Chaplain

Also known as the **Counselor**, the Chaplain's role is to provide psychological support to the crew who need it. Besides your office, the crematorium and the morgue, you have no access.

It is vital that you use the radio to call people to the Chapel, because otherwise it is less frequented than the Library.

## Duties

Each chaplain is free to invent the details of their rituals.

* **Funerals**: You have a stock of coffins you can use for wakes and space burials (that is, launching them out of the mass driver). Some employees appreciate wakes being held for friends and loved ones. See below.

* **Psychological care**: This includes counselling, pharmaceutical remedies (consult the chemist), and confessions. You have a confession booth; you and the confessor enter separate rooms and switch on the radio terminals. Most crew members rarely if ever submit to psychological care of their own initiative; offer to help when someone looks troubled. Prisoners are most often in need of attention.

* **Church Services**: Give sermons and sing hymns. Feel free to make these up, just try to keep it relatively sane.

* **Other possible activities**: Investiture of new acolytes and paladins, dedication of mechs, gravitational singularities, psychical research and seances, and pilgrimages to various places.

## Religions

If you decide to go the religious route, the most common NanoTrasen-approved religions (fluffwise) in the year 2560 include:

* Unitarianism; the unifying of many major abrahamic Earth religions.
* Technologism; the belief that robots and cyborgs are holy
* Order of the Great Lady; the belief that the human race was gifted with the knowledge and ambition appropriate by a large, dragon-like alien who we now call Lady Elzra.

However you are free to propagate any present day religions you know of, or even invent one of your own! Just make sure it doesn't go against NanoTrasen and its values, or you may well end up in the brig.

### Background Information

Over the years religion has come and gone. Some faiths have faded out entirely on one colony but remain strong on another. Due to this many religions have been founded. Some worship gods, others, technology. Atheism is perfectly acceptable and common. However, not all faiths are permitted by NanoTrasen.
As time has progressed, so has the religious community. Many of the “Old Religions” of Earth have long since died out, or merged into others. As of today, 2560, there are a total of seven options generally listed on most surveys.

#### Major Statistics

* Atheism/Agnosticism - This is the current largest of the “beliefs.” About half of the current human population sticks to the idea that there is no higher power or anything of that sort, at least on surveys.

* Deism - The belief that through observation and reason, there is infact a “Creator,” but with how vast “Creation” itself -is-, he does not do anything towards it, and lets everything work on the natural laws of creation, so on and so forth. It became a very popular belief in the mid-21st Century, and has continued to grow since then.

* Buddhism - One of the few “Old Religions” to have not only survived, but thrived. Buddhism is not as well spread as the other three, but is still one of the larger religions among humanity today. It still follows the same principles as always, its' teachings of moderation having a universal appeal still unmatched.

* Unitarianism - Unitarianism is the general demographic under which followers of the Abrahamic religions are grouped. Officially, Unitarianism was created out of the merging between the Christian belief and the Islamic belief - It was officially formed some time in the mid-22nd Century. It is the belief that God is the all-father, Jesus is his son, and Muhammad is their prophet. There are still radical groups of the original religions, but they are too tiny to actually be noticed outside of Earth. Practicioners of individual Abrahamic faiths are generally plopped under this statistic as well, much to chagrin. Most of their numbers come from the inner Sol system- The farther out from earth, the more these religions have died down.

* Shinto - Another of the “Old Religions” to have survived to the 26th Century. Shinto is fairly popular in the more oriental colonies among the stars due to financial backers. It also has a fairly large presence on the Moon due to Japanese/American moguls owning a majority of it.

* Taoism/Confucianism - The final of the “Old Religions” to still be popular among the stars. The chinese indigenous religions tend to be the least considered of the big religions, though certainly a big factor - After escaping Earth post the political turmoil, many chinese emigrators from Earth tended to take to buddhism, but it remains a very strong faith out in many previously chinese mining colonies in the various asteroid belts.

#### Colonial Religious Systems

Colonial Religious Systems (or CRSs for short) are religions and/or belief systems created in the colonial systems. Usually they don’t go much farther than their home colony, system, or small sector of space that contains 1-3 systems. CRS range from a large number of beliefs, ranging from the old religions of say, Hinduism, or the belief in a great “Dragon Mother” being the creator of the universe, and make up a relatively large percentage of marked religious practices. Transhumanism is popular in the odder scientific colonies around the jovian and saturnine satellities -an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition. Nonetheless, due to causing quite a few issues moral issues(Such as the returning concepts of genetic fitness and so forth often ascribed to these groups), public practice off of these environments is generally politely discouraged, filed under CRS.

## Thanatology

The Mass Driver's primary purpose is for burials-at-space; wooden caskets are provides for this purpose. Caskets function likes lockers; place the body in the casket, give a eulogy (over the radio if no one is present), move the casket into the driver and fire it.

Note that some crew members may seek to use the Mass Driver as a way to exit the station into space. This should generally not be allowed without very good explanation.

The Crematorium is used to turn bodies into ash. Remember to strip the body before cremating it.

## Propitiating the Gods

The Pray command is like an adminhelp, but is IC, and should be worded deferentially (e.g. "Oh Great and Wise Pelor, please grant your humble servant...). It is advised that you only pray later in the round; the gods have a habit of ignoring early prayers.

Prayers are more likely to be answered if they are somehow thematically appropriate: wishing for an RCD for no apparent reason is unlikely to be fulfilled, but praying for, say, a divine mission or the tools to complete such are more amusing to the gods.

You have candles and crayons in your locker. Candles can be set anywhere and lit (they eventually burn down). Crayons can be used to draw runes (commonly placed in front of the podium), as well as graffiti (not really your style) and letters (allowing you to write out messages across the ground).

Do not expect any prayers to be answered. Gods are fickle beings. Nobody knows what they are going to do next in their great designs.

## Artifacts

### Your Book

You begin the shift selecting your god, religion name, and holy book appearance. It can also hold a small number of items in it.

~~Striking someone with it has a chance of either healing or causing brain damage; there is also a minute chance of it reviving a corpse. Try not to do with without good reason. Hitting someone on the head with a book is not considered normal behaviour by any means.~~ Your bible is a regular book. Do not hit people with it.

### Null Rod

An odd item that is said to repel the evil magic of Nar'Sie. Made entirely out of obsidian, the rod will reveal and dispel runes, and protect the wielder from them. Using on a brainwashed cultist has a chance of reverting them, doing nothing, or hitting them. Use it wisely.

## Traitoring

The chapel is a relatively secluded part of the station, and odds are the AI won't be keeping an eye on it. You can drag around bodies, as well as both space and cremate bodies without looking suspicious. It's your job, after all.