oc bullshit

Piety decided neither option would suffice, and packed her things to do something that would fulfill her for the first time in her almost 20 years of life, and go where no one had gone before: Northwest, where there was once North America. She gathered a small group of friends as well as some more experienced sailors from the northmost top of Neojerusalem and the Big Sanctuary.

PRE-ACT II

The journey was long and uncharted, and 3 months in they all began to ration their food more and more, as they realised they may be there for longer than expected. They thought it would end up just taking one or even two more months, but it took 5 more. Some people had even died. They still had the trip back to make, but they had already eaten most of the rations for that part. When they arrived at their destination, however, it was filled with a fog that smelled of mould. Piety knew she couldn't get a close look on this large of a boat, and so she took a smaller boat and fled during the night.

She rowed all night, but she didn't realise until morning how close she was to rowing to her death. As the sun hit the water, she saw a huge expanse of water cascading into a hole of unmeasurable depth. The stench of it made her feel lightheaded, it was as though she could still smell the people who had died here during the Nuclear Rapture 150 years prior.

The pure terror Piety felt seeing this amounted to nothing in comparison of what she saw next, amalgamating in the sun bathing the endless cavern. The Divine itself, in corporeal form, the earth rotting around it. "A physical manifestation of the moral decay of humanity", is the explanation the Divine gave her. It had been growing. It had caused the Collapse. The Divine split into many forms and showed her everything horrific and incomprehensible to a human.

Piety rowed back to the ship woodenly, and felt no hunger. She locked herself in her room as they sailed back to Truebablyon, the sailors dropping like flies. At some point, she left and took her small boat to sail the rest of the way back herself. When they found her, the only one to return from the excursion, they assumed the horror in her eyes was only due to the death and cannibalism she saw. She could not physically manage to speak for 2 years, until she gave up on the Sanctuaries entirely and ran off to the Desert.

After years of wandering the Desert she found Camp Asher, and settled there quietly. She found life as a teacher, and a small devout class who enjoyed what she had to say. She had abstract and divine ideas of divinity, of the value of human life. It all felt like it had came to her in a dream, a vision, instead of something she could see and feel and hear and touch, right in front of her. She spoke of death as a natural part of life, of pleasure as the only thing to bring moral equality to humanity. She no longer could smell, that stench haunting her.

PRE-ACT III

At 37, she meets a girl hungry for knowledge but with no one to feed her. She was trepidatious about adopting a new student, but she saw her anger and bravery, and found there was much exploring to be done. As the years of teaching her passed, she found this girl was her favourite student, and after a lengthy conversation on the Mines and the way her work went underappreciated in the Desert's society, Piety gave her the name "Worker".

After some time, Piety dropped her other students, or they drifted away, and she dedicated her time to her protégé, Worker. Neither had family they were close to, neither cared for Camp Asher outside of the roof it provided over their heads, and so they left, to start somewhere that would align with their values.

Again Piety wandered the Desert, this time with someone she could trust and rely on, like no one else she had met before. They find open territory, and begin building, stealing the materials from nearby Camps, avoiding conflict, until they began to recruit enough wanderers from the Desert to make themselves something of a village, with walls strong enough to withhold attacks.

ACT I

Piety spent most of her days doing nothing but sitting and thinking, with Worker spending most of her time working on creating the village. Piety would have sooner died than spend so much time with others. She was too attached to one person, and their symbiotic relationship became, to her, more like an infection. She felt herself to be a burden to the Workers' Sanctuary, and to Worker herself. She felt like she was a part of the rot of the earth she was so terrified of.

She had visions of the girl whose name was growing in renown across the Desert, Rager. A name not dissimilar to the name she had come up with for Worker. She had visions of this girl with the Divine, in the Divine. Someone who could understand her. She was isolated even from Worker.

As things began to slow down and people were getting settled, Worker tried to repair their relationship a little more, and Piety was not opposed. She was 55 now, already considered old because of how short lifespans were in the Desert. She expected herself to die any minute, but it was not that that she was afraid of.

She revealed to Worker what she had seen in the Chasms, why they were called Chasms, why she was so devoted to philosophy and the intangible.

ACT II

At long last, at 61, she meets the 25 year old Rager. Rager asks her one question, and nothing else, "what did you see in the Chasms." Piety replies with only, "you have seen it." And that was all they said to one another. They knew they understood one another, they knew they did not need words.

At 10 years old Worker sees her brother go to school, somewhere she wasn't allowed to go. It was full of classes similar to the Sanctuaries' academies, though women were not permitted to attend in the Desert. She spent 5 years seething over this loss until her father finally found a Wise Woman to read her miscellaneous facts, a haphazard education. Worker was enamoured with the schools, the thrill of all the newness of this information, but instead she was made to sit at home and appreciate that she at least had a tutor, unlike most girls. She got very little information and seethed at this, her jealousy of her brother driving a rift between them.

The lessons didn't last long, as her mother's illness overtook her and the rift completely tore their family apart.

PRE-ACT III

At 17 she meets a strange reclusive woman who had been teaching on the outskirts of the Camp to a small number of devoted students, largely consisting of boys who were progressive enough to think that a woman could have lessons to be learned from. Piety. Their interactions were at first cordial and impersonal, but as Worker heard more of the philosophies of Piety, she became more determined to become one of her pupils.

Their relationship started off slow but once the first barrier was down, they grew closer at a faster and faster rate. After a year of trying to break into Piety's sphere, she succeeded, and quickly became one of Piety's favourite students. Piety spoke of divine madness and violent revolutions and sexual freedom and all that was abstract. It went from academic to religious.

At 21 Worker officially becomes Piety's protégé, inheriting all of Piety's knowledge, even her terrible discovery Northwest, at the Chasms, that caused her to not speak for 2 years on end. Together, they decide to leave Camp Asher and establish their own Camp, a true sanctuary, for the workers, not the Servants of Lord Fame. It was here that Worker got her name, for this.

While exploring the Desert to find a place to settle, Worker sees the Mines. While already angry at Lord Fame according to what happened to her mother and the things Piety told her of, seeing the suffering he and the Sanctuaries brought firsthand radicalised her even further. She was angry.

She and Piety establish the Workers' Sanctuary when they are 26 and 46 respectively. It is made up largely of the women who wander the Desert, women akin to those Mad would meet in her later years. It was difficult to form the pseudo-Camp from scratch but it was a skill not forgotten from when the Desert rebuilt society 180 years before from the ground up.

ACT I

The next 6 years are spent trying to hold her own against the other Camps with the small but loyal group she has cultivated, mirroring Piety's method of recruitment. The most violent towards her were the camps aligned with Lord Fame, whereas the Camps aligned with only themselves tended to likewise stick to themselves. At first they avoided, but as Worker's supporters grew in number, they were able to fight back and steal materials to build with. Before they built houses, they built a wall to protect themselves.

Piety was not one to rule, and quickly retreated back into her wordless shell, only communicating with the others with Worker as a mediator. This was the first rift of uncertainty in their relationship, the seemingly special connection they had with one another wearing thin in the face of conflict.

Worker is 32 when Rager and her friends escape from the Farm, and she finds out about this only when finding women who sought refuge in her Sanctuary after fleeing the Farm as well, inspired by Rager. Worker and Rager would spend many years knowing of one another but never directly meeting. Mad, a friend of Rager's, became well-acquainted with the women of the Workers' Sanctuary that grew hallucinogens, and it was through her Worker found the most authentic information on Rager. In many ways, Mad reminded Worker of Piety, if she were more erratic and immature. Piety, however, did not agree. While she was not hostile towards Mad, she still did not speak to her.

In the wake of Rager's more violent attacks towards the Camps, indirect attacks against Lord Fame, Worker also begins fighting with the Camps. Self-defence turns into war, and the Workers' Sanctuary started to really grow. She absorbs an entire section of the Mines into her territory, earning a means of producing materials, like the agriculture within the upper levels of the complexes.

She and Piety grew closer once more, and Piety told her of all she had seen in the Chasms, how she had seen the rot of the earth, and the corporeal God, that had struck her with such cosmic terror she couldn't speak for years afterwards, and still has not recovered.

ACT II

It is not until she is 41 when she meets Rager, only 25. Piety had expressed interest in meeting her, information which would have hurt her admirer Mad, should she have heard it. Worker did not see what conversation they had, but she saw how the very short exchange changed Rager and Piety deeply. 2 years after this strange encounter, all the while she and Rager are working together, Rager finally joins the Workers' Sanctuary, after having seen the Mines.

Rager had already earned a skirt from the Sanctuaries for her battle prowess, and she was a very useful tool in the battles against Lord Fame, dedicated to honing her anger to a task. Worker wanted to consider them friends, though Rager would disagree. There was no animosity, but there was much formality. Worker started off with a strong hope for Rager, but it spelled doom for her.

Shortly before the 200th year after the Collapse, Rager disappeared in the night, presumably back to Mad's arms as per usual.

But this time, Rager returned with a war on her heels. Neojerusalem proclaimed war against the Desert, a promise of conquest, on the 200th year. With this war, it wasn't short before the Workers' Sanctuary's defences were knocked down, and during the night, Lord Fame set their town alight. Many people died in that night, casualties on top of the people dying in the wake of the new war, and one of those people was Piety.

Worker had dedicated her life to Piety like a one-woman cult, she lived her life by her word. Even when Piety grew distant in her age, Worker cared no less for her. Her grief tore her open. She was angry before, but not like this. She had much in common with Rager, she knew this, but now she knew the rage that drove Rager to madness.

ACT III

The typical sporadic battles between Camps became a full-fledged war spanning the entirety of the Desert, even across the whole of Truebablyon. Worker spends the first few years running; it would be absurd for one woman to take on whole armies, even Rager isn't that brash. It was hard enough building the Workers' Sanctuary the first time, when she had the help of someone much wiser and no war to worry about.

But, in the second year of the war, she gains a powerful, if shaky, alliance. Rager's loyalty to her was still present, though taking a backseat to her new partnership with Haver, resulting in her convincing Haver to align herself with the Desert. Ceremonially, Haver was baptised by Mad, and Worker attended the ceremony. She was surprised by how easily Haver gave her the materials, and territory, to build her Sanctuary back up.

After a year of building, Mad's followers slowly began flocking back to her, telling her they had no idea where Mad was, if she was even still alive. A few months of searching, and she found her, kidnapped by Lord Fame and kept in a room with seemingly nothing to survive off of, save for a meagre blade. She brought Mad back to the Workers' Sanctuary once more, now flourishing once again, filled with refugees from the now conquered Little Sanctuary, east of Neojerusalem.

Rager returns to her shortly after, and would return to her over and over again for the next few years, a cycle of promising never to return to Haver again, and then the next morning gone, back to Haver. Worker tried to be patient with her, but by the 8th year of the war, she knew Rager couldn't keep this up.

It was in this year that Worker's army finally managed to break down Lord Fame's fortress, and Worker was the one to cut off his head, triumphantly parading it around the Desert. The war was not yet over, however. Whatever allegiance had formed between Worker and Haver thanks to her baptism had ended. Haver had grown cruel from power, and Rager wasn't helping.

Worker put her foot down, and told Rager that she needed to go to Haver and settle this, or she should never return to the Workers' Sanctuary. Rager didn't return the the Sanctuary. She went to confront Haver, and neither were seen again. The war was over.

Mad disappeared as soon as she heard the news. Worker stepped down from her position as leader in an attempt to balance the scales of power in her village. The Workers' Sanctuary grew, and the people who did attempt to take the role of leader didn't get very far, there wasn't much of a vacuum to fill.

She and Rager sacrificed half of their rations to keep Seer well-fed, better fed than anyone else, and indulged his wants, tried to let him socialise in small groups but to no avail, he was too anxious to speak to anyone other than them. When he managed to make one friend, Girl, Winner took care of her just as another daughter, even when she was too young to even parent one child. She believed there was hope in these children, hope she needed to nurture.

She held Rager during her rough nights, bleeding from a wound between her thighs, sobbing in fear that it would happen again. And when it did happen again, Winner was there for her, again. She let Rager ramble frantically to her of her nightmares of dying from a child she never wanted to carry, she let her let all her emotions out from dusk until dawn. She had no power to stop Rager from suffering, not when she was facing the same treatment from the Servants, but she wanted to patch up the wounds after they were inflicted. She stood by when Rager convinced Seer to rip another wound in her and physically patch it up, to ensure she would never carry a child.

After a year of recovery, Winner being now 17,they are found by one of the sons of the Servants, who would later by Mad, who promised to not tell so long as they took him with them on their journey. Winner was the only one to verbally confirm this; Rager kept her distance from Mad. Winner allowed him to weep into her arms of how he hated his father, how he never wanted to be a boy. She was the first to refer to Mad as a girl, and advocated for her when Mad told this to the group, only to be met with varying degrees of reluctance.

She was there for Seer when he was shaken by violent visions of his own future, she was there for Rager when she would relive those nights of the Servants raping her over and over. When Mad provided more radical escapes to their reality, through substances she found in places she didn't say, Winner was the only one who was too reluctant to try. No matter how many times she saw them make the same mistakes, taking too much too often, she still helped them through the worst of it. She hated how forgiving she always was, but couldn't do much about it.

She hated putting up with it, she hated how she didn't recognise her friends when they were inebriated and ecstatic. She supported Rager's decision to dramatically rename herself and all of them, giving Winner her name so she would never lose, even when it all seemed eccentric and even childish. She loved the name.

When Mad and Rager launched a plot to kill the Servant in his sleep, she drove them, even when she worried they may get themselves killed. She held Rager on her shoulders so she could raise the trophy of the Servant's head high above her. She did not understand Rager's fascination with the grotesque, but still she found it lovely, because it was Rager's.

She was the one to drive Seer back to his birthplace of Neojerusalem, and unlike Mad, she waited for Rager to return after going with him to see him off into the city. She held Rager when she cried over losing her brother, and did not let herself cry.

At 13, she brought up to her father that she explicitly felt uncomfortable with being his son, to which he immediately threatened to send her to war then and there. That same night, she ran off to the only place with other women she knew of— the Farm. She hid in the attic for some time, living off the rations she had packed, until she found a group of kids (Rager, Seer, Winner, and Girl) already living there. They panicked and made to run, presuming she was a boy working for the Servants, but she told them that she wouldn't tell anyone so long as they brought her with them to wherever they were going.

She wandered with them in the Desert for some time, making easy friends with the warmest of the group, the girl later to be named Winner. Winner was the first person to not treat Mad as though she were a freak for saying she didn't feel much like a boy, and taught her out to experiment with her outward appearance. Mad's insomnia got her to wander through the night and find runaway girls trading substances that none of them quite understood, one of which she took because she was told it would make her more feminine.

Rager had the most aversion to Mad because of her fear of men as a trauma response due to what the Servants had put her through. It took them longer to get closer, and she opened up more when Mad began talking of how she felt herself to be a woman, not a man. After some time, the two of them caught each other when they were both having sleepless nights, and Mad soon allowed Rager to also get lost in the substances they found, sometimes only coming back to groggy lucidity after days of wandering, being found again by Winner and Seer. Even with the small joy it brought her to be accepted, the looming misery of living in the Desert and the horrible mood swings caused by her substances made her develop severe depression, and she soon began to seek freedom from it through putting her own knife to her skin, cutting herself and Rager open in their late-night sessions.

At 18, Rager embraced Mad close and gave her her name, Mad, and gave herself her name, Rager. After a moment together, Rager proclaimed Winner and Seer's names, as well. It was a night of extreme celebration, that resulted in both of them too hungover in the morning to barely walk. But Seer saved them from needing to trudge along, for he sacrificed Girl in the name of the Divine, and the Divine in turn gave them a Chariot. After Winner driving them for a few nights, Mad noticed how Rager's spirits had still not yet lifted. Knowing of what Rager had told her of the Servant who had raped her, one night the two of them took the car back to the Farms and gathered the women who Mad had been trading substances with the past few years, and would consider herself friends with. They held a bacchanal, parading his head around a bonfire, a late coming-of-age ceremony for Rager.

Then, a few months of aimlessly driving east, and they arrived at Neojerusalem, where they would deliver Seer. Over those years, she and Seer had agreed to keep their distance from one another, both jealous of the other's closeness to Rager, but in that moment, Mad knew she would miss him. She waited outside Neojerusalem with Winner for a short while, but she knew she had to move on. In those dazed, drug-addled nights, she had witnessed the Divine, and knew she needed to chase it. Leaving Winner with the Chariot, not knowing when next she would see Rager, she left.

ACT II

There had been an anchor, Winner, when Mad had first started forcing herself into trances. Winner had been someone to lean back on, take care of her when she was sick and hardly lucid. Mad had thought her loneliness would free her, but it was choking. Her blades no longer brought her comfort, but still she would carve Rager's face into her arm, seeking the Divine in the blood.

She had heard Seer's small-voiced ramblings after delirious visions, and thought her experience with the Divine would be anything similar. She realised then that Seer thought himself equal to the Divine, but Mad felt small and insignificant to it. She lived her life in fear, not knowing where she was in any given moment, unable to handle the manic ups and pure ecstasy, when just as quickly she would fall back down again, cutting herself open and eating at the wounds.

She met with Rager a few times, but she could not tell the times apart, how far apart they were from one another. She offered impassioned, fervent, avant-garde explanations of the cruelty of the Divine, the beauty of that cruelty, the falsehood of morality. When she was semi-lucid were the best moments for her, when she was awake enough to control herself, but not just enough to lose that feeling of divinity that unconsciousness brought. She would talk to enraptured audiences of enlightenment, freedom from the oppressive systems of institution and government, promises and threats of violence to Lord Fame and all those who served him.

The net of women whose faces she did not know, who she knew no word for other than "her friends", began to devote themselves to the fanaticisms of Mad's escapist fantasies. She was their Dionysus, they were her Maenads.

When she was 27 Rager informed her, one of their sparse meetings, that the 200th year was soon to dawn. She had had a vision, something between what Seer had described and what she felt around Mad, about the future of Neojerusalem and Truebabylon as a whole. Mad, to comfort her, baptised her into her Bacchae, and walked with her to Neojerusalem to see Seer making a speech of his divinity, that he was more powerful than the sun, and could darken it as he wished. The sun was covered by the moon as the first day of the 200th year arrived. She and Seer regarded one another a moment, seeing how different and yet so similar they had become. Seer was easier to digest, and so therefore more popular. He was a prophet of the people, and Mad was only a prophet to her own people, the small intimate group she had cultivated for herself.

ACT III

Mad's habits slowed down as she found herself needing to be lucid enough to defend herself and her bacchants more and more. Seer had, on that 200th year, started a war across all of Truebabylon. She sheltered herself occasionally in the Mines at first, but soon they were flooded with liquid plague. They kept close by the Heart, closer to the Divine, and farther form the armies. With all of the Camps conquered by Neojerusalem's Havedom, more people came to her to convert, for comfort, for a hope that if this war would kill them, the after would not be so cruel. She tried not to institutionalise herself, but she knew that is what she was beginning to do.

At 30 years old, it reached a turning point. Rager came to her for the first time in 3 years, and told her to baptise Haver, the emperor leading this war. Rager promised peace between the Havedom and the Desert, against the real enemy, Lord Fame. She promised Mad that baptising Haver would bring peace, and so Mad baptised her.

This stance gained Mad more attention that she had ever had before, and quickly thereafter, Lord Fame stole her away and kept her in a cell with only a small blade, and walls made of images of his face. The new alliance she had with Haver did not save her, the devotion her followers had to her did not save her, the prayers she sent to the Divine did not save her. All she could to was sit there and cut herself, wonder each day if that should be the day she should cut deep enough to free herself from mortality.

She stayed strong for as long as she could, running off of the fervent trances she would induce in herself, the occasional food that would be dropped from the hole above her, often rotted but edible. She did not know how long she was down there until she was out— a year, she spent in Lord Fame's prison. But who had saved her was someone she had never met, Worker. She offered Mad a place to stay in her Workers' Sanctuary, where she could get medical help for her injuries and infections. Mad blinked into the sunlight she hadn't seen in a year, and swore she saw the Divine in Worker's face. Emotion seizing her, she threw her arms around her with what little strength she had left and kissed her, to try to encapsulate her gratitude.

When she was taken back to Workers' Sanctuary, there she found her maenads, whoever was left. They were well-fed and glowing with satisfaction. That night they held a great festival to honour her return, to honour the occasional mercy of the Divine, for bringing Mad back to safety.

The girls treated him as a superior to them, and Seer was raised to believe he is a higher being from everyone around him, but the ignorance of these girls to the indoctrination they have gone through. He was raised in the attic of the Farm, away from all the struggles of the women within it, well-fed at the expense of his caregivers. He was taught of what the Deserters know of Neojerusalem's religion, how he belonged to the Holy People, how he was surely competent and holy, even at such a young age. He was extremely antisocial, struggling to speak to any person who he wasn't extremely close with, as though the words physically would not come out of his throat. He befriended only one additional person, over much time and struggle, a girl named Girl, who would die with that name she was born with.

He was 8 when he is handed a knife and asked to cut his own foster mother-sister open, while she teary-eyed wails over sufferings he did not understand, nightmarish prophecies of bloody foetuses and dead mothers. He did what he can, and when his sister did not die from his attempt at a surgery, he truly believes in that moment that he is, really, holy. The next year he gets less food, as malnourished Rager receives more than before so she can recover, and he tried not to resent her for this— he knew he shouldn't. But he experiences hunger for the first time, and it is not as though he views Rager as his equal. Over a year of waiting for Rager to heal, and they were found by the son of a Servant of Lord Fame, later to be named Mad, who forced them to flee although he did accompany with them. He, Rager, Winner, Mad, and Girl, began their journey to deliver him back to Neojerusalem, to the Holy People.

Early in their trip, they encountered wons delivering supplies from Neojerusalem. Rager begged them to allow them onto their Chariot so that they take take Seer back home, Neojerusalem, where he belongs. The wons, however, made up various excuses in order to deny them passage, until finally driving away and leaving the four of them, again, with nothing. They wandered the Desert for years, where Seer experienced sees real suffering firsthand. The boy, Mad, shortly told them he was abandoned by his father because of his desire to become a woman, and they began treating her as such. While Rager and Mad maddened themselves over their wounds, those self-inflicted and inherited from enemies, Seer was cared for only by Winner. He did not understand Winner, her inescapable exhaustion, only the loneliness it brought him when she stared absently and coldly into the vast expanses of nothing in the Desert, a land built to be teeming with people, now empty for kilometres on end with no humans to warm the soil. He was plagued by nightmarish visions, and tells only Winner of these for the time being. Visions of the arsoned bodies the Camps sacrifice, the Mines overflowing with liquid plague, a Treasure Horse flying a flag large enough to consume the sun's light.

3 years in, Seer reached puberty and develops breasts. He went to Rager, confused and frightened, and she did not know what could have caused it, placing responsibility on the Divine for all that she does not understand. Interpreting his body as a divine gift, they soon treated him as though he is holier even than the Sanctuarians, claiming he could perform miracles. He took this to heart, sacrificing Girl to the gods one night in exchange for a mode of transport, a Chariot, a Treasure Horse, anything. That same night, Rager rode the religious high of the ritual, and she decided to rebirth herself, rebirth all of them. She named herself Rager for her rage, Seer for his otherworldly visions, Mad for her tendencies towards insanity, and Winner, as a good-luck charm so she shall never lose. Dawn of the next day, Seer was the first to wake. He saw it in the distance, the Chariot. He alerted the others in enough time for them all to prepare before the Chariot arrived, and this time they would not be duped. Rager did most of the killing— there were four wons, and she felled three. Winner, in the meanwhile tried to shield Seer from the violence to little avail. He was fascinated.

A few nights of driving and Seer was awoken, groggily seeing the small lights Rager and Mad had lit as they began to drive back towards where the sun had set. Winner again tried to calm him down, but he was too interested in what they were up to. They stopped in front of the old Farm and snuck in with a great horde of Desert women, gone until the building came alight and they dragged one screaming man out in a flood of their bodies. They run, Winner drove, until they were far enough to strike up a bonfire. Seer was dressed in a deer's antlers to observe as the women danced around the fire, holding the man's head high above their heads. Seer was appalled to see his sister in this state, bloody and ecstatic, her eyes distant and delirious. It would be the image that he would remember, when he thought of his sister, for years to come.

Seer was now 15. It took them a little under a year to get to Neojerusalem from there, most Deserters steering clear of them for fear they were wons. Once they arrived, Winner and Mad waited outside the border, while Rager accompanied him all the way to Glory. Seer's name already had growing influence in the Desert, but this influence did not reach Neojerusalem. When they arrived at Queen Glory's throne, he saw the queen reject his sister and welcome him with open arms as a won into their society.

ACT II

Seer was quickly initiated into the temple as a pupil, catching up on all of the theology education she hadn't received while in the Desert. She struggled, again, to physically speak to anyone she didn't know, without her support system of Rager and Winner she was lost. But over the months, they were able to get her comfortable enough to speak to a select few friendly priests. Her visions became more frequent— the priests informed her this was because she was closer to divinity— but this time there were people there to comfort her and inform her the meaning of these visions. After some time, she began to share her own theological beliefs, ideas that came to her in dreams, and her way of delivering these speeches enraptured them. She felt herself speaking with the same poetic mannerisms as her sister when she was trapped in delirious states after having gone out with Mad all night. The priests spread word of her ideas, as she could not spread word of it herself.

One day while she was elaborating on one of these ideas, the student teaching the teacher, she noticed an intruder, a face she had seen in the distance before. Immediately she choked up, her nerves getting the better of her. They slowly urged the won back out until Seer was comfortable starting the conversation back up.

Over the months, she and this won— Glory's daughter, to be named Haver— spent more time together. With coaching from some of the medically knowledgeable of the wons, she began to gain more power behind her voice, learning and relearning how to speak. She and Haver's relationship blossomed after the initial stretch of silence. Seer finally felt comfortable in her own skin, accepted for her odd and obsessive tendencies, the body of hers she did not understand.

When Seer was 19, she and Haver finally admitted their feelings for one another. Their first few months together, officially calling one another their lover, were the most joy Seer had felt since she was a child, when all she knew of the world was the warmth of Rager's embrace. Meanwhile, Seer earned herself a skirt, being asked to perform miracles, gaining followers, earning herself the title of Prophet. She knew little of the terribly strained relationship between Haver and her mother, but their animosity started to seep into she and Seer's relationship. Still, Haver insisted she loved her mother and the feeling was mutual. No mother could truly not love their own daughter, or so Haver said.

Seer's ego had been damaged by her time wandering the Desert, but now she felt herself feeling superior once again. The reverence most treated her with felt, to her, the most natural thing in the world. She was embellished with treasures and praises, and the allure of fame drew her away from Haver, her love. In one of their rare moments of tenderness, Seer missing her sister more than her heart could bear, she gave Haver her name. She used the same naming method as her sister, naming Haver for all the abundance she held possession of.

She is 21 when all the tightening tension between Haver and her mother snaps. Glory was considering revoking Haver's claim to the throne, even banishing her outright. In a rush, Seer recounted the story of her sister to Haver, how her sister had ripped apart the man from the Farm who had raped her. Seer was not above murder. They knew what to do. Haver announced her engagement with Seer to the public to delay her mother's action to remove her from the throne, if not stop it altogether.

A week into this agreement, however, Haver suddenly changed. She spoke of her love for her mother, who she would never betray her, not even for Seer. She spoke, even, of how she loved her mother more than she loved Seer. She began to reject the name Haver, referring to herself again as Glory.

The next day, the guests bearing gifts from far and wide arrived, and Haver did not have the opportunity to call off the engagement. Seer bathed in the attention, tried to let it fill the hole in her heart where it longed for Haver. The wedding itself was a wonderfully cheery day, and spending it arm-in-arm with Haver made Seer feel as though all was right again. Seer called her by her name Haver, and it was to this Haver responded, not Glory. After the ceremony, teeming with people, nobility showing off their finest garments in large hordes, Haver returned to Seer only at nightfall, smelling of blood. They discovered the queen's death the next day, and just as quickly did Haver rise to the throne, becoming Queen. Seer did what she could to dispel the rumours that Haver killed her own mother, convincing at least her followers that it was the Divine's will.

200 years after the Nuclear Rapture, Seer was 23 years old. There was a great ceremony on the night right before the 200th year dawned, and when the sun began to climb, Seer spoke before the hordes of people gathered for the festival, as their emperor. Already had she fulfilled the first half of the prophecy— now Haver had announced the queendom would be torn down for an empire, the Havedom. Seer truly believed herself divine, lifting her hand to the heavens, she assured she had the power to even darken the sun. As she made her speech, the moon began to swallow the sun, the black void rimmed with gold shining behind Seer's outstretched hand. Haver unleashed her armies, the Havedom had begun.

ACT III

Seer sat alone on the throne in Glory city, Truebabylon around her ravaged by Haver's Neowar. Her voice grew rusty with disuse, only getting out of her recluse to allow her followers to touch her robes to bless them. One year of war, solitude to contemplate on if this what divinity for her shall be, and one night the door into the great throne chamber is opened, and a familiar figure steps through. Seer immediately regains her energy and runs to the figure— Rager, returned, if only for a short while, back from the war.

They speak on all that has changed between them. Seer explains how she has found herself, how Haver has treated her with nothing but kindness, how she truly sees herself as who Rager raised her to be. Rager, however, talks of how she no longer believes the Sanctuarians to be any better or holier than the Deserters, how she has been fighting against the primary source of Neojerusalem's wealth, the Mines. It was awkward for a moment, their deep political differences, but they brushed passed it, regardless of if they should have done so or not. They missed each other too much to acknowledge any differences now. They spent a month or two together before Haver returned and the two of them left together, the people Seer loved most in the world leaving without her.

When Seer did leave Glory, for short times only, it was to minister to the people left behind by Haver's trail of bloodshed, to tell them there was a god, the Divine, who would heal their wounds. Seer did not stay long enough to see if her words rang true, though she did believe them whole-heartedly.

Seer and Mad were not terribly close when they were young, and Seer ran into her again. They were leaders of their own respective religious movements, and Seer found her to be more of a nuisance than anything else. Mad offered and alliance, Seer refused. Hardly suppressing her anger, she told Mad that she was the reason Rager was so wrong now, even blaming her for the war itself, for the resistance that caused the bloodshed.

Seer spent the next few years of her life with a small group of extremely devoted followers, a small mystery cult that would carry on her words purely orally for the next centuries. They revered her as a god.

Rager and the girl she is closest with, later to be named Winner, raise this child together, along with the other two they were tasked with, the girl later to be named Mad, and a girl who would never receive a name. They spend years keeping the boy, later to be named Seer, in the attic, sneaking him portions of their meals and starving themselves to keep him well-fed, as they had all been raised with the belief he is holy, and therefore better than them. At 14 years old, she is raped by one of the male leaders in the Farm, then she is tasked with helping a woman in the Farm deliver a child, only for that woman and her child to die in her blood-covered arms. The experiences, especially with how close they were together, shake her to her core, and she spends many sleepless nights worrying that she would befall that same fate, that that man had impregnated her and she would die in some girl's arms. She can hardly leave the attic, too afraid of seeing a man, any man, in the Farm again. One year of this, and she decides to consult Seer, hoping he, with his holy hands, could cut the womb out of her, to save her.

After the tedious but successful procedure, Rager fakes her death and spends over a year recovering in the attic with her friends: Winner, Seer, Mad, and Girl. Her wounds are almost healed when one of the boys there, accompanying his father, find her and her friends, and they make to flee as soon as they seem him, however, he stops them. He promises that he will not alert any of the Servants of their escape, so long as they take him with them on their journey. With not much incentive for the other option, Rager agrees and brings the boy with them. They flee from the Farm as quickly as they can, ripping Rager's wounds back open. A few hours of wandering the Desert, something they had only seen from their small windows, and they find one of the Chariots driven by wons, who give them water but refuse to give them a ride to Neojerusalem, where they could deliver Seer back to his home, as the wons do not believe that Seer is from Neojerusalem.

They spend years wandering the Desert, taking shelter where they can, avoiding the Camps and the war they bring with them. Rager steers clear of the boy for a long while, while the boy opens up to Winner about his longing to become a woman. Rager's physical and emotional wounds fester, her anger growing whenever she sees a man and remembers what the man from the Farm had done to her, that it could happen again. Winner consoles her with gentle words and a comforting hand on her back, helping her to accept boy as one of them, as she had with Seer. A year in, the boy, later to be named Mad, tells them he would like to transition. While she finds chemicals to help this process along, she also finds ways out of reality for her and Rager. Substances she found from places she wont say where. While Winner is too skeptical of these substances to try, Rager and Mad lose themselves in them, and for the first time Seer is not fully cared for, and the burden is left to Winner. He hits puberty during this time, and it is at this point Rager realises he is intersex. Never having seen this before, she assumes it is a sign from the heavens that he is some manner of "bridge between man and woman", and they soon believe Seer is even holier than before.

After 3 years wandering the Desert, Rager is 20. She has grown in strength, able to defend herself when they find Campers. In one drug-addled night, she names herself Rager for her rage, Mad for her insanity, Winner in hopes she will never lose, Seer for his prophetic dreams. They are tired of wandering the Desert, however, and they do not know how close they are to delivering Seer back to Neojerusalem. Seer embraces his holy name and one night, decides to sacrifice Girl to the Divine, in hopes it will bring them a Chariot, a way to ride to safety. The following morning, they find the same wons from 3 years prior, and they do not hesitate this time. They kill the wons and take their car. Rager embraces this rage and it worries Winner that it is unhealthy. When she consults Mad of this, Mad embraces her own name and gives Rager and idea, a way to vent her frustration. The two of them take their new car back to the Farm and slaughter the man who had raped Rager, parading his head around in a coming-of-age festival for Rager, along with some of the other wandering women of the Desert. With these holy moments having been lived, all that is left is to deliver Seer to Neojerusalem.

A few months of driving and they arrive at Neojerusalem, and Rager is 22. She walks with Seer to Glory, his name mildly famous in the Desert for his miracle in procuring a Chariot, but he is not yet known in Neojerusalem. When they meet Queen Glory and offer Seer to her, she accepts Seer but not Rager. Rager is heartbroken in this moment, her ideas of Neojerusalem as a perfect place, the ideal, shattered, as Queen Glory brushes her aside for her status as a Deserter. She returns to Winner in the Desert, brotherless, more angry than before.

Mad had wandered off somewhere, Seer was where he belonged, and Girl was dead. It was just Winner and Rager, and the puppy crushes that they had been harbouring, raising their friends together, under too much stress for their age, began to bloom into something bigger. A year they spend together, finding their way through the Desert, fighting in the Eternal War for what else is there to do. But Rager craves more, and Winner craves less. In one moment, they are driving aimlessly, too close to a Camp, and the feelings they harbour for each other, the resentment and the love, burst out too big for both of them to handle, an argument where they both say things too harsh to one another. The Campers ambush them that night, and whatever good luck Winner's name had given her runs out, and Rager watches her love die in an instant. The Campers ambush them that night, and whatever good luck Winner's name had given her runs out, and Rager watches her love die in an instant. In a funerary rite to symbolise carrying Winner on with her for the rest of time, she reverently eats her until there is nothing left.

ACT II

Rager drives from nowhere to nowhere, hardly paying attention to her own life at this point. She finds Mad some time after Winner's dead, and she gives her more substances to drown her sorrows in again, blades to bring the pain from the inside to the outside, and just as quickly as Mad came, she was gone again, and it was just Rager and whatever substances she could get her hands on. Addicted to whatever short thrills of pain she can get from harming herself in any way, and the taste of her own blood when she would suck on her injuries, she throws herself recklessly into battle, battling just as much with her disgust at herself. She fights enough it to earn herself a skirt. But she does not care for her life, she does not know what to do with herself. She knows for however good she could get at battle, she could not singlehandedly end a war with no point nor end it sight. She cannot seem to die. All she lives for are the ecstatic visions she finds herself seeing behind her eyelids, where she finds the Divine in the crevices between her moments of sorrow and her moments of rage.

Rager is 25 when she finds an entrance to the Mines, a town deep below ground where it seems most of them have not met the sun, much less known it as intimately as she. She sees how they suffer at the hands of the Sanctuaries and the rage she held for them only grows more. She doesn't, at this point, know how to help the people in the Mines. For all the wisdom she had learned herself and all the wisdom Mad had given her, she was too frightened of their existence to help. She leaves after only a few days.

She is 26 when she finds the Workers' Sanctuary, some place that seems, to her, to actually matter. She meets Worker, who had known of her and her brother for some time now. Rager settles down here, leaving only in the workers' gathered efforts to target just one camp: Fame, where Lord Fame reigns. She and Worker get closer, and she briefly meets Piety. A peculiar won who doesn't talk but has eyes that have seen things that are certainly something to talk about. Rager spends her next few years with the workers, her sleep getting better in this safer environment, her wounds getting proper treatment from one of the villagers, giving names to some of the people there who admire her. She finally feels happy sober.

Rager is 29 when she wakes up from a frightening nightmare, and she takes a night drive to nowhere, where she knows she'll find Mad. She tells her of her dream, and Mad insists it is a vision. A vision of the new empire— ruled by her own brother. Mad gives her what she calls "spiritual assistance", a baptism. (See Mad's page for context) They drive together to Neojerusalem as the 200th year approaches.

It is here where Rager sees all that her brother had been doing these past years (See Seer's page for context), and she is in the crowd as the 200th year dawns and Seer lifts his hand to the sky proclaiming he will darken the sun, and the 200th year begins with an eclipse, and it begins with an empire. Rager only has status in the Desert, and they do not let her through to see her brother. She leaves with Mad, back to the Desert, as Truebabylon's Neowar begins. Haver and Rager's eyes meet for a moment and nothing more.

ACT III

Rager returns to the Workers' Sanctuary, unsure of what to do. The workers prepare for whatever great war will flood the Desert, and Rager rests. Mad has left her again, and Rager thinks herself wise enough to find what to do with herself now. Does she stay by the Workers' Sanctuary, or stand by Seer, her only kin? She spends a few days mulling this over, instead of spending time with the people she had lived with all these years. During the night, Lord Fame himself had dropped the gasoline and the torch, and Rager awakes to all her hard work burning down, the smell of burning corpses. The people who managed to survive flee, all in different directions. Someone had stolen her Chariot. She spends her next days wandering aimlessly, seemingly no obstacles in her way. the Eternal War had all fled to the border of Neojerusalem, it had morphed into the Neowar. She is exhausted of fighting and did not understand how others weren't. She is terrified again, constantly on her guard of anyone who wants to hurt her, rape her, again.

Neojerusalem, now the Havedom, is impossible to enter now. The throne is vacant, their emperors leading their army into battle instead. Rager decides the last thing she'll do is side with Lord Fame. She joins the Havedom's ranks, well-known enough to them now as soon as her own Sanctuary was just a memory. In the heat of battle, she not only finds herself succumbing against to her cannibalistic impulses, but further enabled seeing her comrades eating the enemy as well, whether out of hatred or hunger, she did not know nor care.

She is 31 when finally, her voice becomes loud enough to have influence, fighting in the army. Enough influence to for Seer to finally find her again, and they have the opportunity to reknow one another. Seer is different from how Rager remembers him, he is young still, but he is not a child. He tells her every way she mistreated him as a child, all the times he wished she was there for him, every way she had misunderstood him. Still, he thanks her. He calls her sister, and she feels again the weight of her wristwatch she had never sold, for it was all she had left of Seer. She embraces him.

She and Haver unite for a brief time, conquering Camps with one another, growing closer due to their shared connection through Seer. It starts off quite tense, neither quite understanding the others' culture and too prideful to find out. As they war together, share a quarters, share most of their time, they grow closer. She helps Haver's campaign by convincing Mad to endorse her, baptise her, so that Mad's growing followers would follow Haver as well. Following this, she dreams of Mad one night, and the following morning she runs off, to seek Worker.

At 34, she meets Worker again. The war was finally slowing down, the Havedom greater than it had been before since Haver had overthrown the Little Sanctuary. The Workers' Sanctuary was not physically rebuilt, but Worker's supporters were growing in numbers. Worker regards Rager as a traitor, but the both of them respect each other too much to truly hate one another. She is conflicted, still. She was finally reunited with her brother, but she knows how Worker was there for her at her lowest. More importantly still, what is the better side for her to fight for? Is she valuing her emotional bonds over her own political values? She finds Mad again, and Mad gives her what she always gives her, a way out of reality. Rager is again in the emotional pit she was in before. She stops fighting, to wallow.

The war had been going for 5 years when Rager throws herself back into battle and battle throws her back out with fatal wounds. She drags herself until her body gives out, and she can see the Heart in the distance. She had not been this close since she was in the Farm, so many years ago, when Winner was still with her. She can feel the strength draining from her body, but not the rage. For as little purpose as she feels in this moment, she knows there are still things she must do. She sees Death's hand, a gentle thing, a kind thing, and swats it away, pushing herself back up with nothing more than determination. When she stands up and lifts her head, Death is gone, and she is still there. Licking her wounds and tearing them back open with her teeth in her anger and hunger, she drags herself back to safety with nothing more than will, and, as she later theorised, the Divine's assisting hand. Back to Haver's arms.

7 years of the Neowar, and Rager finds herself waking up from a feverish nightmare, so similar to the same dream 7 years before. She knows she will not find Mad this time if she searched for her, she knows Mad will not let her find her again. She rushes outside, and sees the regular plumes of smoke puffing into the sky, the regular burnings the Campers do of those they particularly detest. She does not think much of this burning, but it will eat at her. In the morning the discovers that that was Seer's own execution and martyrdom, too far away for her to see his face, but close enough that she could've rushed and seen him in his last few moments of consciousness. For all the durability she had built herself up to have these past few years against death and grief, this was far too much. The method of execution made it all the worse, for the Deserters believed a soul would not find rest if they were not carried on by their loved ones via funerary cannibalism. Instead, his flesh turned just to ash.  Choked with this pain, there was nowhere else she could have turned to.

Rager finds her back on her throne, the throne at her right hand vacant, a black cloth draped over it. With one hand she grabs her knee and with the other, her chin (supplication). Rager and Haver meet each other in their grief in this moment, and it is only they that understand the other.

This moment sparks and alliance between the two of them, and they begin to lead the war together, Haver and Rager growing very close very quickly, and they rush to become lovers, to wash away whatever doubts they had about the situation. They betray each other back and forth, and it may be despite or because of this intimate animosity that they stay with one another. Rager explicitly states the Big Sanctuary should be independent after befriending their Queen Wisdom, and Haver quickly overthrows them. The years wear on and Haver becomes crueler, and Worker gains influence. The 9th year, their main enemy is killed by Worker. She parades Lord Fame's head as a sign of victory, and suddenly Rager's excuse of a common enemy falls through, the tension between both sides snapping and soon Rager is on both sides of the war. She has been delaying this decision for 10 long years.

Haver was raised to believe herself divinely gifted, that everyone aside from her foster-mother was beneath her, less capable than her. She grew up with no friends her own age, scorning the idiocy she claimed the other children had, instead finding refuge among the high priests working for the royal court. She grew up only knowing the strict and unnatural social methods taught to her by her private tutors hired by her foster-mother, and most people struggled to speak to her due to her mannerisms. She busied herself with her studies and when this lead to burnout she would have her lady in waiting flog her until she found motivation again. Her relationship with her foster-mother was competitive, and her mother never acknowledged anything good she did, only told her to get better. Despite Glory's strict enforcement of perfection, Haver was closer to her than anyone. Everything Haver did was done with her foster-mother, acting as a chaperone for whatever connections she did have with the priests.

At 10, Haver began to sneak out, small feelings of resentment starting to bloom in her chest. She would spend most of her time to the only person she felt could intellectually keep up with her, a 14 year old won helping the priests named Sun. While Haver had, prior to meeting Sun, shown only an interest in the sciences and maths, Sun began to teach her a love for the arts, history, even politics, that which her foster-mother never allowed her to know. It was through Sun, a common won of Neojerusalem, that she learned of the Desert and the 12 Camps. They had been friends not even a year when Glory discovered of this and had Sun exiled to the Desert for blasphemy, telling Haver how she was protecting her from people like Sun, who believed Deserters and the Holy People of Neojerusalem to be equals. She guided Haver back to her studies on theophilosphical politics.

But her renewed energy for academia only lasted a short while, the burnout she had been beating out of herself since she was too young to remember began to catch up with her. By 13 she couldn't focus, she couldn't sleep, she could not understand her own guilt over feeling responsible for the death of her parents and the exile of Sun. She became fascinated with the most detestable thing she could imagine— death. She acted disobediently enough when Glory was supervising her for Glory to send her to solitary confinement as punishment, where she would sneak out through the tunnel of rot below the window, sneaking off to the cemetery to perform mock-funerary rites for the already long-dead. She was paranoid over her own death, her lack of understanding of the concept of it, the shame around it. She would sneak books on necromancy into her piles when gathering research for her studies, copy them down in her journals so she could return to them easily. The utter leisure of death fascinated her. Her mother spoke to her of the luxury of leisure, but she did not know how to relax. She became increasingly erratic in her insomniac state, until Glory noticed and searched her room, discovering her journals, the rot in the room of solitary confinement.

It wasn't until she was 15 that Haver was let out of the new room Glory kept her in, her only contact with her mother, who would show her nothing but affection while around her, telling her how much it hurt her when she would disobey, dirty her mind with thoughts of death and rebellion. Her attitude towards death during this time got even more convoluted, wishing death upon herself, wishing death upon her mother, feeling repulsed at herself for feeling this way. She did not launch herself again into her studies as she had following Sun's exile, instead running of with freshly-graduated wons on their way to their Glory Run. Glory woke up the next morning and Haver was gone, off to see the Desert.

For the first time since she was 5, she saw Death as it took people. She saw Deserters scrambling to get to their Chariot, only for this last desperate sprint to end a few steps too soon, and they would collapse on the packed dirt and weathered stone, cold. She glimpsed the Arsoned Corpses from the warring Camps, the people hauled up on sticks and burned alive. The wons she was with did not take much interest in her, and her frail conversation skills crumbled and did not return. Even while travelling the nation with a group of friendly wons, she was still isolated. She wondered if she would die without never having made a true friend.

But it is one night, a few months into their travel, they were nearing the Farms bordering the Heart. Eruptions of light, melodious clamouring, a scream cut short. She and the wons approached wearily, and there she glimpsed Sun again, writhing in a pile with countless other women of the Desert, briefly catching glimpses of Rager and Mad— though she did not know them then— as they triumphantly paraded the head of a Desert man, dripping with death. Amidst her and the wons' revulsion, she was entranced with the terrible beauty of the scene. The sea of women chasing the flames in a circle, a scrawny young woman lifted on their shoulders, blood pouring over them from the trophy held over their heads. She and the wons did not stay for long; they drove off as fast as they could.

In her six months on the road, Haver heard the name "Seer" only once. A young child, supposedly from Neojerusalem, had performed a miracle at the expense of four wons' lives.

ACT II

Glory did not allow her back into the capital city when Haver returned. She insisted that if Haver wanted to go live life off in the Desert with the revolutionaries and the occultists, she should do just that. The wons she had driven with were harshly reprimanded, losing any opportunity they had at pursuing higher education or becoming employed. Already resentment was starting to be haboured by the people of Neojerusalem for their socially-inept hardly-witnessed princess. She had nowhere to go. Her foster-mother had been nothing but loving and caring towards her, at least that is what Haver thought. After a day or so of wandering aimlessly in thought, she sought refuge in the monkish commune of the priests and prophetesses. They welcomed her back, some more warmly than others, reminiscing on how it had not been like this since she was small.

Over the years that Haver spent in the temple, finally getting respite from her endless studies of her youth, she was slowly allowed back into the city of Glory, slowly swaying the public opinion of her as she took part in more political events. She educated herself in the theophilosophical norms of the temple, the rites they had, they openness they had with their bodies. She felt briefly freed from the torment of the self, the endless paranoia of Death's ever-present glare.

She missed her foster-mother more and more over the years, but whatever facade of affection Glory had been using on her had vanished. Had Haver's use to her been lost? A more frightening question— would Haver still inherit the throne? Public favour for her increased and receded like the tide. Even while she was forbidden from the city of Glory, she would sneak in and talk to its people before they threw her back out. Three years of back-and-forthing between her foster mother when she noticed a new face had joined the temple. A name she had heard a few years prior, Seer. She had gained renown in those four years since her miracle, though her name was not commonplace in Neojerusalem, she knew the Deserters spoke of her. She found Seer while she was ministering to a small crowd of priests, but she immediately became choked up and her passionate rant stuttered to a halt when she noticed Haver had come in.

Seer stared at her with big eyes, biting her lip anxiously. Haver waited in the doorway and urged her softly to continue, but Seer just turned to someone else in the crowd who informed her Seer didn't do well with strangers. Haver took to listening in on these speeches secretly, slightly guiltily, until she finally worked up the courage to speak to Seer again. It took many tries of talking to a wide-eyed wall until Seer finally managed to say something, something small, in reply.

As Seer's renown grew, Haver became part of the small group that helped Seer talk to new people, larger groups. Most of Seer's words, however, were passed between others, not from Seer himself. The two of them grew closer, began spending time away from the group. Haver was fascinated with Seer's religious philosophy, a mix of Deserter and Sanctuarian theology. She was especially fascinated with how Seer spoke of Death as an entity, one that one can befriend. That Death had shown kindness to the Deserters when they were supposed to die after the Collapse. That Death takes only those that are willing, those that could not withstand the pain after suffering whatever fatal blow they had taken. Just as she did not judge Seer for her peculiar origins and sex, Seer did not judge her for her fascination with the immoral and necrotic.

Haver was 21 when she admitted, as casually as she could, that she felt feelings for Seer to her. A moment of surprised silence, then a shy reciprocation. She felt she was on top of the world— never before had she been so free, in mind and body. She was more powerful a leader than ever before, especially with Seer leading those faithful to her to follow Haver as well. She was elated.

This semi-tense and wholly ecstatic bliss lasted for all of a few months before the problems started seeping back in. Haver's throne was a fragile one, her relationship with Seer more culturally differing than either had expected. Seer missed her sister, she had no idea where she was. Seer, in his longing for his sister, gives Haver— who had up to this point been named Glory, as her foster-mother was— her name, for all the abundant luxuries and resources she has, in the same naming method his sister had invented when she named herself Rager and Seer, Seer.

The new name, the straying from tradition, the unsanctioned relationship, all made Queen Glory's rage grow. She was planning on announcing that Haver was revoked from her right to the throne, a new girl would be found to be raised in her stead, and she made no plans of Haver knowing this before the announcement would be made. A servant, however, rushed this information to Haver. She had two months until she would have no claim to the throne. She needed to act. When she spoke to Seer of this, she supplied a story of her sister Rager's coming of age ceremony. Initiated by the now Desert priest Mad, she and many Desert women ripped apart the man who had raped her, mutilated her. Haver knew she needed to kill the won who was more of a mother to her than anyone she had ever known. A ritual sacrifice. Sanctioned by a priest.

Dawn, the next day, Haver announced her engagement to Seer, a union not sanctioned by the queen herself. Haver kept her walls out, for a week on end she avoided Glory's every attempt at speaking with her, but there was only so long she could keep it up for. Eventually Glory found her and confronted her. Neither spoke aloud about it, but they both knew what Glory was going to do. An unsanctified union was grounds for a banishment. Haver grabbed a knife, hiding it, hands trembling. She couldn't bring herself to do it, seeing her own mother before her, the won she had loved her whole life. For all her fascination with death, she could not bear herself responsible for it. She dropped the knife and fell into Glory's embrace, sobbing into her shoulder with promises to be good, to obey, to repent for her mistakes. She promised to cancel the wedding.

Guests from across the Sanctuaries, carrying gifts of immense value, abundance, glory, to the throne. Haver took them and laid them at her mother's feet obediently. Glory's guilt grew— she could not call off the wedding when there was such an opportunity for alliances, for wealth, for prosperity.

Two months later, Haver, her name returned back to its original "Glory", walked with Seer down the main road of Glory city. They were surrounded by nobility from across all the Sanctuaries, all dressed in their finest, a sea of gold. She and Seer wed, and Seer spoke her bewedded's name as "Haver", not "Glory."

Evening, after the ceremony, still in her wedding dress, Haver went to her old nursery, where her mother waited for her. She did not hesitate, repent. She stabbed first into Glory's eye, but she did not die at her feet, rather writhe and scream. Haver did not realise how difficult it was to kill a human. Numb with terror, violently disgusted at her own moral repugnance, she stabbed every vital spot she could until finally, her own mother, went cold as the corpses she was so fascinated with.

Haver ascended to the throne the next morning not as queen, but as Emperor. She would not carry on tradition. She would expand Neojerusalem. As Haver was renamed, she renamed Neojerusalem. The Havedom. Her empire eternal. Upon the dawn of the 200th year since the Collapse, Seer spoke of the Havedom darkening the sun, raising her hand to the sky as the moon eclipsed the sun. As Haver left to mount her treasure horse and lead her army to conquer the Camp of Reuben, she glimpsed Rager in the crowd, the sunlight falling in a crescent over her, illuminating her.

ACT III

Glory was impenetrable. Haver had not visited her spouse for a year, embroiling herself with war, learning to know Death intimately. She saw the beauty of it that Seer preached of, the gentle way Death would caress the dead, lay a flower upon their head. She conquered 3 Camps in quick succession, the Havedom expanding across Truebabylon. Her soldiers began to tire, and she allowed them a moment of respite as she returned to Glory city. There, Seer and Rager were reunited. She had heard Rager's name from lips that were not Seer's by now, she was gaining influence. And she was to join forces with them.

Rager was the first proper Deserter Haver had ever even tried to befriend. They led the charge together, in the beginning of the war. There was an unshakeable tenseness between the two of them, their only common thread— Seer— was not there to bridge the gap between them. All that made them similar only seemed to divide them further. Their twin blossoming egos seemed to take up too much space for them to get close, but proximity melted away barriers. They learned how to bear with one another over the course of their campaigning together. Rager gifted Haver with a method of earning the support of many Deserters, telling her of the Desert priest Mad, an old friend. Mad baptised Haver as one of her followers, and public approval of her grew. Seer's approval, however, waned. It was not a blatant betrayal of Seer's religion, but they both knew what it signified for the two of them. During the ceremony, Worker approached her. She hadn't known there was an alliance between Mad and Worker, but she gave Worker materials to rebuild the Workers' Sanctuary nonetheless. Worker was not an active threat, and Haver did not want her to become one.

Rager and Haver conquered over half of the remaining Camps with one another, but one night Rager snuck off deep in the night. Haver's warmth towards her froze in her veins, painful and melancholic, in the wake of this betrayal.

A year's time, and they see one another once more. Haver has covered much land too quickly, already absorbed the Little Sanctuary along with 11 of the 12 Camps, just 5 years into the war. They did not fight together, only acknowledged each other. Rager had returned to aid Worker in the battle. A few months later, Rager came crawling back, her skin ripped open with a wound that should have killed her. Haver hated herself for so easily allowing Rager back into her life despite her betrayals, she hated herself for how quickly she ensured Rager's safety. She always loved those cruelest to her the most.

Haver's meetings with Seer were infrequent over the years of war. After conquering the final Camp, Judah, her Deserter enemy concentrated now just onto Lord Fame, she returned to Glory city briefly. Seer spent half of her time ruling over Glory, the other half taking a Chariot in the wake of Haver's trail of war, to minister to the Deserters left in the newly absorbed territory. The final time Haver spoke to Seer was cold, she longed to see her as she had that day in the temple, sunlight streaming onto her face as she spoke with passion over her faith, the way she froze up when she first saw Haver. They embraced and kissed, and rode into the Desert together, their paths splitting. The people of the Camp of Judah, their hate for Haver fresh, captured Seer and martyred her. Rager is the one to tell Haver of this news, supplicating her from her knees.

Areas:

The Collapse/The Nuclear Rapture: The Collapse to the Deserters and the Nuclear Rapture to the Holy People. When the gods tore down the world as it was once known and it was reborn (my OCs live ~180 years after the Collapse)

Truebabylon: The name for the area of Neojerusalem, the Desert, and the two Sanctuaries combined.

The Desert: (not an actual desert) After the Collapse, half of survivors survived off of their own merits using whatever they could to survive the godly blast and the following radiation. Being left fateless and forsaken by the gods, they live only with Death, too kind to kill them all off. The Desert is embroiled in constant fighting and mostly ruled by the primary group Fame, led by Lord Fame. The Desert is the title of the region but only the deepest end of it is truly a desert, but it is unpassable. Inhabitants are called "Deserters"

The Heart: The actual desert part of the Desert. To go to the Heart is to lose your life: you either die or become a god

Neojerusalem: The other half of the survivors were pious people, protected by the gods during The Collapse. They were drawn to the Life Waters and they built their theocratic, matriarchal kingdom around it, with Neojerusalem naming itself after the kingdom that would reign after the Rapture and the 1000 years of terror, ruled by Queen Glory. Inhabitants are called "Holy People" (Note that Neojerusalem and the Little & Big Sanctuaries together are referred to as "The Sanctuaries" The Workers' Sanctuary is not included)

The Big Sanctuary: The smaller, theocratic, matriarchal, kingdom southeast of the Life Waters, ruled by Queen Wisdom, inhabited by the pious people

The Little Sanctuary: The even smaller sanctuary closer to Neojerusalem than the Big Sanctuary

Havedom/Haver: The term "empire" and "emperor" have not survived, being renamed after their leader Haver, whose name is both a name and title like the Roman Caesar. The spouse of the Haver would be called "Haver [name]", whereas the Haver would just hold that name and whatever number in the line they are

The Workers' Sanctuary: The commune founded by Worker and lead by Worker and Piety together, burnt down in the 200th year

The Chasms: Formerly North America, almost entirely wiped out to become a large trench after the Collapse

The Life Waters: Formerly the Red Sea but most of its banks were dried up and is now only recognisable as a river, though it does grow very large in its portion by the Big Sanctuary

Farms: These are the large concrete buildings that withstood the Collapse (once malls, military bases, apartments, etc), often reinforced with whatever the Deserters can find to reinforce it with. They have many floors, often the bottom floors are where the Girls are kept. Higher up tends to be where the men who rule over the Farm live. The attics are mostly for storage. 

Camps: There are 12 camps (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin) that all war with each other, though most of them still follow Lord Fame

Mines: An underground town inhabited by the Deserters that work for Neojerusalem, gathering most of Neojerusalem's materials

People:

Wons/Pewons/Howons: The way that the martriarchal Sanctuaries refer to women (wons), men (pewons), and humans (howons)

Barebacks: The ideal state of being for the Desert religion, a form of dedicating oneself to the Divine, can be equated to monks 

Deserters: The way to refer to a person originating from the Desert

Sanctuarians/Holy People: The way to refer to a person originating from Neojerusalem or the Sanctuaries (not including Workers' Sanctuary)

Wise Women/Wons: They are often the only ones who know how to read and write, they are the ones who hold the knowledge from before the Collapse, and they are who are sought for advice. Most Wise Wons are from the Sanctuaries, where education is more available

Lord Fame: The primary leader of the Desert who enforces total patriarchy

Servants: The primary men, soldiers who fight for Lord Fame

Names: After the Collapse, people in the Desert forgot what names were and instead named people based off of what they were: girls are named Girl, women named Women, and so on. Rager is the first to name herself after 190 years of no names.

Concepts:

P.C.: Stands for "Post Collapse", a marker for what year it is. Ex: 400 B.C.E. (Before Common Era), 400 C.E. (Common Era), 400 P.C. (Post Collapse)

Chariots: Cars that wons drive around with food and water and supplies to give to Deserters as charity work, often required for entry to many universities in Neojerusalem

Glory Run: The 6-12 month trip a group of wons will take (at 18-25 generally) after graduating from university, driving a Chariot and delivering supplies to Deserters as charity work

Lost: The holy rite of making a lifelong pilgrimage to the Heart, trying to achieve divine madness and be consumed by the Divine

Skirts: Skirts symbolise status. Most Deserters are born with no skirts, while Holy people are born with at least one skirt. Skirts are earned through various things, often by accomplishing something great, or by being born in the royal family. Deserters really only earn skirts through warfare, or by being pious enough. Very pious. Holy people earn them through many other, easier things. 6 skirts is the maximum, but reserved for the monarchs of the queendoms

Treasure Horse: A large wooden horse or horse-like figure on wheels used to be ridden like a horse (as horses are extinct in most areas of the world), often decorated in ornate fabrics and endless treasures.

The Collapse/Rapture War: The Collapse War to Deserters and the Rapture War to Holy people, the third world war that lead to the world being wiped out for their "sins"

The Eternal War: The war between all of the Camps in the Desert as they all struggle to stay afloat and do not trust one another

Truebabylon's Neowar: The war initiated by Haver founding the Havedom in the 200th year that, unlike the Eternal War, involves the Sanctuaries (i.e. all of Truebabylon)

Religion:

The Divine: The way to refer to all of the gods at once, from all of the religions across Truebablyon

The Desert religion: Religion across the Desert is scattered and changes from person to person, though they largely believe in gods as incarnations of emotions (when an emotion or concept is capitalised, it is referring to their divine form, i.e. that emotion has cognisance). Most Deserters do not have strong belief, but still a fear of the Divine and the punishment from Lord Fame for blaspheming. There is a common belief that if one dedicates their life to the Divine and goes to the Heart, they will have enough strength to endure through the Heart and become one with the Divine themself, though there are other sects believing everyone and everything already is part of the Divine.

The Old religion: The more institutionalised form of the Desert religion, pushed by Lord Fame and his political movement. This is orthopraxical, and so relies on religious action rather than religious thought (so faith is not as important as offering)

Neojerusalem religion: In Neojerusalem, the concept of the gods is more concrete, and they believe the gods have physical faces and bodies, though these forms are only shown to the queen, Glory, who is named after their primary deity. They have more organised festivals and a high temple in Glory city for all of the religious authorities, as well as smaller temples across Neojerusalem dedicated to individual deities.

Priests: Religious authorities only in Neojerusalem, as the Deserters believe they worship false gods. Men cannot be priests, though they can serve them if they join the high temple. Smaller sects in the Sanctuaries believe the priests can also see the physical forms of the gods.

The Sanctuary religion: Very similar to Neojerusalem's religion, but with more branches believing in different appearances and names for the gods, as well as other branches believing all of the gods are just pieces of one true god (often referred to as the Divine, and there is debate between the Sanctuaries and Desert if they refer to the same "Divine")

Lost: The act of going to or near the Heart in order to seek the Divine and become a Bareback