The Catachthonian Heresy

One of several short-lived heretical sects of the Low Imperial Period of Uzda, the Catachthonians were founded by scholarly members of the Holy Estate who interpreted the Fourth Truth in such a way that caused them to burrow underground to create secret homes. A non-evangelical sect, the Catachthonians avoided sharing their interpretation of the Fourth Truth, lest mass burrowing lead to structural instability.

Beliefs and Origin

Although critics claim the Catachthonians were merely interested in escaping the constant military drafting and random violence of the Low Period, the writings of the Catachthonians reveal that they found closeness to the Great God in the physical presence of the earth itself. As any Uzdan child would have known, the Fourth Truth states, "The Great God is in the soil that brings forth, but absent from the rock that is barren." In 518, the first Catachtonian, Goodbishop Walladran, wrote in a letter to his fellow clergyman Relgh that he was cleaning his black vestments after a terrible pre-Jacinian raid left them filthy with uptrampled dust, when he noticed that a tiny seed had sprouted from the garment's particularly grimy armpit. "The Great God," he wrote, "is here on my body. And I have washed Him out! I was on the point of washing Him out again! O, my brother! We sin!"

Although Walladran's brother remained unrepentant, the letter fell into the hands of four of Relgh's acolytes, who were cleaning out Goodbishop Relgh's desk for the beginning of the week. Next to a brightly-colored hairy mold that had formed on a long-abandoned crust due to the humid, airless condition of the room, they came across Walladran's confession. Staring at the purpley-yellow iridescent mold, they remembered Relgh's demand that nothing escape their notice; every inch of his study must be spotless and dry. According to Relgh's account, they surprised him in his meditations in the garden, holding aloft a moldy crust and shouting, "Relgh, we will no longer play at being your borrits! If you will kill your God, do it with your own hands!" They disappeared, carrying the mold and Walladran's letter with them.

The Catachthonian Commune

The acolytes found Walladran waist-deep in a narrow pit, flinging dirt out of the hole with his hands. They showed him the letter and asked what they might do to save themselves from cleanliness and sterility. Walladran urged them to join him in digging, not with metal or stone, but barehandedly, into the body of the Great God, where they would make their homes. Together, the five men managed, in a week's time, to clear out an underground den where they could all lie atop one another to sleep. After a month, the area was large enough for them to sit apart from one another and talk. In three months' time, they each had a separate sleeping den adjacent to the communal area.

All this time, Walladran was still able to send one filthy acolyte at a time to his quarters to receive his prepared meals, which they split among them. Although food was therefore scarce, Walladran was confident that the Great God would bring forth. Indeed, the digging process did bring forth several small rodents and lizards, which the acolytes prepared for food with great joy. The rest of their time was spent planning new digs, meditating on the body of the Great God in the soil, and in using the soil to engage in the pleasures of Jipa with one another in holy ecstasy.

The Cursed Orgy

One of the acolytes, Murdte, became troubled. "Walladran," he asked, "if the Great God is in whatever brings forth, but is absent from what is barren, what good is it for a man to be celibate from women? My brothers and I may enjoy the gifts of Jipa together as we please, but we will remain barren. Should we not share this great mystery with women who will help us celebrate by bringing forth with us?"

Walladran was displeased and took to his private quarters to meditate on the problem. Meanwhile, Murdte developed the plan of enticing a group of a dozen women attached to the Blackfrock Society who encamped near the Catachthonian Quarters. Although Murdte recognized the difficulty of converting women to Catachthonian ideals, since their understanding of the Fourth Truth could only be partial and damaged by female perversion, the Blackfrock women might not only recognize the similarity of their black attire, but also the individualism with which they conducted themselves. This group of Blackfrock women, meanwhile, had been considering themselves isolated from the great pro-Blackfrock movements in Kreyinte and were hoping to create a society of Blackfrock-sympathetic males.

The women expressed great delight with the Catachthonian reading of the Great God that He is in whatever brings forth and is not barren. They loudly praised the soil, and added to it praises of the uterus. The acolytes were overjoyed and joined in praising the soil and the uterus. They embraced the women and, in holy ecstasy, engaged in the pleasures of Jipa with them all.

Afterward, they led the Blackfrock women to the hole they had dug, and introduced it as their new home, inside the body of the Great God, where the pleasures of Jipa know no end. The women stopped themselves, realizing they were far too clean still, too barren to enter the body of the Great God. Over the course of the next three days, while Walladran meditated, the acolytes shared the pleasures of Jipa with the Blackfrock women and with one another until not one could be considered too clean or too barren to enter.

But enter they did not. Walladran's diary at this point reads:

When the Great God saw that all twelve of his handmaidens were filled with child, and the earth of our Catachthonian home remained damp, but fruitless, He abandoned us on that day, and carried the bearers of his Spirit away in an airship we know not where.

Post-Orgy Catachthonianism

Walladran and his acolytes were forced to recognize that soil without seed does not bring forth, just as seed without womb is as lifeless as stone. Where is the Great God, then? Walladran asks. In the seed, or in the soil that gives it sprout? Although Targhandans would quickly read the Fourth Truth as identifying the holy properties of the soil over those of the seed, the Catachthonians considered this question to be fruitful only as a subject for melancholy meditation while digging new tunnels into the soft earth with their calloused hands. The Catachthonians disbanded after the final coup of Jacinu in 521 led a cavalry across the field under which the Catachthonians burrowed. Several of the most splendid rooms were destroyed, Murdte was crushed to death by a horse that fell through, and another steed was bled to death after breaking its leg in the secret entry hole. Walladran stood over the dying animal and prayed, "May the Great God forgive us; we have brought forth nothing at all." He and the other acolytes returned to their studies and requested clean vestments.

References:

Blackfrock Society (The)

Heretical Sects of Uzda

Jacinu