Longbridge L O N G B R I D G E

The Cult of the Hand (Archaic)

Devotees of the Hand lived near the boundary of the Bridgehand around the 10-firthan pillar in a community of makeshift villages and huts known as Workhome, which would gradually evolve to become the modern enclave of the same name.

Following the discovery of the Bridgehand, and having suffered under the precarity and oppression of the Order of Solus in it’s later years, citizens began leaving The Middle in droves and worshipping the abundance of the Bridgehand.

The Bridgehand was seen as a divine intervention, sent to break the Order’s stranglehold of enforced scarcity. It was hailed as a timely and generous benefactor to Longbridge, since it greatly increased the available food and other resources.

Tensions broke out into violent conflicts as the Order tried to stop it’s members abandoning them for the Bridgehand, even going as far as to stage raids on the encampments of devotees of the Hand to terrorise and “save” them by kidnapping them back to The Middle to serve penance and learn from their moral errors to become “proper citizens”.

Worship Poems

The early Cult of the Hand did not develop a well-defined or structured mythology to ground it’s ceremonies and festivals. Instead, devotees expressed their devotion by composing worship poems.

The two common forms of these were day poems — simple rhythmic chants used by workers during harvest — and dusk poems — long stories dramatising the journey to Workhome and extolling life in Workhome compared to The Middle, performed publicly in the evenings.

This practice slowly evolved into the first traditions of musical culture in Longbridge, merging the day and dusk styles into what is now known as story form. This began a tradition of nightly revelry featuring fire, music, dancing, and intoxication (via an earlier, much weaker form of the psychedelic preparation used by the modern remnants of the Cult of the Hand) from which the modern culture derives many of it’s artistic and musical influences.

Further Reading