Lifegiver's Manifesto

The Lifegiver's Manifesto are environmental lore objects. The first four can be found in an Immortal Syndicate safehouse (appearing in order of appearance), and the final manifesto is found in the Mastermind's Lair. They are written by the Syndicate Mastermind.

I

 * The world is an ancient stone, rigid and immovable, and we are but water, rolling across its surface, leaving an ephemeral trail before we sink beneath its skin. So short are our lives that the stone seemingly remains unchanged.


 * Given enough time, the rain can shape a stone. Each drop's minute contribution, adding up over time, hews the stone's rough edges. But there is no grand design here. There is no individual guiding the stone into a useful form, only natural forces. Chaos.


 * But what if that weren't the case? What if there was someone guiding the rain? Someone able to plan far past the fleeting lives that limit us?


 * What new potential would we unlock?

II

 * What new thing have you learned today? Or this week? How far have you come in your lifetime? If you died today, how much of what you have learned would be lost for all time?


 * We advance as a society by building upon previous knowledge. Bricks stacked atop bricks. Too often are key advances lost due to an unforeseen death, leaving a gap in the wall. How long until someone climbs high enough once more to continue to build?


 * We cannot all live forever. Sacrifices must be made. But with sufficient time to build our knowledge, what we fuel with the blood of our brothers and sisters today may come freely tomorrow.

III

 * Each great movement has detractors -- the powers that be naturally fight against any threat to their dominance. But steel is not forged in cool air, it is forged in vicious heat.


 * The heat is coming, brothers and sisters. They will try to destroy us, pit us against each other, and put us in impossible situations, but, throughout, we must stand united.


 * Though we crawl through the mud, acting in secrecy and silence, we are destined to become Wraeclast's saviours. Each sacrifice we must make is but a twig in the flames of our forge, and the day will come when our blade has been tempered into a mighty weapon and we may slice through the spectre of death once and for all.

IV

 * We bury the dead. Insects feed on the flesh and bone... Rot takes hold... An entire lifetime reduced to feed for the grass above. A waste. But the soul, oh, the soul... The soul does not even feed the earth. It drifts invisibly into the ether, never harnessed, never used. Gone.


 * What greater waste of life is there than to let the soul flutter away into nothingness? We hope and wish for something more, but here and now we have tools that will guarantee no afterlife be necessary. We have the tools to build a utopian life here, in Wraeclast, through thaumaturgy. The only thing we lacked was time, but the gift of the Horns has given us that too.


 * Brothers and sisters, there's a new empire in the making, and we are its founders. Those that die for our cause will live on within us, and their names will be etched into the foundations of our utopia.

V

 * People need a strong leader. As Oriath bubbles over and spills into Wraeclast, the ragged and the hungry will look to someone to keep them safe from harm. For now, it is merely a matter of survival, but it in time, a true society will form, and someone must step in to rule.


 * A city is not built in a day, nor even a lifetime. Sarn was being cobbled together up to the day it burned. With so many hands involved in its construction, fractures and slips were inevitable. People would fall through the cracks. Factions would form.


 * Oriath didn't learn from Sarn's mistakes, but they cannot be blamed. The death of a ruler always has and always will throw an empire's direction into the wind.


 * With an Eternal Queen, this is a problem we will never have to face.