The Schism Of The Joined

The Links were never designed to last forever. They were almost indestructable, to be sure, but when they were Halst's spies and agents, they would spend a decade or two gathering information, then return to the Scholar for re-absorbtion. Second-joinings were rare, used only to return to the Scholar after a host's demise.

After the Silence, the Joined had to adapt to a more permanent form of existance. Living for centuries rather than decades changed the Links. Most significantly, they grew weaker as they spent more time as Joined, with the mind of the host dominating the mind of the Link rather than the other way around. Soon, only Links freshly recovered from the seas could manage Joinings with non-sentient beings without going feral, and each year fewer of those were recovered. The Links were never designed to reproduce themselves, either, which caused great concern in the Sanctum.

This weakness turned out to be something of a benefit for the Joined. Since the Silence, the race had no leaders, no collective will to replace the instructions of Halst the Scholar. They continued to follow his last, general instructions, gathing knowledge about the world and its people out of intertia. But as the Links weakened and the host's minds began to dominate, the Joined once again began to have leadership, and with it, leadership disputes.

Three major factions emerged from this era, none having great advantage over the others:

• The Caretakers, who believed that the Joined agents in other lands should move their activities from mere information gathering to active influence and control, in order to unify the world under the benevolent leadership of the Sanctum.
• The Awaiters, who believed that the essential God-Will of Halst still remained, disguised as a humble Link, and could be restored to divinity with the correct rituals and incantations.
• The Hedons, who rejected the pursuit of stale facts and information in favor of pure experience, arguing that each Link should, through what control they could manage through cajolery and argument and drugs, ride their hosts through as much joy, teror, tenderness, and attrocity as a life's experience could provide, again and again.

Balancing all three of these was a fourth, more conservative faction still dedicated to the scholarly pursuits of the Sanctum, comprised mostly of first- and second- joinings of Links retrieved late from the sea.