I always thought the whole Pinnacle Fluids thing would make conversation TTL awkward as hell. Saying your blood is hot is one thing, but going on about how excited your "fluids" are just sounds like you really need to change your clothes, you know? I get that's the whole point and it makes the whole thing even funnier. As for ectoplasm, is it just a case of your Pinnacle Fluids violently shooting out of your body and getting possessed by spirits?
"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
At a certain point, the Republican Union's men and women decided that they could say the sentence "They're after our precious fluids!" with a straight face. This was when they crossed the boundary into madness.
Madness depends on social convention. Arguably the mad one is the person who doesn't think his fluids are special in any way. He's going on about how it's just lymph or whatever as his family signs the papers to have him dragged off to an asylum.
RAISE HELL: THE MR. TOBIAS STORY
The Blind Christian Gentleman Mr. Tobias, the right hand of Dr. Charles Marx and one of the main proponents of Spiritual Marxism, was born on November 1, 1831, to unknown parents in the town of Liverpool, England. So much of his early life, including his last name, has been forever masked in mystery, and what records that may have been discovered by later generations were likely lost to time or the ravages of war back in his home country. Apparently, Tobias was an itinerant preacher in around the Liverpool area but had little fame or success. His life story really only was ever known for certain starting around the time of the Great American War. When the passenger ship O.K. Sultan was sunk by Georgian gunboats on August 22, 1858, Tobias answered the call to arms the Union issued "to all hearty Anglo-Saxon Christians who wish to fight for God and what is right!" Remembering the Union's assistance via AFC Volunteer Brigades during the 1842 English Revolution, Tobias and many other Protestant hardliners in England saw it as their time to finally repay the debt owed to the Americans.
Upon his arrival in New York City, Tobias joined the 2nd New York English Volunteer Maniple with around 120 of his Anglo brothers. The 2nd English would see action at the Battle of Fox Farm Hill, directly on the Union-Virginian border, during the opening gambits of the war. Fox Farm Hill was a rather small and unimportant fight that few historians recall as particularly interesting, but it was responsible for forging one of the most legendary Americans of all time into what he would become. During the opening salvo of the battle, a shell detonated near Tobias. There is a chance that it was not an enemy shell and, potentially, was actually a misfiring American explosive. Later in life, Tobias and official biographies of him would insist on it being a Virginian shell. The explosion killed several of his comrades and sent him flying backward, his uniform on fire and shrapnel perforating his limp body. Tobias would wake up in a field hospital unable to see. Though doctors were hopeful and told him his sight would eventually return, it never did. Two months later, Tobias would be formally discharged from the army. Of interest is the fact that the English Volunteers kept few records and were only just barely considered true members of the armed forces, and so his enlistment and medical records were lost to time, or perhaps never even existed, again leaving his last name shrouded in mystery. According to legend, one of his fellow English veterans would recognize him decades later at a Charles Marx session in New York and told bystanders "It's Private Crowley, by Jove," though this is possibly apocryphal.
What followed his discharge was an odd tale indeed. Returning to New York City aboard an army medical train, he found work for a short time as a boot black, shining shoes on street corners for a pence apiece. However, the blind man developed a reputation with the street people in the area as a charismatic and intense orator and preacher, and many came to look upon him as a mentor. Something of a cult of personality developed around the strange little shoeshine man, and he soon found himself being taken care of by the local homeless population, who referred to him as "The Blind Christian Gentleman." Legends say he was also a "sexual machine," "chasing the devil out of harlots and street girls with the power of his Pinnacle Seed." In 1860, Tobias had secured enough of a fortune to travel to Boston, where his helpers had secured the deed for a run-down mansion on the outskirts of the city. Supposedly, Sir William Howe had made the house his personal quarters during the British occupation of Boston. Following a short period of repairs and upkeep, Tobias opened the house up as a "spiritual transcendental meditation salon." Tobias would sit for days at a time on an old Native American rug listening to one of his favorite prostitutes, or "helpers," read to him from the Four Books of Manifest Destiny. Though some would claim that Tobias was a prophet, he himself never claimed as such. He "merely" claimed that his blindness had actually opened up his "third eye" so he could transcend the earthly realm to see "fantastic wonders" and that he could communicate with the dead. Naturally, this raised some eyebrows, but he was so devoted to his message that many began to believe him. In 1861, a visitor to the salon would change everything.
Dr. Charles Marx, Professor of Occult Studies at Benedict Arnold University of Boston, had long desired to make a name for himself and to move out of the shadows of his more famous father, who had devised Scientific Marxism and electro-shock science in the earlier part of the century. For the entirety of the 1850s, Marx had gone off in search of "spiritual power of great magnitude," first finding himself stranded in the Congo. This was followed by his first successful book, Great White King in the Heart of Darkness, or How I, Dr. Charles Marx, became the God of the Congolese Savages. After this, he studied under "Vodou Queen" Mama Dog on the island of Hispaniola (later known as East Carolina). While with the elderly witch, he supposedly unlocked "the secrets of the Other Side," and he now was firmly convinced of the existence of spiritual power and Christian Magick "as unlocked by the power of trained, ordained spiritual mediums." In 1861, Marx had heard rumors of the "Blind Christian Gentleman" and decided to return to Boston to meet with him.
When Marx visited the salon, he remarked to his butler who had accompanied him, "Can you feel it? There's a primal, powerful energy here. I sense a portal has been opened up to the Other Side here. Gird your loins, and may Jehovah protect us." Marx initially halted his entry into the ancient house because of Tobias's former harlots, who now devoted themselves to him with "mind, body, and soul," and were completely naked at all times. Marx, perplexed, slowly calmed down and was led to the central room of the house, which Tobias called the "Inner Sanctum." The nude women were rather unsettling, and each carried a candle to light the way. All the windows of the house had been sealed up to prevent any light from the outside world and normally the building was kept completely pitch black unless absolutely necessary, and the women looked not unlike ghosts, their pale figures seemingly floating through the mansion by dim candlelight. Marx thought it strange that Tobias, a blind man, would be concerned with keeping out light, but he would soon learn it was among the medium's many curiously odd habits. When the two men finally met, it was as if they were long-lost brothers. They each shared many of the same ideas and were happy to talk for hour upon hour about "The Realm Spiritual what that is beyond the veil of reality," as the Blind Man so aptly put it in his Liverpool accent.
For several months after this, Marx and Tobias were inseparable, drawing up plans to travel the country and spread the word of Spiritualism. Interestingly, Tobias wanted little of the fanfare and glory, instead wishing for Marx to use his respected name to push the theology forward. Indeed, it was Tobias who dubbed the new movement "Spiritual Marxism." When Marx initially objected to taking the credit, Tobias insisted, saying that "My name is mud. I am but a blind Christian gentleman, groveling before our Lord, but there are those more blind than eye who shall look upon me and laugh. But the noble Professor Marx shall not long be ignored!" Despite his initial humility, Tobias was a rabid evangelist for the cause, helping Marx to take their spiritual show on the road, performing sessions (European seances), speaking in tongues, and communing with the dead at every church, theatre, and building that would have them. What followed the initial public appearances was an explosion of popularity. Families eager to speak to loved ones killed in the Great American War could supposedly say their last goodbyes with the aid of a "gifted, ordained medium." While some folk derided these "sessions" as making money off of dead soldiers' families, many more believed. After all, the Council of Jehovah had long said that Christian Magick was real. Now, in a time of great sorrow, the Lord was surely revealing that which had been hidden to the masses.
"I was laughed at! I was scorned, I was! But the pow'r that was i'vested in me by the Holy Lord Jehovah has filled me to the brim what with passion to share the fantastical phantasmic plain what with those who seek enlightenment! No amount of derision or mockery shall long inhibit the power within me! Here I stand, knee-deep in ectoplasm. I can do no other!"
- Mr. Tobias speaking before a crowd in Philadelphia on July 1, 1862
The next decades brought unprecedented success to the movement. Mr. Tobias went from a secondary figure to a celebrity in his own right, and his ego rose with his status. Gone were the days of living in a run-down colonial mansion. With the arrival of the Manifest Destiny Party and George Custer in the late 19th century, he was officially welcomed into the Union government and the American Fundamentalist Christian Church, while Marx elected to retire and write. In 1890, Tobias went up to the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania with government and church contractors and began construction on the Mr. Tobias Institute. The massive castle nestled in the mountains was exorbitantly expensive, but the Blind Christian Gentleman said it was necessary to "help secure a glorious future for our nation in the name of Jehovah." The fortress was home to a massive observatory (rather ironic) to watch the stars and planets for the arrival of the Second Coming, a meditation facility, dining halls, and even more. The Institute was laid out to make absolutely no sense unless you either worked there or were guided by someone who did. Mr. Tobias himself resided for a long time in the eastern wing in a grand chamber, constantly tended to by his former harlots (who were never photographed or ever mentioned in print in the entire country). The main four buildings, however, were the Chapel of Manifestum, a domed structure that served as the chief church for the Institute and was the one most frequently seen, the Chapel of Fati, which conducted many rituals to "strengthen the nation," the Chapel of Patriots, which was dedicated to all Patriot-Saints and Martyrs and which sported the observatory to await their return, and finally the Chapel of Purity, which was largely a mystery to outsiders. The Library of the Faith was one of the largest libraries in the world, with over 10,000 books on religious and occult matters. Next door was the Library of the Third Eye, which consisted of a massive depository of supposedly "magickly endowed" items, relics, and the like which could be used in rituals.
But all was not well. In his desire to "spread his Pinnacle fluids," Tobias had impregnated dozens, if not hundreds, of women while on the road preaching and conducting sessions, sometimes teaching that this was the only way to perform rituals necessary to open the gateway to the Other Side. This was a potential public relations nightmare for the Church on a unimaginable scale, though Billy Sunday would later give him a run for his money. The Church would offer to shelter the women at the Institute if they were in a tough spot and promised a livable income for the rest of their lives for their "sacrifice." Before long, though, rumors spread that Tobias was the "greatest lover who ever lived," and hundreds of women wrote the Institute offering themselves up as tribute to the Blind Man. Tobias, of course, was ready and willing to do his duty. From 1891 to around 1908, in between and after tutoring Michael Custer in Philadelphia, Tobias welcomed a never-ending stream of women to the Institute, who would live in the "Chapel of Purity." Soon known as the "Sisters of Purity," the women viewed Tobias as the supreme authority in their life and dedicated their lives to him. Zealots, the Church's armed crimson-coated protection squads, were not allowed in the Chapel of Purity under any circumstances and the "Sister of Purity" had a group of around ten women stand guard at the singular entrance at all times, wearing white uniforms with crimson trim. Allowing any male other than Tobias himself into the Chapel of Purity was punishable by vague--but certainly not pleasant--terms.
The fruits of Tobias's deeds definitely were obvious. By 1905, the Institute was home to hundreds of children. Little did the world know that the Church had now sanctioned Tobias's bedroom antics as the rightful propagation of a Pinnacle Bloodline. According to Church policy, Tobias was such a pure example of Anglo-Saxon fluidation that "He Who Is Blind must father as many children as possible before death to ensure the restoration of the Blood of Adam." When the news of growing tensions in Europe and Asia reached America, Tobias formed the Holy Order of the Sons of Tobias, often known simply as HOST. HOST was a militarized group of Zealots dedicated to fight exclusively under Tobias' crimson banner. Every single HOST Zealot was indeed a son of Tobias, and each adopted the last name "Tobiason" for legal purposes. Tobiason would become one of the most common American last names by the mid-20th century. HOST would see action in the Great World War, especially out west during the Californian campaign. The troops that broke through the final Californian defenses were, in fact, HOST Zealots. Their ferocity and valiant conduct in battle would result in their final acceptance by the American people. Americans realized what Tobias had done, and the results were undeniably impressive.
"The end of this dreadful but successful war has finally arrived. My children died in their masses. I lost my boys by the score. You can never fill the void inside of a lost child. I have lost more children than any man alive, I believe. Since 1911, 232 of the fruit of my loins have died in the line of duty defending our freedom. But for their sacrifice I am forever grateful, and I join a grateful nation in praying for their souls to be received what with all of our fallen heroes into Heaven. Amen."
- Official statement from the Blind Christian Gentleman at the end of the Great World War
When Joe Steele, Tobias's former protege, took power at the end of the war, Tobias feared for his own safety. He knew Steele was cuckholding Reverend-Colonel Sunday and stripping him of any real power and he feared government intrusion into the Institute. But Steele was not stupid. Despite initially concocting plans to recruit one Tobias's women to poison him, Steele moved on. He realized that Tobias was in his 80s and offered no challenge to his sovereignty and decided to forgive his tutor for his horrific school years. On November 1, 1921, the day of his 90th birthday, He Who Is Blind became He Who Was Blind, passing away in his sleep of old age. The Chapel of Purity was thrown into chaos, with hysterical women crying and shrieking that all was lost. Some fifteen women killed themselves over the next several days, most of them some of his oldest followers and closest companions. It was up to Howard Lovecraft, a former raving lunatic now remolded with electro-shock by Tobias into an apprentice, to restore order. Lovecraft was quickly named Head of the Institute and he told the Sisters of Purity that they could still devote themselves to the Church and to Tobias' memory by doing good deeds in his name. Some offered themselves to Lovecraft, but he seemed disgusted by their advances. In the 1920s, the Sisters of Purity would go on to become one of the largest charitable organizations in the world and particularly helped the blind and crippled. In the 1930s, during a massive drought out west, Sisters of Purity would travel around the region, going from state to state, gifting food, water, and clothes to those who could no longer support themselves. By mid-century, SOP would be one of the most beloved of American institutions and took on young members who were never a part of Tobias' lovelife. Esther Johnson, the last original Sister, would pass in 2012, at the age of 113. Johnson was only 16 in 1915, when she became one of the last to bear Tobias a child. Edgar Immanuel Tobiason, the last living original Son of Tobias, would pass in 2020 at the age of 105. For a blind, half-crippled, deranged medium, the Blind Christian Gentleman Mr. Tobias left an incredibly huge impact on American and world history, and also left an enduring blood legacy.
"A man who was truly unique and divinely blessed, this true American hero passed onto us not only his precious bloodline, but also his words of wisdom in times of crises, his thoughts on matters spiritual and corporeal, and above all the message that resonates through the eons: That none are so blind as those who will not see. Indeed, Patriot-Saint Tobias was not truthfully blind, and saw and experienced that which we all can only imagine or hope to come close to witnessing ourselves. In his name and sacred memory, we light this Eternal Flame. With this flame we tell him, wherever he may be, that he will live on forever in the heart of his countrymen. May Jehovah bless the Sisters of Purity and the Holy Order of the Sons of Tobias on this, the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Blind Christian Gentleman into the Other Side. And may God bless America."
- President Charles Oswald, November 1, 1961
The Eternal Flame of Patriot-Saint Tobias
- President Charles Oswald, November 1, 1961
The Eternal Flame of Patriot-Saint Tobias
The Martin Luther "here I stand" butchering is now one of my favorite quotes in this entire TL so far, hands down. Lol
Also, there are so many cultural references it's ludicrous. From Lovecraft's reviling horror of sex to the Manson Family, to the Brides of Dracula, to freaking Voldemort.
Also, he raised Steele and an entire generation of offspring. Hee hee "raise hell," how punny.
EDIT: Also, Tobias was born and died on November 1, which pagans know as Samhain, the day of the year where it easiest to contact the dead. I was rather pleased with that. lol
Also, there are so many cultural references it's ludicrous. From Lovecraft's reviling horror of sex to the Manson Family, to the Brides of Dracula, to freaking Voldemort.
Also, he raised Steele and an entire generation of offspring. Hee hee "raise hell," how punny.
EDIT: Also, Tobias was born and died on November 1, which pagans know as Samhain, the day of the year where it easiest to contact the dead. I was rather pleased with that. lol
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"Tobias, Republican Union's greatest love machine" must be a popular song ITTL.
Also considering the number of bastards Mr Tobias generated, is it possible that Oswald will be one of his descendants or at least that he will claim so for political reasons?
Also it is nice to see that at least the SOPs actually want to help people rather than just being a bunch of religious fanatics.
Also considering the number of bastards Mr Tobias generated, is it possible that Oswald will be one of his descendants or at least that he will claim so for political reasons?
Also it is nice to see that at least the SOPs actually want to help people rather than just being a bunch of religious fanatics.
I wonder if any prostitutes or Inferiors took the chance to take the Tobias Ticket to Betterhood. He's blind after all, he can't see a "Paddy" woman's ginger-red hair...
EDIT: Ectoplasm has got me thinking, what if during Oswald's reign we get a *Ghostbusters where the Ghostbusters are actually a squad of Papist villains, and the ghosts are Patriot-Saints whose worldly presence must be protected by Magick-wielding Zealots? Maybe you can even keep the comedy angle and have the Busters be a bunch of bumbling Infee buffoons.
EDIT: Ectoplasm has got me thinking, what if during Oswald's reign we get a *Ghostbusters where the Ghostbusters are actually a squad of Papist villains, and the ghosts are Patriot-Saints whose worldly presence must be protected by Magick-wielding Zealots? Maybe you can even keep the comedy angle and have the Busters be a bunch of bumbling Infee buffoons.
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An interesting character, to say the least. Someone who "talks with ghosts", literally raised hell (Steele), and had an unbelievably huge amount of children. And now we have Lovecraft as new head of the Institute. Talk about madness!
Wtf did I just read?
By the lowbar madness standards, I will consider the SOP as one of the more genuinely good guys (or gals) out there if not for my need to pretend as Japanese, what with being lowbar due to doublethinking their supposed purity instead of their charity (to Betters only, of course).
By the lowbar madness standards, I will consider the SOP as one of the more genuinely good guys (or gals) out there if not for my need to pretend as Japanese, what with being lowbar due to doublethinking their supposed purity instead of their charity (to Betters only, of course).
Jesus Christ. Mr. Tobias had enough sons to form an infantry corps. That's nuckin futs even by WMIT standards.
This post edited by the Office of Public Virtue for the maintenance of proper Christian and Carolinian thought. If you have any questions about this post, please call our hotline and we will be more than happy to send a Virtueman to your home to discuss this matter in person. Have an excellent day and Hark the Sound!
This post edited by the Office of Public Virtue for the maintenance of proper Christian and Carolinian thought. If you have any questions about this post, please call our hotline and we will be more than happy to send a Virtueman to your home to discuss this matter in person. Have an excellent day and Hark the Sound!
I don't understand how he had time to do anything else if he's screwing that much
He's the Pinnacle Man of Pinnacle Men! Of course he can do anything!
"I guess that's one of them Yankee things a good, simple Cokie Virtueman like m'self just don't understand. Hark the Sound!"
Ok in seriousness, I know there's a line of thought out there that Jesus had a wife, etc... Will that be AFC doctrine?
Who knows. With everything they've come up with until now, I wouldn't be surprised if they did it. They could even go as far as declare some Betters 'descendants of Jesus' godly bloodline'.
Sexual Marxism is looking more likely by the day. Robert Heinlein will probably be all over it, get ready for gender neutral polygamy and line marriages and other fun stuff.
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Madness!Heinlein will certainly be an interesting figure. I can imagine he blends the political leanings displayed in Starship Troopers with the sexual morality of Stranger in a Strange Land/Time Enough for Love.
Lol that would be awesome, like a modified version of The Da Vinci Code becoming standard AFC doctrine, with Mary Magdeline becoming the SOP's patron. Of course, this would require a garbling of Christian texts beyond recognition, but I have faith that the Church will get it done!
He was in the Navy OTL, what if he decides on a change of career and end up involved with planning the Space Force moon missions, he could be pushing internally for a whole subterranean lunar complex.
Oh if Space Force is an option you know Heinlein would be a part of it.