>From: Alan Kohler <[email protected]>>

>The only thing it doesn't do is fix what I consider the most egregious

>mistake of the FW: the totally illogical merging of two of the (IMO most

>interesting) factions. Perhaps I'll try to retroactively apply my own fix in

>your little contest, Brannon. :)

The Mind's Eye is one of the things about Faction War that I like the most.

All factions are totally illogical mergings thrown together in the frantic days after the Great Upheaval in order to survive, although the Sons of Mercy/Sodkillers were probably the strangest combination. The Signers were a meeting of lots of subfactions.

Factol Darius was part of the largest one, the group that believes that *everyone* is the center of the multiverse (I call them the Egalitarians). "Weigh it all carefully; improve yourself, and you improve the multiverse." Everyone has the potential to change reality by realizing the truth of the relationship between what we are, what we experience, and what we think - the meeting of dreams and waking. This group had a lot in common with the Godsmen - themes of self-improvement and the ability of the individual to reach godlike status - although their philosophies were interpreted differently.

A smaller group was what the Planewalker's Handbook called the Egomaniacs. "Don't cross me, berk, or I'll think you right out of existence." This group was full of Signers who believe that *they're* the center of the multiverse, and you aren't.

The other official splinter was the Will of the One. Sure, a Signer is the center of the multiverse, but it's not me. It's him.

I've identified several more:

"Things that you imagine, things that you dream, they aren't real. And they can't hurt you."

"This is a universe of boundless space, howlie. Matter and energy are rare and small. For us in this vast emptiness, even dreams are real."

Corby, Radix

These factioneers subscribe to the belief that the One is a single, unknown Signer, who exists now or is yet to come. Includes the Will of the One fraction.

Jaen Cambry is the Gatekeeper, a devout priestess (of the multiverse itself, she says) who has memorized all the signs of the coming of the One, and the appropriate rituals and tasks to perform at that time. Chant says that every action she makes throughout her life is not only preordained, but choreographed in the ancient scrolls of a thousand faiths that Jaen has carefully poured over and imitated. She fears that any incorrect action could cause the One to be misborn -- an event that could bring about the end of existence, rather than the new stage she seeks. So she hedges her bets.

Jaen is an excellent gatherer of allies. A small circle of Doomguardsmen has even formed around her, attracted by the promise of the One's ability to unmake that which is.

Jaen was one of the primary architects of the Mind's Eye.

Many Signers see themselves as the fulfillment of various prophesies made by themselves or others, chosen Ones destined to save or destroy the worlds. Unlike the Messianists, Messiahs don't necessarily think they have to be the only One around. In fact, many see antichrists as a matter of course.

Heg, messiah of the heart.

Pel, messiah of the sword.

A child whose imagings come true, a la Twilight Zone/Treehouse of Horror

That kid grown up.

A neo-child sect.

"Rejoice! This is the promised time/ of Earth's ascent to realms sublime.

Imagination's endless dance/is mankind's jewelled inheritance." -- Alan Moore, Promethea.

Dreamers live most of their lives beyond the veils of sleep, believing that there they can find the true source of creation there.

The Egalitarians believe every living thing is equally the center of the multiverse - it's the soul that's sacred, the source of all dreams and universes.

 Xixchil (voor, thri-kreen, etc.)

 Those who would shape the multiverse, or multiverses.

 Bel.

The pit fiend Bel, Warlord of Avernus, owes the Signers much for the favors they've done for him over the centuries, first helping him conquer Dis in the name of his mistress, then allowing him to achieve mastery over his mistress and become a true Lord of the first layer of Baator. Darius felt uncomfortable about this relationship and attempted to bury all record of it.

Psychoanalysts believe that the secrets of the multiverse can be found within themselves, and so they look inward first in order to know the outward. Many Psychoanalysts are Egalitarians, and believe it's equally important for everyone to discover their inner mysteries - they're the center of the multiverse, after all.

Explorers are the opposites and complements of the Psychoanalysts. They believe to truly understand themselves, they have to look outward into the multiverse that they created. The Plane of Positive Energy offers insight into their own destructive impulses, while Elysium tells them a lot about the inner peace that they can't seem to find in their daily lives.

 nearly souless magic-addict tiefling born from maid working in wizard's tower, obsessed with becoming one with magic, his only friend.

The Wildmarked are Signers in the Beastlands who cultivate the changes that plane gives their physical appearances. "The multiverse reflects me, and I reflect the multiverse." The Wildmarked have appearances far more extreme than most of the Beastlands' inhabitants - one might appear to be made out of rain, or rocks or trees or sky. Another might seem to be all lion, or a chimerical hybrid of lion and duck and squirrel.

Wildmarked often get along well with Believer Evolutionaries or Mutants.

Thought-children are a result of a peculiarly Signer method of reproduction - direct creation ex nihilo, from thought. The creation of a thought-child requires two Signers in most cases, and is an arduous and delicate process. With any interruption, the child could be destroyed unborn. Signers often create thought-children as part of truces or treaties between warring Egotists.

Being the only sentient being in the multivese can be a melancholy thing. Sometimes Signers wish for a co-creator to share the worlds with so badly it hurts. Disgusted with an infinite number of shadow-people who are mere figments of their own imaginations, the Lonelies attempt to create something real, something equal to themselves.

A simple garden, with a simple woman within. Just inside the gate in the little fence are two fierce looking solars, who defend the Woman as if she were the only hope the multiverse had.

Who is the Woman in White, and why do the solars -- near-divinities themselves -- treat her as if she were so important? No one can get close enough to ask her, but some, looking over the fence from a distance, have decided the Woman is pregnant. A cult has formed among Signers for both the Woman and her unborn child. "The One!" they shout. "It must be the One!"

The Headless Plateau

The City I Dreamed, The City of My Dreams, The Town I Spoke, The Castle in the Clouds, etc.

Semuyana's Bog, Tir Fo Thuinn, Fayrill, the land where men share blood with rilmani, wastriliths, hydroloths, hezrou, the plain of frogs, the spine of the fallen god, zehrapushu, balaenas, songsharks, asrai, the undersea city of the rilmani, pirates, tso pirates, black Keeper ship, slavers, King Texas, Tradegate, the Marketplace Eternal.

The water shines, reflecting the multicolored light of a thousand different moons and suns. It is every sea in every myth and story compressed into one. It's Stygia, Lunia, the 49^th and 88^th layers of the Abyss, Thalassia, Ossa, and more all poured into one infinite basin, larger than any material ocean. However, there are a few more-or-less fixed points, most predominant the Enchanted Wood, that is said to impinge on the waking world in some places, Ulthar, the village of cats, on the river Skai, Serannian in the sky, and Celephais, dreamed brick-by-brick by its king and god Kuranes. But feel free to alter descriptions in some ways for every visit.

"Man's path, through matter's warfields, led/

to this dream-realm that waits ahead.

Where we may lift our gaze and see,

Overhead, the soul's infinity."

Alan Moore, Promethea

'What is a human being, then?'

'A seed.'

'A... seed?'

'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree'

David Zindell, The Broken God

Evolutionaries are obsessed with the improvement of both the individual's soul and the bodies of their race. They use controlled experiments in breeding - often without the subjects' knowledge, working within secretive female cults who marry those their faction tells them to - and sometimes blatantly, treating sentients like cattle. Fast methods of permenent change are sought, often with alliances with creatures like Xixchil or even minor demiurgic gods.

Mutants are Godsmen who experiment primarily on themselves, or who participate in such experiements. Some of them seem very strange to non-Godsmen eyes, with multiple arms, enlarged brains, or odd, random appearances. Others have changes that are completely internal.

 mutation addicts become frenzied in their search for new ways to alter and adapt themselves - pools of mutagenic slime, sites of magical radiation, the corpses of dead gods.

The Smiths take the Believers' core metaphor of the worlds as a forge for souls to its logical extreme. The Smiths are the best craftsmen in the multiverse, and they work on changing everything, seeing nature as a raw material that exists to be transformed. If the Smiths had their way, everything would be modified by their hand into the work of art it deserves to be.

Aescetics (as opposed to the Aesthetics, a variation on the Smiths), believe that self-improvement can only take place in an environment full of denial and self-sacrifice. Some Signers are also Aescetics, believing that the mind's embrace of the multiverse can only happen through the deemphasis of the flesh.

Archonists use the archons of Mount Celestia as their model. They see how a simple lantern can become a mighty tome, and so they name themselves after these castes, charting their spiritual progress by archon standards.

As the Archonists, but idolizing the baatezu.

Every faction produces paperwork. The Scribes believe that recording the multiverse is the first step towards transcending it. The Scribes are often more Signer than Godsman.

Eugenists are an extreme variation of the Evolutionaries. Progress can only be made if evolutionary failures are eliminated.

Symbioists believe that progress can only be made through cooperation. They look for other life-forms to bond with physically and mentally, believing that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. Symbioists will often be seen with plants, mold, or fungi growing from them or with sluglike things clinging to their bodies or implanted within their inner organs. Others do research in finding ways in which things like slaad eggs and gibberslugs can be allowed to transform a being without it losing any of its original experience or memories - ideally, they'd like a smooth integration of both kinds of beings, although thus far they've only created things with erratic, split personalities.

The Ecologist fraction sets up experimental colonies on exotic demiplanes, believing either that being exposed to unique conditions helps forge the soul or that one of them is bound to have the key to divinity within itself by the law of averages.

"Biotechnology allows us to evolve in the directions in which we wish to be evolved: taller, stronger, healthier, higher IQ, more beautiful. We imagine this will be the future humanity. Absurd. If a tribe of Australopithecus had set down to design the next evolutionary breakthrough, they would have planned something that could run faster, see further, smell better, have sharper nails to grub out insects and roots. They would not have planned talking, thinking, toolmaking Homo sapiens."

Ian McDonald, Evolution's Shore.

Pantheists -- believe that things ascend in order to rejoin the Source in ultimate oneness.

The Blessed'ms are magicians, priests, and explorers. They're revered among many communities among the Believers of the Source as higher beings on the frontiers of discovery.

The Shoal is a somewhat sinister group that works to eliminate knowledge of the Source or of transcendence into godhood on the Material Plane. It's not that they don't want to share, only that they're afraid of what unchecked ascendance can do.

The mathematician Luce first discovered a technique for translating the resonance of the planes into audible music, and the notion caught on among the Believers as a way of gauging their level of ascension. The most common scheme, first proposed by the Archonites, maps a soul's progress in a way inspired by the layers of Mount Celestia.

Lunar

Venal

Martial

Solar

As a counter to this one, there are other methods also used in the faction, including the twisted harmonies of Baator's pits, and free dissonances inspired by the chaos planes. Although his tunes aren't as dissonant, Factol Ambar himself uses a system much more like those of chaos, finding the formality of the Celestian system too reminiscent of the hated Quybier clan who sacrificed his family to their rigid notions of propriety. "A soul," he teaches, "is much too complex an object to fit onto a simple one-dimensional staircase. Many are the influences which forge it, and many are the harmonies to be found within."

Feat: compose Empyrean harmonies

In a secret chamber within the Great Foundry, the Godsmen are building a weapon to be used by the baatezu in the Blood War. Jealous of the Tanar'ri's relationship with the Doomguard, members of Baator's Ministry of Research approached the faction they saw as the Sinkers' natural rival. Defying the laws that ensured that the city Armory would have a monopoly on weapons manufacture, they built a device officially classified as a "mining tool." Combining advanced magical theory with principles incorporating the Empyrean harmonies of Baator, the weapon has the ability to destroy great swathes of material with a great magical blast hotter than the flames of Phlegethos. Most of the faction -- including, for some time, Ambar himself -- is ignorant of the true nature of the project, and even some of the engineers seek to prevent it from ever being used.

The core of the Godsmens' belief is of course the notion of the Source, the beginning of all things. The exact interpretation of what the Source is is usually left up to the individual faction member, with some treating it exactly like a deity (often an existing deity who they worshipped since childhood), and some thinking of it more as an abstract force or even a place that could one day be located. Others think of it as more of a metaphor than literal truth, although this is rare: planewalkers know that metaphors become literal truth beyond the Astral Plane. The notion that the Source existed in the past, before the multiverse began, and divided itself (or was divided, perhaps brutally) in order to create the present order of things is popular among some Godmen but frowned upon by the current leadership, due to the influence of the Source's priesthood.

The Doomguard and the Believers in the Source would seem to be antitheses of one another, believing in diametrically opposed views of the multiverse. In fact, usually they are. An important part of the Believers' dogma is the notion of progress -- that due to a number of factors, beginning with the Source, things naturally get more complex over time -- while the Doomguard, of course, believes primarily in the supremacy of entropy, the force that turns all complex structures into chaos. However, a small number of Doomguard are willing to admit that it's possible for much of the multiverse to become more complex over time as long as it suffers an overall loss of energy in the process. The idea that one day all souls will become Powers and more than Powers acceptable, perhaps even desirable, providing that upon attaining such glory they subsequently burn out. A few Godsmen have even acknowledged that this could be a valid interpretation of their doctrine: the notion of endings isn't foreign to either faction, both being generally linear in their thinking. Most Believers, however, assume that things will keep evolving and growing forever, or at least reach a climax point and stay the same; the Doomguard calls this the heresy of light's triumph. Some do imagine cyclical patterns, with ascendant Godsmen becoming deities and eventually new Sources, creating their own multiverses where the process of ascension from base proto-matter and proto-souls begins anew (this idea of new creations appeals especially to creative types like dwarves and those who might otherwise favor the Sign of One), or else that once everyone has ascended beyond Power status they reunite with the Source that spawned them, a new Source enlightened with the knowledge of what it means to be many, but at the same time still itself, still the same eternal ideal.

It was at Jaen Cambry who first announced that the Sign of One and the Believers must join forces in the wake of the Faction War. It will be vital in the coming conflict, she says, basing this on the scribblings of some old prophet or two. Within the Believers she found a surprising amount of clerics and witches that believed the same as she did -- the Evolutionaries and Godsmakers, who agree that an ultimate savior will come, though not without their efforts. "I know," said Jaen, "that you have a great role to play in the coming of the One."

Idealogical conflict between Messianists and the Messiahs they create.

Sometimes the creations of the Evolutionaries end up being their creators' worst enemies. Because they haven't chosen their role, their loyalty to the faction is sometimes suspect. Evolutionaries try to compensate for this through various safety features, sometimes ingrained in the very substance of their being or sometimes in the form of magical bindings and harnesses.

Shapers/ Creators/Smiths

The Mind's Eye was founded by the more progressive members of the Sign of One in tangent with the more mentally-oriented members of the Believers in the Source to form a new faction based on the idea that the imagination is the key to the soul's ascension.

A number of Godsmen have grown disillusioned at the activities of their faction. "Progress is a lie," they say, "a failure. Our great engineering experiments, our eugenics programs, our shaping and breeding of animals and Primes, our experimental ecologies, social revolutions, and nation-building have all been disasters, creating abominations where we wanted gods, chaos where we wanted utopias. Even the great dream of Ortho has degenerated into the evolutionary stagnant Harmonium. It's clear that the notion of meritocracy, indeed of any kind of ranking system, is fundamentally flawed. Who is to say that a monkey is more evolved than a fish? Perhaps we can begin even to question whether a Planar is truly more evolved than a Prime." These dissidents, in extreme cases, move to the Chaosmen and the Bleakers, but since the advent of the Mind's Eye they've increasingly joined the Signer wing. The Signers believe that either anyone or everyone is the center and creator of the multiverse, already divine and beyond the greatest of the Powers, and this radical egalitarianism offers the erstwhile Believers in the Source a solution to their dilemna. Life isn't about who is more involved than who; everyone is already or could already be the Source, so the purpose of life is discovering, truly discovering, that simple fact. There's no need for physical change and ascension, only education and introspection.

Many former Sensates have joined the Mind's Eye, becoming powerful enough to have a major influence on the faction's direction. The Sensates reason that it's *experience* that allows one to truly become the center of the multiverse, or even a god.

If Erin Mountgomery were to escape her Maze, it's likely she would join the Mind's Eye under this capacity, and probably attempt to take it over. Ascendence was always her goal, and the Mind's Eye concentrates on this far more than either of its root factions ever did.