Pierre Savoie

RELIGION IN SCIENCE-FICTION ROLE-PLAYING GAME CAMPAIGNS

by Pierre Savoie

     I want to throw together a few thoughts on how to handle the
historical development of religions in a spacefaring science-
fiction future, for use with role-playing games.  I draw my
inspiration from the DUNE novels and a look at how religions with
recognizable elements from our day might change and spread 10,000
years later, through the important influence of a space diaspora.

DUNE mentioned odd developments such as the Orange Catholic
Bible, the Dune Tarot, and a "Luddite" revolution against
computers called the Butlerian Jihad.
     In this essay, "people" mean all beings of the same species
as you, as opposed to science-fiction "aliens".  A different
religion may come from aliens, or just a different group of
people.

ASSUMPTIONS:
     Here are some general working assumptions, bearing in mind
that we ARE talking about future-fiction here.  Although some
real-history cases are mentioned as illustrations of general
effects, no offense to existing religions or their "truth" is
intended.

1)  No religion stays the same.  Over centuries, wars, spreading
into new peoples, gradually mutates the "message."  The plausible
lifetime for a religion as humans know it seems to be about 3,000
- 5,000 years, beyond which it bears little resemblance to its
forebear.  Observe, for example, the Blacks of Ethiopia who are
Falasha Jews, a long-hidden Jewish tradition that had the Torah,
but not the Talmud.  The more Orthodox Jews don't want to
recognize them as truly Jewish.  The "parting of the ways" may
have occurred 2,500 years ago or more.
     Hinduism has lasted a long time, although it has also
changed from INTERNAL changes of emphasis and the dropping of
certain gods:  the Hinduism of North India resembles an ordered
pantheon with only a few "prime movers," and Hinduism in the
southern regions of India has a greater number of goddesses, and
more of the two million possible Hindu gods.  Each god has its
origin as the patron spirit of one single village, or of a
location, and Hinduism absorbed them all (accretion).  A similar
process occurred for Greek mythology (Athena being the goddess
for Athens, Poseidon of the sea, each of Jupiter's human lovers,
etc.; each was at one time exclusively worshipped as the sole or
major god depending on locality, or represented various heroes
and heroines).  
     One can almost speak in evolutionary terms about speciation,
diversification, natural and random selections.

2)  The urge to revamp a religion is strong.  Claims of religious
miracles or momentous events in religious history, involving an
uncertain, semi-legendary past, tend to minimize the worshippers
of the present day.  They wonder why they are not themselves
privy to miracles and massive revelations in "interesting times."

Therefore, ONE method of religious revival is to take existing
beliefs and combine with new beliefs, to steer the ship in a new
direction (syncretism).
     Some canny figure may find a way to do this, by changing or
adding to existing doctrine (Joseph Smith of Mormonism, or Prince
Gautama of Buddhism) or by fusing two existing belief-systems in
close proximity (Guru Nanak of the Sikh religion, drawing from
Hinduism and Islam).  They will gain followers by being able to
involve people of the present directly, in essence resetting the
calendar to Year 1 of a new era.  The people are told they are at
the crux, the turning point of history, which is a strong appeal.
     Sometimes they will violently denounce the precursor
religion(s) (otherwise, why make a new religion at all?), or
sometimes they will make surprisingly generous overtures to the
past, the better to give followers of the old ways a bridge to
the new.  For example, Guru Nanak emphasized monotheism as in
Islam, and yet at the same time religious legend has it that
millions of Hindu gods witnessed his birth and foretold his
future as a great man.  The apostle Paul appealed extensively to
Greek-speaking Jews to have them adopt Christianity.

3)  When there is more personal freedom, religions are adopted no
longer through heredity, but through free-market forces.  No
matter how odd or alien the religion, or even if it COMES from
aliens, a small minority will be interested in adopting it.  In
Larry Niven's RINGWORLD novels, it was mentioned that a small
number of Kzinti became Kdaptists, a belief that since their
human enemies were winning so many wars, God must favor humans. 
Kdapt worship ceremonies at the peak of a war with humans were
performed wearing human masks, hoping to fool God long enough to
win favor.  The majority of Kzinti despised them.
     Even in our own history, radical shifts have been observed. 
There was an invasion of Eastern religions into North American
young in the 1960's, although not all these religions were
considered true religions in the Western sense.  For reasons tied
to politics and an imagined ancestral link and non-oppression,
many Black Americans have converted to Islam.

4)  Space travel causes many changes, and these to the nth power.

If a tiny and weird religious minority moves off and colonizes a
favorable planet, they may later number in the billions and
colonize an entire arm of space, all with that particular
religious character, and become a local majority.
     If a planet is cut off, isolated from interstellar cultural
currents, their religion will drift or even severely mutate. 
Religions caught together on such a planet may fuse peaceably (or
conversely blow the entire planet to NOBODY'S Kingdom Come).  In
current Japan, people are comfortable with many religions at
once, marrying as Buddhists but with Shinto funerals, and may 
even be partly Christian in the bargain.
     There is another effect:  space secularizes people.  Unless
one is running a fantasy RPG campaign, space travel and smallpox
cures are not achieved through Oms, Koans, Insh'Allahs or
Hosannahs!  To be able to explain the nature of physical reality,
and to exploit (or prevent) its properties to suit one's own use,
the Scientific Method must be turned to as the methodical way to
construct theories and test observables, and becomes the most
efficient way of arriving at the nature of physical reality.  The
truth of a thing becomes tied to its proven effectiveness.  
     Religion thus retreats from the causal to the "spiritual,"
"emotional" or "behavioral."  Religion becomes more personal,
less the product of everyday interaction with the world and with
others, and people abandon one ancient use of religion as an
attempt to explain previously unexplained physical phenomena.
     The harsh nature of space and the relentless physics of lack
of fuel, food or oxygen may also drive home the point that
miracles won't happen, not on THIS trip; only personal effort and
resources count, despite all the necessary wishing tied to the
preservation of life.  Or, conversely, it may lead to fatalism
and a warrior-religion like Zen Buddhism was to the samurai or
Klingon beliefs to the Klingon.  They may seriously want to seek
death in battle rather than pass up this "honor" and die horribly
in an accidental decompression or a crash instead.

5)  Religion causes grave conflict.  More correctly, religion
granted temporal or secular power will assert itself over
people's lives, or be affiliated too closely with a ruler, and a
conflicting religion will indeed cause conflict.  If there is a
government of guaranteed neutrality or secularity, then
religions, forcibly put on the back-burner, may coexist
peacefully, and this hastens the speed of some of the previous
effects.


     So, how do you generate a religious "history" of future
space?  
The sharpest religious divisions might be that between human and 
various alien outlooks.  Within each race, a unique history may
be 
developed, and some religions survived and some didn't.
     This is a product of RANDOM selection, rather than natural
selection, for I would hesitate to claim that there are specific
traits ensuring the survival and spread of specific religions. 
Most disseminations and conversions have been intimately tied to
the unrelated parallel business of the fortunes of war, or the
filling of ethical vacuums:
     In a decadent and ethnically confused Rome, many cults,
including the cult of the sun-god Mithra, were contenders to be
the dominant religion of the Empire.  Christianity only HAPPENED
to win out.  A non-violent monotheistic cult, no matter how
sublime its concepts, may have been smashed by the more violent
Viking culture nearby and its less developed, "barbarian"
religion.  Zoroastrianism, a religion of fairly peaceable and
life-affirming concepts, was hounded out of Persia by Islam, and
settled in India instead.
----------

     Therefore, for a race and planet or a specific spatial
region, decide the religion's basic type.  This is my shot at
rough classifications, forcing a fit to come out to exactly 10
categories (I wonder why?), and some examples given may fit in
more than one category.  Roll or choose on the Base Religion
Table:


BASE RELIGION TABLE (1d10):

1  Animism
2  Spirit Religion
3  Polytheism
4  Pantheon
5  Monotheism
6  Supernaturalism
7  Personal Transcendence Religion
8  Psychologism
9  Atheism (or non-belief)
0  Radicalized Materialism

ANIMISM:  A belief that spirits or occult phenomena exist, tied
to every living and non-living object.  Larger or more important
objects have more powerful spirits.  Beliefs about what these
spirits mean to people and their conduct is not well
systematized.  Examples:  caveman beliefs, American Indian
religions, African religions.

SPIRIT RELIGION:  A form of Animism where certain spirits are
emphasized, and the idea that these spirits intimately influence
people is advanced.  A prominent priest class to manage the
details may appear for the first time.  Examples:  Shinto,
Voodoo, Wicca, spiritism and the Latcher cult (superstitions
about the spirits of those who last died in a mining spacesuit.)
     In the Latcher belief, since mining spacesuits are too large
and expensive to be given final disposal after someone dies in
them, they must therefore be repainted and renumbered.  The
miners, to soothe their unease, must propitiate the spirits of
dead miners, the "Latchers", so-named because they are said to
hang on to the last object in space they knew in life, and
terrorize the living.

POLYTHEISM:  A belief in many gods of greater power and influence
than is normally attributed to spirits.  There may be a hierarchy
of gods, avatars, spirits, etc.  To varying degrees, these have a
message or seek to guide people.  Example:  Hinduism, Mayan
religion.

PANTHEON:  A fixed and well-developed order of gods by
functionality, who may be in conflict to mirror conflicts in the
forces of nature.  Small-scale spirits may not exist at all.  A
pantheon may be as little as two gods, one for Good, another for
Evil (for these are the ultimate moral and behavioral functions).
     One could have different "teams" of gods in the pantheon,
for example, a Tricameral Pantheon:  each "team" representing
greater and lesser gods for Good, Evil, and the alien concept of
Pruignath, which is neither, and represents some alien statement
of a remaining uncaring component of insane, random nature.
     Examples:  Greek, Chinese, and Viking mythology.

MONOTHEISM:  The belief that the universe is unified under the
control and view of one God.  In North America, this is the type
most familiar to people, although they somewhat tend towards
being bipolar pantheons for Good and Evil.  Examples:  Judaism,
Christianity, Islam.     
     One advantage is that different people and even aliens may
rally under the same banner.  If they sincerely believe there can
only be one God in the cosmos for different alien races, and are
prepared to engage in the emphasis of common ground (as in
ecumenism), then the concept unifies.

SUPERNATURALISM:  The rejection of powerful deities controlling
persons, but the affirmation of various paranormal influences
upon people.  What these mean for people and their conduct may
vary widely.  Examples:  UFO religions (such as Raelians in
France and Canada), mentalism or beliefs in psychic phenomena,
astrology, auras, ritual magick, etc.  

PERSONAL TRANSCENDENCE RELIGION:  The rejection of ultimate
controlling deities, but the affirmation that spirits, great or
small, or supernatural effects, represent only other people in
transformed states, eventually achieving some sort of heaven or
perfection.  Example:  Buddhism.

PSYCHOLOGISM:  A rejection of theism or spiritism, but belief in
self-improvement and even supernatural transcendence through
psychological techniques which themselves are occult in belief,
not founded on any scientific process or rules of evidence. 
Example:  Scientology, EST, half of California!

ATHEISM (OR NON-BELIEF):  Technically, what is called Atheism or
non-belief in gods would also apply to Buddhism or Jainism, but
in this usage it represents no belief in gods or spirits or
paranormal processes of any kind.  The physical world is seen as
just being there, to be dealt with as it is, and people are
encouraged to make their way and set their own goals and conduct
in the most auspicious way.  Probably first expressed publicly by
an ancient Greek, Protagoras:  "MAN is the measure of all
things."
     In cross-cultural contacts, between aliens or people of
vastly different religious belief, the only common ground may be
a tacit refusal to discuss religion, to stick to material issues
for trade or cooperation.  Hence, non-belief becomes the common
basis to achieve a goal.

RADICALIZED MATERIALISM:  My own science-fictional concept of a
category of strict non-belief.  RadMats believe not only that all
the universe is unified, and strictly material, but supernatural
belief is the only evil force there is.  This may take root when
advanced space cultures doing planetary surveys constantly
observe the link between religions or superstitious beliefs and
technological primitivism and misery, or have experienced a
horrendous past war based on religious lines.  They have respect
for science, Atheists, non-believers and free-thinkers, but
murderous fanatical hatred for any kind of occultism, blowing up
the offices of a Webnewspaper just for carrying an astrology
column.
     RadMats often verge into occult and less than mellow rituals
of their own.  For example, if they accept that they will have a
limited and final lifespan, they may for example leap into occult
corollary beliefs in fanatical self-improvement.  It is almost as
if AbFlex machines, Tony Robinson motivations, and speed-reading
courses were sermons inflicted upon all instead of simply
products to be sold in late-night info-mercials, for those who
wanted them, since "life is short!"
     A youth rebellion against such strictures, BACK to religion
or simple non-belief, may occur and annoy the older, Orthodox
RadMat generation, but the youthful aim may simply be to be less
"uptight!"
     Example:  Communism had a touch of the RadMat attitude in
it.


     Add details to this religion as you see fit.  Now that you
have a religion, you may consider how far or in what way it
propagates.  Here is a simple scheme.  Roll or choose on the
Propagation Table (1d10):

PROPAGATION TABLE (1d10):

1  Propagates modestly through space (following the colonization
route of the race)
2  Propagates modestly through space (roll on Mutation Table)
3  Propagates widely through space (roll on Mutation Table)
4  Propagates widely through space, AND develops modest following
among aliens encountered (roll on Mutation Table for the way the
aliens practice it)
5  Propagates widely through space, AND develops wide following
among aliens (roll on Mutation Table for all followers)
6  A form of the religion (perhaps reduced to its basics) has
gained a universal foothold (roll on Mutation Table)
7  The religion has not done well at all, limited to a few
systems or one planet (roll on Isolation Table)
8  Religion is in retreat even on its planet of origin, or a
planet is cut off from interstellar contact (roll on Isolation
Table)
9  Religion goes extinct except as a series of legends, or
remains only in a small region of a planet (roll on Isolation
Table)
0  Religion goes completely extinct and no longer even known


MUTATION TABLE (1d10):

1  ORTHODOXY:  Great respect for the religion as it is, as a
stable moral center.  Absolutely no changes regardless of
technological or cultural currents.
2  FANATICISM:  strict adherence with the urge to convert others.
Religion spreads because of victory in war or economic domination
or some other physical advantage of the religious group.  New
emphases to suit the culture of expansion may be added.  Example:
Islam after its origin, Christianity to the New World.
3  EVOLUTION:  concepts of ethical and moral improvement
stressed, primitive concepts from an ancient past or concepts
specific to one people or alien race down-played.  Fair legal
processes ignore religious rules to cut off hands of criminals,
for example, or modern medical aid for dangerous pregnancies
abolishes religious laws on sexual taboos or sexual segregations.
Rules on circumcision are abolished if an alien race has nothing
to circumcize!
4  MODERATION:  All major religious concepts downplayed or
modified, particularly when it crosses over to aliens.
5  MODERATION:  All major religious concepts downplayed or
modified, particularly when it crosses over to aliens.
6  SCHISM ("skizm"):  A split in the religion, with a new group
as the offshoot of the old, turning the religion in a new
direction.  The old religion survives; treat both as separate
religions for further historical processes (roll again on
Propagation Table for each?).
7  PHAGIC SCHISM ("FA-jik skism"):  A split in the religion, 
with a new group as the offshoot of the old, and the new 
group consumes the followers of the old group, often with 
much violence.  The old religion is reduced or disappears.
8  ECUMENISM:  the religion emphasizes common ground with a
different religion, causing a peaceful, equal OR unequal fusion.
9  DOMINATION:  the religion has consumed (or been consumed by)
the followers of another, but the prevailing religion contains
traces of the suppressed religion's beliefs or practices.
0  WEIRDNESS ADDED:  "space is big," some strange new unexplained
effect or "miraculous" aliens discovered somewhere in space,
disturbs believers, reinforces supernatural belief, may lead to
Schisms or Fanaticism.


ISOLATION TABLE (1d10):

1  TIME CAPSULE (ORTHODOXY):  Great respect for the religion as
it is; absolutely no change on the planet or in the area for
hundreds of years.  May end up looking bizarre when outsiders
chance upon the place, even to outsiders of the same original
religious current.
2  FANATICISM:  strict adherence with the urge to convert others,
and any discovery by outsiders would cause them to exert
tremendous pressure on outsiders to convert to the Truth.
3  DRIFT:  beliefs change or evolve, not necessarily in fanatical
ways.  Totally random process; can be considered a new religion
(and may repeat Propagation Table roll?)
4  DRIFT:  beliefs change or evolve, not necessarily in fanatical
ways.  Totally random process; can be considered a new religion
(and may repeat Propagation Table roll?).
5  DEVOLUTION:  many original concepts lost, simpler in content,
original meanings forgotten.  Often accompanies a technological
downfall.  People may stop worshipping a monotheism deity and
start worshipping the crashed colony ship which brought them to
the planet, since it contained the only chapel for the religion.
5  TYPE SHIFT:  Religion may not only mutate, but change its
fundamental type.  A monotheistic religion may introduce a
bipolar pantheon, or go polytheistic.  A psychologism may become
supernaturalism or vice-versa.  Atheism may go RadMat or vice-
versa, etc.
6  SCHISM:  as in Mutation Table.
7  PHAGIC SCHISM:  as in Mutation Table.
8  FUSION:  the local religion has fused with a different
religion from other people OR aliens in the area.  Treat as a new
religion and roll again.  Like Ecumenism, but the resultant may
be less moderate, more bizarre, seeing as it draws from a
smaller, local pool of ideas.
9  DOMINATION:  the religion has dominated or been dominated by a
religion of local people OR aliens, and the prevailing religion
may contain traces of the suppressed religion that remain in its
beliefs or practices.
0  WEIRDNESS ADDED:  some strange local effect particular to the
area is treated as supernatural; assumes importance in the local
religion, mutating it.  Attempts by outsiders to explain the real
cause of this phenomenon may upset the religion, mutating it
again (a common STAR TREK plot!)

----------


THE LATCHER CULT, AND THE GERNSBACH DATACUBE CRISIS

a sample religious current for Humans and Vrusk in the Frontier

by Pierre Savoie

     Somebody asked me to take my essay, "Religion in Science
Fiction Role-Playing Game Campaigns", on the propagation and
evolution of religions in space, and give a working example,
specific to the Frontier if possible.  Here is one on the
evolution of the Latcher cult.
     One thing to remember is that the tables given were best
used by CHOOSING the event which occurs on the Propagation,
Mutation or Isolation tables, rather than rolling on 1d10.  I did
not feel like making choices about the relative frequency of each
event, except to hint that slow evolution of a religion was more
likely (shown with TWO entries out of the ten in the Mutation and
Isolation tables instead of just one).  At the risk of insulting
believers in Eternal Truth, religious evolution is a common
reality.  In one age the Catholic Church allowed priests to marry
(one Pope was the son of another) and abortions to occur up to
"quickening" (20 weeks of gestation); in another age, not.  The
game-master must use his creativity as he dreams up his science-
fiction "future history", and make guesses as he pleases about
how a fictional religion will change.
     If people truly want to develop religious detail, they can
take a map of space from their game campaign and put arrows on it
showing the migration of different groups (like many historical
atlas maps do).  Arrows are shown pointing together for
conflicts, an arrow can show a small group leaving if oppressed
by a large one ("The beauty of space travel is that there is
ALWAYS some place else to go."  --Robert A. Heinlein), and so on,
in different colours.  The width of the arrows indicates the size
of the migrations involved.  There is another dimension:  whether
people are fervent believers or only nominally of that religion,
which can be shown in varying shades of colour intensity (or on a
computer RPG mapping program, the number of pixels of that colour
per area).


     As I mentioned before, the Latcher cult was a folk-belief of
miners who lived in and worked the Asteroid Belt of Sol, in the
early Human space colonization period.  Because mining spacesuits
were large pieces of expensive heavy equipment, bristling with
tools and long-term life-support apparatus, they could not just
be disposed of if a miner happened to die in one.  The suits were
just cleaned out, refurbished, repainted and renumbered, and
issued to a new owner.
     However, many miners of a superstitious bent were highly
uneasy working in these suits.  Folk-tales of "Latchers" sprang
up:  these were the spirits of dead miners who were so-named
because they were said to attach themselves to the last object in
space that they knew in life, and bring all sorts of fright, bad
luck and woe to the current owner.  Such deaths were caused by
gruesome accident, or a miner getting lost or cut off from help,
to face slow death as some element of his life-support supply ran
out first.
     The superstitions were self-fulfilling, with the most
superstitious miners feeling the greatest unease, losing
concentration, making dangerous mistakes and even causing
accidents short of death.  Such a miner, convinced that a Latcher
was present, would then seek out a Voodoo-like priest to help
"exorcise" his suit or propitiate the spirit.  These priests were
given various names such as Suit Shamans, Belt Shamans,
Decrocheurs, Lacheros, or Kshenzha, depending on the ancestral
language of the Belter citizen.
     Officially, the mining arm of the Company concealed details
of a suit's history, but in any Belt sector with a high number of
Latcherites, infiltration and digging out death records was
impossible to stop.  Latchers could then be identified as
Bloaters (spirits of people who died from explosive
decompression), Chokers (dead from oxygen running out), Parches
(dead from being isolated and running out of water first),
Corpsicles (heating units failed) or Roadkill (dead from impacts,
or caught between two asteroid fragments colliding).  Lore and
ritual developed for each type, including protective designs
painted onto the suits.  A small side-ritual also developed to
pray for the good functioning of the spirit of one's radio, since
many causes of death resulted from not being able to call for
help.
     The cult beliefs evolved, and became more systematic and
self-consistent, adding legends of particular spirits.  Spirits
of "evil" miners, destined for hell but prevented from reaching
Earth for all eternity, were said to be gathered by a spirit
known as NastyAss Johnston, an immoral miner of bad social
reputation who happened to be the Belt's first fatality in a
mining suit (rumor is that he was helped along).  Originally just
one of the many spirit-legends of the Latcher cult, the figure
grew to prominence in the belief after a few centuries.  In a
similar way, spirits of "good" people were said to be gathered by
a beautiful female spirit named Estelle Starlight.  This legend
was dreamed up at a time when, at first, most Belt miners were
male, cut off for long periods from female company, and this did
not represent an actual woman but an idealized fantasy.
     The Latcher cult was ridiculed back on Earth, and Earthside
media occasionally satirized them to the point of straining laws
against religious bigotry in general media.  Many fundamentalist
religions sought to stamp out the Latcher belief.  But Belters
were isolated from these efforts:  media signals from Earth were
too faint to be heard on most individuals' radios, the Company
often repackaged Earth's major faxpapers and censored offending
cartoons or articles, and in any case the Belters set up their
own media.
     Missionaries out to change the "heathen" Latchers were for
the most part not trained for any labor the Company needed.  The
Company controlled the only fleet of ships capable of reaching
the Belt, and did not give out joyrides to just anybody for
something not work-related.  For that matter, particularly in the
rough-and-tumble early days, a whole lot of illicit moral
behavior was going on in the Belt, which overshadowed private
beliefs (an excellent illustration of mining colony life is the
movie OUTLAND.)

     Now that we have the outlines of a religion, let's fast-
forward, making use of the tables for ideas.  In hundreds of
years, as interstellar colonization spread, the spacefaring
Belters represented a disproportionate number of Human colonists,
more fit for long trips through space than the Earth
"groundhogs".  It was estimated that as many as 21% of colonists
had some form of openly professed Latcher belief.
     In the Propagation Table, let us choose the entry that the
Latcher cult "propagates widely through space" -- although, to be
sure, it is not the only religion to do so.  Space conditions
were the same for miners in any star system, preserving a core
Latcher belief.  However, groundside colonists no longer shared
the same attitudes towards death, which came to them in more
normal ways.
     A certain favorable planetary settlement was in a state of
Isolation, so let us choose on the Isolation Table that the
religion underwent a Type Shift.  As technology advanced on this
populous planet, the Latcher cult changed from a Spirit Religion
to LatcherISM, a religion with a Bipolar Pantheon.  People
developed a bipolar belief in Good and Evil, typefied by the
goddess Stel (personification of the widespread and savage beauty
of space) and the evil Nastas, or Natas (Satan spelled
backwards!)  They believed that, not spirits, but past influences
and events may latch on and stain the soul and its ability to
grow and develop in Good, and they sought to root out these
influences by religious precepts that verged into Psychologism.
     At the same time, advances in transport meant that miners in
remote locations in the star-system were not so isolated any
more, and ended up sharing the viewpoints of the planetary
majority.  This shift represented only the general trend:  a
large population of Latcherites will vary and consist of more
religious or less religious people, or perhaps contain different
sects.  Linguistic shifts also disguised the origin of religious
terms, and no one connected the changed name of the religion to
spirits "latching" onto spacesuits.

     Let us now postulate that this new version of the religion
Propagated widely through space, and a check on the Mutation
table shows it to have Dominated other Latcher beliefs, with
little change to itself.  A few miners in some systems faithful
to the Spirit-Religion current were ridiculed into disappearance
or violently uprooted.  But, for many centuries, the religion was
a widespread and fairly stable Human belief.

     Then, a Human sector of space came into contact with the
Vrusk.  [I will not name any particular planets of contact where
Humans and Vrusk mix or colonize together.  Nothing was ever said
about racial contact and settlement history of the Frontier in
the STAR FRONTIERS [SF] game, and some have had more developed
models for this; so I leave it up to the reader.  I am not even
certain whether the Humans of SF are related to Earth Humans, or
originated in some other, fictional, way.]
     As someone observed, Alan Dean Foster wrote novels about the
Thranx, whose story begins in NOR CRYSTAL TEARS.  These are a
likely insectoid race that the Vrusk can be modelled on.  The
main character, Ryozenzuzex, mentioned after tumultuous first
contact with Humans that his religious belief can most be likened
to a Human Theravadist.  This probably went WAY over the heads of
most readers of the book, so I will explain.
     Theravada Buddhism (or Hinayana Buddhism) is classified in
my earlier scheme as a Personal Transcendence Religion which is
most common in Sri Lanka, Burma and parts of Southeast Asia.  
Unlike mainstream or Mahayana Buddhism, Theravadism does not
believe that EVERYONE will achieve Nirvana through progressive
reincarnations.  Mahayana and Hinayana mean, respectively, Large
Vehicle and Small Vehicle, expressing their relative view of how
much room there is on the "boat" to Nirvana.
     It is plausible that Vrusk may believe in a Personal
Transcendence Religion.  It is not stated in the SF rules, but
Vrusk like other insectoids may begin as eggs which hatch into
some kind of larval phase, then to a pupa, and then to a normal
adult form.  They may have some ancestral hive society as well,
which explains their love of corporate structure.
     Now, since they have consciously experienced such radical
transformations in their being, more traumatic than puberty would
be to a Human's self-identity, it is reasonable that they are
remarkably tolerant of differences in form, and tend to view
moral development by analogy to these radical changes.  They can
easily believe that death is just another transformation leading
to a return to an egg, or something else (something more
transcendent), and that spirits and the paranormal are just
different forms of themselves, or altered states.

     [VRUSK PHONETICS:  As an aside, my understanding of the
Vrusk physiology is that they will have a range of sounds of
buzzes and clicks surpassing the variety of clicking sounds a
Bushman from southern Africa could produce, and can approximate
most Human sounds, but will have trouble with sounds that place
the most demands on soft lips that they do not have (such as the
letter "b"; they tend to say it as "p".)  They also have no
nostrils, so a distinction between nasal-resonance sounds such as
"m" and "n" is difficult, although they make this sound
understood as a strong glottal stop instead (as in the missing
"t" sound in "mountain", the way some people say it).]

     In a certain sector, Vrusk came into contact with Human
Latcherites.  What happened?  This time a roll on the Isolation
table may say that some Vrusk Fused the religion ecumenically
with some of their beliefs, and called the mixture Klirr't Sstel,
or the Way to Stel.  Maybe they were not strong believers in the
transformation religion of the Vrusk, or discouraged at the
prospect of going through endless cycles of egg, larva, pupa,
adult and death for a chance at some different, advanced
spiritual state.  A belief in being gathered up to Stel (whom
they also called the Cosmic Egglayer or Cosmic Creator), after
only one life, held out some appeal.  This held particular
comfort for a life cut short by space-accident, which by the old
Vrusk religion would be unable to have evolved the soul much, or
even have caused backsliding to a rebirth in a lesser egg,
retarding ultimate transformation.   
     Since Latcherism still had some associations and religious
imagery to mining (much as Freemasonry bases religious imagery
upon the tools and practices of architecture), Klirr't Sstel
spread among one particular Vrusk mining corporation.  The
relative success of this corporation, in newly colonized areas
jointly managed by them and the Humans caused increased self-
regard, and may even have caused religious Fanaticism -- inasmuch
as the Vrusk were even capable of this emotion.  At least, they
tended to believe their successful expansion and prosperity was
tied to their new moral outlook, and they back-propagated the
religion down that particular arm of Vrusk space, particularly to
other mining corporations.


     For a century or two, Latcherism and the related Klirr't
Sstel settled into phases of peaceful evolution, and a moderation
of Klirr't Sstel's rough edges when it became widespread. 
Relations were peaceful between them and with other Human and
Vrusk religions.  But then an archeological discovery changed all
that.
     Out in the original Sol asteroid belt, an archeological dig
led by Professor Leo Gernsbach turned up the remains of a disused
mining station from 1,700 years earlier.  The find produced a
number of data storage devices, including a datacube which held a
documentary on the original Latcher cult of the time.  Although
it had been produced with a favorable outlook to the cult, the
intact sections of the decoded and translated holovideo
represented the original Spirit Religion beliefs.  The holovid
footage was quite at odds with the evolved form of Latcherism and
Klirr't Sstel, but definitely recognizable from core terminology
and some practices.  It forced a revision of religious history in
a way much, much more devastating than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
     The discovery was not treated as controversial by the Earth
sector (which by then was populated by people of non-belief plus
non-Latcherite religions), but the news and information was
carried intact to the Latcherite-dominated sector of Human space,
and to the nearby Vrusk in the Frontier.  In particular, it
included an unfortunately lewd representation of Estelle
Starlight, painted on the suit of a miner of the time, who was
lonely for female company.
     The Human Latcherites were furious, and accused the Earth-
sector people of forging that artifact.  The holovid itself
mentioned Earth oppression of the Belter beliefs.  That was one
part that the Latcherites were willing to believe, and the
artifact was likened to early anti-Latcher propaganda.  This
encouraged Latcherites to declare an all-out war for a short time
between the Latcherites and the neighboring Human sectors closer
to Earth.
     The high priests of the Klirr't Sstel were also annoyed. 
Had they not adopted many Human religious and cultural ideas in
good faith?  Why was the whole idea of Stel deemed to be an
imaginary myth, a mere Human pin-up girl?  Why were they handed
that particularly ignoble representation of Stel?  The Vrusk also
thought the artifact might be a fake, but blamed the nearby
Latcherite Humans.  They imagined that the Humans were
introducing a demoralizing view of religious history in order to
gain more control of the jointly mined sectors.  They brooded
over where all those Vrusk souls gathered to Stel really were, if
Stel did not in fact exist except as some lonely miner's fantasy
from the past.  If Stel was false, were all those souls doomed to
start reincarnating again from scratch??
     The Vrusk did not war with the Humans, but considerable
power struggles occurred among Vrusk factions trying to interpret
the artifact's meaning.  The mining corporations most heavily
involved in Klirr't Sstel lost prestige among other Vrusk.  An
insulting pun was coined by some Vrusk:  "Klirr't Zt'l," the Way
to Nowhere (or Oblivion).  There were some skirmishes, and things
would have been more bloody if not for a long-standing principle
of non-violence rooted in the original Personal Transcendence
Religion, and all Vrusk acknowledged non-violence to some extent.
     Eventually, everyone calmed down, and the revelation forced
Evolutionary changes in Latcherism and Klirr't Sstel, favoring
moral principles over legends and literal history.

     Keep in mind that this represents only one current of
Latcherism, in the area of the Frontier.  In different parts of
space, the religion could Schism, Evolve, Devolve, Fuse with
something else, Dominate, be Dominated, stay absolutely the same
for thousands of years, or decline and die out.  Given enough
time, two different currents of Latcherism would not even
recognize each other as related, and might even make war!

     I hope this totally off-the-cuff historical development of a
Star Frontiers religion was of interest.  Many more ideas can
come to you if you stare at the table options in the original
essay long enough.
     I was also helped by the fact that the variety of existing
Human religions makes any sort of fictional religion plausible. 
Whereas other elements of a science-fiction campaign such as
technology and propulsion systems must be rigorously plausible,
invented religions don't suffer from a lack of believability, for
you can always pretend that there will be enough people willing
to believe in them!


SOURCES OF INSPIRATION:

--"Who's There?" by Arthur C. Clarke (1958), the inspiration for the 
early Latcher Cult
--NOR CRYSTAL TEARS by Alan Dean Foster (1982)
--OUTLAND, starring Sean Connery.  Also novelized by Alan Dean
Foster (1981).
--LAST AND FIRST MEN by Olaf Stapledon (1930)
--A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter Miller (1959)
--DUNE series by Frank Herbert
--FOUNDATION series by Isaac Asimov
--Larry Niven:  stories dealing with the Belt, such as the novel
PROTECTOR (1973).  Information about Belter culture was also
beautifully detailled in an entry in the RINGWORLD RPG (Chaosium,
1984, now out of print).
--MYTHS AND LEGENDS by David Bellingham, Clio Whittaker, and John
Grant.  Quintet Publishing, London, 1992.  Previously appeared as
AN INTRODUCTION TO VIKING MYTHOLOGY; AN INTRODUCTION TO GREEK
MYTHOLOGY; and AN INTRODUCTION TO ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY.


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