The Latcher cult was a folk-belief or Spirit Religion of the miners who lived in and worked the Asteroid Belt of Sol, in the early Human space colonization period. Because mining spacesuits were large pieces of expensive heavy equipment - bristling with tools and long-term life-support apparatus - they could not just be disposed of if a miner happened to die in one. The suits were merely cleaned out, repainted and renumbered, and issued to a new owner.

However, many miners of a superstitious bent were highly uneasy working in these suits. Folk-tales of "Latchers" sprang up: the spirits of dead miners who attached themselves to the last object in space that they knew in life. They would bring all sorts of fright, bad luck and woe to the current owner. They would even cause death by gruesome accident, or by getting the miner lost or cut off from help, to face slow death as some element of his life-support supply ran out.

The superstitions were self-fulfilling, with the most superstitious miners feeling the greatest unease, losing concentration, making dangerous mistakes and even causing accidents short of death. Such a miner, convinced that a Latcher was present, would then seek out a Voodoo-like priest to help "exorcise" his suit or propitiate the spirit. These priests were given various names such as Suit Shamans, Belt Shamans, Decrocheurs, Lacheros, or Kshenzha (singular: Kshondz), depending on the ancestral language of the Belter citizen.

Officially, the mining arm of the Company concealed details of a suit's history, but in any Belt sector with a high number of Latcher cultists, infiltration and disclosure of death records was impossible to stop. Latchers could then be identified as Bloats (the spirits of people who died from explosive decompression), Chokers (dead from oxygen running out), Parches (dead from being isolated and running out of water first), Corpsicles (heating units failed) or Roadkill (dead from impacts, or caught between two asteroid fragments). Lore and ritual developed for each type, including protective designs painted onto the suits. A small side-ritual also developed to pray for the spirit of one's radio, since many causes of death resulted from not being able to call for help.

The cult beliefs evolved, and became more systematic and self-consistent, adding legends of particular spirits. Spirits of "evil" miners, destined for hell but prevented from reaching Earth for all eternity, were said to be gathered by a spirit known as NastyAss Johnston, a rough, immoral miner of bad social reputation who happened to be the Belt's first fatality in a mining suit (rumor is that he was helped along). Originally just one of the many spirit-legends of the Latcher cult, the figure grew to prominence in the belief after a few centuries.

In a similar way, spirits of "good" people were said to be gathered by a beautiful female spirit named Estelle Starlight. This legend was dreamed up at a time when, at first, most Belt miners were male, cut off for long periods from female company. She did not represent an actual woman but an idealized fantasy.

The Latcher cult was ridiculed back on Earth, and Earthside media occasionally satirized them to the point of straining laws against religious bigotry. Many fundamentalist religions sought to stamp out the Latcher belief. But Belters were isolated from these efforts. Media signals from Earth were too faint to be heard on most individuals' receivers, the Company often repackaged Earth's major faxpapers and censored offending cartoons or articles, and in any case the Belters set up their own media.

Missionaries out to change the "heathen" Latchers were for the most part not trained for any labor the Company needed. The Company controlled the only fleet of ships capable of reaching the Belt, and did not give out joyrides to just anybody for something not work-related. For that matter, particularly in the rough-and-tumble early days, a whole lot of "immoral" behavior was going on in the Belt, which overshadowed private beliefs (think of the movie Outland, and its Club).

The Spread of Latcherism

Now that we have the outlines of a religion, let's fast-forward, making use of the tables for ideas. In hundreds of years, as interstellar colonization began, the spacefaring Belters represented a disproportionate number of Human colonists, since they were more suited to long trips through space than the Earth "groundhogs". It was estimated that as many as 21 per cent of colonists had some form of openly professed Latcher belief.

In the Propagation Table, let us choose the entry that the Latcher cult propagates widely through space although, to be sure, it is not the only religion to do so. Space conditions were the same for asteroid miners in any star system, preserving a core Latcher belief. However, groundside colonists no longer shared the same attitudes towards death, which came to them in more normal ways.

A certain favorable planetary settlement was in a state of Isolation, so let us choose on the Isolation Table that the religion underwent a Type Shift. As technology advanced on this populous planet, the Latcher cult changed from a Spirit Religion to Latcherism, a religion with a Bipolar Pantheon. People developed a bipolar belief in Good and Evil, typified by the goddess Stel (personification of the widespread and savage beauty of space) and the evil Nastas, or Natas (which just happened to be "Satan" spelled backwards.) They believed that past influences and events - rather than spirits - may latch on and stain the soul and its ability to grow and develop in Good. They therefore sought to root out these influences by religious precepts which almost verged into Psychologism.

At the same time, advances in space drives meant that miners in remote locations of the star-system were not so isolated any more, and ended up sharing the viewpoints of the planetary majority. This shift represented only the general trend: a large population of Latcherites varied and consisted of more religious or less religious people, or perhaps contained different sects. Linguistic shifts in pronunciation also disguised the origin of religious terms, and no one connected the changed name of the religion to spirits "latching" onto spacesuits.

Let us now suppose that this new version of the religion propagated widely through space, and a check on the Mutation Table shows it to have Dominated other Latcher beliefs, with little change to itself. A few miners, in some systems faithful to the Spirit-Religion current, were ridiculed into disappearance or violently uprooted. Afterwards, for many centuries, the religion was a widespread and fairly stable Human belief.

First Contact with the Buzzers

Then, a Human sector of space came into contact with an insectoid race, called "Buzzers" by the humans, since their own name for themselves was not easy to pronounce. The author Alan Dean Foster wrote novels about the Thranx, who are a likely insectoid species that the Buzzers could be modelled upon. The main character of the book, Ryozenzuzex, mentioned that after tumultuous first contact with Humans that his religious belief can most be likened to a Human Theravada Buddhist.

Theravada Buddhism (or Hinayana Buddhism) is a Personal Transcendence Religion which is most common in Sri Lanka, Burma and parts of Southeast Asia. Unlike mainstream or Mahayana Buddhism, Theravadism does not believe that everyone will achieve Nirvana through progressive reincarnations. Mahayana and Hinayana mean, respectively, Large Vehicle and Small Vehicle, expressing their relative view of how much room there is on the "boat" to Nirvana.

The Buzzers believed in a Personal Transcendence religion. Buzzers, as insectoids, begin life as eggs which hatch into a larval phase, then to a pupa, and then to a normal adult form. They had an ancestral hive society as well, and as a result are well suited to modern organization in "corporations", where their workplace is also their living space and family.

Since they consciously experienced such radical transformations in their bodies - more traumatic than puberty would be to a Human's self-identity - it is reasonable that they are remarkably tolerant of differences in form, and tend to view moral development by analogy to these radical changes. They can easily believe that death is just another transformation leading to a return to an egg, or something else (something more transcendent). Spirits and the paranormal are therefore just different forms of themselves.

In a certain star sector, Buzzers came into contact with Human Latcherites. What happened? This time a roll on the Isolation Table may say that some Buzzers Fused the religion ecumenically with some of their beliefs. They called the mixture "Klirr't Sstel", or the Way to Stel. Maybe they were not strong believers in the Personal Transcendence Religion of the Buzzers, or felt discouraged at the prospect of going through endless cycles of egg, larva, pupa, adult and death for a chance at some different, advanced spiritual state. A belief in being gathered up to Stel (whom they also called the Cosmic Egglayer or Cosmic Creator), after only one life, held out some appeal. This held particular comfort for a life cut short by space-accident, which by the old Buzzer religion would be unable to have evolved the soul much, or even have caused backsliding to a rebirth in a lesser egg, retarding the ultimate spiritual transformation.

Since Latcherism still had some associations and religious imagery to mining (much as Freemasonry bases its imagery upon the tools and practices of architecture), Klirr't Sstel spread among one particular Buzzer mining corporation. The relative success of this corporation (in newly colonized areas jointly managed by them and the Humans) caused increased self-regard and even religious Fanaticism inasmuch as the Buzzers were even capable of this emotion. In any case, they tended to believe their successful expansion and prosperity was tied to their new moral outlook, and they back-propagated the religion down their particular arm of Buzzer space (particularly to other Buzzer mining corporations).

The Gernsbach Datacube Heresy

For a century or two, Latcherism and the related Klirr't Sstel settled into phases of peaceful evolution, and a moderation of Klirr't Sstel's rough edges occured as it became widespread. Relations were peaceful between them and with other Human and Buzzer religions. But then an archeological discovery changed all that.

Out in the original Sol Asteroid Belt, an archeological dig led by Professor Leo Gernsbach turned up the remains of a disused mining station from 1,700 years earlier. The find produced a number of data storage devices, including a datacube which held a documentary on the original Latcher cult of the time. Although it had been produced with a favorable outlook to the cult, the intact sections of the decoded and translated holovideo represented the original Spirit Religion beliefs.

The holovid footage was quite at odds with the evolved form of Latcherism and Klirr't Sstel, but definitely recognizable from core terminology and some practices. It forced a revision of religious history in a way much more devastating than the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls two millennia earlier.

The discovery was not treated as controversial by the Earth sector (which by then was populated by people of non-belief plus non-Latcherite religions), but the news and information was carried intact to the Latcherite-dominated sector of Human space, and to the nearby Buzzers. In particular, it included an unfortunately lewd representation of Estelle Starlight, painted on the suit of a miner of the time, who had been lonely for female company.

The Human Latcherites were furious, and accused the Earth-sector people of forging that artifact. The holovid itself mentioned Earth oppression of the Belter beliefs. That was one part that the Latcherites were willing to believe, and the artifact was likened to early anti-Latcher propaganda. This encouraged Latcherites to declare an all-out war for a short time between the Latcherites and the neighboring Human sectors closer to Earth.

The High Priests of the Klirr't Sstel were also annoyed. Had they not adopted many Human religious and cultural ideas in good faith? Why was the whole idea of Stel based on an imaginary myth, a mere Human pin-up girl? Why were they informed of this particularly ignoble representation of Stel? They brooded over where all those Buzzer souls gathered to Stel really were, if Stel did not in fact exist except as some lonely miner's fantasy from the past. If Stel was false, were all those souls doomed to start reincarnating again from scratch? The Buzzers, like the Latcherites, also thought the artifact might be a fake, but blamed the nearby Latcherite Humans. They imagined that the Humans were introducing a demoralizing view of religious history in order to gain more control of the jointly mined sectors.

The Buzzers did not war with the Humans, but considerable power struggles occurred among Buzzer factions trying to interpret the artifact's meaning. The mining corporations most heavily involved in Klirr't Sstel lost prestige among other Buzzers. An insulting pun was coined by some Buzzer: "Klirr't Zt'l," the Way to Nowhere (or Oblivion). There were some skirmishes, and things would have been more bloody if not for a long-standing principle of non-violence rooted in the original Personal Transcendence Religion (all Buzzers acknowledged non-violence to some extent).

Eventually everyone calmed down, and the revelation forced Evolution changes in Latcherism and Klirr't Sstel, which favored moral principles over legends and literal history.

Multiple Paths

Keep in mind that this represents only one current of Latcherism, in this area of space. In different parts of space, the religion could Schism, Evolve, Devolve, Fuse with something else, Dominate, be Dominated, stay absolutely the same for thousands of years, or decline and die out. Given enough time, two different currents of Latcherism would not even recognize each other as related, and might even make war!

Many more ideas can come to you if you muse on the tables long enough. The known variety of existing Human religions makes any sort of fictional religion plausible. Whereas other elements of a science-fiction campaign - such as technology, propulsion systems and the habitability of planets - must be rigorously plausible, invented religions don't suffer from a lack of believability, for you can always pretend that there will be enough people willing to believe in one.

Sources of Inspiration

This article was originally undertaken after some conversations with members of the electronic mailgroup for fans of the old Star Frontiers science-fiction RPG (TSR, 1982-85). Fans of this game can join by sending E-mail to Majordomo@iastate.edu with nothing but "subscribe starfrontiers" in the body of the message. Once joined, people communicate with all others in the group by messages sent to starfrontiers@iastate.edu.

I wish to thank the mailgroup participants for the initial burst of inspiration. In addition, inspiration was drawn from the following sources, which interested players may wish to examine:

"Who's There?" by Arthur C. Clarke (1958), the inspiration for the early Latcher Cult.
Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster (1982).
Outland, starring Sean Connery. Also novelized by Alan Dean Foster (1981).
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon (1930).
A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller (1959).
The Dune series by Frank Herbert.
The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
Larry Niven stories dealing with the Belt, such as the novel Protector (1973). Information about Belter culture was also beautifully detailled in an entry in the Ringworld RPG (Chaosium, 1984; now out of print).
Myths and Legends by David Bellingham, Clio Whittaker, and John Grant. Quintet Publishing, London, 1992. Previously appeared as An Introduction To Viking Mythology, An Introduction To Greek Mythology, and An Introduction To Oriental Mythology.

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