The Innocent

Overview

The Innocent is a mythic figure in Kelx cosmology, paired with the Condemned Man and the Magistrate as one of a formative triad. She embodies pure, redeeming inspiration. In the faith’s foundational story, an innocent girl is abducted and killed; at the moment of her death, inspiration from her passes into the perpetrator, becoming the spark that enables him to conceive a world and argue for life before judgment.

Appearance and Traits

No physical description is given. She is described in terms of qualities: innocence, purity, and a redemptive inspiration that can move others toward creation and betterment.

Roles and Actions

• In the founding tale, a robber murders a family and later strangles their daughter—the Innocent. Captured and awaiting judgment, he becomes the Condemned Man.
• Haunted by the Innocent’s lost potential, the Condemned Man claims that a soul can contain the power to create a whole world. To demonstrate this, he narrates a world to the Magistrate. The tale expands over many sittings as new characters and troubles arise, deferring a final sentence.
• Within this cosmology, the Innocent’s inspiration is said to have passed to the Condemned Man at her death and, in turn, to spread “virally” into others, granting each person a share in creative responsibility. Some sects preach hope that a perfected world might one day be created by a Chosen One, saving all worlds recursively.

Relationships

• Condemned Man: The Innocent’s inspiration enters him at her death, enabling his creative narration and offering a path to redemption.
• Magistrate: She does not act directly upon the Magistrate, but her inspiration influences the narrative the Magistrate judges.
• Kedevs and magisters: Clergy and adherents invoke her as the redeeming element of the triad during sermons that exhort personal responsibility and world‑betterment.

Current Status

She is a figure within a religious narrative, not a living person in the present account. Her role is actively referenced in contemporary Kelx preaching, including shipboard services where magisters press listeners to act in ways worthy of favorable judgment.