3.1.0

There are the descriers, and there are the voices, and that is how the congregation of South Baneland came into being. When referring to their group, it is simply "the congregation" for everyone in the area knows it. They tell people that they are the modern Amish, or maybe that's their cover, for no one really ever seems to believe it. To outsiders, they're a cult. No group can be so close knit, they reason. They live secluded lives from the world, intertwined so deeply with each other that often outsiders joke that they are interchangeable. Many will go months, if not years, without leaving the congregation quarters; a spot on the edge of the city, near the world yet separated by rows of trees, somehow less than a mile from modern society yet so isolated that not a sound will get through the dense patch of trees running around it.
So the congregation isolates, secludes, distances itself from everyone different from themselves. The others outside are considered below them. They cannot do what the congregation does. Therefore, few from the congregation bother to leave. They have their own society inside that little patch of trees at the edge of the city. All the children must go to school, for that is the law, but out of school only the men have jobs, and that is the only time they spend not at the congregation. The women leave only to shop, although they grow most of their food themselves. College is an optional sort of state, attended at times by the men of the congregation but rarely by the women; why go to college if you wont ever get a job?
Thus comes the belief formed by the outsiders that the congregation is a cult, and that is how it has stayed for hundreds of years.