Cultores Agorander

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Cultores Agorander​

"The world of their ancestors perished in fire and betrayal; it must have driven them mad! And that madness has crossed the ages... leave those poor wretches in the hills be, there is nothing to be done for them now."

_Unknown adventurer, after escaping a Cultores Agorander enclave.​

The Cultores Agorander is the collective name for a number of cults which established enclaves across the Galactic southeast in the period before the rise of the Republic. Although the the details of their faith differ wildly from group to group, the core tenants of their beliefs - and the origins of them - are all the same.

Origins Enclaves Beliefs

• 
  
  Origins​
  
  
  The Cultores Agorander exists on many worlds, mainly those which were once subjects of Agorander the Terrible, an ancient, pre-Republic dictator who conquered a significant portion of the known Galaxy in the distant past. Agorander's vast empire was toppled in part by revolution, and in part by an apparently intentional act by the despot, a signal propagated through the empire's hyperspace beacon network which caused every known station to self-destruct or - at the very least - scrub its astrogational database. In an age when navicomputers cost as much as a mid-tier planet's quarterly GDP and were the size of a modern light freighter, this effectively plunged thousands of worlds into isolation, societal collapse and barbarism.
  
  In this dark age, those who still held loyalty to Agorander were often hounded by the general population. Agorander had betrayed his subjects, condemning countless trillions to all the hardships and horrors that the collapse of interstellar civilization brought with it. Those that managed to form coherent groups fled into the wilderness of populated worlds, or to remote moons and untamed frontier worlds. Most clung to the idea that in spite of everything, Agorander still lived, and would one day send ships to reconquer his empire and restore those who had remained loyal to him to positions of privilege and power.
  
  Over millennia of isolation, as technology failed and the memory of what had been was passed down imperfectly from generation to generation, the hopes of Agorander's scattered followers devolved into a desperate, often depraved religion. The memory of Agorander ascended to godhood; he was Agorander, Whose Will the Stars Obey, who would one day send his iron legions to smite those who had rejected him. Artifacts and tales which had been passed down from the Before Time became sacred relics, or the inspiration for lesser deities. Dimly remembered procedures and customs became rituals. Those who had cast out the original loyalists, and their descendants, became non-believers, creatures to be feared and hated.
  
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  Enclaves​
  
  
  After long millennia in isolation, the enclaves of the Cultores Agorander have become grim places indeed. Usually clustered around the remains of remote, ancient fortresses, settlements and even shipwrecks from the time of Agorander, some are tiny, host to a few hovels and perhaps a few dozen individuals, while others are nearly cities, home to hundreds or even thousands of the faithful.
  
  Such enclaves tend to be primitive places. Shunning outside contact, the inhabitants - if they have access to technology of any kind - are well behind the Galactic standard when it comes to amenities. Those groups which have retained some technical knowledge may have preserved some vestiges of advanced technology; larger settlements are often powered by long-lasting atomic piles, which were highly refined in Agorander's day and will run practically forever if they are not damaged. Some possess ancient weapons, such as beam-tubes, bunker lances, slugthrowers and even rayguns, although time and lack of proper maintenance has often reduced these devices - with the possible exception of hardy slugthrowers - to little more than scrap. Those enclaves which possess vehicles similarly tend to utilize archaic groundcars and ground-effect hovercraft; very rarely, they may even possess a few true air vehicles, or a carefully preserved semi-functional spacecraft.
  
  Some of these more "advanced" enclaves may even have caches of functional Automatic Conqueror droids and Command Podiums, although this is exceedingly rare. Even rarer is any ability to control such equipment.
  
  The vast majority of smaller enclaves have reverted to a pre-technological state. Those items of advanced technology which they do posses are typically little more than junk, albeit often revered junk. Flight suits, helmets and other articles form the basis of ceremonial costumes, and cosmetic recreations and interpretations often stand in for the real thing. Weapons, whether functional or not, are brandished by shamans and chiefs as sacred relics; the corroded ruin of a raygun may become a scepter of office, a nonfunctional bunker lance the legendary totem given to great warriors. Technical manuals, computer tapes and punch-cards may become sacred texts, their deeper secrets unknowable to mortal beings. The hulks of Automatic Conquerors may become slumbering guardians, or the inspiration for lesser gods.
  
  Universally, enclaves of the Cultores Agorander are remote and hidden, purposely made difficult to reach from the outside world.
  
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  Beliefs​
  
  
  The Cultores Agorander vary wildly in the details of their faith, springing as they do from widely dispersed pockets of survivors from Agorander's fallen empire; however, the core tenants remain consistent across them all. All believe in the divinity of Agorander, their one-time leader, and that one day he will return at the head of a divine fleet which will scourge the Galaxy of all whose ancestors betrayed him when his empire fell. To serve him in this conflict to come, and to be rewarded in the new world that will follow, the followers of Agorander must keep themselves isolated from the treachery of outsiders, and maintain the sacred rites and traditions.
  
  Many of the Cultores Agorander practice loathsome rituals. Agorander, it is said, replaced much of his body with machinery over the course of his long life; to bring themselves closer to their god, cultists will practice ritual mutilation, replacing parts of themselves with crudely attached prosthetics. Few of the enclaves retain any working knowledge of bionics, or indeed advanced surgical procedures, and so these prosthetics tend to be crude in construction and design, relying on simple mechanical linkages in order to articulate, if they do at all. They are typically grafted into the flesh of the recipient, which can lead to gruesome infections. The procedure for attaching the prosthetic is often carried out with no anesthetic.
  
  Many enclaves have adopted the practice of sentient sacrifice as part of their rituals, choosing victims either from among their own number or abducting them from outsider communities. Intruders are often killed to protect the secrets of the enclave, and their deaths are often incorporated into larger rituals if they are unfortunate enough to be captured alive.
  
  Of particular note, many of the Cultores Agorander hold a deep loathing of Force users, who exist in their mythology as devils who caused the downfall of Agorander. The life of any Force user caught in their midst is considered forfeit, and their deaths tend to be even more brutal than most intruders. Force sensitive individuals born into such communities are sacrificed as soon as their powers are discovered.
  

Intent​

To expand the lore of Agorander, the ancient conqueror I created in another submission, and to provide a third-party antagonist group for characters to encounter and fight against. This cult is heavily inspired by the Survivors, who Han Solo and company fought against in the Legends novel Han Solo and the Lost Legacy.

 

[Malon]

Approved!