Factions/Spiked Wheel

A Zeit ago, or maybe two, or three, before the Virus spread her(?) blackredsilver fingers across the Warp, and made it what it is today, there was another Strange -- or rather dozens of other Stranges, all Strange, all slightly different in mood and flavor. Before the virus, Strange was dark in different ways, different gorgeous grotesqueries -- or so say the members of The Spikéd Wheel, a society with the stated goal of easing Strange into a new bloody rebirth, into a new Zeit.

Members of the Wheel are not anti-Strange; indeed, most are almost fanatically pro-Strange. Many are Virus-infected themselves, and, unlike the SMC, do not seek to defeat the Virus -- many think that the Virus is one of the most interesting artwar sallies that the Warp has ever done.

But they feel that eternal change is the heart of Strange; while Charm is permanent childlike latency, Strange is permanently adolescent, caught eternally at the point of change, ever recreating itself. They see themselves as midwives of that eternal rebirth, endlessly in favor of change, always tuning the wheel, continuing the cycle. Many see orgasm -- birthpain -- bloodwater -- life-in-death as the endless cycle. Some, to use their phraseology, "turn the Spikéd Wheel" by indulging in orgiastic sexual practice, bodybirths of various kinds (including the incubation of parasites, fleshsculpting, and more metaphorical -- though always painful -- births), suicide, and rebirth. Others are accomplished warartists and encourage the change in that way, in more metaphorical birth and death. Others are exquisite sadists who drive others through the cycle. Most do a combination, some or all -- experience, as they say, is the gateway to the New.

The Spikéd Wheel is anarchic in the extreme; it has no heirarchy, no set statement of purpose, only the desire for eternal change, the endless longing hunger, and the recurring motifs: sex and fear, blood and love and death. Its members come together from time to time, however, to engage in orgies and other rites, and allowing oneself to be crushed on a spiked wheel -- and thereafter to be reborn; few members are single-lifers -- is often considered to be an initiatory rite, though this is certainly not a requirement in any sense of the word.

To "turn the Spikéd Wheel" is to give birth to the new in a wholly Strange-flavored way: in the inextricably linked foursquare knot of ecstacy, pain, birth and death. The goal is not to efface the old but to merge it with the ever-new, the ever-growing, never-grown, ever-seeking, never-finding, eternal, beautiful, terrible god(dess) Strange.

Neg may very well secretly be a member. Orange does not participate in faction rituals, but openly supports the faction when he finds time to do so.