Help me design a religion for space pirates

[Raven Crowking]

You stay in space long enough, out here away from the worlds, and you start to hear the voices. You smoke the lotus or you give in to them. And if you give in to them, if you let those Old Things hollow you out and crawl into your skin, you ain't a man no more. You turn Reaver.

Better to smoke the lotus, man. Or stay dirtside if you don't have the wanderlust in your heart.

But you come out here? Well, we folks who live here, we need the food. We need the water and the fuel. The stuff you bring. The sacrifices you bring. We take our tithe for the Voices, for the good Voices, the ones that help us out here in the dark.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Gary Busey and James Brown have some whoppers floating out there too.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And now, a word from our sponsors...

The Sword
Warp Riders

You will not find us among
those who dream of escaping
Across the aether we've come
All is ours for the taking

You don't age when you live out of time
A thousand years in the blink of an eye

Secrets of the blackest void
known only to the ancients
Freedom from the planetoids
and the gravity that chains us

To make a fold in space and slip between the curves
Sacrifice of the sisterhood to do for those they serve
To cross a universe in hyper-spatial flight
We ride the warp of space into the womb of night

Ouranos' daughter, Hermes' bride
Mistress of the Mysteries
Upon the ward she rides
Navigatrix of the star-seas

She makes a fold in space, we slip between the curves
Sacrifice of the sisterhood to do for those they serve
To cross the Universe in hyper-spatial flight
We ride the warp of space into the womb of night

You don't age when you live out of time
A thousand years in the blink of an eye

Any RW religion dealing with travel- esp. seafaring- can be made into a religion for those who sail the void.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Xenubianism:

There is a widespread belief in the great god Xenu, and his prophet Elronn. The Xenubians believe that planets are haunted by the spirits of past explorers who died "unfulfilled", and said spirits attach themselves to the bodies of the living to cause grief and "negative waves". The Xenubians perform a ritual process called "inspection" during which a subject is attached to probes conducting dark energy, by which the spirits of the unfilfilled are removed from the body, allowing past lives and hidden wisdom to be realized. The Xenubian religion is one of great mysteries wrapped in enigmas, which one only learns through years of study, dedication, and donations to the Xenubian cause, gaining "levels" over time that reveal more details of the Xenubian master plan.

 

[Janx]

I saw this thread title, and all I could think of were the space rastafarians from Neuromancer. I mean, Rastafarian, space-weed smoking, hippy-esque space pirates would be pretty damned cool.

I saw a different source for a rasta reference.

Gully Foyle is my name and Terra is my Nation.

Alfred Bester (not the PsyCop, but his namesake) wrote a nice piece of fiction that had some rasta dudes who tattooed Gully's face up so bad it was frightening. I forget the name of the story. But one could google and find it.

 

[tuxgeo]

I saw a different source for a rasta reference.

Gully Foyle is my name and Terra is my Nation.

Alfred Bester (not the PsyCop, but his namesake) wrote a nice piece of fiction that had some rasta dudes who tattooed Gully's face up so bad it was frightening. I forget the name of the story. But one could google and find it.

Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination

(from "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester)

("space jaunting" as an expansion of "jaunting" named after the character "Charles Fort Jaunte")

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They also might not have a religion, but still espouse a philosophy. Nietzcheans, Nihilists, Hedonists, Social Darwinists/Eugenicists, Anarchists- there are all kinds of philosophies that could be warped into a piratical code.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, anything could work. Remember the kids in the desert in Beyond Thunderdome? Imagine a ship in which the adults had been killed off- reason doesn't matter- and the kids raised themselves, learning what they know about society from the deceased captain's collection of antique pirate movies.

Or Lord of the Flies.

 

[Krensky]

By Klono's Curving Carb-Alloy Claws, how could anyone forget the Dread God Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And now, for the religion practiced by the good guys. (Remember this all takes place in the fifth millennium, by our reckoning, and things have gotten a bit turned around.)

Brandaenism is a religion popular with spacefarers in the Aramis subsector of the Spinward Marches. It is only rarely practiced with by those who do not make their living traveling between systems, however.

The religion centers on Brandaen Navigator, a legendary astrogator in the early days of humaniti's interstellar travels. The religion's holy book, the Navigatio, tells of his voyages shepherding travelers to the colony world of Paradise. Along the way, he and his 60 passengers and crew encounter aliens and undergo many hardships, each of which contains a moral lesson.

Brandaen's symbol is a whale's tale, recounting an adventure where his ship lands on a world that turns out to be an enormous space whale. Some uplifted orca insist that Brandaen himself was an uplifted orca, and not a human astrogator at all.

Although the Nondenoms at spaceports in the Aramis sector theoretically don't prize one religion over another, many of them have at least subtle whale motifs worked into their decorations, and many of the workers either wear a whale's tale medallion or have the tail tattooed on their inner wrist.