Eh. "Church of Human Purity" kills it for me. that makes it feel like there is a bit of a forced attitude about life for the player characters - one subscribes to the "those things are bad because they are different" worldview, and must push a species ideal, rather than fight for something greater. I, as a monotheist IRL, could get behind even a polytheist religion in-game, or into a game such as ER where the multiverse is a mess with no clear religious overtone, but this feels like a forced faith -which makes the city of holiness a brittle, self decaying thing itself, and one almost not worth defending.
The eighties tech level I could live with, but this just feels fundamentally wrong to me. Not, mind you, because of my monotheism. rather, it feels self contradictory and just begging for plot holes.
I hope you don't take this knee jerk reaction too harshly, but the church as described raises more questions for me than answers, and any character I play who isn't a straightforward grunt that I don't give a shit about would probably fall to the dark side pretty early on.
I never said their faith was RIGHT, did I?
Something I don't think people get is that I'm showing you things from the perspective of one civilization. Their faith is their own, and its one of many. And their city wasn't the first targeted and it won't be the last. Their faith is their own, not one I'm prescribing to the universe. And considering how actively alien, frightening and hostile the world around them is, I think it's quite understandable that they'd choose to believe in humanity.
I mean, I don't know which god you follow, but could you really tell yourself he was loving and rewarding and something worth your faith if all the world seemed your enemy? Even early Christians believed in a jealous, angry god that punished them for minor slights. And they didn't have nightmare beasts roaming just outside the walls. Also, I'll play the jerk card here and say that there is no religion that isn't full of holes unless it is extremely metaphysical and hands off. I mean, like this:
"Why did god give adam and eve free will if he punished them for using it?"
People can argue that for hundreds of years. And the thing is that there's no answer that will satisfy everyone.
If people want a pantheon or something different because the "Go humanity!" faith is too 40k for their liking, I can give you one. I can even make it so that the gods are all different enough so that people can do what they like.
But I stress this: There is going to be one religion, and there are no atheists here. Others exist elsewhere in the world but this isn't about them.