Fictognostic: The Lie

It might have been a small one: oh, my train was delayed, sorry, so sorry, I'll be there in an hour.

It might have been a heavier one: I can't make it to your wedding, I'm afraid, because we'll be in Hawaii that time - meeting the family, yes, only once a decade - sorry, but it's already booked, I'm sorry...

It may have been a huge one: Fucking your best friend? That's ridiculous! Why would I even think about having sex with him? You.. you're so fucking insecure!

They are all pieces of fiction passed hastily as items of fact: lies.

Fictognostics, those who seek Truth through Lies, are created in this manner. No one knows entirely what distinguishes one lie from another - some believe it to be astrological in nature, others are positive that it's just the universe trying to draw fictosorcerers together, most are unsure or have wilder theories - but it is one lie, the Lie, that makes a Fictognostic Qabal.

The funny thing is, most of the time the Fictognostics aren't even part of the lie. Say, for example, that Samantha is fucking Nicholas while she engaged to Mark. Mark, naturally, doesn't know, and Samantha doesn't exactly want to tell him. When this secret is exposed - and the really powerful, really bent ones always are - things happen. Samantha 'not' fucking Nicholas is the Lie.

Nicholas's brother, Daniel, is drawn in. Mark's ex-girlfriend, Suzanne, is as well. Samantha's best friend, Michelle, may as well be thrown in, and so is Mark's best friend, Troy. Troy, Michelle, Daniel, Suzanne: four individuals that have nothing to do with the Lie but are all linked through association.

One by one, they disappear from the world. The fiction gobbles them up. Their Fictognostic abilities are still freshly awakened, still raw; they manipulate fiction and fact through instinct and intuition instead of practice and discipline. They might lose their jobs; they might alienate their family; they might be committed to a sanitarium; they might vanish altogether. They have stopped being real.

While they are gone... they see worlds, impossible worlds, worlds that they control. They see with the true eyes, with eyes that can pierce the occult shroud that surrounds the world. They can discriminate and fabricate.. they are lost in illusion. This process might take months; it usually takes two to five years.

Assuming they aren't killed or sucked into horrible fantasy-places for eternity, they will return together. They will have seen and met each other in fiction, while they have projected their spirits into the world of fiction, and they will return as friends and allies: as a Qabal.

When they return, their initiation complete, they will escape their bonds. They will typically cut off whatever remaining ties they have to family and friends, and they will move in together, work together, fight together. They will have set up their sacred space, their alters, where they will work and live most of their lives.

Most Fictognostics will never leave their Qabal. They might go rogue, become solo practitioners, but they will never be accepted into another group. Qabal's are too personal for that.

They will have formed a Qabal - a group of two to six Fictognostics - and created a Lodge, the house where a Qabal is kept. The Lodge might, in time, join a Temple (a collection of Lodges), but this isn't a step most Lodges are prepared to take so quickly.

The Qabal will have greater things to worry about than Temples and the like, to begin with. They'll be busy exploring their new found powers and building their worlds. Unfortunately, all too soon their Shadow Lodge will form, and then the real struggle will begin..