“I didn’t choose my Bishop. He just made sense one day.”
Overview: The New Faith is not a religion in the old sense. It is a decentralized, viral emergence of divine magic first rekindled a century ago when Saint Varen Hanali the Drunk brought a spark of the First Gods back from the past. Since then, divine magic, thought lost or forbidden, has bloomed like wildfire among the city’s poorest and most desperate. Where arcane spellwork is hierarchical and expensive, the New Faith spreads freely. Its members bond with their divine copilots, pseudo-sentient spells that live with them, learn from them, and grow in power. To the authorities, the New Faith is dangerous. To its adherents, it’s survival. Glitched miracles, floating sigils, radiant graffiti, sermons by group-sending, and bishops who rise as public figures, followed, quoted, and imitated across the lower plates.
Philosophy: The New Faith was never written. It grew. It’s not doctrine, it’s a million quiet habits: a way of casting, of asking, of sharing. Divine magic isn’t worshiped, it’s tended to. Like a garden, or a groups of people message cantripping tips and tricks of how to handle their copilots. Over time, some styles caught on. Some voices carried further. The first Chosen Bishop, Kind Uhra, was one such voice. When she was killed by those who tried to twist the Faith, the people remembered her by imitating her kindness. Since then, power in the New Faith hasn’t been taken, it’s been echoed. Bishops emerge not by decree, but because others begin to pray, or laugh, or cast like them. And they stay only as long as they’re useful. The Faith isn’t nostalgic. It’s now. It’s yours. It lives as you do.
Key Figures: There is no central church: Bishops emerge naturally, those whose use of divine magic becomes so resonant that others imitate it.
Chosen Bishop Snagsnug: The divine prankster. A kobold miracle-worker known across the 5th Plate for unexpected blessings wrapped in riddles, dares, and acts of grace. Snagsnug’s glowing garb and wide, earnest eyes have become a kind of symbol, stitched onto cloaks, painted onto walls, mirrored in mannerisms. While the higher Plates whisper of containment or co-option, the lower ones keep adopting his rituals, his tone, his joy.If there was a single leader, despite his youth, Snagsnug has emerged as the most chosen and followed bishop.
Investigator Yulthup Themall: A formerly washed-up Precrime Prophet turned unexpected power broker when he took the assignment nobody wanted. Now, he’s the closest thing the New Faith has to a representative on the upper plates.
Projects Publicly, the New Faith offers healing, community, and small miracles. Privately, factions like the Bishop Barons explore deeper mysteries. Some fund expeditions below Plate 6 to recover divine-laced relics. Others experiment with memory, resonance, and ritual. The Faith’s greatest action may be passive: it grows where no one watches.
Plate Relations: Plate 6 is their heartland, a fractured plate ruled by Bishop Barons. The 5th Plate has integrated the Faith more peacefully, coexisting alongside groups like the Transneuroclasts. Plate 4 it is shunned. On plate 3 it requires the proper paperwork to even have a copilot and on Plates 2 and 1, divine magic is banned outright. Nevertheless, even in these places, some bear the copilot’s glow under their clothes.
Magic Affiliation They wield divine magic broadly, rejecting none, not even arcane practice. Their miracles are personal, often spontaneous. Even the otherwise non-magical members qualify for a divine copilot, a living spell, that aids them in their daily lives.
Player Hooks
- You were from a lower plate and when the rest of the City abandoned you, the New Faith asked nothing. They didn’t even ask you to join, they just made your life better.
- Magic is cool and the New Faith gave it to you without school, without prerequisite, without judging.
- Paladins, clerics, druids. If it’s divine, it’s most likely New Faith.
- Their level one origin feat offers one of two divine copilots: a spectral familiar that can cast a divine spell and grant inspiration, or a floating assistant that becomes needed gear and stores your magic.
Tone / Aesthetic
- Smells like: warm stone and static.
- Sounds like: a crowd murmuring just out of earshot. Or someone reading your old memories back to you.
- Feels like: being seen, deeply, then reshaped by what you didn’t know you carried.
- Parties: rooftop sermons lit by sigils. Underground memory rites.
- Punishments: forgetting your name. Watching your copilot dim.
- Symbols: spirals, halos, winged emojis. Patches sewn over scars.
Secrets & Subtext
- In the far corners of the Sixth, some have twisted divine magic into cults, coercion, and miracles no one dares call holy.
- Varen Hanali sparked a revolution by mistake and has been riding the wave with a wineglass ever since (earning the name The Drunk Saint).
- Sometimes it is difficult to tell if the divine copilot is guiding and enhancing people, or if it is purposely nudging them towards something.