The Goddess Faithful

Fictional

Goddess Faithful Insignia

Shrine of the Purging Flame Insignia
Acronym: GF
Motto: Fear not the Reaper
Affiliations: Moriji
Culture: Deadbeat
Language(s): Moriji
Religion(s): Just Mori
Type: Religious Organization
Specification: Shrine Confederation
Current leader(s): N/A
HQ location: Death Castle, South of the Underworld
Industry: Religion, Healthcare, Mining, Information, Military, Chuubanitics, Agriculture, High-Energy Vitubics, Music
Products: Chuubanite-related products, Weapons, Diamonds, Armed Combat, Wine, Cherries, Purified Chuubanite, Chuubanite Equipment
Subsidiaries/Members: Shrine of the Purging Flame
Wealth Level: 5

The Goddess Faithful is undoubtedly the most culturally influential institution on Moriji Island. It is renowned throughout the known world for its might and strong, benevolent grasp on Our Mori's Island. Politically, the Goddess Faithful reports to no one except Mori herself, not even the Council of Three. Its power dynamic relative to other important players on the island such as the Council and the Black Fleet varies, but can best be described as a cautious but deeply intermingled cooperation.

Organization

The chart above describes the chain of command of the Goddess Faithful. The Shitomo are the executive authority of the organization, and consist of an assembly of 30-40 anointed priests and priestesses. The Shitomo are selected from the current priesthood body, either after displaying their capability in one of the other sub-organizations and being noticed, or after successfully going through a selection process. Each term in the Shitomo is five years, with unlimited terms, but a requirement that each term be separated by at least one year in one of the sub-organizations.

Artistic rendition of the Shitomo Assembly

The New Moon Maidens are a group separate from the Goddess Faithful, but closely related. Should a priestess decide to leave the congregation, to enter a new career, or leave Moriji entirely, she will need to go through a certification process ensuring she will not abuse the blessings Mori granted to her. This is uncommon, and not very well perceived by the rest of the congregation, but it does occur from time to time, and they are well received in the rest of Moriji, especially if their time as priestess was fruitful. These New Moon Maidens may choose a more mundane new occupation, but they're well suited to military duties and other professions of violence, for obvious reasons.

Responsibilities
Its most primal responsibility is to form the link between the Deadbeats and Their Mori. Through a variety of rituals, the priests and priestess can draw information from the Heavenly Realm, and this data is relayed to the population of Moriji through songs, artistic demonstrations and sacred texts.

The second responsibility borne by the Goddess Faithful is the defense of the island and its inhabitants against the ever present threat of schizo incursions. The priesthood includes some the most elite warriors on the island, specialized for combat in the homeland against schizos and schizo-related threats, internal or external. To achieve this, the Goddess Faithful dedicates a large portion of its resources towards training, arming and supranaturally improving its fighting body.

Those two aims drive the widespread distribution of Goddess Faithful shrines throughout Moriji. Thousands of shrines exist, all with at least a few priests or priestesses watching over their assigned territory and providing services.

These services include dispute resolution for cases where the municipal justice system is insufficient, orphan care, and healthcare. Accordingly, the priesthood of the Goddess Faithful receives an in-depth education in legal and medical matters, allowing them to fulfill those tasks.

The Goddess Faithful are also the caretakers of the Underworld. The Underworld is a critical strategic reserve of Mori-type chuubanite, the burial site for all Deadbeats since times immemorial, and the location of Mont Mori, the residence of Mori on Vitubia. The exact nature of this presence is of the utmost secrecy, in no small part because the chuubanite concentrations found at the mountaintop are sufficient to annihilate the mind and cripple the body of any normal human. Leading theories are that the axis of the supervolcano's chimney is a place where the Vitium Field and the Earthly Realm interact strongly, allowing possibly one-sided manifestations from Vitium Entities. The truth of this matter is hard to determine due to the difficulty in conducting observations, and because the Goddess Faithful is extremely secretive of what knowledge there is.

Managing the Underworld has some people-facing burdens associated with it. The priesthood is tasked with preventing the intrusion of unauthorized individuals into the region, and with the extraction of any such intruders. This is mainly to protect the sanctity of the Underworld, but also for the protection of the intruders, as the chuubanite concentrations in even the Underworld's outskirts will quickly have negative effects on untrained individuals, leading to a likely death through exposure or predation.

Funeral rites are also carried out by the priesthood, and well as the construction of catacombs, usually with the assistance of specially trained third-party contractors. More detail on these matters may be found in this document.

Chuubanite conservancy is the least discussed, but perhaps most geopolitically critical responsibility of the Goddess Faithful. Mori-type chuubanite is regarded as a blessing from Our Mori, letting us touch her divinity through hallucination, granting us our strong bones, and empowering our priestesses to be some of the world's deadliest fighters. This chuubanite has an affinity for hard substances, and in sufficient concentrations, seems to have a hardening and toughening effect on substances, not through a direct magical effect, but by strengthening the structure and composition of the substance. Information regarding the workings of Mori-type chuubanite are expounded upon here. Suffices to say, the Goddess Faithful considers preventing the loss and waste of Mori-type chuubanite and the optimization of its use to be of the utmost importance. Thus, the Goddess Faithful controls the market of highly chuubanitic kimberlite (colloquially "Mont Mori Diamonds") with an iron grip, owning and acquiring all mines throughout the island for the product. Note that highly chuubanitic kimberlite can be found outside of the Underworld, in the Eastern volcanic ridge. Mt. Mori Diamonds are the most significant source of naturally accumulated Mori-type chuubanite, alongside the bones of Underworld creatures.

Income

The diamond mines are an important source of income for the Goddess Faithful, but not the only one. Shrines receive a voluntary tithe from the villages they are responsible for, which is more than enough to cover their activities with a profit in all but the most destitute of villages. These tithes are especially plentiful in locations vulnerable to schizo attacks where the priesthood protects the livelihood of the village with some frequency. Grapes cultivated in the Underworld are vinified to produce internationally recognize Mont Mori wine, which is sold and marketed as a high value luxury good. Similarly, delicious Underworld cherries are gathered from the forests and sold for a great profit.

Research and Development

Plentiful chuubanite access through the Underworld allows the Goddess Faithful to conduct thorough study of the fields of chuubanitics and vitubics. The institution has been working with and improving their understanding of the substance since times immemorial, and its accumulated knowledge is almost unparalleled, at least as far as Mori-type chuubanite is concerned. The main fields of research are chuubanite concentration and extraction, medical procedures involving chuubanite, use of chuubanite in weaponry, and chuubanite-enabled interactions with the Vitium Field.

Records tell of a now forbidden worship linked with Mori. Theological historians believe this cult may have been the ancestor of the Just Mori worship universal within Moriji. There have been times in the Goddess Faithful's history where priestesses had to engage in transdimensional expeditions to realms where the banished demon was allowed to exist, hoping to learn how to navigate an ongoing Heavenly crisis. In the end, faith in Their Mori has always seen Deadbeats through. To execute those missions, interactions with the Vitium Field using large amounts of chuubanite were needed.

Combat Capabilities

The most common form Goddess Faithful combat operations take is the defense of the village assigned to them from some threat. The priesthood has the most advanced equipment available to Moriji science, including high mobility plate armor, explosives, rifled guns, high draw-weight crossbows, and all sorts of melee weapons, including Mont Mori Diamond-tipped weaponry, allowing the penetration of even armored targets. The priests especially will have a highly varied and versatile loadout, while the priestesses will tend to carry out frontline fighter roles. The most dangerous weapon of the priestesses is their body. The most critical selection criteria for priestesses is their ability to withstand the mind-altering effects of Mori-type chuubanite. This tolerance can be further increased through exposure to the substance, which is achieved by training and patrolling in the Underworld.

Accumulating large amounts of chuubanite in the skeleton and body has a variety of knock-on effects detailed here. All together, they result in any priestess who has completed her training having a skeleton with a high density of cellularized high-iron goetithe, and a large accumulation of densified muscle tissue. This physiology makes those priestesses close to twice the weight of a woman of similar size and proportions, with the muscle strength to move as fast or sometimes faster than a completely unburdened warrior of similar size. This increased power density results in priestesses being able to wear armor of increased thickness, which leads to better performance against bullets, especially with glancing hits.

Priestesses able and willing to accumulate even more chuubanite may undergo Ghostling procedures, increasing their weight and strength further. It is a popular saying that a priestess' little finger bone can break a common man's femur (Experimental demonstrations have found this to be accurate).

The priesthood is too spread out and few in numbers to form a regular army, but the presence of even a few is sure to affect the outcome of any tactical engagement. Events that may result in large amounts of them gathering for battle would usually involve targeted attacks on the Underworld.

Education

Joining the priesthood can be attempted by anyone, at any time. However, the initial chuubanite tolerance tests will be impossible to complete for non-Deadbeats, and increase in difficulty with age. Moreover, the physiological adaptations the priesthood undergoes can only reach their full potential if training in the Underworld is begun at a young age. Thus, most of them join the Goddess Faithful when prepubescent, around ten years old. All orphans undergo the tests, and if they pass the physical evaluations, will be offerred a place at a Semina, which are the educational institutions where the priesthood are trained. Most well-cared for children will also be brought to the Goddess Faithful to undergo an evaluation, if only to know if this is a path that is available to the child. Priesthood is rare and regarded very highly in Deadbeat society, so children will usually be encouraged to join the Semina if they have this opportunity.

The Seminas are also where the bulk of the Goddess Faithful's medical, chuubanitic and vitubic research is conducted. Many programs of collaboration with Black Fleet Academies and other universities are always ongoing, exposing the pupils to the rest of Deadbeat society. Being centers of bleeding edge medical research, they are also where Deadbeats would go for top of the line or exotic treatments.

History

The origin of the Goddess Faithful is lost to the sands of time, but what is known is that its power, cultural, political, and military, has been increasing continually for its whole history, with some ephemereal dips in times of theological uncertainty. Notably, since the advent of the line-of-battle strategy by the Black Fleet and the Fleet's subsequent increased influence, collaboration between the two organizations has been on the rise, with some occasional friction.