I'm a religious man myself, but there are times when it strikes me just how strange and totally alien to my own faith the Amarrian religion is.
In Uskyounto, for example, we wouldn't keep the skeleton of a holy man on display for four hundred years as a holy relic.
Saint Shemek the Reclaimer, a man who purportedly converted the population of a whole world to Amarr with one divinely powerful speech. His body - or at least, some of it - is on display in a chapel reliquary in Dam-Torsad, for the faithful to visit and be inspired by.
Except that some of the faithful were inspired to steal the skeleton and take it with them on pilgrimages of Reclamation, the better to grant some divine spark to aid in their cause or... whatever. Zealot thinking.
His left hand is on my desk right now. The Theology Council has issued a one million ISK bounty per bone on this holy man's remains, and I have a whole twenty-six of them. The third distal phalanx turns out to be a very convincing fake - When I mentioned this to the cleric at the reliquary chapel she told me that Shemek was a spaceshipyard worker before he became a preacher, lost the tip of his left ring finger in a workplace accident, and that he wore a prosthetic for the rest of his life. When they came to display the skeleton, a replica bone was made because people were so used to seeing him with an apparently full complement of intact fingertips. Still, the bounty's valid for the fake fingertip too, to keep up appearances. In fact, they take the news that the bone is a replica to be evidence that I really do have Shemek's hand.
The simple wooden box that carries this artefact was wedged behind a cold air duct under the deck plating of my hangar, right underneath the drone docking and charging platform, the one part of the whole hangar not able to be reconfigured or have cargo stacked on it.
All because mine is hangar twenty-seven, and they have twenty-seven (or so they think) of the saint's bones with them. bones which I have confiscated and intend to return to the Empire's keeping. My pilgrims didn't take the news well. In fact, they're having to be guarded every second of the day because the moment they think they're not being watched, they attempt to take their lives.
They're insane, clearly. I've contacted a religious institution in the Empire that specialises in rehabilitating the suicidally faithful.
Doesn't feel right taking the money for this thing, though. So there's going to be a series of anonymous (and very large) donations to charities in the Republic looking to help new immigrants out of poverty.
Seems only fair that the Saint of Reclaimers should contribute something to the well-being of the emancipated. I like the irony of that.
Still need to figure out which of my staff were dumb enough to let them in and fire them though. So, mystery not quite fully resolved yet.
Save. End.
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