The Hand Thread - Heathen Engineering's Terran

"Lasting Faith"

The Hand is a collection of Terrans and Dwerrian still loyal to the creationist way of the ancient human race. There doctrine states that
the week shall inherent the earth though the earth is now uninhabited. They profess poverty though are the wealthiest of factions aside from the Faction
and of note there prime directive is to aid the helpless and needy though they only do so on the condition of adherence to their theology.

The Hand appears as an intolerant, hypocritical society on the surface yet it is the Hand that has offered shelter to Faction refugees risking a war they couldn't hope to win and despite their shaky founding has quickly grown and prospered in a mere 140 years to control the second largest holding in the known galaxy and without a single war.

The Hand owes much of this to their lineage; formed from the merger of 2 powerful factions the Inquisition and the Faith a most unlikely union.

The Inquisition much like the Hand of today lived by a strict dogma though not one of the sprit; the Inquisition where self-proclaimed “technomancers”; through selective breeding they cultivated a line of Terran with unmatched levels of integration and declared the science of nano cyber genetics the soul domain of Terran’s stating that non-Terran integration was akin to genetic warfare against Terran’s. It was around this time that Dwerrian and several of the lesser races where experiencing there first successes with nano cyber genetics; the same catalyst that spawned the Terran race from its Human ancestry; in truth it was simple xenophobia.

The Faith on the other hand where an open society accepting “pilgrims” from all races and living by an ancient human way of life and openly assisting the lesser races with nano cyber genetic research. Faith Terran’s like the ruling class of the Inquisition could trace their ancestry and there cyber components
back to the first Terran’s there capabilities seemed almost magical to the lesser races.

The Faith military was almost non-existent when the Inquisition declared them heretics and began bombarding there worlds however the alliances the Faith had constructed with the lesser races coupled with some of the most brilliant tacticians of the age allowed the Faith to take the upper hand early on. The Inquisition’s pure military where far more capable but simply too few in number and so the Inquisition employed large numbers of mercenaries ironically enough most of which were mixed race bands. The mercenary fleets of the Inquisition and the combined force of the faithful where in stalemate for
years, the toll in lives of the lesser races was massive many of which wiped out completely and unknowingly by the 2 warring giants. The Inquisition set in
place a plan to break the Faith and focused the whole of their forces on Faith core worlds spear headed by an elite group of mercenaries. The Inquisition
seemed to have won however there mercenary warriors turned on them at the end of their greatest victory 60 years later the Inquisition found themselves seeking sanctuary from the remains of the Faith thus forming the Hand of Lasting Faith now known simply as the Hand.