Borg Popes (always plural) is the archive’s name for a heterodox ecclesiastical dynasty of the extended cosmos: not a single pope nor a hereditary title, but a pattern that names each pontiff who seeks extreme supernatural transcendence through arcane means. Its rite works by two poles, negative (lichdom) and positive (solidified golden light).
| Type | Faction (papal dynasty) |
| Known popes | Pope Borg of Caldero; Pope Alejandro Sixto |
| Seats | Great Obsidian Plaza; ruby throne of the Palace of the Prism |
| Spanish entry | Papas Borg |
Description
The popular formula “the legendary Borg Popes”, preserved in the Caldero Gazette and other provincial archives, records a long tradition: there have been several, and the pattern is not closed. The Borg Popes are megavarones (“mega-barons”): figures whose authority combines the ecclesiastical with the industrial-financial, or who claim to. Their rites have a magical-industrial aesthetic: enchanted foundries in underground cathedrals, mechanical prodigies of magic and steam, magical devices among liturgical instruments, and networks of industrial patronage over the elites of the crater-cities. The Borg papacy in its full form requires an industrialized or near-industrialized world.
The two poles
Negative pole: lichdom
The Borg Pope of Caldero / Star City, around 1812 Star Year (twelve years before the compilation of Mascor Blancarba), sought to become an all-powerful undead. With corrupt cardinals he performed a profane ritual in the Great Obsidian Plaza, a star-shaped stone plain and focus of celestial energy, meaning to consume innocent blood and lives.
He failed. Pilgrims bearing relics of the people’s last prophet freed the Ancient Giantess, a primordial volcanic deity sealed beneath the underground sanctuary, who crushed the Pope with the Sword of Judgment before the transformation was complete. The shockwave scattered cardinals and sacrilegious instruments. The people sang “Papa Don’t Lich”. He left a crater.
His cardinals already combined church authority with control of industrial towers. After his fall the industrial nobles (owners of the tallest towers, barons and captains of magical industry) took Star City and accelerated the Magical Industrial Revolution the papacy had held back for fear of losing power.
Positive pole: luminous solidification
Pope Alejandro Sixto, raised during the Fifteen-Year Hiatus of Ardis Vala, sought access to the positive energy plane: solidified golden light, an anti-undead aura, celestial guards with an imperial-eagle breastplate and sun eye. He succeeded. No giantess appeared; Caladan, vampire and involuntary darklord of the misty domain, is a passive dark pole, not a protector. The Pope sits alive on the ruby throne without rising, and the Custodes were transmuted into servants of golden light. Under the Mist domain of Valakhan the magical-industrial revolution does not penetrate in the same way, so his apparatus is doctrinal, not foundries.
The four papal pillars
Where the Basileus Drusus IX rules with three pillars (prophecies, draconic councils, selective iron hand), the Borg papacy works with four, echoing the four vertical layers and four conceptual columns of the extended cosmos.
| Pillar | Negative pole (Caldero) | Positive pole (Ardis Vala) |
|---|---|---|
| Major ritual | Lichdom in the Great Obsidian Plaza with innocent blood | Luminous solidification on the ruby throne |
| Cardinal apparatus | Corrupt cardinals of the Star City papacy | Custodes absorbed from the Order of Thoth |
| Consecrated ground | Star-shaped stone plaza | Palace of the Prism, anchored above Ardisvala |
| Containment | Ancient Giantess and Sword of Judgment, freed by pilgrims | None: the darklord Caladan does not contain |
Success or failure is decided by the fourth pillar: with active cosmological containment, the Pope falls.
Layers and columns
The Borg papacy operates at the crossing of four vertical layers (positive, intermediate, negative, temporal) and the four conceptual columns set out in the Eisagogika of Paulus as infrastructure of the Game of Shadows. Its doctrine holds that each elevated Pope crosses one layer by one column:
- Positive layer, luminous column: Pope Alejandro Sixto.
- Negative layer, dark column: Pope Borg of Caldero.
- Intermediate layer, mundane column: undocumented; hypothetically a secular Borg Pope ruling as civil sovereign.
- Temporal layer, chronological column: tentatively associated with figures such as Pablo the Chronomancer, unconfirmed as papacy.
Known popes
| Pope | Pole | Place | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pope Borg of Caldero | Negative (attempted) | Great Obsidian Plaza, Star City | Crushed c. 1812 AE; a crater |
| Pope Alejandro Sixto | Positive (achieved) | Ruby throne, Palace of the Prism, Valakhan | Active; acts through a librarian, never rises |
The Caldero pope is known popularly only as “Pope Borg”. Some provincial archives tentatively give him a title equivalent to the Ardis Vala pope’s, “Magnanim Pius Pontifex Maximus”, unconfirmed. “The legendary Borg Popes” suggests at least three or four earlier ones; the metropolitan Decadian apparatus has purged them from official archives, and they survive in heterodox provincial chroniclers. Only one Borg Pope is active at a time in the present cycle.
Councils
Some heterodox archives hold that the Borg Popes meet, have met or will meet in intermediate regions of the extended cosmos. The only evidence is rumor among chroniclers of Caldero, Star City and Narsileon, and clandestine theosophist archivists. Such a council of a positive and a negative pope could lock both poles into one engine. Mascor Blancarba notes the possibility in his margins: “se cuentan cosas peores, épocas antiguas” (“worse things are told, ancient ages”).
Conflicting accounts
- Arkos holds that the two poles are one rite with two directions, chosen by circumstance.
- The Decadian does not rule out two distinct lineages (lich and luminous) sharing a name by chroniclers’ coincidence. Operative doctrine follows the first reading.
Open questions
- What would happen if Borg Popes closed all four poles at once? Three readings: apocalyptic (the cosmos breaks and the Game of Shadows ends), redemptive (the cosmological Pact is completed), and impeded (cosmological containments trigger in cascade and prevent the closure). None is established.