⚠️ DARK THEMES⚠️
[Unintentionally became a bit of a story]
In my au (w.i.p. title is Bad AU) the Lamb was never a kind leader. Over the decades that they built their cult, they controlled the food, installed a strict uniform and provided protection to their followers from the horrors of The Old Lands, as long as their word was obeyed. The Lamb controlled life and death and could read minds.
Seeing them angry was terrifying and none dared to bring upon their wrath.
Total devotion to the Red Crown was the only way you could stay and enjoy a regular meal, have a roof over your head, avoid being raided or ask the Lamb to rescue family for you.
One by one the Bishops were slain and the Lamb grew more powerful, with their village growing alongside in strength and numbers. Being a devotee to the Red Crown was preferred to the life of suffering under the Bishops.
Only legends told of there ever being such a large settlement before in the Old Lands. Truly, the Lamb had brought a new age of prosperity and safety to all.
They only asked that you follow the rules, for the benefit of all, that you devoted your mortal life to the People and that you pledged your immortal soul into the protective embrace of the Lamb.
Eventually, all of the Bishops were slain. The One Who Waits was also vanquished under the righteous blade of the one true god. The old ways were fully outlawed, as the Lamb's cult became the singular hub of civilisation. Beyond the village walls there were monsters and mad heretics; incapable of rational behaviour as their minds were rotted from the influence of their previous masters.
Only the Lamb could protect The People from the horrors. Only the Lamb loved and cared for them like no other leader ever had before. If the Lamb punished you, it was for your own good and for the security of the community that you learned from your mistakes. To miss out on a daily ration was to remind you of who provided that meal, of who you had to thank for the comfortable bed after a night in the stocks.
The Lamb's most devoted, blessed followers, became Disciples and maintained the balance of their perfect paradise when the Lamb went away on crusades. If they felt you were slacking in your duties or your devotion, the Lamb would be informed upon their return and you could face re-education... or punishment.
Such was the way in this new age.
Then, one day the Lamb returned to the cult with a scruffy black cat suspended in the air by the Crown's ability. It was clothed in the barest rags, such as that of a death shroud, and the Lamb unceremoniously dumped them before the great altar in the center of the village.
The cat looked furious but confused and a little terrified. Something about their manner convinced most that they were some heretical madman from the woods... until the Lamb announced that this was an Old God respawned from the ichor of the dead... brought back to a mortal life by the heretics with the intention of stealing the Red Crown and bringing back the Old Ways.
The heretics responsible for this unholy ritual were already slaughtered... but this cat continued to spout foulness, as was its nature of being born from the darkness of Old Magic. So the Lamb brought him to show the People that despite there being no Bishops and no Old Gods left, deranged heretics and monsters plagued the Lands.
It was not safe to venture outside the walls without a protective talisman crafted by the Blessed Lamb themself. The Lamb's divine quest to bring peace to the world was not over yet.
It made sense to continue working for the glory of The Red Crown.
The black cat was tossed among the People to put an end to his convictions that the Red Crown belonged to him, by divine right. Once he was silenced, the Lamb left him in the stocks for three days to suffer his agonies and bear witness to the strength and nobility of the People he wished to destroy. His only permissed care was to be given water and whatever food he could lick off his face.
The Merciful Lamb healed the worst of his wounds but left some for his own reflection. The stocks were a respected form of training in humility. Apparently, that black cat must have learned that to love the Lamb was to love themself, so after three days they dissapeared from the stocks and if anyone asked where they went after, it was told that they were Redesigned and freed from their inherited evil.
The Lamb, being so merciful, brought them into The Flock without announcement, since they had endured the Wrath of The People and was now as beloved as any other member.
Such is the Lamb's Mercy.
Such is the Lamb's Love.
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