The Book of Joseph was a pre-order bonus item that was available to the first 2000 persons who ordered the Mondo Edition of Far Cry 5. The book serves as a short autobiography of Joseph Seed and the official history of the Project at Eden's Gate. Table of Contents:
The messenger is often attacked for delivering bad news You will hear a great deal about me: People will tell you that I am a liar, a cheat, a conman A mad man, and even a murderer. People will tell you anything and everything Because I am the bearer of bad news, Because I am the messenger. I am the one who must warn you of the ending of this world And gather the chosen ones who will build the next world. If you want to live, you need to ignore the slander. You need to believe me. You need to follow me. - Joseph Seed Part One: “Bless the name of those who Have dealt you blows. Be grateful to those who Have caused you harm. For it is these sufferings that Have led you to me.” - Sermon from the Project at Eden’s Gate. If a person had been walking down the poorly maintained road out front of the Seed’s house on that afternoon in June and felt the strange urge to glance over, they would have witnessed a bizarre sight. They would have seen a man dressed in black pants and white undershirt, frothing with anger, brandishing a comic book in one hand and a bible in the other at his son, a child of about ten. But no one had been down this road in the poor suburb of Rome, Georgia, in a long time. Not ice cream trucks, not social services cars, not even police patrols. In any case. In these parts, the people kept their noses out of other people’s business, even when that business took place on a porch out in the open. The father thrashed his arms furiously while the boy, young Joseph Seed stood with his head bowed, contrite and seemingly fixated on the floorboards. If he had looked up, he would have seen the kaleidoscopic colors of an old issue of Spiderman flashing by, alternating with the smooth black leather of his father’s Bible and the ruddy face of the father himself. He would have seen the grey teeth - few and far between - of Old Man Seed, as the locals called him, or Old Man Seed behind his back, as Joseph’s big brother Jacob had snickered to him. Dental care was not a priority in the Seed household. The money was needed for other things. So, his father’s teeth always reminded Joseph of rocky crags that pirate ships washed up on in picture books at the library. The priority in the Seed household, as everyone in the neighborhood knew, was cheap whiskey, which the father drank from dawn till dusk. The more whiskey that went in, the more Bible verses that came out - and the more often his children felt the switch. The cause of the paternal fury was simple; comics were forbidden in the home - comics and books, records, magazines, radio, and television. Only the Bible was allowed. Once, when the entire elementary school went to see Gone with the Wind at an old theatre in town, Joseph’s father had leapt up in rage like a drunken jack-in-the-box, and before stunned teachers and students, launched into a rambling sermon condemning the sins of Hollywood, insisting this Babylon had long perverted the most fragile of minds and was responsible for the downfall of all America, with Joseph under one arm and Jacob under the other, he stormed out of the room still hurling curses. This time, when they arrived home, he beat Jacob only, because he was the eldest and thus responsible for his younger brother. At least the brothers had had time to see Atlanta burn. Thus, when Old Man Seed stood on the porch and began sliding off his belt, the child simply removed his T-shirt, folded it carefully, and bent over to offer his pale, delicate back to the worn-out strap of leather. Joseph’s head was turned toward the well maintained - at least by local standards - house of a quiet, gentle widow. He considered it a blessing, if a small one. Facing the other way, he would have had to look at the other neighbor’s house, which even by local standards was so run-down as to be hideous to the eye. When they were younger, the widow used to bake them cakes, probably out of pity for them. The children’s mother wasn’t exactly an impressive chef. She wasn’t exactly a loving mother either. But the widow didn’t bake much of anything anymore now that she was dying of cancer. Instead, she spent her days in her porch rocking chair, rain or shine, tottering gently. Jacob and Joseph argued over whether the groaning came from the wooden rocking chair or the old woman. Sometimes the widow’s daughter would stop by, just long enough to steal her mother’s medication and barter it for heroin. She never stayed long; prospects in the town were so few that not even junkies wanted to live there. On this particular day, the young Joseph, age Seven, received 25 lashes. It was the price to pay for having read about the adventures of a man in tights bitten by a radioactive spider. He bore his punishment and hardly ever cried. You may be wondering who I am to know so much about the banal misery of this family living in a poor white neighborhood like so many others. I am Joseph Seed. And if you want to know why I remember that scorching day in June so clearly, it’s because that was the first day the Voice spoke to me. Part Two: “He who ignores the low flight of the bird, the darkening of skies, and The taste of iron in the blowing wind deserves the thunder and lighting that will rain down upon him.” - Sermon from the Project at Eden’s Gate. Many people claim to hear divine voices. There are numerous lunatics out there, and if it’s not the voice of angels speaking to them, it’s aliens, George Washington, or John Lennon. Every busy street corner has a chosen one, a mad prophet. They announce that “THE END IS NIGH!”, that humanity has been irredeemably condemned for its sins and misdeeds, ordering you to repent and damning you to the eternal flames of hell. They frighten children and inspire a vague sense of pity in adults - especially when you catch a whiff of their body odor as you pass. Yet they claim to be heralds of the holy word. Why should I be any more believable? How am I any different? Probably because I’m not here to talk about saving your soul. I’m here to talk about life before death. I’m only here to help you survive the impending chaos. Don’t get me wrong - the world is coming to an end. It's destruction has been foretold. And as glassy-eyed as your street-corner proselytizer is, as confused as his spirit is. I can’t help but respect him for understanding better than anyone else that the clock is ticking. But whereas he only senses a murky feeling of doom deep in his bones. I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I know it because the Voice told me so. The Voice of the Creator. I am here to tell you that God has tired of humanity’s behavior and intends to take back everything He has created. Man’s pride has made him so forgetful and ungrateful, that God intends to start over. For we have learned nothing. We have left our filth on everything, soiled it all. And as insignificant as we are, our perversion, our duplicity, the indescribably cruelty we inflict on each other has fanned the flames of His anger. How can we still doubt the approaching deluge that will wash us all away? We may have been created in His image, but we have reinvented ourselves, adding make-up, and contorting ourselves into strange shapes to become ghastly creatures. We who were once so pure, who lived in Paradise, now wallow in muck day and night, entombing our original goodness under a thick layer of filth. We have enraged our God and we will pay the price sooner than we think. Look at what the world has become. Look at how some bask in the opulence while others drown in misery. Witness the vicious cycle of conflicts spiraling out of control, of crusades driven by the greed of men. Greed - that is what drives mankind. In man’s endless quest, a quest that never ends well, those with nothing are worth no more than those with everything. Victims never dream of a more just society, they yearn only to join the caste of the unjust, to tread on the poor in turn. The greed of men destroys every hint: forests, oceans, their fellow man. Men kill, they poison, they corrupt. Men care not whether individuals die on the other side of the world as long as we possess the latest technology: they care not whether the multitudes are trampled upon as long as they can fill their cars with cheap gasoline. In their frenzy for possessions, they mock everything. Nothing is sacred anymore. They dance atop ruins, march through cemeteries parading the still-warm ashes of those who were sacrificed in the flames. In a society where selfishness triumphs, where people can’t see beyond the end of their own noses, where they worship themselves, what becomes of the righteous? What becomes of goodness? Of the humble or those who wander abandoned in this vast wasteland that the world has become? What becomes of those who prefer to understand rather than to possess, to share rather than to keep? They are ridiculed. We scoff at the generous, at those who care for others. We laugh at those who feed the destitute; we mock people who prefer the real world to virtual illusions. We point and laugh, call them weak, simple-minded misfits. We heap insults upon them and beckon them to join the macabre carnival of frenzied consumption. And if they refuse, we become suspicious of them and cast them out. Who else do the FBI and other government agencies persecute these days? Such pariahs are constantly harassed and subjected to the relentless zeal of federal authorities. They are subpoenaed, hunted down, kept tabs on, and humiliated. Sometimes they’re dragged off to prison and driven to madness or suicide. Look deep inside your heart: isn’t this exactly what you’ve always believed too? Are you not a member of this new crop of martyrs, devoured by the invisible beasts of despair and solitude unleashed upon you in the world’s arena? I see that you hesitate to answer, that you do not agree. Your suspicion is understandable. This vice-filled world - a world to which you don’t belong - has so long forced you to hide your true self away, taught you in painful ways to protect yourself, beat down the impulses of your heart, distrust words, distrust others - even distrust yourself. But let me tell you what the Voice told me: The Creator has never turned a blind eye to the distress of the righteous. He has been watching mankind and has seen those who desecrate His word, who desecrate themselves in a race toward material wealth and vainglory. Such sinners have angered Him and it won’t be long until he unleashes his righteous punishment. The wheat will be separated from the chaff. This is the mission bestowed upon me. I must gather those who will be touched by the grace of It’s message and bring them together to form a family. The emptiness you feel inside is a resonant chamber that amplifies the Voice so that you may know It is genuine. What if you could be one of the chosen ones along with others who believed in me? What if you could be one of those whose preserved purity allows you to grasp the divine source of the message that I’m spreading? What if you knew from the instant we met, that I wasn’t just another fool at the crossroads? If you too dream of restoring the world’s original beauty and harmony - if you have the faith and the drive - then join me and you will survive the cataclysm that is upon us. To live again in the Garden of Eden. The way we did before. Part Three: “They quote prophets who were born slaves. They sing the praises of saviors born of the people. But in their arrogance, they will never understand that the messenger is not of their caste.” - Sermon from the Project at Eden’s Gate. When the Voice spoke to me, it had been a long time since I’d heard anything comforting. Father had just taken me and Jacob out of school to home-school us himself. He meant to pass on knowledge more faithful to his convictions, away from evil influences, as he proclaimed to anyone who would listen. Which was no one. I no longer had stories our teachers innocently recounted of the adventures of pious, tightknit, loving families of pioneers who conquered the country by braving all sorts of dangers. If those pioneers had known what would become of their dreams, they most likely would have chosen not to brave anything at all and to slaughter their oxen and burn their covered wagons. But some home-schooling was quite common and perfectly legal in the state of Georgia as long as one of the parents could read and write. Father met both of these criteria. The fact he wasn alcoholic who beat us simply did not concern the authorities. As for the neighbours, they were too busy with their own problems to worry about the fat of Old Man Seed’s boys. It wasn’t that they were heartless — on the contrary, they were good people. But despite their kind nature, they had been hardened by misery. In our town, everyone worked the same job — collecting unemployment. We lived off a patchwork of welfare, food stamps, charity and soup kitchens funded by rich liberals from wealthy suburbs paid for to buy themselves a conscience or so they could brag about it at the dinners they threw at hip Atlanta restaurants. In these parts, everyone had their own cross to bear. Some had more than one, and the worst off had enough to fill a cemetery. Thus, we were alone with our problems, just us, members of a family descended from pioneers who failed to conquer anything but vast nothingness and gained only the right to settle their misery in one place. Amid this emptiness, my sole source of joy was running to the corner gas station at the very end of our street. Our mother would send us there to buy — often on credit — the hot dogs and frozen pizza that formed the bulk of our diet. And whiskey, of course, for our father. The owner was a good man at heart who let me skim through the magazines next to the register, without a word. I would sit alone in a corner, enjoying the cool breeze of the noisy air conditioner and the sound of the radio playing over worn-out speakers. I read and the world disappeared. Sometimes he’d give me a soda, for no reason, without asking for anything in return, as if he weren’t from around here. Later, when I began founding my community and gathering believers, I decided to give him a visit and bring him the message I bore. I wanted to save him the way he saved me. That’s when I learned he had been shot years earlier in a robbery committed by people who couldn’t have been from the neighbourhood — everyone in town knew that the contents of his cash drawer weren’t worth three .38 bullets. May he rest in peace. At least he won’t be around for the horror of the end times. Why did the Voice choose to speak to me on that day in particular? I believed it’s because recently my brother Jacob had begun to clash with our father more and more. We were separated by more than just age. He was also bolder. He was the first one to jump into the polluted reservoirs, the quickest to go adventuring in other neighbourhoods, despite the bands of kids who marked it as their exclusive territory. He was also the one who pinched candy whenever possible, at the risk of severe punishment, just so we could have a bit of sweetness and comfort in our lives. He was surely a thief, but I came to admire him as a modern day Robin Hood, with a forest of broken down houses, cracked roads and overgrown gardens. We were accustomed to our father’s mood swings, the stench of alcohol on his breath, his maniacal sermons. We were even used to his smacks and kicks, to the lashes of his belt. But he had started beating our little brother, John. Jacob was strong and determined, and I was somehow able to retreat deep within myself during whippings. But John was young and so delicate. It tortured Jacob to see him cry and howl after being beaten. And the anger Jacob felt mutated into a fierce hate. Our mother’s lethargy only made things worse. She glided through the house, listlessly, always wearing the same nightgown. She had never been anything more than a ghost to us, of no help whatsoever, possibly doomed to derangement for all eternity, having been crushed by her marriage to a man who spoke like a saint but acted like a demon. Violence seeped into the cracks between the father and his oldest son. We certainly didn’t lack examples. Violence filled our neighbourhood. Robberies, fights, drug deals, domestic violence — what kids from nice neighbourhoods saw on TV, we saw from the windows. The full range of misery, and its faithful companion, crime, was everywhere we looked. We had all the inspiration we needed. Violence had become so normal that when we went to bed, Jacob talked shamelessly with us about various strategies he had come up with for getting rid of our father. Maybe he was only plotting and dreaming out loud, like mistreated employees who think about revenge after a few drinks. Nonetheless, I understood that I needed to talk to Jacob and hold him back. We could lie and steal and be forgiven, but could not raise a hand against our father. For behold, this is the greatest of all sins — the ultimate, unforgivable sin. Why, then, did the Voice speak to me and not my brother? I have often asked myself this question. I have never truly understood, never received a response. I was no better or worse than any of the other children. Maybe it was just that I was available, in the right place at the right time to hear the Voice. In time, I stopped asking all these questions and accepted that I was the messenger as I had accepted the message. I spread the message, tirelessly exalting the souls, like the crackling speaker that warmed the heart of children sitting under a flashing neon sign in a gas station in Rome, Georgie USA. End of Part 03 - To Be Continued.
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