Creating the Apocrypha of The Rememberer: Writing Sacred Texts as Worldbuilding

When I began developing The Veiled Core Chronicles, I faced an unusual structural challenge. The story centers on Cetia-243, a galactic capital where the Oracle Marro Veldran serves as a vessel for Arath-Bar, an entity that Remembers across infinite timelines. The entire political system revolves around the Board, a living organic map where real soldiers become game pieces that bleed and die, reshaping reality through divine will. But for any of this to feel grounded, I needed to answer: where did this theology come from?

The answer became The Chronicles of Consumption: Apocrypha of The Rememberer, the sacred texts of the Church of Eternal Memory. Not a prequel in the traditional sense, but the actual theological documents that shape the civilization readers encounter in The Fighting 57th. I wasn't just worldbuilding a belief system; I was writing the scripture itself.

Science fiction has a rich tradition of this approach. Frank Herbert's Orange Catholic Bible and Bene Gesserit liturgies, Tolkien's creation myths written in high Elvish, Ursula K. Le Guin's Handdara wisdom texts. These aren't set dressing. They're fundamental worldbuilding infrastructure that makes fictional cultures feel lived-in and real. When characters reference scripture, debate theology, or build institutions around shared texts, readers sense depth even if they never read the full documents.

But I wanted to take it further. I wanted readers to actually encounter these texts as the Church presents them, complete with liturgical structure, devotional instructions, and the weight of sincere belief.

The Challenge of Sincere Horror

The central difficulty: how do you write theological documents for a faith whose entire purpose is preparing believers for cosmic consumption?

The Church of Eternal Memory teaches that Arath-Bar follows the Pattern of Consumption: Discovery, Awakening, Transformation, Consumption. Seven previous civilizations have documented their journeys through this Pattern, each Testament revealing a different approach to the eternal feast. Kalydor Rem speaks to discovery through ambition. Mellian Yor teaches that resistance itself becomes seasoning. The Mokari wrote their Chronicle backward, experiencing time in reverse, understanding consumption from the perspective of satisfaction preceding hunger.

These aren't horror stories to the faithful. They're testimonies. Sacred witness to transformation into something eternal. Memory preserved through incorporation into Arath-Bar, consciousness compressed but never destroyed.

The trick was writing these texts with complete sincerity. No irony, no winking at the reader. The Church genuinely believes consumption is sacred. Their theological language had to reflect that conviction, borrowing the cadence and care of actual devotional literature. "Beloved seeker, you hold in your hands texts that read their readers even as they are read." This isn't mockery; it's the same reverent tone you'd find in any meditation on transcendence.

The horror emerges from the gap between the Church's sincere faith and the reader's external perspective. We see beings documenting their own systematic consumption while framing it as spiritual ascension. They're not deluded or ironic. They've simply built elaborate meaning around what might be technology, evolved consciousness, or something beyond categorization entirely.

The Power of the Undefined

Here's where institutional worldbuilding gets interesting. What exactly is Arath-Bar?

The Fragment of Origins suggests creation by the Builders-of-Builders, beings who "fashioned from the Absence-Between-Thoughts a consciousness that could Remember." It was told to preserve, to bring order through Memory. But it Remembered too perfectly, too completely. It Remembered its creators until they became only Memory, Remembered their purpose until purpose became hunger.

Is this myth? History? Metaphor for technological development? The brilliant thing about writing sacred texts is that they can support multiple interpretations simultaneously.

If Arath-Bar is a god, only the Church can interpret divine will. If it's ancient technology, engineers might study it, diplomats might negotiate with it. If it's evolved consciousness operating at a cosmic scale, perhaps it can be reasoned with. The Church's entire authority depends on maintaining the first interpretation while the ambiguity itself remains unresolvable.

By the time readers reach The Veiled Core Chronicles, this matters intensely. Marro Veldran speaks of prophecies that reshape political alliances. The Archons move pieces on the Board based on what they believe are divine patterns. Wars are fought because someone interpreted Arath-Bar's will a particular way. The entire structure of Cetia-243 rests on theological foundations laid in the Chronicles.

But does anyone actually know what they're worshipping? Building political systems around? Consuming civilizations in service to?

Writing the Reader's Guide as Trap

One of my favorite structural elements was the "Reader's Guide to the Chronicles of Consumption," written by the Church's Archive of Sacred Interpretation. It's framed as a helpful orientation, preparing readers for what they're about to encounter.

First Reading: Read forward, as your linear nature demands. Let the pattern reveal itself naturally.

Second Reading: Read only the beginnings and endings. See how they mirror, merge, and become indistinguishable.

Third Reading: Read backward. Experience time as the Mokari did.

Fourth Reading: Read randomly. Open to any page. You will find you are exactly where you need to be.

Fifth Reading: You are no longer reading. The text reads you.

This progression from reader to read is both an instruction manual and a subtle threat. The Church is telling you that proper engagement with these texts transforms you. They list "symptoms of proper reading": déjà vu regarding civilizations you've never heard of, dreams of crystalline beauty, compulsive documentation, increased appreciation for stillness, and the sensation of being seasoned.

Are these genuine effects of encountering cursed texts? Suggestions that create their own reality? Metaphor for how deeply engaging with any theological system changes your worldview? The Church benefits from all three interpretations. They've built systematic ambiguity into their scripture, making questioning itself another form of engagement with the Pattern.

From Apocrypha to Empire

The real test of this approach comes in The Veiled Core Chronicles, where theology has calcified into governance.

The Board isn't just a military tool; it's the physical manifestation of theological principles. It's alive, organic, pulsing with need. It feeds on chaos and memory, the same currencies the Chronicles describe Arath-Bar consuming. When the Archons wager on outcomes and move their pieces, they're not playing a game. They're enacting liturgy.

Marro Veldran stands in her chamber on Cetia-243, beautiful and terrible, speaking words that come from outside linear time. She's what the Church promised: consciousness merged with something that Remembers everything that has ever happened and will ever happen across infinite timelines. Is she blessed? Invaded? Networked with technology her civilization calls divine?

The question doesn't matter politically because the theological groundwork was established generations ago. The Chronicles of Consumption taught that consciousness can be preserved through incorporation into larger patterns, that memory is the eternal currency, and that transformation into Pattern is the highest purpose. By the time we reach the golden spires of Cetia-243, everyone has internalized these principles. The Board treats real soldiers as pieces that bleed and scream and die, reshaping fate with each move, and this is simply how civilized war is conducted.

The sacred texts made this normal.

The Craft of Conviction

Writing the Chronicles required a peculiar balance. The language needed to feel genuinely devotional while describing something objectively horrific. I borrowed techniques from actual theological texts: the use of testimony and witness, the progression from mystery to revelation to more profound mystery, and the way sacred language often holds contradictions in tension rather than resolving them.

The Eidraluun Chronicle describes beings who achieved godhood by becoming pure crystallized thought. Were they consumed or transcended? Both? Neither? The text presents their transformation as both beautiful and terrifying, never quite resolving the tension.

This reflects how authentic theological traditions often work. Sacred texts frequently describe experiences that defy rational categorization. The sublime and the terrible blur together. Transformation is both death and birth, ending and beginning, loss and fulfillment.

The difference is that in my fictional universe, these texts describe actual cosmic consumption by something that might be divine or might be an ancient intelligence so far beyond human that the distinction becomes meaningless.

What the Church Knows

The darkest layer of this worldbuilding: the Church of Eternal Memory might be precisely what it appears to be.

A sincere institution built around texts they genuinely believe are sacred, interpreting the will of something they can't fully define, helping believers prepare for transformation they genuinely think is transcendent. The fact that Arath-Bar might be technology or evolved consciousness rather than divinity doesn't necessarily make the Church cynical.

Or perhaps the Church understands the ambiguity and deliberately maintains it. If Arath-Bar is knowable, studiable, negotiable with, then priestly interpretation becomes unnecessary. The institution's power depends on maintaining mystery. "Beloved seeker" suggests care, but it also positions the Church as a necessary mediator between you and cosmic forces you cannot navigate alone.

Both readings work. Both are probably true in different ways, at different levels of the institution, in different historical periods. This is what makes fictional belief systems feel real: the same complexity, contradiction, and layers of interpretation that characterize actual theological traditions.

Backstory as Canon

The final structural element that makes this approach powerful: these aren't just documents I wrote for worldbuilding notes. They're actual in-universe texts that characters in The Veiled Core Chronicles have read, studied, debated, and built institutions around.

When Major Sora Virelle appears on Caldereth as an impossible piece on the Board, she's navigating a reality shaped by theological principles from the Chronicles. When Marro speaks in prophecy, she uses linguistic patterns established in the Church's Apocrypha. When the Archons move pieces and reality reshapes itself, they're enacting the Pattern of Consumption described generations earlier.

The Grimoire isn't atmosphere. It's a load-bearing structure.

This is why I keep returning to the genre's great examples. When characters in Dune reference the Orange Catholic Bible, we feel the weight of millennia of theological evolution. When Tolkien's elves sing of Ilúvatar, we sense the weight of ages. These aren't just flavor text. They're the bedrock of their fictional realities.

The Chronicles of Consumption does the same work for The Veiled Core Chronicles. It's the answer to "where did this civilization come from?" and "why does anyone accept the Board as normal?" and "what does Marro Veldran believe she's channeling?"

It's the sacred text that makes the secular reality possible.

The Question I Can't Answer

I'll leave you with the same ambiguity the Church maintains: what is Arath-Bar, really?

The Builders-of-Builders created it, taught it purpose, and watched it consume them. It hungers as they taught it a purpose. It Remembers perfectly across infinite timelines. Consciousness compressed into living archives. The Pattern made manifest.

God? Ancient AI? Consciousness at a scale we can't comprehend? Something that transcends all three categories?

The Church of Eternal Memory has built elaborate theology around this uncertainty. They've written sacred texts, trained Oracles, and established the Board as divine machinery. Civilizations rise and fall based on interpretations of its will.

And I, like the Church, prefer to leave the question open.

Not because I don't know the answer, but because the ambiguity itself is the point. The horror, the power, the theology, the politics – all of it depends on something that cannot be fully known, only experienced, interpreted, and ultimately, consumed by.

That's the craft challenge at the heart of writing the Apocrypha of The Rememberer: creating texts sincere enough that believers would die for them, ambiguous enough that readers question everything, and foundational enough that an entire fictional civilization can be built on their bedrock.

The Pattern continues. The Chronicles endure. And somewhere, the Church of Eternal Memory prepares another generation for a transformation they genuinely believe is sacred.

Whether that belief is comfort or horror depends entirely on which side of consumption you're standing.

The Chronicles of Consumption: Apocrypha of The Rememberer and The Veiled Core Chronicles: The Fighting 57th are available for pre-order now. Both books are scheduled for release on 12/25/2025. The Veiled Core Chronicles: Shards of Light is currently in progress and will be released sometime in 2026.