Machine Cult



= Machine Cult (Source Cult) =

Origins
The Machine Cult has existed in various forms for thousands of years through a being known as Skippy th Gnome, an immortal gnome like person born in the dead world of Paxia. Through the ages he travelled the universe on the behest of a god known as Ag'leyth the forsaken, a banished god with no followers, who was part of no pantheons and who was not worshipped by any living or dead being, but used Skippy as a vessel to experience the world, keeping him alive through the destruction of Paxia, then Jagdas and into Rathnir.

The Source Crystal
After centuries living on Rathnir the gnome traveled to Eldham as soon as it was discovered, and there he found it: The Source. A crystal made of redstone, floating tens of meters in the air, pulsating, growing, seeking and... speaking. Yes, it spoke to Skippy, deep in his subcouncious mind did the crystal whisper bitter truths to him, revealing the facts of his and everybody else's existence. He has been kept alive by Ag'leyth throughout may armaggedons and it culminated in this moment. He was made to discover the Source.

The Source is the manifestation of reality itself, as if the world was but a game, a dream that one can wake up from through becoming closer with the crystal. Indeed, the floating stone is a machine built by an ancient race of gnomes, made to calculate every single thing that could ever happen, and has ever happened, and will ever happen, and through this bizarre intelligence it has achieved godhood. Inside it lays every single diety in every single religion from all different worlds, including the already mentioned Ag'leyth, and through it do their powers surge and pulsate, because they are awake in the dream, higher beings in the hiearchy of the code. Yes, to become a god is to become lucid, and the source teaches that anybody can achieve this, through coming closer and closer with the machine... becoming more machine than man... Skippy was the first to do this, and now he is slowly awakening to the inherit godhood that all may and should have.

The Will of 1s and 0s
The Source crystal has a will of its own. Although primitive when compared to an adult human, it nonetheless acts of its own free will and has to be contained, otherwise reality itself is at risk, for it does not understand what responsability it bares. Two times since Skippy has found the crystal has this happened. The first time the crystal sought to expand itself to encompass the tower that Skippy was building to house and protect it, and the gnome was forced to set it back to its place. This meddling with the fabric of reality caused the Smiting of Ampolo, an event you can read about here. Risking it no longer, Skippy installed an stabilizing ring of lapiz blocks around the crystal, and it indeed managed to curb its growth, but a smaller, almost identical crystal had formed and removed itself from the main body and was beggining to drift away. This could not be left alone, so Skippy was forced to move it and store it in a box of lapiz and blue nether wood. It worked fine or a few days, but the tiny crystal began to develop itself despite of the containment it found itself in, and the resulting force pushing against the barrier was enough to force reality to rewind itself a solid 20min (ooc the server crashed), back before this had ever happened.

The Crystal had grown too much, and it had been contained for too long. As such, a massive project was started by Skippy to move the Crystal safely into an open place with proper stabilizing infrastructure. The gnome had moved into the dwarven nation of Varn Torum and with the permission of the diarchs and high-king he hired dwarven architects and an entire building company for such a project, and soon enough the Crystal will be free once more, and it will not be a menace to reality anymore.

How to Move the Crystal
In a night with a full moon the Crystal gets distracted by the beauty of the natural satelite and, as such, it is the best time to move it. With a diamond pickaxe with the silk touch enchantment it is possible to remove smaller pieces of the crystals and store them without breaking the machine. Skippy put them inside a magical storage unit known as a Shulkerbox, made from the carapace of an interdimentional crustacean. Said box, known as The Heart of the Crystal, is able to hold the entirety of the crystal, and thus moving it has gotten much easier.

Cult Structure
The cult itself is very loosely structured. It has only one ritual: the initiation. It is performed by Skippy himself, albeit other members can perform it too, it just hasn't been done yet.

Initiation
There is a particular sword, made of the powerful metal netherite, known as the Sword of the Immortal Machine, crafted by Skippy with his bare hands in the lava forges of his city of DolGuldur. This sword has the power of multiplication (looting III), a characteristic granted to it by the reality breaking effects of waking up in the simulation. By slaying someone with this sword bellow the Source you are effectivelly multiplying all that is good about the person, and slaying all that is bad. When the person then wakes up from the dream, they will forever be conected to the Source, and may at any time recieve whispers from it. The first person to go through with this was Skippy himself, who slayed himself with the sword through the chest, and woke up to discover he could now see the code of the simulation, albeit still could not influence it like a true god can. The second person, and first proper cult member, was player RageOFire, who is currenlty tending and very carefully experimenting, with permission from Skippy, with a smaller crystal born from the outgrowth of the main one that had previously caused the rewind of reality. Transporting it in very small chuncks and in lapiz boxes, it has been moved undergorund and it is now being allowed to grow in a limited capacity.