize with the captured conspirators, and quietly show them to understand the evils the way the scientists did, caused the ranks to fray, and quickly saw the organization turn on itself, allowing the new government to have some respite from them.

Today, polities universally turn them over to the Technocracy when they are caught.

### The Family Hearth

*"In nature, there are no contracts, only the strength of the brutal."*

In the early Golden Age, a group of Keepers infiltrated the Hearth Home having joined the Family Hearth as sleeper agents, and attempted to set the Great Library on fire. Due to the fortuitous dampness due to a recent rainstorm, they only managed to destroy a small number of documents before they were caught and killed and the fire was put out.

There have also been several instances of book merchants traveling with the Family Hearth being set on fire in their wagons immediately after showing their wares to have ancient tomes of knowledge. Upon investigation, the Family Hearth and city guards will sometimes find that the buyers were either murdered to destroy the knowledge or were agents of the Cave.

### The Academy

The Keepers once convinced the Academy to work with them, making them believe that the Academy's mission to hide dangerous knowledge from the world was a mutual goal. This ended when the Keepers purposefully infected a Scholar working with them with an illness from the Goran lands, believing they would start a plague within the Citadel. The Scholar's illness was promptly treated with the advanced medicines of the Academy, and the Keepers were labeled as an enemy.

Today, Fireflies are warned to fear the Keepers of the Cave, who will torture them to death for attempting to garner fuel for the accursed Light if they are caught.

### The Technocracy

The Technocracy has taken actions to root out all Keepers of the Cave in their midst. They cannot rely on the Princess or simple background checks to defend them from Sleeper agents, and so they have devised a method of giving puzzles which cannot be solved by those who are not true believers in science to suspected Keepers. This has had good results, but the paranoia remains, for if one were to infiltrate one of the Councils...