'R' is for 'The Red Brigade.'

'R' is for 'The Red Brigade.'

The Red Brigade is the dominant sect of a disorganized religion worshiping five absent gods: The Bold, The Wise, The Provider, The Deceiver, and The Fifth. These gods are explicitly abstracts, not thought to inhabit a distant plane like other religions, and are seldom anthropomorphized. Rather, someone who wears the red jacket or wristband of the Red Brigade strives to embody one of the five, and their good works in that form are considered both prayer and divinity.

Exact practices vary wildly based on your geography, and there is no central body governing The Red Brigade. The most common form of The Bold is the soldier or warrior, such as those insurgents fighting against The Empire of Gold and Jade’s incursion into The Frontier. The Wise are most commonly scholars or strategists, while The Deceivers are most infamously spies who infiltrate other societies. Most cherished are The Providers, such as parents, educators and farmers. The Fifth god is seldom mentioned by name, and is the only one for whom, after you converted to its ways, you cannot convert back.

It is also dogma that Red Brigadiers change from one phase to another as is needed by their people. Most Red Brigadiers are yetis, centaurs or humans, though it is spreading among triclopic peoples. Secularists pin the recent trend in triclopic Brigadiers on it being such a time of strife for them, what with their presently losing a war to foreign secularists and all.