#immaculacy

Artifact ••••: The Razor Which Cuts Through Self-Deception (Black Jade Reaper Daiklave)

Master Iron Breather is a widely-respected scholar from the Littoral tradition of Immaculacy -- the Pure Way and its fellows. Known for his unusual teaching style focused on humor, subversion, and deprecation, Master Iron Breather is often called the Great Wise Monkey of Kamthahar or Old Master Bastard.

In his youth, Master Iron Breather defeated a mighty spirit with his bare hands, and took the spirit's mighty sword. For the rest of his life, the Great Wise Monkey of Kamthahar wielded it not as a weapon, but as a razor for his bald head and a knife for his bread -- a final insult to the spirit's arrogance that its legendary sword was put to mundane use.

Master Iron Breather was said to use the sword to cut the hair of his students into embarrassing haircuts to teach them humility. Legends say that once a prince of a mighty Prasadi family came to him and boasted that she was wiser and stronger than the old, bright-eyed monk. Without looking up from his meal, Iron Breather unsheathed the sword and threw it at her head; as it sliced through her hair, a fingernail's breadth from her skull, it embedded itself in the wall behind her, it sliced through her arrogance and she fell down crying, humbled for the first time. It is said that she bore a slice in her hair down the middle of her head for the rest of her life.

Brother Ahamo is a foundational author in the Sanctum-Ascension genre of Immaculate mysticism. Born blind and half-deaf in the ruthless foreign city of Apogee, Ahamo drew his Second Breath at age 20, unusually old. He was drawn by what he called "The Light One Cannot See" to a life of monasticism on the Blessed Isle and to abandon the apostasy of his youth.

Ahamo's most influential works are his Reflections, where he writes extensively on his personal experiences as outcast and outsider. He reflects at length about his personal connections to the Immaculate Dragons and Elemental Dragons, and the liberation he felt of being part of an ordered world. His works are deeply personal, revealing his own struggles with sexual desire, crises of faith, and other topics widely not commented-upon by monks and scholars.

The upper city of Lookshy has been rebuilt many times. Scholars studying ancient Immaculacy could excavate the corner of a certain market street and find the remains of mighty red stones.

The Red Temple was an early Immaculate temple, possibly one of the earliest in the River Province. It was composed of a simple square building, two stories tall, with a large central column supporting the structure. The building had one singular entrance, and the upper half was ringed with large open-air windows. Now it is only ruins, but the structure could be reconstructed from the remaining stones.