PmWiki | Tripocalypse / Remnant

The Christian Remnant comprises between a sixth and a fifth of the world's population, with peaks in PATRIOT territory (25% right east of the Rocky Mountains) and throughs in ANVIL (5% on the Chinese mainland).

Regardless of the containment of their God, the Remnant remain a significant political force within all commonwealths simply due to being the single largest subculture on the planet.

The Treaty of St. Michael, signed on the archangel's cenotaph, specifies an exception to the voiding of pre-Rapture patents and copyrights for the Eden fertilizer invented by Dr. Chaim Rozenweig. This generates a significant royalty income, although the patent is set to expire in the next solar orbit. Combined with the old inventor's belief in communal ownership, the agreement has ensured that Remnant communities can generally wield a bit more economic power than would otherwise be the case. Due to the end of the royalty agreement, some Remnant-held companies are diversifying their holdings; others are bankrolling lawyers to make the case that the treaty referred to sidereal years and not solar orbits. The last lawsuit on the matter ended in a stalemate, and prolonged the royalty accord from +13 to +20.

All Remnant subscribe to the Homo Imago Dei, and people who deviate significantly from it may find Remnant-only communities difficult to visit by reason of size differences. That said, most Remnant integrate with the general population. A few communities have "No Remnant" unofficial rules in place, with some having none but effectively enforcing it due to a shared imago that is not size-compatible with the Imago Dei; discrimination, in both direction, is rare but not unknown. The commonwealths, in general, do not have the resources to deal with this beyond making it easy for the offended party to safely move elsewhere.

Narrative causality by Remnant members is restricted to a particular class of "Biblical miracles" such as parting waters or temporarily multiplying food -- there are exceptions, but they are extremely rare. On the plus side, Remnant members share enough of a worldview that unlike most NC practitioners they have an easy time synchronizing their narrative control together; this generally takes place in the form of prayers or songs; most notably, even people who are unskilled in narrative control can contribute to a NC effect initiated by a pastor or preacher.

This is used to great effect in the medical profession, and while "faith healings" tend to bring about unrequested imago changes back towards the Imago Dei, most patients agree that it by far beats dying. Uniquely, Remnant also have much greater resistance to NC physical and especially mental harm (hypnosis, puppeteering etc.) than the average person. Detractors use this as "proof" that Remnant are being puppeteered by the One Above All already, but it is undeniable that NC effects that target them in harmful ways have difficulty working.

Remnant are known for, on average, having problems traversing the Grid and occasionally even entering a Liminality, to the point that approximately half of them has never been in one. Although exceptions exist, this Grid-aversity has created the stereotype of the Remnant traveling salesman obsessed with transportation and communication. Rumors of a large liminality that can only be accessed by Remnant, Flipside, continue.

As of +19, three major subgroups of Remnant exist.

The Matthians maintain that "Jesus is on His throne and all is right with the world", even if Jesus' throne is inside a vacuum chamber and the world seems to have settled into a state of manageable insanity at best. This group puts an emphasis on living rightly and quietly; while they are not in denial about what the new condition of the world entails, they have tried to pick up the pieces and live as closely as they can to pre-Event conditions, to the point of mounting the occasional relief convoy for yellow-zone settlements that are succumbing to dissonance. That exception aside, pretty much everyone in this group inhabits blue and green zones. They do proselytise, although conversion rates are extremely low. They still use the ichtyos symbol without alteration. This group comprises a majority of the Remnant, although there are no clear estimates as to how wide a majority that is. Chaim Rozenweig belongs to this group. A group of Matthians believe that the "Sheep and Goats" judgement is simply on hold, and that there is still time to turn Goats into Sheep; as a result, they proselytise very enthusiastically, believing that the Millennium will start when there are no more Goats for Jesus to judge.

The Johanists believe that the post-Snare world is indeed the Millennial Kingdom, and that the final chapter of Revelations should be read prescriptively rather than descriptively; they have been trying to build an Eternal City as close to Old Jerusalem (most of which is in a red zone) as they can. This is the only major Remnant settlement within a yellow zone, and the place looks quite convincing to visitors, although the extreme amount of ambient light and the gold-plated streets are a strain on the eyes. They are not particularly interested in proselytising, believing that the time for that is over, but do try to lead other people into their faith by example. They use the ichtyos symbol with legs, an attempt to "reclaim it from evolutionists" (not that it much matters anymore, given that the global earthquakes have made a mess of the fossil record and things like a cow with two heads giving birth to a sheep-dog hybrid barely make the local news), to mean that Christians should trek into the Eternal City and settle there. Tsion Ben-Judah belongs to this group, and operates the Eternal City's Ethernet node and public-access library.

The Paulines continue to actively try to release Jesus from His containment chamber, in order to bring about the judgement and the Millennial Kingdom. This group is small but well-organized; they have lawsuits pending with all five commonwealths for Jesus' release on grounds of CATS' (or anyone's) lack of jurisdiction, and have been linked to attacks on Ground Minus One in previous solar orbits. CATS makes it clear that as much as they want to respect freedom of worship, they are not taking any chances, and anyone provably belonging to this group who visits Ground Minus One will be expelled from the grounds (from a trebuchet, into a dark zone) on sight. This group, while small, is important because their leaders did most of the Saint Michael negotiations on the Remnant's behalf. Their symbol is a modified ichtyos in the shape of a shark. Rayford Steele is known to belong to this group, but is on record as not advocating a violent solution. This group is actively opposed to proselytising, believing that "reprobates had their chances". Some extremists within this group go as far as believing that people born post-Snarl are actually demons.

A fourth outfit, unnamed and undeclared but drawing mostly from the latter two groups, has been recently observed preaching that the world we live in is in fact a metastable liminality or Hellish delusion, and that either Christians who wish to escape its inevitable collapse should move into the Flipside liminality permanently, or Christians doing so will in fact hasten the collapse. Preachers of this doctrine are generally very mobile and do not try to establish churches.

Thanks to Monty, Ryan Dyal, John Wesley Bush, Robin Ingles-Barrett, and Hoax Busters For God