Sojourners
Sojourners (properly, the Order of Universal Sojourners) are an itinerant religious order devoted to preserving knowledge and disseminating it to poor and marginalized cultures. Sojourners live in enormous, slow moving library vessels known as Memory Arks. Their Order journeys throughout the League and far beyond Human Space in their search for wisdom to preserve and share. They are renowned as excellent hyperspatial pilots with a selfless and trustworthy commitment to others. Sojourners are ethnically and culturally related to Zoologers, and have sometimes been falsely considered a splinter Zoologer group.
Sojourners are actually far older than the Zoologers, having arisen near the dawn of the chaotic Third Exodus, when fragmented outbound human colonization waves sent forth by the Messengers realized that they had no effective means to continue sharing information systematically about the daunting range of discoveries that were being made. Various scientific monastic orders banded together to create the Order of Universal Sojourners, a new group dedicated to peripatetically traveling between colonies to gather and share critical information between scattered worlds. Sojourner practices solidified over the centuries, establishing rules for Diocesan Territories and Marches, distributed redundant data storage networks among the Arks, and consistent cataloging systems for the almost incomprehensible range of information being gathered by Humanity.
Sojourners expanded with human colonization efforts, and routinely traveled into areas controlled by aliens in peaceful missions of cultural outreach. Sojourners frequented the Andromedan territories as neutral cultural ambassadors, even during the Xenagon.
Sojourners have been involved in many of the greatest human expeditions in history, such as the Perseus Arm Danariad, and the great Xenocorps Sagittarian incursion of 3206 GE. In both cases, Sojourners proved themselves tenacious explorers, being among the few survivors that returned from these horrific exploits. Further, the most useful detailed accounts of these missions arose from the meticulous record-keeping of the Sojourner crew members of the expeditions. Their accounts from these voyages are legendary.
Sojourners emphasize a number of beliefs, including their idiosyncratic forms of secular humanism, a commitment to science, and a cult of personality around the historical figure of Thann and the ancient Thannic Colonizers. Their version of secular humanism is a philosophy that emphasizes reason, ethics, and justice, focusing on human agency and rejecting superstitions and cruelty. While not a religion in the traditional sense, it provides a framework for meaning and purpose in life for Sojourners. The Sojourner commitment to science is their firm worldview which holds that science is the only reliable way to acquire knowledge and that scientific methods should be applied to all areas of inquiry, including those traditionally considered outside the realm of science. It is a quasi-religion for them in that it elevates science to an almost sacred status. There is an undeniable cult of personality among Sojourners which historically developed around their charismatic leaders founding like Thann and Mei, who are often seen as infallible or even god-like. Sojourner followers often exhibit extreme devotion and obedience, and the group has its own unique rituals and practices regarding Thann and his most prominent followers.
Sojourners articulate their beliefs through the exhortations of what they term the Great Vow, comprised of five admonitions:
- Seek discoveries with clarity
- Save the bereft with compassion
- Share knowledge with humility
- Sustain science with diligence
- Sojourn through life with courage
They also state these admonitions in an active form which they term the Sojourner Commitment. Sojourners demonstrate a high degree of commitment to their cause, and are one of the longest surviving Galactic Orders in the history of humanity as a starfaring species.
However, as Galactic information networks have advanced, the Sojourner Order has slowly declined over the centuries. Interstellar information conglomerates have steadily replaced many of the functions of the Sojourner Order with cognizer couriers and massive hyperspatial data relay nodes.
Despite waning, the Order remained a force for information dissemination up until its revival under the Thomasines as an exploratory civilization in its own right.