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Tasks: Help Request Create An Article for the Star Army Chaplain Corps

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In general the Star Army doesn't really spend a lot of time thinking about religion but the Star Army does think about morale and retention. As seen in recent funeral RP, a small chaplain corps exist in the Star Army that provides religious services to Star Army soldiers. I request a member to help by making a wiki article for it.
 
Upvote 2
Looked pretty far into the actual tools and ceremonies used by IRL shinto priests, and what is on the wiki here.

Having Miko as a secondary position makes sense, seeing as it is more like a part time job for girls in their late teens IRL. That's also probably all that a small vessel really needs. "Retaining the morality and dignity of Yamatai culture under duress". Also administers weddings under the captain's authority.

Larger fleets or wings might have a shared full-time priestess who manages a reliquary, deals with full vessel recoveries and major festivals/events. Likely has strong ties with samurai's equipment.

Retired from service nekos get the cushy temple jobs on major planets and tend to the actual populace.

I don't mind formalizing this article myself, if nobody else is willing.
 
Whoever ends up doing this should keep within canon perspective. As the opening post says, "doesn't really spend a lot of time thinking about religion." Culturally, religion that deifies entities is widely considered "illogical and childish." So while a chaplain corps would exist for the stated morale purposes to accommodate the (very) rare religious soldier, remember not to overstate things.
 
And the given the mention of Buddhism in that passage @raz linked, given Yamatai's cultural analog origins and martial culture would be Zen, because Nichiren and other parts of the Mahayana tradition are too "loud" and Bushido values, which come from the Zen tradition are celebrated. Theravada, besides less presence in Japan, also centers very heavily on samsara, and for synthoids who ST all the time, focusing on reincarnation like that is sort of out of character as well. Vajrayana wouldn't even come up.
 
Well, if we're talking about real world analogues, SARP Shintoism is literally nothing like real life Shinto!
 
The fact that they do actually have machine spirits of a sort, is what I think makes the most sense to relate to Shinto. They were also constructed for a specific purpose, and serve an immortal empress. These are unique things about their culture that can be used to culturally unite them...

*That said*, I am very wary myself about Yamatai soldiers turning into screaming zealots, or weirdos who use unseen ghostly Kami to act irrationally. There are war gods in Buddhism, too, believe it or not.

This is why I propose that the chief function of ritual in this kind of shamanism still existing in various levels, is purely as a self-actualisation thing.

A Miko *idolises* a Kami, serves a vessel's *spirit*, but the Megami and the Captain are still the *literal* embodiment of that excellence. It's about self-improvement, not arrogance or navel gazing.

Having something to cling to when half the ship has been eaten by alien monster-squids... It's worth having. Pride only works if you always win.
 
I wouldn't want MEGAMI being Kami to be something that's always existed but rather something some people have taken to practicing YE 46. Not to be "I've been playing my MEGAMI a certain way for 7 years" but... I have! Being a Kami or having that as a possibility isn't something I would want to have been in the setting if it never came up in my RP, for example.

Also, since this is about chaplain... Is it all too necessary in a culture where most are ST'd and most are not religious? I'm considering MOS bloat.
 
Also how do Chaplains interact with Counselors? Maybe it's a POSITION for a Counselor.

Also the MEGAMI Kami thing is weird MCS/5XF culture stuff.
 
No, in the context of the Star Army:
  • counselors are trained medical/psychology professionals in the Star Army Medical Corps
  • chaplains are a subset of the caretaker corps who provide religious services for soldiers, for example Davonte Lyons was a Christian of some kind so we saw a First Fleet chaplain there for his funeral.
 
Ametheliana said:
I wouldn't want MEGAMI being Kami to be something that's always existed but rather something some people have taken to practicing YE 46. Not to be "I've been playing my MEGAMI a certain way for 7 years" but... I have! Being a Kami or having that as a possibility isn't something I would want to have been in the setting if it never came up in my RP, for example.
Click to expand...
I agree, and this kind of goes off my first post in this thread about not expanding the scope of SARP religions via a military occupation. Again, SARP Shintoism isn't real life Shinto. Real life Shinto invests almost everything with a kami spirit. Yamataian Shintoism is almost exclusively focused on pseudo-ancestral Neko kami. Though there is mention of certain specific naturalistic or elemental kami in Yamataian Shintoism, it is still severely limited compared to real life Shinto.

MEGAMIs have never been considered part of Yamataian Shintoism. If that was what Immortal intended I think they'd have put it in the article. Instead, they focused specifically on these pseudo-ancestral kami detailed in the article.
 
All of this is specifically up to the tolerances of the captain, at any rate. That feels like the best way of explaining the general presence within the culture and aesthetics of an individual ship.

Even if a captain is pure atheist and super combat oriented, they might still want a Miko around to deal with mushy stuff like weddings. If they are a hard ass that has been given a bunch of ex-NMX crew, it's also a good idea to have a cultural cheerleader.

The idea that everybody is just automatically obedient and super motivated battle after battle, is something that can immediately make writing feel shallow to me. I'd like to see some kind of effort for Yamatai to address that... Even if it canonically kind of a joke on some ships.
 
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