Callers are individuals who are extremely talented in generating group cohesion through rhetoric, creativity, and supernatural appeal. The role is considered a combination of several Pre-Burnout professions, both from the modern-era and antiquity.

• Bard/Oral Poet: Callers are notorious for being able to recite lengthy histories, myths, and stories about their patron factions. They are also responsible for fabricating this lore as it develops and teaching their successors about it. 
• Priest/Scholar: Callers have an incredible command of their faction’s doctrines, laws, and opinions. A good Caller can flawlessly explain the evolution of their faction’s ideals, its main influences, and the key decisions made by its leaders. Callers must be adaptive to their faction’s needs and culture. Callers need to constantly innovate and respond to the changing world or the politics of their faction.
• Media Influencer/Personality: Callers work as an in-between to connect a faction’s elites with its average people. They disseminate policy and other key information through the population through public addresses, intimate conversations, or influencing the faction’s artforms. This requires stage-presence, charisma, and skill with rhetoric.
• Shaman/Religious Mystic: Central to the name, Callers can “call-upon” the supernatural. Whether it be the ancestors, recently deceased, gods, demonic entities, or intangible spirits, a Caller serves as their faction’s link to the metaphysical realm. Through illusions, psychoactive drugs, blind faith, or something else (Membrance), Callers can instill an unshakeable belief in their followers. 
• Neutral Advisor: Callers are strictly “neutral”, while they help cement the faction’s ideology, they do not have any decision-making power. Many political figures are trained by Callers, and use their tactics, but Callers themselves are forbidden from seeking other positions. 

The so called “First-Generation Callers” were all presumably living in the region that would become Verdance when it was flooded. From there they were heavily indoctrinated by Verdance’s religion. Near the end of the winter of 2031, approximately 20 of these individuals left the territory and sought out large surviving communities to influence. They would approach a community and offer some version of the following speech:

“I [Name] am a Caller of Verdance. I have come from deep within the Foulness of the Delta to seek out the broken-yet-breathing. To you, the wretched, I offer my service. I cannot stop your bleeding nor set your twisted bones, for I am no doctor and I carry no medicines. I cannot ease your hunger, for I carry no food. I cannot assist with your material wants, for I do not work in your mortal realm. My kind has come so that we may be some salve for your anguish and despair. We have come to help Immerse you in the new world, for you to slough off your pain and be redeemed. I am a Caller. I bring stories, wit, and virtue so that you may fill the holes in your soul. Show me to your leaders, so that while they bring you prosperity, I may begin my work to bring you hope.” 

According to surviving First-Gen Callers, at least a quarter of their number must have been killed before or immediately after giving this speech— including the one destined for the Blue Column. If accepted by the community, the Caller would proceed to learn about the faction’s history, demographics, and other factors that would shape their culture. Once a Caller had a firm understanding of the community that had adopted them, they would begin a lengthy consult with that faction’s leader(s). 

In these meetings, a Caller would state that their priority was the spiritual redemption and survival of their new state. They would make a new religion and gradually convert the population to its rituals and beliefs. However, these beliefs would be entirely influenced by what the leader wanted. The Caller’s responsibility would be to translate policy into spiritual rhetoric and cultural values. With this arrangement, both sides got what they wanted: Callers were able to Immerse large groups of people, and early leaders gained a powerful new system of control. This system outlined the basic political-social structure of most Great Clans and Cities. There was a “leader”, a Caller, and the general populace. A leader would make decisions and set policy, and the Caller would influence the general populace to align with those decisions— or at least obey them with minimal friction. 

What happened across the Widow’s Passage and several early Cities was the painfully awkward “Baptismal-Era”. Even with firm ideals and political backing from on-high, Callers still needed to actually Immerse their target populations. The average Burnout-surviving American was brought-up as some kind of Christian (either some Protestant denomination or Catholic), and had been either agnostic or mildly devout. During the Burnout, many Christians interpreted the collapse as the Rapture and thus became fanatically devout. However, the overwhelming majority of Americans, Christian or other, lost faith entirely. The arrival of Callers, and their early “sermons” on their new religions had mixed reactions. Rational adults were obviously skeptical of some of the genuinely occult and fantastical ideas that the newcomers espoused, however many went along with the religions as they offered ways to bond with other survivors and address their trauma incurred during the Burnout. There were two general commonalities between factions that quickly adopted Callers: extent of Burnout-era suffering and the “absurdity” of their experiences. Communities like The Lake in Wisconsin (what would become the Great Clan, Northway), had endured countless raids by marauders and extreme weather while surviving in partially submerged houseboats— both tragic and absurd. Their Caller described the community’s Immersion as an “overnight process.” Conversely, the areas that had more “mild” Burnout experiences were slightly more resistant to the efforts of early Callers.

The duration of the Baptismal-Era is contentious. Some scholars believe that it ended once three-quarters of a population regularly attended services/rituals put on by its Caller— what they think is the degree of participation needed for a religion to become permanently established. More conservative researchers argue that the Baptismal-Era only concluded once children born after the Burnout demonstrated belief in their faction’s religious narratives. Many historians, and survivors, maintain that religious “faith” in the 2030s was largely disgenuine. The people in that era knew about the fabricated nature of their religions, but followed out of pressure from their community or the desire for hope— no matter how engineered it was. 

Regardless of how devout their parents were, the generation born after the Burnout was extremely faithful. Through the mid-30’s and early 40’s, teens who had apprenticed under First-Generation Callers set out to Immerse other factions as the Second-Generation. By this point, many factions had already developed their own cultures and partially Immersed themselves without any need for a Caller. Nevertheless, this new generation was able to imbed with the ruling elites of the groups they visited. Having accomplished national Immersion (at least for the Passage-Lands and good chunks of the Swells), the responsibilities of Callers shifted from spiritual redemption to maintaining social order as the political landscape of the country shifted. As Great Clans vied for control over periphery territories and independent factions, the Callers of these groups would meet to discuss what the spiritual transition of power might look like. These projects worked to make a smaller clan’s citizenry recognize their new rulers, or understand that they could not pledge loyalty to any single power. Many times, Callers from archrival groups would meet to discuss what peace would look like after the fighting was over.