Sarenis

Intent: Ambition
Origin: Krynnspace (CSR-029)
Collapsed: ~1,200 years ago
Primary Function: Gyre resistance, frontier research, boundary-pushing
Religion: The Ascended (80,000 practitioners)

History

Krynnspace was a sphere where gods played politics openly. Divine beings held court, waged wars against each other, and elevated mortals to godhood when it suited their purposes. Sarenis was one such elevated mortal. A general who conquered half a continent, died in the campaign's final battle, and was raised to divinity by a patron god who needed a weapon.

Sarenis took to godhood the way a fire takes to dry wood. Within a century of ascension, Sarenis had surpassed the patron who created them. The god of ambition outgrew every ceiling placed above it.

When Krynnspace began to collapse, Trisurus evacuation teams identified Sarenis as a priority extraction. A god whose Intent was the relentless drive to overcome limits had obvious applications for a civilization trying to solve the unsolvable.

Sarenis was separated from the dying sphere and placed in a pocket dimension. The remaining gods of Krynnspace went down with the sphere. Three billion people died. Four million were evacuated.

Current State

Sarenis is among the 15% who suspect something is wrong. A god of ambition is, by nature, the kind of being that notices when its reach shortens. The pocket dimension feels smaller than it should. The prayers feel thinner. The power that once let Sarenis reshape continents now barely sustains a modest divine court.

Sarenis has not yet identified the cause, but the suspicion gnaws. A god of ambition does not accept diminishment quietly.

The Ascended

The survivors of Krynnspace became The Ascended, a tradition built around the belief that mortals can achieve divinity through perfection. They maintain memorial halls containing memory crystals of the enlightened dead. Their theology holds that apotheosis is the highest calling.

The uncomfortable parallel to consciousness uploading has not gone unnoticed by Trisurus academics. The Ascended reject the comparison. A soul becoming divine is sacred. A mind copied into crystal is engineering. They insist the distinction matters, even if they cannot articulate exactly why.

Eighty thousand practitioners still pray to Sarenis by name. They have begun receiving fragmented visions: a throne in a shrinking room, walls pressing inward, a crown that weighs more each year. The Ascended's priesthood interprets these as metaphors for spiritual growth. They are not metaphors.

Harvested Output

Sarenis powers Trisurus's Gyre resistance shielding and fuels the drive behind frontier research programs. The Sphere Stability Project's most ambitious proposals draw on energy traced back to Sarenis's conduit network, though the researchers involved do not know this.

There is an irony the Consortium prefers not to examine: the god of ambition is being used to power a civilization's desperate refusal to accept its own mortality.