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Threads: Reformism

Core Premise Senera’s Reformist operation looks like an aberration or mind flayer plot, but that is intentional misdirection. The visible horror is parasite eggs, green mutagenic sacrament, aberrant transformations, and mind-share symptoms. The deeper horror is institutional: the Reformists and Rothchild’s network are degrading a society into dependency, appetite, incompetence, and control.

The Original Project The Reformists originally believed they were incubating people toward some form of ascension, possibly mind flayer-like transformation or a shared higher state. Aberration eggs were placed in food to dull the populace and prepare compatible bodies/minds. But after decades, the eggs did not produce proper mind flayers. The project “failed” as apotheosis.

The Pivot The top brass realized the failed process was still useful. It made people easier to control: less curious, less technically competent, more driven by appetite, more dependent on ritual and centralized miracle-tools. The goal shifted from “make ascended beings” to “make subjects.”

Green Liquid / Sacrament The green liquid is not a gift from aberrations. It is an extracted cocktail made from captive or exploited non-illithid aberrations: aboleths, beholders, flumphs, and possibly illithid-adjacent components/eggs. Different ratios create different effects.

• Flumph-heavy: shared pleasure/pain, emotional contagion, artificial intimacy, boundary dissolution. • Aboleth-heavy: obedience, ancestral memory, regression, bodily mutation. • Beholder-heavy: paranoia, surveillance obsession, zealotry, eye/vision mutations. • Illithid-adjacent additives: suggestibility, mind-share compatibility, cognitive dulling.

Publicly this is framed as sacrament: “drink this to ascend.” Privately, it is a tool for social conditioning, capture, and controlled degradation.

The Flumph Reveal The nastiest version is that flumphs, normally gentle/empathic psychic beings, are being forcibly drained. Their empathy is weaponized into a communion drug. The players may expect an elder brain or aberrant mastermind, but instead find gentle creatures turned into industrial empathy batteries.

Hierarchy of Knowledge Knowledge changes by rank.

• Top brass know formulae, goals, and political purpose. • Cup Bearers and temple operators know ritualized procedures and ratios. • Lower clergy are told it is sacrament. • Common initiates are told: “drink this to ascend” or “you are not worthy yet.”

The same act is lab protocol at the top and holy mystery at the bottom.

The Cup Bearer The Cup Bearer already exists in-game as someone who directly administers parasites to selected individuals. This is now clearly ritualized targeting. Food contamination is broad and imprecise; the Cup Bearer handles high-value capture: leaders, dissenters, skilled workers, military assets, or promising converts.

Lower Reformists / Near-Ascended The Seneran/Sanerian operations are run by people just at the cusp of ascension. They are not fully trusted, but they are given power and little tastes of the sacrament. They run mines, rations, temples, policing, logistics, and enforcement while desperately trying to prove worthiness.

They are both perpetrators and victims: powerful enough to abuse others, degraded enough to remain dependent.

Dark Archons A few Dark Archons observe the operation as middle management. They monitor quotas, discipline, rituals, sacrament distribution, and the Near-Ascended. Most Dark Archons sincerely believe in the “true doctrine”: pain and pleasure reveal the real self beneath civilization, restraint, intellect, shame, and craft.

But there are tiers: Outer Dark Archons believe sincerely. • Operational Dark Archons know the project is ugly but think it is necessary severity. • Inner Rothchild-aligned Dark Archons know the real goal is managed collapse Rothchild’s Strategy The operation is designed to fail locally while succeeding strategically. Rothchild wants to weaken Senera/Saneria for conquest and make it useless to anyone else. The deliverable is not a stable theocracy. The deliverable is spoilage.

Success means:

• technical knowledge degraded • civic competence rotted • people made impulsive and dependent • industry replaced by magical bottlenecks • resistance disorganized or addicted • local Reformists hollowed out • chaos made useful

The key reveal: “You thought this was a failed conversion. It was a successful reduction.”

Doctrinal Horror The faithful interpret devolution as proof that the doctrine is working. If people abandon craft, seek pleasure, dissolve into crowds, lose restraint, or become dependent on the Cup, the Dark Archons say the false self is being stripped away.

The inner tier knows people are being reduced. The believers think people are being unveiled.

Future Azrima Relevance Azrima is not introduced yet and Arzhadad is far away, so this plot must stand on its own for now. But later, it matters because the language the Dark Archons use resembles the “true doctrine” Azrima once believed in. The wound is not “the doctrine was fake.” The deeper wound is that something real enough to love was used as the mask, fuel, and language for something monstrous.

Reformist Goals

Section titled “Reformist Goals”
  • So far, it seems like the Reformists have these goals around the world:
    • Collection and exploration of these Orbs of Power
    • Abduction and extraction of magical organs
    • Infection of magic users with aberration parasites
    • Transformation of infested magic users into aberrant forms
  • What had they done so far to further their goals:
  • These could not and should not be the actual goal, but what is?