On the day the massive speaker towers were erected in the Formac assembly square, the Atonement Stone ran thick with blood. A machine powered by the demon force is an affront to God, even though the device was made to carry the amplified voice of Elijah Kain to the assembled priesthood. An affronted God must be appeased, so ten died that day. On a high iron platform under a soot-smudged sky, Archpriest Kain stepped up to a small perforated sphere suspended at the level of his face by thin wires. He looked down at the sea of black robes, upon which floated a foam of expectant faces, waiting to receive his voice. He cleared his throat to speak. The sound of his phlegm boomed from the towers and echoed back from the walls of the buildings surrounding the plaza. A murmur of shocked surprise swept through the crowd. Kain was awed by the power of the amplifier. God, spare me from your fury! He summoned his most authoritative sermonizing voice. “The age of Christ’s Redemption is over!” He paused, revelling in how his voice had thundered over the crowd. This is power! “Some call it the Great Reduction, when the Earths billions were reduced to scattered remnants. We know it was God’s Harvest, when Christ redeemed those who were worthy of redemption, and took them away from this Earth to His eternal light. And we who are left are the straw and the chaff. There is no longer a Christ to whom we may appeal. Christ’s work on Earth is done. He is gone.” The massiveness of Kain’s voice had galvanized the crowd. “But God remains. He is the great God of the Old Book!” His voice climbed to a crescendo, punctuating each word. “And He is wrathful!” The crowd roared with applause and excitement. The archpriest basked in the adulation for a few moments, and then raised his arms for silence. “In Formac, we have built a holy city where every man knows his God-ordained place, from the highest highpriest, to the lowest workers of the tar-pits and the factories. But there is a world outside Formac which has not abased itself before God.” There were hisses from the priests in the square. “It is a world that makes a mockery of our values. It is a world that scoffs at the reverence and the fear we have for our Holy Father. It is a world that fuels its machinery with unholy forces. It is a world that alters its minds to peer through the fabric of God’s creation, reducing it to the vilest of base functions. Their sins have enraged God, and He demands that they atone!” Kain waited again until the noise of the cheering priests subsided. “God has given us iron to form into weapons for his glory! God has given us black tar to fuel an army that will sweep the sinful of this world into a Hell where they writhe forever in an agony of eternal perishing!” To the left of Kain, hidden from the audience, a terrified midpriest desperately turned control knobs on a large metal box from which rose a dense, acrid smoke. An unholy reverberation emanated from the speaker towers, ending with a deafening boom. No more sound came from the towers, but the crowd of priests was ecstatic. Kain, uncharacteristically, felt no anger about the malfunction. The boom seemed a fitting end to his speech; many in the crowd likely assumed that it was intentional. Kain made a mental note to himself that the amplifier operator would atone nevertheless.