6
An Overview on The Children of Mercy
O lord, have mercy on us,Your fearful children pray,
Save us from all evil,
Every night and every day.
From what can be gleaned, they are an eschatological offshoot of typical protestant Christianity, embracing the White-Hot War as a sign that man had strayed too far in a collective sense of pride and God had rendered appropriate punishment. They live according to a strict orthodoxy, making everything serve the purposes of the faith. There are no malingerers: for everybody has a purpose to serve. A strict moral code prohibits much of the culture that came about just before the end of the world. Individual liberty gives way to collective will, and the collective will exists only to serve God. They stand against every ideology that came to the fore since The Enlightenment.
- Assessment from the Report on the Remnants of the United States commissioned by the Free Maritime Republic of Iceland
After the Cold War turned hot, The United States of America-- like every superpower-- fell into a state of extended anarchy as urban centers turned to slag and the federal government had to respond to many crises. Ad hoc governments would rise and fall, bearing ideological flags or just simple self-interest and despotism. In the fertile American Midwest, this was especially the case. In ten years, over one dozen governments took over land that would eventually be in the custody of The Children of Mercy. Accustomed to so much shock and tragedy, it wasn't long until more extreme ideas began to take root. Anything that promised an end to the suffering was sure to build a following.
A network of churches crossed denominational lines to provide food and an anti-Communist militia for the citizenry. They humbly allowed the Federal government to attempt their foothold while they simply provided civil aid, they rolled over and legitimized a right-wing republic and collaborated with their eventual fascistic tendencies while providing harbor for revolutionaries that wanted something different. So shell-shocked by many changes, the people supported The Children of Mercy when their militia turned into a religious army. People believed that this was the same charitable faction that would build a humanist land of freedom and harmony. Their commitment to warfare led yet more factions to rise from the rubble and attempt a last stand for their worldviews.
The Children of Mercy committed to strict rules of conduct in warfare, even tending to enemy wounded and providing funerary services for those who fell standing against them. This proved to be too good for the world, as the Brown-Red Bloc, a national socialist organization, wounded their ideological zealots and instructed them to massacre as many people as possible in the combat hospital and the city of St. Paul. Hundreds were slaughtered by the Brown-Reds who utilized their significant preparation and skill in urban warfare to carve a bloody swathe across the Children of Mercy's primary frontline city. This event would prove to be deeply traumatic; yet the morale shock expected by the perpetrators did not happen.
Instead, the Children of Mercy got bloody.
Flickering candles deep in the horizon could be seen every night as houses were incinerated by 'Cleansers', civil disobedience was treated as harshly as the Brown-Reds should have been: the only mercy a wounded enemy could hope for was for their brains to be splattered on the dirt beneath them.
The Children of Mercy merged into a single, cohesive faith ruled by a council of priests. They called their denomination "True Christianity" and adopted a firebrand, fundamentalist worldview that utilized modern technology only to insulate their wide community of regressive, mandatory Luddism. Things as simple as electricity are reserved for facilities of the faith while the people live in a state of crushing poverty, unable to enjoy even the reminder of the conveniences of the past. Urban centers were largely razed and allowed to be reclaimed by nature and people were settled against their will into 'hamlets', regions designated to perform one industrial function and tend to vast farmlands.
At present, the population of The Children of Mercy is estimated to be approximately 1.1 million. There are few statistics that can be gleaned as they are extremely secretive and isolate themselves from the entirety of the world. All tourism is tightly guided and no faction has managed to successfully infiltrate them without agents being compromised and slain.
- Histories of the White-Hot Aftermath.
