Article 9: The AP Schism

For generations after the Covenant, the Angelic Protectorate fought Demons. On many of the planets they protected, magic-using sentients who wanted to use their abilities to grow in power would create these monsters, refined magical manifestations of the antithesis of what the Divine were meant to be. Almost without fail, whenever a despot rose to power on one of the planets the AP protected, they did so with a cadre of conjured demons making up a portion, if not the bulk, of their army. We rarely see these nowadays, but these half-real creatures were much more common in the earlier days of the AP. Though a powerful mage could force them into a state of magical existence through sets of blood-stained rituals, once they were brought into the universe they could persist by feeding off fear, hatred, and aggression, making them similar in many respects to negative concept Elementals.

Merely having to face such a dangerous threat on a more and more regular basis was concerning enough for the Divine of the Angelic Protectorate, but what sealed the need for a course of action in the minds of the AP's judges was the regular re-emergence of specific "Pit Lords"--Names, appearances, powers and tactics would echo themselves through various summonings, and though the Demons that they fought were still only imaginary at their core, ones that they had bested in previous incarnations would reappear, more powerful each time. It was only a matter of time, the AP judges feared, before Demons would become real and permanent. Their reactions to this fear, however, would eventually lead to the historical event known as the Schism.

A minority of judges looked at the problem and saw one new constant that they felt could be responsible for the Demons--The AP themselves. Since the Covenant had been declared, other races were being exposed to Divine society as they attempted to intermix. They saw the Divine as a symbol of purity and law, and most Divine saw them as something to be protected from their opposite, entropy and chaos. Other beings, though, not being as purity-attuned as the Divine, were to the skeptical judges more a force of balance, and the Divine asserting themselves was likely what was causing chaotic, entropic beings to be manifested on a larger and larger scale. In other words, according to the later-named "Heretic Judges", Humans and other sentient species seeing the Divine as a manifestation of good led them naturally to believe that manifestations of evil could exist, and this empowered conjured demons to become more powerful and more potentially real. Something had to be done, and in the eyes of the future Heretic Judges, this meant that AP society had to change.

While the majority of the AP's judges refused to entertain the notion of such a suggestion, the Heretics managed to find agreement with portions of the Angelic Protectorate's other spheres of Divine. Whether it was dissatisfaction with their place in the caste system, disagreement about specific rules pertaining to their interactions with non-divine, or merely acceptance of the Heretics' logic, they decided that they needed to do what they could to subvert the edicts of the majority of Judges and hopefully prevent the formation of true living Demons. The pushes made here were small at first, with the occasional subversive piece of art or minor magical body modification made to help them more resemble their desired new caste. The Covenant-adhering judges, however, reacted to this swiftly and resolutely. Not only would all of these behaviors be ruled heretical, but their own solution to the problem of Demons would be implemented and enforced: No Divine was to speak of the existence of Demons to any non-Divine. The idea was that if the other sentients in the Angelic Protectorate never thought about Demons, Demons would cease to reappear.

Of course, the heretics continued to push back against the rulings. Many of them used magic spells to give themselves features that belonged to the demons themselves--the occasional horns, tails, and blue, red, or gray skin, even if so small or on a patch that could only be seen under close inspection. These were in an effort to show the non-Divine that they were not infallible beings, that perfect good did not exist and therefore neither did perfect evil. Heretical Divine began to regularly break the rules of their caste and begin romantic relationships with both other heretics and members of the non-Divine populations--something expressly forbidden among Divine as their ancient laws stated that all Divine must love everyone rather than a few specific people. Over the next few generations, this cycle of new, more strict rules being implemented then immediately being subverted swung more and more wildly, until the Covenant Judges, after a secret meeting that excluded the Heretic Judges, declared that the Heretics were to be cast out from Angelic Protectorate society, and that The Creator has decided that they are to be removed from the influence of The Light, lest their rebellious nature risk corrupting its own purity.

The loyal Covenant-following AP set to the task of rounding up the Heretics, on more than a few occasions stopping them from going into hiding with measures as extreme as slaying them in pursuit then waiting for them to reincarnate within the nearest Light and capturing their incredibly confused new incarnation. When heretics dealt with in that manner spawned with their magical body modifications intact, it only confirmed the Covenant Divine's suspicions that the Heretics had tainted themselves with their rebellious behavior. All that remained was the issue of how to rid themselves of the Heretics. They couldn't simply kill them, as they would merely be reborn and risk further damaging The Light's purity. Keeping them imprisoned indefinitely was also not an option, as they felt that they might serve as a symbol creating even more strife among the AP and their ward races. A plan was considered to build a series of prison ships that would be flown away from the center of the galaxy, but they were worried that they might be able to take control of these ships and simply return, and AP technology at the time had issues with attempts to use their BioWarp abilities outside of their sphere of influence near the center of the galaxy. Eventually, it was decided that they would be sent as far away as possible using a machine built by Humans and powered by their entropic magics--a Teleporter. As this machine was being built, The male Volk warrior caste, all led by a single Judge who finally returned from a long campaign against a particularly nasty set of conjured Demons lasting decades, saw what was going on as a violation of everything they stood for and sided with the already-captured Heretic Judges, launching an attack against the Covenant Judges on the site of the Teleporter's construction. Though they fought valiantly, their insurgence was put down by the vastly larger combined armies of the other AP castes, and the Volk were sentenced to the same fate as those they wished to save. In disgust, the Valkyrie counterparts of the Volk announced that they and their steward planets were leaving the Angelic Protectorate. Though they had lost an entire class of Divine to do it, the Angelic Protectorate had managed to quell the last of the rebellion that they were certain was only making the issue of Demonic arisals worse. Over the course of the next year, they sent every one of their prisoners through the clattering, horrifyingly-designed Teleporter, and as the last one entered, the odd Human-built machine collapsed in on itself, disappearing in a flash of purple-black energy.

The edict was re-issued to never speak of demons again, and for a time, the Angelic Protectorate was at peace.