Many fringe religious sects throughout the extent of human history have taken an extreme view of the physical body as a living prison of sinful temptation. The most radical have sometimes resorted to self-inflicted punishment in order to cleanse their flesh of what they believe to be inherent impurity and even filth. To the monastic Zealots who call themselves Automatists, the synthetic race known as the Cauldron Born is the answer to their dilemma of the iniquitous physical shell.
A common article of faith among humans is that their gods are prone to behave in mysterious and incomprehensible ways, and it is the belief of all Automatists that their gods created the monstrous and violent Verunasi specifically that they might, in turn, one day create the transcendent and halcyon Cauldron Born. Though the Cauldron Born, by their own design, resemble humans—and thus, ipso facto, the gods of humans—they are not organic beings, but artificial ones. Therefore, free from the corrupting influence of fleshly temptation, the Cauldron Born exemplify what the Automatists perceive to be a purity and perfection of both thought and form.
In particular, the Automatists have become drawn to a variation of the Cauldron Born they refer to as “Superiors”. The incredible, aesthetically stunning synthetic utopias engineered by Cauldron Born Superiors are considered sacred ground by the Automatists, and many embark on a holy pilgrimage to one of these distant worlds in search of spiritual enlightenment through contemplation of the Superiors and their empyreal, aseptic existence.Aside from the potential for true metaphysical revelation, the greatest gift an Automatist can hope to receive from a Superior is the blessing of Cauldron Born nanotechnology, which far surpasses that of any other race. To an Automatist in possession of such a gift, he or she would embody the ultimate divine marriage of science and faith.
