Terrorists, Ritual Nihilists, and the Space-Happy, Part 3. (Unfiltered)

Wanted to finish this up.

Ritual Nihilists

They have had many names. The pre-Reform USNA regime called them ‘superstitionists.’ The New Empire still refers to them as ‘rākṣasas,’ and politely ignores any attempt to modernize the term. Pre-Contact civilizations called them ‘cultists,’ with all that that implied. But these are modern times. The term ‘Ritual Nihilist’ describes the phenomena perfectly well, and without any pseudoscientific nonsense associated with it.

Unfortunately, naming the condition does not actually cure it. Although nothing can cure it. The best anyone’s ever managed to do for a Ritual Nihilist is temporarily allow them enough self-reflection and horror to allow them to commit suicide. It’s uniquely difficult to maintain ethical research standards under conditions like these, so there’s no expectation that there will be a clinical breakthrough anytime soon, or even at all. In the meantime, most organizations have declared Ritual Nihilists as outlaws, to be dealt with as wolves are.

In some ways they are like the space-happy. First is the general murderous behavior. Sufferers from Ritual Nihilism are murder addicts, at a level that is uncomfortably close to an actual physical dependency. The cravings can be mitigated via the killing of animals, but a Ritual Nihilist is constantly at least thinking about the deliberate murder of human beings. Unfortunately, usually they’re planning murder – or actually engaging in it. They also have no meaningful sense of self-preservation, and cannot be trusted.

What makes them alarming is that they form groups. Ritual Nihilists can and do regularly work together to accomplish their goals. They also work horribly well with each other, which is not something one sees with the space-happy. They don’t share an unbreakable bond, and two different groups can easily find themselves to be rivals with each other, but Ritual Nihilists divide the world into Us and Them, and sane humans are very much part of the Them.

Fortunately, they do not all have the same goals, hangups, or obsessions. Any organization, movement, political philosophy, ideology, or even cultural phenomenon can provide the twisted seed from which a Ritual Nihilist group can grow. They do gravitate towards unpopular things, because people who are unpopular find it easier to self-isolate, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the sacrifice, and the blood. The longer they can keep the former secret, the longer the latter can flow. That is officially the goal of all Ritual Nihilists: death, for its own sake. Only terrorists will seriously suggest that there might be other agendas.