But that prayer was answered. Misery’s Absolution, a tug of eight under the command of Captain Anthurium Ono, touched down on a strange asteroid with engine problems. In a cave they found strange etchings on the walls and a seam of unknown, shimmering stone. That night, one by one, the crew members had the same dream: a figure that comprised a blaze of light spoke to them in a stitched-together voice. It was the Demiurge, the Larex Forge, one sometimes called God, Zie of Many Names. As they listened to Hir in fear and wonder, the Demiurge spoke to them with great truth, explaining why they had come to such tribulation and suffering. This was Hir domain, to which they had come uninvited. Their malleable organic minds and bodies were attractive to the nullvoid, who preyed on them like a bird feasting on the soft bodies of clams. It latched onto their emotions—feelings that were core to humanity—and through there rode into their flesh and destroyed them, or turned them into its agents. But the Larex Forge, in Hir infinite mercy and wisdom, had decided to spare humanity. Zie had deigned to take these refugees, stragglers from a forgotten world, under Hir wing. Zie would teach them, the Eight Messiahs, how to live in this part of the universe.

When the eight of them woke they found themselves changed. There was knowledge in their heads placed by the divine touch. In the wall of the cave they had become marooned in, the strange and shimmering stone was singing. It was holy ruby, the charge-bearer, the first of its kind that humanity would come to understand. The Eight Messiahs were the first saints, and in subsequent years the Demiurge would show Hirself to them, again and again, guiding the fledglings of humanity in their new homes.

But all good stories need a villain, and this gospel was gifted perfect candidates when two of the Messiahs refused the word of the Forge, and set out to find mundane explanations for all of it: the nullvoid, the holystone, the sainthood. Their actions challenged the authority of the fledgling Church, rent the fabric of Faithful society in half, and created the Schism as we know it. Set off three hundred years of holy war, which is how we got here today.