Microstory 717: Find the Ring of Culture

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Like the other four Primary Rings, the Ring of Culture has always been a mystery. It was worn by Eido Ivanka when she was first in power during the founding of this galaxy. It is said that she hid it deliberately in order to either protect it from people, or people from it. The original final taikon in the Book of Light did not list its rediscovery as part of the prophecy. Instead, the one hundred and seventeenth was meant to establish Ivanka—or her replacement, had one been appointed—as ultimate successor to Sotiren Zahir, should the Sacred Savior die a second time. Ivanka was the principal actor against the introduction of the Book of Anseluka. Even today, she rejects its teachings, and is adamant about retaining our tradition through the original divine books. She has gone to great lengths pushing her own divine book, despite the new taikon’s prediction that it must soon be destroyed. Presumably fearing that we would find the Ring of Culture, Ivanka was caught trying to retrieve it from its original hiding place (which we would have never uncovered, by the way), and trying to destroy it. As it turned out, The Ring was full of damning evidence that the history of our galaxy is not what we believed. Analysts are still looking over the data, but we’ve learned the truth about a few things already. Sotiren did not ride the Light of Prospect to the “land of light”. He gained access to a repository of knowledge which had already completed extensive study of the Fostean galaxy, long before our ancestors had so much as thought of breaking away from the communists. Some evidence even suggests these surveys were done far deeper in the past, possibly before Lactea was seeded with life in the first place. We currently do not know how comprehensive this conspiracy goes, or whether any of the other eidos had any clue about it; though Andrea certainly knew something. Certain remarks by Peter Fireblood, and other detractors, now make more sense. Perhaps we all knew a little bit of the truth behind our faith, which we now realize to be little more than a bastardization of an old religion on Earth called Christianity. Maybe we are lucky this information did not come to light until now, though. We are already in the middle of reimagining our faith into something healthier, and more productive. We would never have been able to reach this point had we been so profoundly made foolish by Sotiren and Ivanka’s lies. Now we understand why the new taikon demand we burn the Book of Ivanka. While we doubted the point of this before, we now understand, and we cannot wait.