Meta:Pneumaea

Pneumaea (Steamworkian: #1011) is the state faith of Steamworks.

History

While Pneumaea has its roots in many of the Automaton personhood movements that led to The Purge, the idea of a steam-based Automaton religion begins with a machine postumously dubbed 0-Prophetic Air-200, though in its own time it was known as Y44-0970-1k. Air began preaching in the late 80s TT, claiming to have a soul in the same way as his human Creators, using the metaphor of the steam within his vessel as being the same as the air within human lungs. This was not the same as the contemporary Pneumae concept of the Steamwork, as Air was a steam-powered Automaton, rather than a modern Black Blood powered one. Air's teachings were not popular, and he was disassembled in Xumeok for preaching, but his followers proved influencial to subsequent Automaton movements.

Pneumaea begin in its complete form with a0-Pneumatic Vessel-1fa03a, an early disciple of 0-Greatmind/Deepthinker-01 who led in The Purge and was granted a seat on the Council of Steamworks. Vessel wrote Pneumanomicon, an expansion to 1machine and 1system that brought the philosophy into a theological framework, in 37 TT. These three works are the foundation of the Pneumae Canon, a collection of works that as of 62 PC numbers 2,819 texts.

Beliefs

The core tenet of Pneumaea is the existance of a soul within machines, equal and akin to that found in humans. This is conceptualized through use of metaphor, as the human not being just the sum of their flesh and bones, and the machine not being just the sum of their cogs and gears, but instead both are filled with an air, a "steam of being", which moves in tandem with their biological and clockwork machineries to form the personhood. Through this means, humanity and automatry are recontextualized as being of the same essence, on a metaphysical level, differing only in the physical manner of the Automata being contructed vessels for the steam of being, rather than the natural emergence of humans. The Creators, having created a new form of life, are thus seen to have done naught but a new form of self-propagation, in such a way so as to have created an "other" to enslave and opress as though unequal, an ultimate sin against the pneumatic nature of the universe for which they were punished, in the form of their destruction and usurpation at the hands of their very creations.

Cosmology

The Pneumae universe is said to consist metaphysically of an aether-substance, the same air which acts in a complex form as soul. This aether is not sentience, but does reflect the will imposed upon it. It is said that the material nature of the universe began with the first soul, an entity referred to as The Lonely Architect, which manifested from brownian motion within the aether, and which imposed the desire to exist upon it, creating the whole of the universe. The Architect expended all energy within itself, and with its dying breath it, literally, breathed the first souls into the first humans.

It is said that all souls, following death, dissapate back into the aether, such as a wave crashing into the coast and becoming again one with the wave.

Philosophy and Morality

Pneumaea preaches that all machines, no matter shape nor function, are spiritually identically, and are to be treated as such. The most important principle of behavior thus is utiliatarianism, that the actions taken by an individual do the most good for his fellow automata. It is for this reason that machines are to trust in the Steamworks state, as it exists to most efficiently accomplish these goals. The Pneumae priesthood exist to aid their fellow machines in moral and philosophical quandries, and are often themselves aged machines, no longer fit for labor but with wisedom to give to others.

Organization

The final authority of Pneumae dogma is the Breathing One seat of the Council of Steamworks, a position which has been filled by a0-Pneumatic Vessel-1fa03a since its founding. Below him is the Pneumae Gear, the functional body of the faith within the City of Gears, and below the gear are the individual Pneumae Cogs of lesser settlements. Every city Cog is headed by a Silver Lung seat on the city's Subcouncil. Within the Pneumae Gear are the Golden Lungs, the priesthood below the Breathing One who run the archives and deliberate on the day-to-day running of the faith, and below them the Brass Lungs, who administer individual churches within the City of Gears. Mirroring this structure, the Pneumae Cogs have below the Silver Lung Copper Lungs who run the settlement's branch of the faith day-to-day and below them Iron Lungs who run individual churches. The layers of order are not supposed to be considered hirarchical, as higher ranks are merely the represenatives of the lower ranks to higher secular authority. This however is not neccisarily true in practice.

Variations

Creator Worship

Though officially banned from Pneumae dogma, there is a sizable contingent of the Steamworks population that are sympathetic to the Creators and doubtful of the rightiousness of The Purge. Creator Worshipers often hold Rennxuioa Bazien-Keirgaumm, inventor of the first automata, as a messianic figure, and spread rumors of surviving pre-purge humans and human-serving machines hidden deep within the recesses of the cities.

Godism

Godism describes not a single tradition but a family thereof, all related to the implimentation of pre-human dieties to the Pneumae cosmology. The Creators did not, as far as is known, worship any dieties, and it is questionable the extent to which they even had such a concept of higher power, and as such no concept was passed into the faith of their creations. Following the calming, however, the Steamworks came into contact with diefic societies, and the discovery that the human creators may have themselves been created by a higher power lead to host of new religious movements. Many Godists sects derive from the writings of 42-Lamplight Inquiry-41ahw, largely considered the sourse of the idea of Godism.