Content authored by: Morgan Wilson (Character: Mayve Lio)

Wayfarers believe that there is a spark of divinity in a ship: in the clank hiss of its air cycler turning over, in the creak-thrum of its radiators flexing under solar wind, in the chk-ping of its nav systems picking up the beacon from the next safe harbor. Somewhere along the way, it ceases to be a collection of systems, and takes on life of its own.

Spacers must learn to trust their ship, to read its moods, to sense its needs, and to comprehend the meaning behind its slightest deviations if they want to survive in space.

And so, for the faithful Wayfarer, there are rituals for everything. Replacing oxygen canisters, refreshing the coolant in your radiator loop, cleansing salt buildup in your water storage system, refilling your hydrazine stores for your reaction control, installing the latest patch update for your NLL navlink. Somewhere along the line what was once literally rocket science became something of a folk art and is now a not so small matter of faith.

After all, it's way less scary to put your life in the hands of a tin can for six straight months when you know you've called in every supernatural favor you've got to brace it against the void.

Wayfarers have all kinds of practices built around the routines of keeping a ship working, its crew sane, and its next crisis anticipated long in advance. That might include fastening a carved totem to the cage surrounding your air filtration system, rapping on a water pipe every time you pass it to listen for a change in pitch, saying a brief prayer before flipping on your thrusters on the outset of a new voyage, or getting your used oil filter read like tea leaves by a certified lubmistry practitioner.

It is a faith built around a thousand little superstitions, obsessed with the problem of keeping humanity alive in space.

Tenets

There is plenty of disagreement on what qualifies as legitimate practice and what's mere superstition, but all Wayfarers are united on these points:

• Ships and the other spaceborn habitats humans call home come to contain their own spark of the divine.
• They are held together not just by struts and solder, but by faith, ritual, and superstition.
• A Wayfarer is of their ship and their ships is of them. The two become inseparably bound with time. Even if one gets scrapped or abandoned, some part of one is always with the other.
• It is important to mark the passage of time—the occasions of each new journey, the dates of each alteration to your ship, the sight of every new star—because there is no single world with its single seasons to mark time's passage for you.
• When worse comes to worse, we remember that we are now creatures of the stars, living in defiance of gravity and the void itself. We can therefore take solace in one simple fact: even in the most impossible circumstances, we will endure.

History

There is a theory that the Wayfarers splintered from The Children of the Cycle as spacers adjusted its teachings to fit their world without seasons. In a world without sowing and reaping, without snowflakes and autumn leaves, they reverted to the worship of more esoteric cycles, each tied to an individual ship and its changing.

This faith was once only common among the small population of people who spent large swaths of their lives in space—if not as their “One True Religion”, then at least as a set of common folk practices. A number of vikings and other crew of The Fenris have taken up this faith as they try to make sense of their new home.

There's a theory commonly held among Wayfarers that the constellation of the Fenris' tugs, beacons, and other support ships is Significant and should be the subject of study and divination.

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