While fighting Ousters on Hyperion, Colonel Fedmahn Kassad encountered Moneta, a woman who he had previously known only from battle simulations during his training and developed a romantic relationship with. After the attacks against the WorldWeb, the popularity of the Church had risen again people saw the war as punishment against humankind.ĭuring his expedition to Hyperion to study the Bikura, Father Paul Duré of the Catholic Church encountered the Shrike in the planet's labyrinths. The Shrike Church, as it was also known, gained more and more followers, but by the time the Hyperion system was attacked by the TechnoCore disguised as Ousters, riots started against the Church, their temples on Hyperion were destroyed and their priests persecuted. The Church of the Final Atonement was based around the reverence of the Shrike, which they called the 'Avatar' and the 'Lord of Pain'.

The presence of the Shrike on Hyperion was the starting point of some religious changes in the Hegemony. Countless individuals - possibly numbering in the thousands or millions - had been taken by the Shrike and impaled on this tree. When the Shrike chose to impale victims on the thorns, they would not die, but rather continue living while experiencing the full physical pain of impalement. Much like its namesake, the Shrike had a tree for its victims: a vast, artificial tree-like armature made of a substance resembling chrome steel and studded with three-meter-long thorns, which was known as The Tree of Pain. The Shrike derived its moniker from the family of Old Earth birds of the same name, which were known for impaling their prey on the thorns of trees.

It was once thought that the TechnoCore's Ultimate Intelligence was responsible with it's creation, and Ummon of the Core called it 'half-perceived perceptions of an all-too-real extension of our UI', backing this up, but according to Aenea, at some point approximately twelve thousand years after the 'current' time, after he fought the Shrike in the far future, the faction of the TechnoCore known as the Reapers used the violent and soldier aspects of Fedmahn Kassad's personality and DNA, then mutate, twist, and incorporate them into forging the Shrike.The creature did not hold any specific motive of its own, but was more of a pawn, designced to act as the Avatar of the Lions and Tigers and Bears, the TechnoCore Ultimate Intelligence and the Human Ultimate Intelligence at different times and for different purposes. As such, exactly who created the Shrike in the future was indeterminate. According to Ummon, the future was fluid, constantly changing based on 'current' events. The nature of the Shrike's origin was indefinite due to the nature of time itself.

Endymion hyperion