1

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Basic Rules of the Fate of the Manifold Worlds
a. Aspects
b. Skills
c. Stunts
d. Stress
e. Consequences
f. Refresh
g. Taking Action
i. Rolling the Dice
1. The Ladder
ii. Interpreting Results
h. Fate Points
i. Invoking
ii. Declaring a Story Detail
iii. Compels
3. What Are the Manifold Worlds?
a. Religion in the Manifold Worlds
4. What is outside the Manifold Worlds
a. Barbarian Space
b. The Enemy of Man
c. The Confluence
d. Aekihv
e. Chaozhaanshe
f. Shabda Nakati
g. The Straflings
5. A brief history of the Universe from the point of view of Man
6. Character Creation
7. Aspects
8. Common Skills
9. Who are the Schools
a. The Great Schools
i. Belisarians
1. War
ii. The Dragoumanoi
1. Language and Communication
iii. Finders of Karao
1. Geographic Navigation, survival
iv. Order Aisahe
1. Terraforming, human survival
v. Mind Masters of Sazur
1. Psychology
vi. Servile Union
1. Obedience
vii. The Spice Merchants of Oca
1. Pharmaceutical Biochemistry
viii. Universal Bankers
2
 1. Banking
ix. The Watchmakers of Xzin
1. Micro-mechanical engineering, heretical
b. Minor/Specialized Schools
i. Adonae of Calyz
1. Beauty
ii. Alvar Alaxel
1. Architecture
iii. Bene Tlontis
1. Archivists and memory
iv. Contortionist-Assassins
1. Muscle Control
v. Dansuers of Cascondia
1. Dance, courtly grace, and body movements
vi. Epicures of Cascondia
1. Food Preparation
vii. Gunners of Caliban
1. Applied Marksmanship, trick shooting
viii. Harcaro Geise
1. Sex
ix. Iskanderan School of Sword
1. Swordplay
x. Kironat Potentialists
1. Specialization and enhanced skill training
xi. Kishandian School of Sight
1. Non-visual Compensation
xii. Larian Mimes
1. Body Language and emotion
xiii. Listeners of Chirrof
1. Observation and Deduction
xiv. Living Weapons
1. Murder and martial arts
xv. Meteorologists of Charybdis
1. Weather Prediction and Manipulation
xvi. Musicians of cascondia
1. Music and Sound
xvii. Nax Persuaders
1. Torture and Anatomy
xviii. Noticians of Cascondia
1. Song, Instruments, and memory
xix. Ouroboros Recyclers
1. Waste Management
xx. The Phadir Naenix
1. Endurance, Resilience, and Target Focus
xxi. Phobos Justicars
1. Fear and the Fight/flight reflex
xxii. Poison Tasters
1. Sense of Taste
3
 xxiii. Quentle School
1. Hearing and Sound
xxiv. Quingdou Eshe Marshals
1. Close Range Gunfighting with pistols
xxv. Racers of Seratna
1. Speed
xxvi. Saccade Institute
1. Attention and optometry
xxvii. Sacred Order of Mirror Blasters
1. Spatial Geometry
xxviii. School of the Twin Falls
1. Physical Performance, Unarmed combat, and Security
xxix. Siki Reeton School
1. Comprehension and pedagogy
xxx. Sisters Abanda
1. Penmanship and writing
xxxi. Skymen of Charybdis
1. Aircraft Piloting
xxxii. Space Astrologers
1. Astrology and mathematical predictive analysis
xxxiii. Thredians of Cacsondia
1. Clothing design
xxxiv. Voluntas
1. Observation and the Senses
xxxv. Vrason Diagnostics
1. Medicine
xxxvi. Weaponeers of ahTwound
1. Crafting of Hand Weapons
xxxvii. Zymurgists
1. Fermentation
c. Esoteric Schools
i. Asterion Maze-Makers
1. Architectural Warfare
ii. Calculators Guild
1. Pure Math
iii. Children of the Eye
1. Also Null Space Navigation
iv. Ecstatics of Govsil
1. Breath Control, States of Euphoria
v. The Holy Scriveners of Shafad
1. Writing and Calligraphy, Records Management, Symbolism and
Semiotics
vi. Inner Lights
1. Memory and Perception
vii. Kaltar Daemonologists
1. Personality
viii. Khyber Empaths
1. Aesthetics and empathy
4
 ix. Morphean Oneiromancers
1. Consciousness, Lucid Dreaming, Hypnosis, and Sleep
x. School of Tea Mastery of Cascondia
1. Tea Mastery and perfection
xi. Solipsiste Movement
1. Identity
xii. Stoics of Unne
1. Endurance and Conviction
xiii. Tao of Sophos
1. Fallacies and Illogic
xiv. The Thirlian Players
1. Games and game theory
xv. Vao Re
1. Physical and mental balance and harmony, theta wave brain
state
d. Heretical Schools
i. The Anakadmon Fernexis
1. Bionic Integration
ii. Animal Men of the Periphery
1. Primitive Rage and Atavistic Fury
iii. Argian Order
1. Vision
iv. Breeders of Ouori
1. Dog Breeding and Obedience training
v. Cerberans
1. Memory and cognition
vi. Confraternita di Sabotatori Santi
1. Sabotage and entropy
vii. Heretical Romancers
1. desire, love, trade
viii. Pallas Enath
1. War as Artform, deadly beauty
ix. Sentinels Corphyan
1. Protection and cybernetic sense sharing
x. Symbioun Cyphers
1. using parasites to benefit man
10. Technologies of the Manifold Worlds
a. Space Travel
i. Altman-Le Guerre Uncertainty Bridge device
ii. Space Ship Design
b. Weaponry of the Manifold Worlds
i. Quad Rail Electromagnetic Musket
ii. Laser weapons
iii. Sliver Gun
iv. Kite-Dart
v. Rayah Gun
vi. Findsman Rifle
vii. Plasma ejector
5
 viii. Razor Field
ix. Electrocution gun
c. Defensive Technologies of the Manifold Worlds
i. Kinetic Force Screen
d. Other Technologies unique to the Manifold Worlds
i. Environmental suit
e. Sacred Chemistry: Nootropics
i. Plastex
ii. Houndsbreath
iii. Bloodsalt
iv. Ichor
v. Amrit
11. NPCs and Enemies
a. Calibans
b. Doangers
c. Araey(Great Bird)
d. Debo
e. Razor Grass
f. Ba'alohrre
g. Red Fucigg
h. Kiba Cibalba
i. Kertyu
j. Gemini
12. Known Worlds
a. Cascondia
b. Morpheus
c. Sazur
d. Karao
e. Seratna
f. Vras
g. Tlon
h. Kish
i. Kadis
j. Calyz
k. Mlas
l. Charybdis
m. Caliban
n. Vayliiyt
o. Julex
p. Fyurusaa
q. Iskandra
r. Howadar
s. ah'Twound
t. Firahs Rock
u. Actus
v. Xzin
w. Orbital Space Station Mo-Loke
x. Amirdoo
6
 y. Kaltar
z. Asprit
aa. Venus
bb. Bocardo
cc. Kohre Di'if
dd. Ahia(HolMech 0007)
13. Example Scenario

Fate of the Manifold Worlds

Man is the Measure of All Things.
The Human Hand gives work its value.
The Human Mind gives work its meaning.
The Human Soul gives work its purpose.

The purpose of machines is to serve.

The purpose of mankind is to drive.
Let never the servant be the master,
nor the assistant be the ruler.

Weak is the Hand whose work is done by machines, for this work has no value.
Weak is the Mind whose thinking is done by machines, for this thinking has no meaning.
Weak and Wicked is he who values machines over his own soul.
By hand and mind and soul alone are the Manifold Worlds tamed.

~Common Litany of the Schools of the Manifold Worlds

Introduction
There are Manifold Worlds among the stars.

Ten thousand years of exploration and colonization have taken mankind a very long way
from Forgotten Earth. The Altman-La Guerre Uncertainty Bridge Device allowed mankind to
enter the Great Diaspora across Null Space, sending huge cathedral ships into a state of
superposition where only a living mind can determine exactly where, among billions of
probabilities, will the ship emerge.

Only a living mind. This is the basis and foundation of the civilization of the Manifold Worlds:
the universe can be only tamed and subdued by the human mind, body and soul. The
thought of creating machines to replace any function a human being may fulfill, or worse, to
surpass it, is heretical and blasphemous, because it undermines the position of mankind as
the pinnacle of creation and ruler of the stars. And to create a thinking machine is the worst
of the abominations, a mind without soul capable of unknown horrors.

7
No. The living mind, body and soul of mankind must be developed, trained and exalted into
the absolute peak perfection, into levels that the uninitiated might consider supernatural or
impossible. This is the foundation and reason of the existence of the Ancient Schools,
institutions devoted to only one of the Manifold Ways in which the human capabilities can be
honed and polished into perfection. Following the teachings of the Aristean Faith and the
Church of Mankind Ascendant, the Masters of the Schools believe, know, that one can reach
Sainthood, or even divinity, through the relentless pursuit of perfection in a narrow field.
Those whose achievements are greatest are allowed to take the sacred Amrit, risking losing
control of their minds and bodies for the chance to push away old age and continue their
quest for transcendence. It is said that in the keeps of the Great Schools there are Revered
Masters close to a thousand years old, whose skills are the stuff of legends.

Each School controls a more or less broad field of human endeavor, from muscle control,
memory enhancement or the nature of identity, to efficient killing, terraforming or song.
Among the greatest are the Dragoumanoi, the Interpreters that allow the billions of
inhabitants of disparate worlds to communicate with each other, and the Navigators and the
Children of the Eye that pilot the cathedral ships across Null Space.

However, there are other powers in human society beside the Schools. The Church of
Mankind Ascendant, that controls who will and will not be allowed to take the tests for
entering a School, is one of them, but there are also the Princes and Magnates. Both are
rulers of worlds, either inherited from a past shrouded in the mist of ages, or purchased
within the last few millennia. The Princes, however, have something the Magnates do not:
the sacred Ichor that flows through their veins, making them paragons of human
near-perfection, broader, but less focused, than School Masters. The Princely Ichor can not
be duplicated or replaced, and thus, along with the throne each Prince inherits the very
blood of their predecessor.

The Schools, the Church, and the Princes and Magnates with their families compose the
Khalsa, the Free, the only ones allowed to pursue perfection. The rest are the Rayah, the
Flock, whose role, according to the Aristean Faith, is supporting the Khalsa and serving
faithfully, so that their quest for perfection may help the whole of Mankind. In reality, they
are very much at their mercy, and if they are well treated or horribly oppressed depends
solely of the whims of their rulers. The only way to pass from the Rayah to the Khalsa is
passing the exams of the Order of the Watchful Eye to enter the Church or a School, but
only the very best of the best (or the really well connected) stand a minimal chance.

This is, of course, civilized society, but not all of society is civilized. There are heretic
Schools hidden among moons and remote star systems, using prohibited technologies in a
misguided attempt to rise over the rest of humanity. There is the Enemy of Man, the
Machine Gods, sentient, soul-less computers that have enslaved their former human
masters, whose techno-shamans gleefully preach about the supremacy of inorganic
intelligence. There is the Confluence, emotionless beings encased in environmental suits,
whose language the Dragoumanoi refuse to learn, merchants of impossibly high technology
that profess absolute neutrality. There are the Aekhiv, deluded religious fanatics dedicated
to exterminate mankind in the name of wild nature; the Shabda Nakati, masters of genetic
manipulation that consider mankind a base thing to be altered and surpassed; and the
many barbarians and heathens outside the reach of the Church and the Schools, among
8
them the dreaded Chaozhaanshe, the Super Soldiers of Ihmal.

The Manifold Worlds are a dangerous place, a place of mystery and conspiracy, of ancient
and forgotten traditions and baroque customs, with obscure privileges and exceptions.
Anyone can be an agent of a rival School, a pawn of the Church or an envoy of a Magnate,
not to speak of a Machine God missionary or an Aekhiv bioterrorist. Centuries-old masters
and Princes conspire amongst themselves, putting in motion plans behind plans and wheels
within wheels, using all tools at their disposal, from venom to money, treachery and war, in
order to pursue their own agendas, all with the shining beacon of human perfection and
universal mastery as their ultimate goal. Enemies can become allies, lovers can become
rivals, and all can become pawns in schemes that began centuries or millennia before the
birth of their ancestors.

This is a place where the lowest can become the highest, and the highest can s ink to the
deepest pits of degeneracy. A place when a word or a knife can alter the Fate o f the
Manifold Worlds.

Welcome.

Gaming in the Manifold Worlds

You have seen the Schools. You have seen the worlds. You know by heart the Aristean
philosophy of excellency, abhor the Enemy of Man and maybe even aspire to be, some day,
one of the Thousand Saints. What now? How do you craft all this into a game?

There are as many ways to play a game in the Manifold Worlds as paths to Aristean
excellency. First, consider the roles played by the characters themselves, what are their
places in the world. The Church of Mankind ascendant teaches (at least to those capable of
it) that a person, to become a Complete Human, must have aspirations, and long for
greatness. What are the present circumstances of your characters, and what are their
goals?

Are they peasant Rayah intent on being picked up by the Watchful Eyes? How do they plan
to do it? Would they wait to the next examinations round, or take a bold stance and try to
show everyone their worth in a chosen skill?

Are they novices from one of the Schools? If so, which one? They can be all classmates
being tutored, or maybe they come from different Schools and are cross-training, or being
instructed in religious philosophy by the Church.

Or are they already adepts? There are many ways in which adepts from different Schools
can join forces: they can be hired for one-term jobs where their skills are complementary,
or form long-term partnerships. They can find themselves joined by circumstances, maybe
hired by opposing forces to do the same job using wildly different means... or even to
prevent the other from doing his. Or, of course, they can be part of a Shahaba.

A Shahaba is the retinue, the court, the staff and entourage of a Magnate, Prince, or
something with aspirations of one thing or the other. What happens when the Prince realizes
9
that his daughter is recruiting a Shahaba? Does that mean that she wants his Ichor now,
and that the succession process will be... hasted? What does that mean for the adepts? Are
they on board, do they knew when they came to the planet that their prospective employer
was not the legitimate Prince or Magnate?

They may be also the Shahaba of the ruling Prince. What if there is a threat to their
employer? Or if a rival School, not represented in the Shahaba but with similar areas of
expertise, begins a slander campaign against one of the members in order to replace them?
They may even be tasked simply with running the day to day affairs of their master. An
entire world is not easy task, and the opportunities for conflict and intrigue abound.

The player characters may not even be School adepts. What if they are Church members,
looking for great men and women whose deeds record? Or preachers sent to barbarian
worlds to teach the principles of the Aristean Faith? They may even be members of one of
the Magnate or Princely families, scheming for money and/or power under the shadow of
their rulers.

How to use this document

In this game you play members of a Prince or Magnates Sahabah, a group of adepts with
skill beyond the dreams of twenty-first century man. You will play members of the various
ancient schools, both minor and major. This is a world of intrigue and assassination and
everyone is used as a means to an end. There are two basic modes of play in this game,
Cooperative and PvP. In a Co-Op game you will all be working together to increase your
leaders standing and build a better tomorrow. In a PvP game you will be working against
everyone else to further your own goals, paranoia and distrust are rampant.

[chapter breakdown]

Recommended Media
Dune by Frank Herbert: this was the seed that lead to the creation of the Manifold Worlds.
Also the movie was pretty good, as was the mini-series on Scifi...though it is six hour long.
Neverness by David Zindell: Throughout this book and it sequels(the Broken God, The Wild,
and War In Heaven) a great many schools like those in the Manifold are described,
investigated, and mentioned.
Saga of the Seven Suns by Keven J. Anderson: There is much in this that fits, though a lot
of it does not. Specifically pay attention to the Green Priests.
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons: there is a lot of this that works really well as a choice
here. that and it is just worth the read.
The Deathstalker Series by Simon R. Green: More on the pulp side of the spectrum and with
a lot of magic and such in it. However there is much to emulate from the series. The
Deathstalker is a genetically designed supersoldier that operates much how the Manifolds
Animal Men do. The Battle Drugs are prevalent, and the Meandre Mundus were taken
directly from this series. Ignore the espers and you have some interesting stuff to work with
here.
Lexx: a TV show that does not get enough love. Mostly pay attention to the first part of the
first episode/movie. The hellish worlds all living under His Shadow are ripe with mood and
10
feel
Legion of Superheroes: For a less dystopian world. the legion itself could be viewed as a
really optimistic view of the Supreme Executors Sahabah. Dealing with issues throughout
the Manifold Worlds they are the best of the very best.

Any other t houghts on inspirations? Comment here.

The Risen Empire duology by Scott Westerfeld is pretty cool.

The Basic Rules of Fate of the Manifold Worlds

What you need to play?
Getting into a game of Fate of the Manifold Worlds is very simple. You need:

Between three and five people. One of you is going to be the gamemaster (or
GM for short), and everyone else is going to be a player.
A character sheet, one per player, and some extra paper for note-taking.
(GMs, any important characters you play might have a character sheet also.)
Fudge/Fate dice, at least four, preferably four per person. Fate dice are a
special kind of six-sided dice that are marked on two sides with a plus symbol (+),
two with a minus symbol (-), and two sides are blank (0). You can get these dice
from many hobby and game stores, often under their original name, Fudge dice. (For
Fates purposes well continue to call them Fate dice, but call them whatever you
like!) Fate dice can be purchased at your friendly local game shop or online.
Tokens to represent fate points. Poker chips, glass beads, or anything similar will
work. Youll want to have at least thirty or more of these on hand, just to make sure
you have enough for any given game. You can use pencil marks on your character
sheet in lieu of tokens, but physical tokens add a little more fun.
Index cards. These are optional, but theyre very handy for recording aspects
during play.

If youre a player, your primary job is to take responsibility for portraying one of the
protagonists of the game, which we call a player character (or PC for short). You make
decisions for your character and describe to everyone else what your character says and
does. Youll also take care of the mechanical side of your characterrolling dice when its
appropriate, choosing what abilities to use in a certain situation, and keeping track of fate
points.

If youre a gamemaster, your primary job is to take responsibility for the world the PCs
inhabit. You make decisions and roll dice for every character in the game world who isnt
portrayed by a playerwe call those non-player characters (or NPCs). You describe the
environments and places the PCs go to during the game, and you create the scenarios and
situations they interact with. You also act as a final arbiter of the rules, determining the
outcome of the PCs decisions and how that impacts the story as it unfolds.

Both players and gamemasters also have a secondary job: make everyone around you look
11
awesome. Fate is best as a collaborative endeavor, with everyone sharing ideas and looking
for opportunities to make the events as entertaining as possible.

Players, your character sheet contains everything you need to know about your
PCabilities, personality, significant background elements, and any other resources that
character has to use in the game. Heres an example of a Fate character sheet to illustrate
all the components.

[Character sheet graphic]

Aspects
Aspects are phrases that describe some significant detail about a character. They are the
reasons why your character matters, why someone is interested in seeing your character in
the game. Aspects can cover a wide range of elements, such as personality or descriptive
traits, beliefs, relationships, issues and problems, or anything else that helps us invest in
the character as a person, rather than just a collection of stats.
Aspects come into play in conjunction with fate points. When an aspect benefits you, you
can spend fate points to invoke that aspect for a bonus. When your aspects complicate your
characters life, you gain fate points backthis is called accepting a compel.

[Example]

Aspects can describe things that are beneficial or detrimentalin fact, the best aspects are
both. And aspects dont just belong to characters; the environment your characters are in
can have aspects attached to it as well.

Skills
M
ost things that player characters do in the game are done with skills (and of course if the
skill isnt enough, you can augment it with an aspect). Skills are areas of training,
experience, or sheer talent. When you want your character to do something risky or that
has the potential to add to the storysomething with an interesting consequence for
failureyoull use one of your characters skills. Unlike aspects, skills are concrete and
quantifiableeach skill has a numeric skill rating that measures how effective the character
will be with it in play and how likely you are to succeed. Skills tell you what a character can
do. Every skill also has a Power Tier that indicates how effective it is in comparison with the
efforts of an ordinary human being. Most skills are in the Mundane Tier, but transhuman
skills can go beyond it, such as the Bellesarians tactical genius or a Dragumanois ability
with language. To see if you do well, roll Fate dice and add your skill rating. Thats your skill
roll. Compare the skill roll to a difficulty number set by the GM. If you beat the difficulty
number , you succeed.

[Example]

Stress

12
W
hen bad things happen to characterssuch as injury, embarrassment, or frightthey
take stress . If your objective is harming someone else (physically or otherwise), stress is
how we represent it in the game. Stress comes in three varieties: Health, Composure, and
Reputation. The more points of stress you take, the worse off you are. For example, lets
say youre in a fistfight with a couple of goons. Your effort (the total of your roll, your skill
rating, and any modifiers) is +6, while theirs is only +3. The GM tells you that you can
spend a shift to knock one of them down a short flight of stairs and out of the immediate
area. You decide
to do that, and put the other two shifts toward dealing damage. The goon takes 2 points of
Health stress and is knocked down the stairs. If something has a Weapon rating (like
Weapon 1), it does additional stress. If something has an Armor rating (like Armor 1), it
absorbs stress. Taking stress is bad. If you take enough of it, youre Taken Out , or
removed from the story for at least a while. You could be dead, unconscious, disgraced,
fleeing in panic, or whatevers appropriate for the attack that took you out. Within that
context, the attacker gets to choose your fate. Given a few minutes of respite, stress goes
away on its own. When you dont have that luxury, there is another way to reduce stress:
by taking consequences.

[Example]

Consequences
"the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences." Liet-Kynes

Consequences are the other option you have to stay in a conflict, but they have a more
lasting impact. Every time you take a consequence, it puts a new aspect on your sheet
describing your injuries. Unlike stress, you have to take time to recover from a
consequence, and its stuck on your character sheet in the meantime, which leaves your
character vulnerable to complications or others wishing to take advantage of your new
weakness.

Refresh
Refresh is the number of fate points you get at the start of every game session to spend for
your character. Your total resets to this number unless you had more fate points at the end
of the last session.

Gifts and Fate Points

Gifts bend the rules a little where your character is concerned. You might have a Gift that
gives you a special piece of equipment or that makes one of your aspects more powerful or
that provides a little boost to some of your skills in the right circumstances. Theyre sort of a
halfway point between aspects and skills, in that they have concrete mechanical effects, but
its up to you to define the specifics within the guidelines provided. Every character has at
least one Gift. Well discuss them in the Gifts section. Every player also has a store of Fate
Pointssometimes a lot, sometimes a few, sometimes none! Spend Fate Points to affect the
events of the story in your favor; earn Fate Points by acting in accordance with one of your
characters aspects in a way that puts you at a disadvantage. This back and forth of Fate
Pointsthe Fate Point economyis, like aspects, central to Fate. More information on how

13
this. And thats how you play the game.

Taking Action
Players, some of the things youll do in a Fate game require you to roll dice to see if your
character succeeds or not. You will always roll the dice when youre opposing another
character with your efforts, or when theres a significant obstacle in the way of your
effort.Otherwise, just say what your character does and assume it happens.
To overcome an obstacle
To create or unlock an advantage for your character, in the form of an aspect you can use
To attack someone in a conflict
To defend yourself in a conflict

Rolling the Dice

When you need to roll dice in Fate, pick up four Fate dice and roll them. W hen you read t he
dice, read every + as +1, every 0 as 0, and every - as 1. Add them all together. Youll get
a result from 4 to +4, most often between 2 and +2.
Here are some sample dice totals:

-+0+ = +1
+-00 =
+++- = +2
-000 = 1

The result on the dice isnt your final total, however. If your character has a skill thats
appropriate to the action, you get to add your characters rating in that skill to whatever you
rolled.

So, once youve rolled the dice, how do you determine what a particular result means? Glad
you asked.

The Ladder
In Fate, we use a ladder of adjectives and numbers to rate the dice results, a characters
skills and the result of a roll.
Heres the ladder:
+8 Legendary

+7 Epic

+6 Fantastic

+5 Superb

+4 Great

+3 Good

14
 +2 Fair

+1 Average

+0 Mediocre

-1 Poor

-2 Terrible

It doesnt really matter which side of the ladder you usesome people remember the words
better, some people remember the numbers better, and some people like using both. So
you could say, I got a Great, or I got a +4, and it means the same thing. As long as
everyone understands what youre communicating, youre fine.
Results can go below and above the ladder. We encourage you to come up with your own
names for results above Legendary, such as Zounds! and Ridiculously Awesome. We do.

Interpreting Results
When you roll the dice, youre trying to get a high enough roll to match or beat your
opposition. That opposition is going to come in one of two forms: active opposition, from
someone rolling dice against you, or passive opposition, from an obstacle that just has a set
rating on the ladder for you to overcome. (GMs, you can also just decide your NPCs give
passive opposition when you dont want to roll dice for them.)

Generally speaking, if you beat your opposition on the ladder, you succeed at your action. A
tie creates some effect, but not to the extent your character was intending. If you win by a
lot, something extra happens (like doing more harm to your opponent in a fight).

If you dont beat the opposition, either you dont succeed at your action, you succeed at a
cost, or something else happens to complicate the outcome. Some game actions have
special results when you fail at the roll.

When you beat a roll or a set obstacle, the difference between your opposition and your
result is what we call shifts. When you roll equal to the opposition, you have zero shifts. Roll
one over your opposition, and you have one shift. Two over means two shifts, and so on.
Later in the book, well talk about different instances where getting shifts on a roll benefits
you.

Fate Points
You use tokens to represent how many fate points you have at any given time during play.
Fate points are one of your most important resources in Fatetheyre a measure of how
much influence you have to make the story go in your characters favor.

You can spend fate points to invoke an aspect, to declare a story detail, or to activate
certain powerful stunts.

You earn fate points by accepting a compel on one of your aspects.

15
A word of warning: dont use edible things as tokens, especially if the food hasnt arrived
yet.

Invoking an Aspect
Whenever youre making a skill roll, and youre in a situation where an aspect might be able
to help you, you can spend a fate point to invoke it in order to change the dice result. This
allows you to either reroll the dice or add +2 to your roll, whichever is more
helpful.(Typically, +2 is a good choice if you rolled 2 or higher, but sometimes you want to
risk a reroll to get that +4.) You do this after youve rolled the diceif you arent happy
with your total.

You also have to explain or justify how the aspect is helpful in order to get the
bonussometimes itll be self-evident, and sometimes it might require some creative
narrating.
You can spend more than one fate point on a single roll, gaining another reroll or an
additional +2, as long as each point you spend invokes a different aspect.

[example]

Declaring a Story Detail

Sometimes, you want to add a detail that works to your characters advantage in a scene.
For example, you might use this to narrate a convenient coincidence, like retroactively
having the right supplies for a certain job (Of course I brought that along!), showing up at
a dramatically appropriate moment, or suggesting that you and the NPC you just met have
mutual clients in common.

To do this, youll spend a fate point. You should try to justify your story details by relating
them to your aspects. GMs, you have the right to veto any suggestions that seem out of
scope or ask the player to revise them, especially if the rest of the group isnt buying into it.

[Example]

Compels
Sometimes (in fact, probably often), youll find yourself in a situation where an aspect
complicates your characters life and creates unexpected drama. When that happens, the
GM will suggest a potential complication that might arise. This is called a compel.

Sometimes, a compel means your character automatically fails at some goal, or your
characters choices are restricted, or simply that unintended consequences cloud whatever
your character does. You might negotiate back and forth on the details a little, to arrive at
what would be most appropriate and dramatic in the moment.

Once youve agreed to accept the complication, you get a fate point for your troubles. If you
want, you can pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening, but we dont
recommend you do that very oftenyoull probably need that fate point later, and getting
compelled brings drama (and hence, fun) into your games story.

Players, youre going to call for a compel when you want there to be a complication in a
16
decision youve just made, if its related to one of your aspects. GMs, youre going to call for
a compel when you make the world respond to the characters in a complicated or dramatic
way.

Anyone at the table is free to suggest when a compel might be appropriate for any
character (including their own). GMs, you have the final word on whether or not a compel is
valid. And speak up if you see that a compel happened naturally as a result of play, but no
fate points were awarded.

What are the Manifold Worlds?

Social Stage
Within the Manifold there is great room for advancement and gaining of power, should your
ambition be high enough. In general there is one major separation between classes and a
multitude of smaller distinctions within each larger group.

At heart the people are divided into two castes. The Khalsa, meaning Sovereign or Free,
rule the galaxy in one form or another. the Khalsa include the Ancient Schools, Princes,
Magnates, and members of the Magnates and Princes families. The Khalsa rule over the
Rayah, meaning Unbaptised. They are the serf, slaves, and servants of the higher classes.

To be Khalsa is to be gifted. Khalsa either gained the rank by being so skilled that they
could not be denied, or so rich that none could argue. They live in a luxury that few know,
they hold great parties, eat the finest foods, wear the finest clothes, and have the highest
technology(within the Manifold, there are many barbarian worlds that have higher
technology). The Khalsa also care for and command the Rayah masses. How well they do
this and what methods they use differ from person to person.

Princes
Princes are the highest ranked, most powerful, Khalsa. Their lineage dates back to before
the founding of the manifold, before the Blood Wars, they are the original leaders of Man.
Gifted with Ichor, they enjoy extended life spans, increased intellect, and nearly
superhuman physical capabilities. They hold the best planets and the most wealth. They are
limited only by the amount of ichor. Ichor is so rare that only the rarest of the rare, can
attain it, and to attain it, they must drain the previous princes blood and replace their own
with it.

Magnates
Magnates came about during the Blood Wars and were instrumental to the formation of the
current Manifold Worlds. They were business men and entrepreneurs of great alacrity. They
attained enough wealth to buy planets and did so, thus gaining more power and wealth.
Magnates, to this day, can be from any background so long as they have enough to
purchase a planet. they do not have access to ichor, though some can gain access to
anagathics and other enhancement drugs. The cost is immense, but the payoff is worth it to
some.

17
Adepts
The Schools are at once the most powerful and least powerful of the Khalsa. they have
abilities of great power and renown, becoming nearly unknowable in their later years.
However the Adepts work for the Princes and Magnates, at least on paper. They are greater
than servants, they are beyond human in many ways, but they still serve. Most utilize this
service to control the destiny of man in one form or another. When you become an adept
you begin playing the most dangerous game, and you do not have a choice.

Landed Khalsa
Those Khalsa who do not fall into one of the previous categories are generally family
members of the Magnates or Princes. This does not mean they do not have power. Some
have access to great stores of wealth and lands. If utilized properly, these can bring renown
and greater wealth. these Landed Khalsa are not content to rest on their laurels. They
constantly seek more opportunities for wealth and power, in the hopes of gaining enough to
claim a planet and become a Magnate themselves.

Non-Landed Khalsa
Some Khalsa just dont live up to expectation. They do not have the sense or wisdom to
gain wealth, skill, or some other form of power. They are content. Contentment is the
beginnings of corruption. Corruption brings doom. However, these layabouts and dilettantes
have their uses. Often other family member can use these pawns in their great games. And
some Khalsa only pretend to be lazy, whilst they play a far deeper game.

To be a Rayah

18
The Universe of the Manifold Worlds

The Manifold Worlds

Also known as the Manifold or Manifold Space or The Ten Thousand Planets. A
semi-autonomous grouping of 10,000+ habitable, human-populated planets some eleven to

19
twelve thousand years in the future. Embodies the extent of human exploration and
colonization, yet still represents only a small percentage of the galaxy. Association consists
of the Royal Worlds, the Purchased Worlds, and a handful of others. Theoretically ruled from
Earth by the Royal Diet; in practice, each world is independent. Held together by trade,
religion, and the unifying power of the Ancient Schools. Outside the Manifold Worlds are
religious heretics and the Enemy of Man, a varied and non-aligned group of computerized
artificial intelligences and others. The Manifold Worlds consider themselves civilization;
outsiders are barbarians, who, ironically, may or may not be more technologically
advanced.

The Royal Worlds

The Royal Worlds were among the first planets colonized following the development of the
ftl-system known as the Bridge Device. Approximately 800 to 900 planets. Oldest are about
9,000 yrs. old. Each is ruled by a Prince (gender neutral term - female rulers are not
Princesses); each may send a representative to the Royal Diet. Princes enjoy longevity
and heightened human abilities (strength, speed, intelligence) through the
blood-replacement Ichor.

The Purchased Worlds

The Purchased Worlds are the planets settled after the initial diaspora. Approximately 9,000
planets. Some are almost as ancient the Royal Worlds; others are only a millennia or so old
since colonization. Purchased by the wealthy, licensed by the Royal Diet and the Princes.
Each Purchased World is ruled by a Magnate (again, gender neutral).

Other Worlds
Only a handful of planets are ruled neither by a Prince or a Magnate. Earth is controlled by
the Royal Diet and its head of state, the Supreme Executor. Majority of others are
non-aligned worlds controlled by two Ancient Schools, the Finders of Karao and the Order
Aisahe, both responsible for the discovery and/or creation of most of the Purchased Worlds.
Their worlds are independent largely because neither Ancient School has publicly revealed
their existence.

The Royal Diet

The theoretical governing body of humanity, yet largely powerless and ignored. Based on
Earth. Headed by the Supreme Executor, who still controls the largest single army in human
space. The Royal Diet represents the Royal Worlds and their rulers. Licenses the sale of the
Purchased Worlds and the existence of the Ancient Schools. Legislative body largely under
the control of an Ancient School, the Dragoumanoi, for ease of communications between
Princes.

The Enemy of Man

Term coined by the Church of Ascendant Man. Unknown number of planets and
organizations beyond the civilization of the Manifold Worlds, but probably less than the
Manifold Worlds themselves. Some only want peaceful co-existence, or live and let live.
Others are opposed to the Manifold Worlds and seek to control it. Includes the Machine
Gods, AIs who seek actual godhood and worship; the Confluence, secretly created by the
Computer Gods to introduce heretical technology to the Manifold Worlds; the Aekihv, former
ecologists dedicated to the eradication of humanity; and the Shabda Nakati, formerly
20
human geneticists who continue to practice heretical and often obscene genetic
experimentations.

Aliens?
Some worlds have multicellular native life - the Calibans of Caliban are even
semi-humanoids but not sapient - but most planets are fairly lifeless and have to be settled
with Earth-based lifeforms. Space-faring or even sapient aliens have not been discovered;
the Finders of Karao, however, search for them, or at least past evidence of their existence.

*************

The Ancient Schools

The Church of Ascendant Man

The real unifying force of the Manifold Worlds is faith. Dominant religion of the Manifold
Worlds is the Church of Ascendant Man, an Aristean faith with roots in ancient Earth
Sikhism. Encompasses several branches, some more philosophical than religious. Dominant
idea is the supremacy and unlimited potential of man, which expresses itself mostly in two
ways: 1) a lack of reliance on computers and other electronic substitutions for the mind
and body of man - their use is considered a heresy; and 2) the existence and promotion of
the Ancient Schools, who in turn promote hyperspecialization, or the actual practical
expression of mans unlimited potential.

Church doctrine divides humanity into classes: the Khalsa, meaning the Sovereign or the
Free, representing the rulers of the Manifold Worlds (including Church members) and the
adepts of the Ancient Schools, who together are felt to express the ideals of the Church;
and the Rayah, or Unbaptized, who do not, and consequently must be ruled by the
Khalsa.

The Ancient Schools

The primary expression and justification of Church doctrine. Ancient in the sense that the
oldest of these organizations are about ten thousand years old; School in the sense that
each trains human beings to unleash their full potential, said potential expressed in the
hyperspecialization of a constellation of mental (Mantra) and physical (Tantra) skills,
providing practically superhuman abilities - heightened senses, heightened intelligence,
heightened reflexes, heightened skill ranges, yet narrowed along specialized paths. Adepts
of the Ancient Schools have largely replaced computers/electronics in the Manifold Worlds.
They also represent the primary trade between the Manifold Worlds, which is conducted
not in resources but skills and services.

The superhuman abilities of the Ancient Schools are derived from intensive training
regimens, the use of nootropic drugs, and selective breeding. Genetic engineering and
cybernetic augmentations are heresies.

Major/Minor Schools
Ancient Schools can be divided into Major and Minor organizations. Major Schools control
their own planets - a Prince or Magnate rules, yet he or she follows the lead of the School.
Minor Schools are either under the thumb of or cooperative with the rulers of their planets.
21
Esoteric Schools
Some Schools focus less on the development of economically useful superhuman talents and
more on religious and/or philosophical ideals. A handful of Esoterics are also Major Schools,
but most are Minors, being without the economic and/or political power of the more
influential Ancient Schools. As a rule, the Esoterics are more closely affiliated with the
Church of Ascendant Man. Examples include the Inner Lights, the Tao of Sophos, and the
Morphean Oneiromancers.

Heretical Schools
Despite the danger, some Schools have embraced genetic engineering, cybernetics, or other
heresies of the Church of Ascendant Man. Heretical Schools are officially outlawed
throughout the Manifold Worlds; nonetheless, some still provide useful services to the
Princes and Magnates and conduct a secret trade with them. A handful of Hereticals are also
Major Schools, but most are Minors, again without the sheer economic force of the more
mainstream Schools. Examples include the Animal Men, the Anakadmon Fernexis, and the
Symbioun Cyphers.

Other Organizations
A few prominent groups fall neither into the Esoteric or Heretical groupings, or even as
Ancient Schools, relying as they do less on hyperspecialized training than merely being born
within said group. Examples include the super-soldier Chaozhaanshe and the emaciated
Straflings, who also provide services to the Princes and Magnates of the Manifold Worlds.

The Great Schools

Whenever a Prince or Magnate wants a particular service or skill, he or she usually has to go
to the particular planet of a particular School in order to acquire it, or send an agent. The
Great Schools are those who through a combination of influence, size, and sheer
ruthlessness have managed to offer their services on multiple planets (the Servile Union is
an exception, in that its customers still have to go their home planet). Each Great School
has also largely created a monopoly - they have no real competition for their skills and
services, and consequently their influence throughout the Manifold Worlds is almost without
limit. Examples include the Dragoumanoi, the Spice Merchants of Oca, and the Universal
Bankers.

The Children of the Eye are another exception. The most skilled navigators in space, and the
best employers of the Bridge Device, their services can be found on multiple worlds as well.
But they are not a Great School: other Ancient Schools can also employ the Bridge - only a
human mind can successfully navigate through Null Space - and more importantly their
Esoteric beliefs have limited their political ambitions. The degree to which the real Great
Schools adhere to the doctrines of the Church of Ascendant Man varies but is generally less
than most. Each have their own political agendas, which include no toleration for
competitors - this is the primary difference between them and the Major Schools. They also
have secret agendas, such as the Belisarians instigating small, locally confined wars in order
to prevent massive, interstellar ones.

The Great Schools cooperate but only because they have to; they have created a Conclave
of Schools to mediate their interactions with one another and at the same time control the
22
Schools and planets beneath them.

Controlled Technology
The existence of the Ancient Schools, along with the doctrines of the Church of Ascendant
Man, limits the use of computers and/or electronics. Aside from the Hereticals, the Ancient
Schools actively discourage their use, partially out of religious devotion, mostly to retain
their own monopoly on power. Most of the Manifold Worlds range technologically from the
Neo-Medieval to the Neo-Victorian, i.e., higher technologies and skills are held
exclusively by the Khalsa, and the majority of the society lives in an essentially
pre-electronics world of baroque and highly durable materials, comforts, and incredibly
sophisticated mechanical devices but with nothing that might be used to extend their minds
or senses beyond the natural.

Examples of more sophisticated technologies include the Bridge Device, Kinetic Force
Screens, and lasers. Almost all, however, are still non-electronic. Some are very
sophisticated mechanical devices; others are nano-symbiotic, meaning created by a form
of nanotechnology no longer practiced inside the Manifold Worlds. They are hard to find,
essentially non-replaceable gadgets rather than industries, soft and pliable to the touch,
living, in a sense, but non-reproductive.

Actual electronics/computers can only be derived from Heretical Schools or from outside the
Manifold Worlds, such as the Computer Gods.

Drugs, Ichor, and Amrit

Another example of ancient nanotechnology is Ichor, the blood replacement of the Princes.
Less an actual liquid and more a conglomerate of nanosubstances, Ichor provides the
Princes heightened abilities on par with the adepts of the Great Schools, yet less focused.
Adepts of the Great Schools do not employ the nanotechnological Ichor; their primary
life-extension drug is Amrit, which promotes health and slows the aging process to a crawl
- the average lifespan of a human being without Ichor or Amrit is about 100 yrs. With
either, though, ages of up to a thousand years are possible. Amrit is also taken by the
Khalsa. A more powerful anti-aging drug, Tgali, it is said, can extend life up to three times
as long, but it is highly rare and sought after and may be nothing more than myth.

Other mind and body-altering drugs are employed by the adepts of the Ancient Schools,
many of which explain their superhuman abilities. Similarly, exotic poisons and other
substances are traded and employed. Drug use in general is a common occurrence in the
Manifold Worlds, among the Khalsa, for recreation; among the Rayah, to control them.

The Manifold Worlds are a large interplanetary or interstellar society; so ancient the
memory of Earth has faded. Perhaps earth died during the Great Diaspora. Perhaps it has
been terraformed so that it is unrecognizable. Perhaps it is lost. All that is left, all that is
known, are legends and rumor. Many is the fool who has purchased a "genuine" star chart
showing the location of Forgotten Earth few have ever returned from such folly. Within the
Manifold Worlds the Great Schools compete for control of their dominions and the dominion
of man as a whole. Some adepts from the Schools, in fact, become the wealthy and
powerful in charge of worlds. They play the great game, a game of alliances and betrayal. A
23
game of shadows, where one never knows if one is winning or losing.

The distinguishing characteristic of the Manifold Worlds - if one may say such a thing - is
that they are, in fact, many and varied. At last count, over ten thousand habitable planets
make up the loose association known colloquially as the Manifold Worlds, an expanse of
space stretching across a vast arc of the galaxy yet still encompassing only a small portion
of the total stars contained, not to mention the total number of stars in the galaxy. Within
those ten thousand planets are endless variations of habitability, size, population, and
history. Yet because they share a common origin, civilized galactic society does share some
common attributes. A quick note on the use of the word, "Civilized." For those who dwell
within the Manifold Worlds
It doesnt matter if your neighbors have superior technology or a culture just as objectively
advanced; the fact is, theyre not the Manifold Worlds, and therefore by definition they can
only be barbarians."

Each of the Manifold Worlds is ruled - in theory, anyway - by a Prince or Magnate. Some
worlds have elected legislatures, some are the base for influential religions, and others
possess extensive aristocracies. In the end, there is always one individual whos supposed
to be calling the shots. Whether or not a ruler has practical control in another matter
entirely.

Although they make a great deal about the difference, politically speaking theres little
difference between the rule of a Prince or Magnate. Princes inherited their worlds. Magnates
purchased them. Thats the difference. For instance, Magnates always remain Magnates, no
matter if the worlds they inherit were purchased generations ago. What matters is that they
were purchased in the first place.

The wealthiest, most influential Schools control their own worlds, or even several worlds.
This is, in fact, the generally accepted dividing line between a "major" and a "minor" School.
There are exceptions - the Order Aisahe Terraformers own not just one but multiple
planetary systems, some completely secret and isolated from the rest of galactic society;
the Dragoumanoi, contrarily, control no single world, yet their agents can be found on every
inhabited planet, which no other School can claim - but majors like the Diagnostics of Vras,
the Bene Tlonits of Tlon, or the Asomniacs of Morpheus otherwise dominate wherever they
are based.

A Prince or Magnate will still technically "rule" such worlds, but they nevertheless follow
whatever advice is given them. On Sazur, the Mind Masters don't even pretend
subordinance: everyone in the galaxy knows Sazur's Prince is a puppet.

Similarly, some planets have more powerful rulers than others. These worlds wield
considerable influence on their neighbors, amounting to what became "pocket empires" of a
dozen or so worlds apiece, at most. Here, no single School controls. Instead, they compete
for aristocratic favor or supplement one another. On Cacsondia and its satellites, for
instance, a dozen or more Schools compete to gain the favor of the Pleasure Lords.

On some worlds, the ruler acts as patron, and through the School he or she spreads
24
authority in galactic society. It is well known again that the School of Sword is in the pocket
of the Prince of Iskandra and report on all their comings-and-goings to him.

Between these extremes, on worlds where the rulers' influence extends no farther than
orbit, the Ancient Schools, major and minor, compete and thereby form the backbone of
interstellar commerce, a trade less in physical commodities than in needed services. The
Diagnostics may be based on Vras, but they maintain branches in many places; the same
may be said of minor Schools like the Racers or the Maze Makers, though to a lesser extent.
In most places, the Schools and the local rulers strike a delicate balance, the Schools
lending support to whomever is in charge, the Princes and Magnates ensuring the monopoly
of the School is maintained.
Sometimes - oftentimes - this balance doesn't function well . . . and that is why so many of
the Schools are nothing more than training grounds for assassins.

Individual planets have their own economies. The interstellar economy - interstellar trade -
is entirely the domain of the Great Schools and the Princes and Magnates. Resources are
easily available; space is vast, and nearly every world has the basic building blocks. What
are actually traded for the most part are skills and talents - either the adepts themselves or
what the Great School adepts only do in lease (the Servile Union, for instance, actually sells
its graduates, whereas the Diagnostic of Vras merely lease their services on a temporary
basis).

There are exceptions. Pharmaceuticals are highly prized. Different planets possess different
chemical and organic makeups, and there are certain drugs that only a few highly
specialized environments can produce. But even in this the Great Schools dominate: the
most traded, most useful drugs are those that help their adepts achieve their
near-miraculous talents and abilities, cultivated by the specific Schools for generations, and
thus totally monopolized by them.

Most worlds do not have significant enough populations to produce everything it needs,
even if the basic resources are all around them. They are dependent on the talents of the
Great Schools for their ongoing survival. Add in the drugs - many of which are highly
addictive - the influence of the Schools on interstellar civilization is all-encompassing. They
control weaker Princes and Magnates. They influence as much as they can in all the ways
that they can.

The technology of the Manifold Worlds is strictly controlled. No computer with a memory or
processing ability beyond a mere calculator (mid-twentieth century standard, not late or
21st) is tolerated, and often even those are looked upon with suspicion. This is for several
reasons. The Great Schools dont like them - they restrict the infinite potential of the human
mind and body, they claim. The Princes and Magnates dont like them, either - they provide
power, and they prefer having as much power as possible in their own hands. There is also
a major religious focus on human endeavors over that of machines. All peoples of the
Manifold Worlds are taught the belief in self improvement over the use of machinery from
an early age.
More advanced computers do e xist, but they either exist largely outside the Manifold Worlds
- among the technological barbarians known as the Enemy of Man or the Machine Gods -
25
or within carefully regulated and highly specialized apparatuses, such as those used in
traveling faster-than-light. There are no electronic networks within the Manifold Worlds, in
other words; any example of a technology higher than the late 19th or early 20th centuries
only exists within specialized gadgets, individual items that can be handed around or
bought, sold, and controlled easily and comfortably by the elite, meaning only Great School
adepts or planetary rulers.

In practice, the majority populations of most of the Manifold Worlds would not look all that
dissimilar from the Middle Ages of Forgotten Earth. Spacecraft look like those dramatized in
the mid-twentieth century (rocketships, not starships), with bulky dials and pumps and
heavy equipment, save for those specific devices that allow for ftl - often a fairly small,
semi-organic module that can be easily inserted and removed into the engine assembly.

Often, the singular pieces of supertech that do exist, they remain irreplaceable. No one
within the Great Worlds knows or deins to know how they function, only that they do
function. They can be replaced, but to do so one must trade with the Machine Gods.

Tripartite structure of the Manifold W orlds

1) The Great Schools
One corner of the civilized galactic society is represented by the Great Schools.

The Minor Schools outnumber the Major Schools, with the Minors generally restricted to
localized areas of influence around whatever planet they are based - they do not even
control their own worlds - whereas the Majors d
o control their own planets and possess
much greater markets for their services - hundreds if not thousands of worlds instead of
just dozens.

In cases like the Dragoumanoi and the Universal Bankers (new, see below), their markets
are just about every planet in the Manifold Worlds.

There is no overarching authority linking the Great Schools together, save loosely in the
form of the Church of Mankind Ascendant, the priests of which conduct services for the
adepts while at the same time unofficially serving as ambassadors; and the Dragoumanoi,
the great communicators, who carry messages back-and-forth and help negotiate deals. In
practice, the Great Schools prefer using the Church rather than the Dragoumanoi, though,
as the latter charge for their services and even still cannot be fully trusted. In other words,
the latter is for official communications while the Church is the main and more casual
unofficial connection between Schools, where the real business is carried out.

2) The Purchased Worlds

A second corner of civilized galactic society is made up of the Purchased Worlds of the
Magnates.

The Magnates are the super-wealthy of the Manifold Worlds, each controlling vast economic
resources and political clout, enough so that individually they can buy, or have inherited
from previous Magnates, their world planets. There are older, established Magnates - I fail
to come up with a proper term - whose worlds have been in their familys possession for
centuries (millennia, in some cases, rivaling the age of the Princes, below) as well as newer
26
and up-and-coming Magnates - again, I have no term for which as yet - whose purchases
are either more recent and in the process of negotiation. There is a class difference between
the older, established Magnates and the newer ones (old wealth vs. new wealth).

Where do they purchase planets, or received them from in the first place? E ither the Finders
of Karao - sellers of naturally habitable worlds - or the Order Aisahe - the m akers of
terraformed planets.

Buying a planet is a huge investment. Typically, the Magnates pay either the Findsmen or
the Terraformers in installments through the Universal Bankers, mortgages that can extend
for centuries or again millennia. In practice, the two Great Schools exert a powerful
influence over the Purchased Worlds, shaping their internal politics to suit their own ends.
They are rivals, though, and competitors, and often the Magnates will use their rivalry in
turn to make sweeter deals for themselves, while all the time the Universal Bankers take
advantage of everybody.

This whole mess, when they can get together (the Order Aisahe, the Finders of Karao, the
older Magnates, the newer Magnates, and the Universal Bankers), make up an unofficial
corporation of sorts that in turn makes deals with and plays against one another the Great
Schools and the Royal Worlds.

3) The Royal Worlds

The last corner of civilized society consists of the Princes and their so-called Royal Worlds,
the first planets settled in galactic history, pre-dating both the Terraformers and the Aisahe
- these Schools may in fact have originated during this early settlement period.

Being a Prince consists of three things: 1) inheritance of a Royal World, usually far more
settled and populous than most Purchased Worlds, and thereby providing even more wealth
than most Magnates; 2) inheritance of a genetically-altered heredity, done in the ages prior
to the rise of the Great Schools and the ethics of the Church of Mankind Ascendant; and 3)
inheritance of the Ichor, the Royal Blood, the Blood of the Gods . . . actually, an ancient
nanotech solution that replaces the Princes original blood supply, which is drained and the
other injected in replacement.

Notes to be worked on
I really dig Hakans terminology and description. The R ayah (Unbaptized), first thing, almost
certainly have no political say in anything. In the Manifold Worlds, anybody whos anybody
is either rich, trained in the disciplines of a Great School, the inheritor of Princely ichor, or in
the immediate service of one of the aforementioned. This culture doesnt even pretend
democracy. All real power is strictly aristocratic/meritocratic.

Naturally, this would lead to abuses of the worst kind - hellhole planets that make the
Harkonnens from Dune look tame - but at the same time the drive toward excellence that
the Church advocates, and that some planets will exist where the rulers really do take the
philosophy to heart, that it really is their responsibility as Khalsa to properly guide the
Unbaptized along a slower route to perfection (however they define it), is going to ensure
the peasants of the Manifold Worlds are a step up from medieval times.

27
What do they look like? More racially diverse but almost certainly handsomer than the serfs
of the past - no Prince, Magnate, or School is going to allow disease to spread if it can be
contained, and almost certainly there have been eugenics programs of some sort carried out
that we would find very icky, breeding the peasants like animals for desired traits - some
combination of health, beauty and, submissiveness, I imagine.

In the better worlds, the peasants will be well-fed but not educated beyond what the needs
are of their rulers. With no access to higher technology, their lives would be carried out
somewhat like the denizens of a modern Renaisance Fair . . . that is, what the middle ages
would look like seen through the eye of Hollywood, or, more plainly, comfortable beds, good
food, straight teeth, no cancers hanging off peoples faces, and clothing suspiciously free of
lice, doing things in a purposefully simple manner (blacksmithing, furniture making, porting,
weaving, and so on, but with better materials to start with).

On hellhole worlds, the peasants would be the damned, simply that.

I think I see an opportunity for another rival faction/liberation theology sect of the Church,
organising underground resistance among the Rayah. Perhaps in secret cahoots with the
Machine Gods and opposed to the transhuman ideals of the Princes and Schools.
Technology, after all, is the great equaliser; without genetic inheritance and the Ichor, a
highly limited resource, none can be a Prince and becoming an Adept takes power, wealth
or natural talent to be accepted into the Schools in the first place. Anyone can set a bomb.

I think the we should have a little more technology if The Rayah themselves probably have
some sort of substrata in emulation of the Khalsa: Administrators/Merchants at the top
(being similar to Princes and Magnates), Artisans (their variants on Schools).

I think Tech Level (Rayah) and Tech Level (Khalsa) needs to be added to a world ' category'.
I mean what's the level of your average person going to have: Ink pens/fountain pens are
they common or marvels (probably not to the Khalsa but your average Rayah? )

We should create a simple 'template' across the board for most worlds. We know that
Genetic engineering is thing (to some degree)- does this mean that Rayah have acess to it,
do they have Offspring Management - offices that they visit when they want to have
children and depends on what the Khalsa need on that world they're allowed to pick from
Plans A,B,C? What about the Princes & Magnates similar?

Ar children born 'for/with' a purpose in mind, or is just natural birth (with some genetic
tweaking)?

What about the Princely Ichor? Has anyone attempted to try to 'clone or reproduce it' in tiny
batches, to try to make themselves a Saint? ( have succeeded but the Ichor was
fundamentally different and so it changed them?

Has anyone studied the genetic Markers of a Prince to figure out what makes them tick- and
makes their Ichor transfer process different from 'regular genetic modification?

28
What's the system of Money use on the Manifold Worlds- we know we that Universal
Bankers will take just about anything- goods, people, tech? What keeps serfdom from
become slavery? (i.e the Rayah are simply toys of the Magnates, Princes, Schools, and they
can shuffle them around at whim.)

I assume there are various styles of dress across the world, Fashion must be all the rage(
we've got a School about it)-- if we don't have radios, TVs and such how do people get
news, and information . there must be some way to move information quickly. I can't see a
prince opening up the World Gates, for the use of news... that's a drain on power and Ichor.

Forgotten Earth
Technically speaking, its not. Everyone knows where Earth is and what it represents - in a
galaxy with the Children of Eye, the Findsmen of Karao, and the Bene Tlonits, it would be
hard to forget such things - and people still live there, after all. Every Ancient School worth
anything has a branch there. Earth is forgotten in the sense that it doesnt matter
anything at all in galactic politics. No Prince or Magnate claims it - in fact, no Prince has
bothered to set foot on Earth in over three millennia - and no single School runs it, nor is
any exclusively based there. Earth has no impact whatsoever in the state of the galaxy, a
double irony: one, naturally, seeing that Earth is the common origin of the species, and two,
that its the seat of the Royal Diet, the theoretical center of government for the entire
human race.

The Royal Diet

(Yes, every pun imaginable has been made about the name - the Dragoumanoi collect
them). The Royal Diet is the wholly academic unified government of the Manifold Worlds.
In theory, it is the Diet that licenses the sale of the Purchased Worlds, that registers the
existence of the Ancient Schools and oversees their operations, that still enjoys one
representative apiece from all the Royal Worlds, each Ambassador representing a Prince of
his or her own planet in a galactic senate.

Its bunk.

The Princes do continue to send representatives to the Royal Diet, but not one of them even
pretends to consider it an important posting. The Princes jealously guard their sovereignty.
While the Diet has hypothetical oversight, in that any law it passes should apply to them,
they utterly ignore its rulings and legislative matters and carry on their own affairs. The
same may be said of the Purchased Worlds and the Ancient Schools - there might have
been a time when such licenses mattered, but not any more, not for a long time.

The Princes continue to send representatives to the Royal Diet because of the convenience
of communications that body represents. When one Prince needs to contact another -
business, war, the rare friendship - the easiest method of delivery is through one Diet
representative to another, all managed by the Dragoumanoi, of course, who treat the Royal
Diet now as their more or less exclusive bulletin board.

The Secret of Why Earth Still Matters

Its something the Ancient Schools are keeping to themselves, but, in terms of raw
29
percentage, Earths non-affiliated population - the one practical thing the Royal Diet does is
govern the planet - produces more adept-quality candidates than any other planet in the
galaxy, bar none. That is, while the other Manifold Worlds altogether overwhelmingly
produce the most candidates, Forgotten Earth on its own still produces an atypically
higher number. Why this is is a matter of some debate. Some think it has to do with the
environmental conditions. Others argue its the gene pool. Others contend its the fact that
no one power rules (no one counts the Royal Diet, not even itself). No one knows, but the
percentages simply dont lie.

This is why the Ancient Schools still have branches there.

Last thing: Compiling these lists, Ive found some more likely feuding between Ancient
Schools - Schools that are directly competing with one another, commercially or
ideologically, like gtrocs excellent three-way Flesh Wars between the Harcaro Geise (sex),
Adonae of Calyz (beauty), and Larian Mimes (Body Language).

The Architects War: the Alvar Alaxel vs. the Asterion Maze Makers
The Culture Wars: the Muscians of Cacsondia vs. the Noticians of Cacsondia (got to be a
vicious one)
The Food Wars: the Epicures of Cacsondia vs. the Poison Tasters
The Math Wars: the Calculators Guild vs. the Space-Astrologers
The Memory Wars: the Bene Tlonits vs. the Cerebrans
The War of Ultimate Determination: the Phadir Naenix vs. the Stoics of Unne

I would imagine that as a general rule this society would consider any graduate of an
Ancient School (an adept) a member of the Khalsa. But it can't be as simple as that - the
common people would probably look up to a Servile from the Servile Union, but just about
any other member of the elite would consider that individual a slave (an expensive slave,
but still a slave). Similarly, I can't see anybody - Khalsa or Rayah - looking upon the
Cerebrans as anything other than servants.

As for members of Heretical Schools, while other adepts may judge otherwise, evaluating on
skills, the Church of Ascendant Man would not look upon the Animal Men as Khalsa, nor
adepts of the Argean Order - they violate every principle the Church is based upon. Same
with the Shabda Nakati - they're too different, too obscene, and frankly too gross.

Yet, overall, getting back to the above . . . with a few exceptions, adepts of the Ancient
Schools are usually Khalsa, whatever their origins. If they came from Khalsa stock
originally, they've only proven why they were members of the class to begin with. If they
were originally from Rayah stock, then they've proven their true worth (this society's
perspective, anyway).

Who else are Khalsa? There's the Prince of any Royal World, first off. Then that Prince's
family, immediate and extended (I regret now in my description of Howadar making the
new Prince the daughter of the old one . . . much more likely, considering the age-extending
properties of Ichor, she would have been his great-great granddaughter, but be that as it
may).
30
Then . . . I picture a generally capitalist economic structure for the Manifold Worlds, but I
don't see what we would consider "corporations" in the D une CHAOM sense, and certainly
not in the, say, cyberpunk sense. Rather, I see the economy of any particular world being
shaped by entrepreneurs, the most powerful of which would be close to the American
"robber-barons" of the late 19th or early 20th centuries: think Carnegie, J.P. Morgan,
Rockefeller, and the like. Now, these guys certainly founded corporations, and those
corporations still exist today, but at the time they were active people didn't think of these as
organizations, per se: they only saw the robber-barons themselves. Corporations were what
they used, not whom they were. And considering that age extension drugs are available,
these guys would create industries and then maintain hold of those industries for as long as
they could, centuries if possible.

The most powerful of these industrial/economic leaders on any particular world would
eventually strive for more, and so with their great wealth they would buy their own planets,
becoming Magnates. If not so powerful, and thereby not in direct competition with the
Prince (or a Magnate, on a Purchased World . . . the same rules would apply there), they
would remain an underclass right below the Prince's family. Below them would be slightly
less wealthy individuals, and so on, down to some arbitrary line between rich (Khalsa) and
not rich (Rayah).

Consequently, not counting adepts of the Schools, the Khalsa would consist of the
Prince/Magnate, the Prince/Magnate's family, then the wealthy elite in a descending strata.
The wealthy elite who could afford it would move off planet to become Magnates themselves
(if not, and they stayed, they would be in competition with the planetary ruler, and that
would be a struggle one or the other would not survive).

Title-holding members of the Church of Ascendant Man would also be Khalsa. After all, they
make the definitions, and probably many actually come from this wealthy elite. If not, and
they have risen from the ranks of the Rayah through the Church, again, by this society's
definitions, they've proven themselves of a higher quality.

******

I think personally that "Prince" and "Magnate" should be the only ranks outside the Church;
that is, no dukes, barons, etc., which actually is too reminiscent of Dune. However, I
definitely think that any member of the Rayah addressing any one of the Khalsa class to use
an honorific, like "lord" or "lady" when addressing them. It would only be prudent.

How about "Ustad"? Literally "Master" in the sense of someone who has mastered a skill.

That's good. It actually supports an idea I just had - the social strata of the Manifold Worlds
is very meritocratic (charitably) / Darwinistic (uncharitably). If one is a Rayah, and you
want to rise into the Khalsa class, you 1) have to become an adept of an Ancient School, 2)
join the Church of Ascendant Man, or 3) achieve enough wealth that you have t o be
considered Khalsa.

I presume that the odds are against one, though. Methods 1 and 2 would be extremely
31
difficult, and as for 3, well, you have all the people above you to shove out of the way,
probably (lots of Khalsa with inherited wealth who strictly speaking didn't "earn" it). "Ustad"
means you had to master a skill - anyway you look at it, that's exactly what you had to do.

I've been toying with this idea of the Manifold Worlds as being a "planet-rich civilisation", so
where other civilisations throughout history have been defined by a glut of some particular
resource like gold, iron, labour or superior technology, the Manifold is defined by having so
many planets that they can just cordon a certain percentage of them off solely for use as
weird social experiment platforms. For example, Sazur; the three major continents of the
planet are deliberately kept unaware of each others' existence by the Mind Masters just so
they can watch these separate societies developing in microcosm - this is the best use they
could think of for a whole planet. Why? Because habitable planets are a dime a dozen, not
literally - they still cost a bomb, which is why the status of Magnate is such a big deal - but
the fact that Magnates, people who literally buy whole habitable planets, exist in the first
place should tell you a lot about the mindset of a typical Manifold Worlder, if its name alone
doesn't. Those other cultures, the Enemies of Man? They have a harder time of it because
they have no adepts, and without adepts they are left having to spent weeks, months,
potentially years planning out a single Altman-DeGuerre Bridge jump rather than a few
minutes or hours. If they mess up a single jump it could mean peeps die out there in space
while they wait for a rescue, if a Manifold World vessel gets off-course it just means the
navigator sighs, takes another dose of nootropics and starts their mantra over from the
beginning. Worst case scenario someone has to get on the Superluminal and call for help
and a ship will be along in like half a day. Thanks to their noetic intelligentsia being able to
interact with hyperspace on a much more profound level than any culture that diverged
down more traditional technological paths space travel is just plain easier and so planets
become simple commodities to be traded.

Religion in the Manifold Worlds

The Aristean Faith and the Church of Mankind Ascendant

Philosophy and Beliefs

According to the Litany that forms the core principle of the Aristean Faith, Mankind has
unlimited potential, and this potential is varied, as Manifold as the worlds the human races
has colonized. To rely on machines beyond the absolutely necessary is to be weak, wicked
and foolish, because machines have no mind, nor soul, and only a human mind and soul
gives value to everything.

In this scheme of things, the place of Mankind in the universe is to be rulers and drivers, to
conquer and tame the entire universe with its infinite potential. And the place of every
human being is to struggle to best and tame him or herself, to better his or her own mind,
body and soul and achieving their maximum potential. One must reach over the masses and
become something better and greater, superhuman in a sense, although the Church prefers
to use the expression "Wholy Human", or "Complete". Only when the peak potential is
reached one can be considered to be a real, perfect human. With untold millions of beings

32
striving to perfect themselves, the whole of Mankind necessarily would improve and benefit.

There are, however, those that simply cannot do it. Some bodies are weak, some minds are
feeble, some souls are wicked. Those that cannot should accept their destiny and bow their
heads under the just yoke of their betters, giving everything they can to help them achieve
perfection, even if the contribution is as humble as making beds, preparing meals or toiling
in the fields. When their masters attain perfection, surely even those weaklings would
benefit of the care and wisdom they will receive in return.

Those that would not, however, are a wholly different story. They are the Enemies of Man,
thralls to the Machine Gods or deluded echo-terrorists like the Aekihv. With these
abominations there are no compromises and no parlay, for, in the same way as the
betterment of the willing uplifts the entirety of Mankind, their foolish attempts to pervert the
very soul of the human race work in the opposite direction, and threatens every single
human being. At least, that is what the Church says. Rumors are persistent of shady
dealings and meetings in neutral spots; of course, the accused parties are quick to claim
that is all slander intended to smear them.

In so many words, the objective of the Aristean Faith is simple: to be not better, but the
best (Aristos), to achieve excellency (Arete). To become gods. According to the teaching of
the Church of Mankind Ascendant, there is no singular way to godhood, but Manifold Paths,
manifested on the Schools and the Ichor of Princes. They all, however, share some common
principles, the very basis of the Faith: That excellency grows from conflict and challenging,
that material things are transitory, and the only absolute values are skill, knowledge and
wisdom: skill to do, knowledge to know, and wisdom to understand. And of course, a
gnawing, burning drive to break all limits and barriers, and to best even the Saints.

These Saints, commonly known as the Thousand Saints, although the real number is much
greater, are paragons and exemplars, those who have attained the peak of perfection in one
particular field, and are revered and imitated for their virtues. They include the founders
and greatest heroes and masters of the Schools, but also the Ancient Fathers of the princely
Bloodlines, and very few other select individuals. The Saints are not prayed to, because they
cannot or would not interfere in mortal affairs; but are honored with rituals in which their
teachings and deeds are remembered and set as examples for others.

On other matters, there is no overarching teachings held as truth by the whole Faith.
Different sects have different opinions about the proper ways to worship the Saints, the
destiny of the soul and the afterlife, and even about the existence or not of something
resembling gods. These sects will be examined later.

Organization

The most widespread and politically strong organization of the Aristean Faith is the Church
of Mankind Ascendant, but there are others. The Church is a body external to the Schools
and Princes, but intertwined with them in many ways, because its very existence and
philosophy depends on them. In a way, those that choose the path of the Church are
admitting that they cannot qualify for perfection, since they will not train in a School. They
are merely the spiritual advisors and caretakers of those who will.
33
To the Church, humanity is divided in two great strata: the Khalsa, which means
"Sovereign" or "Free", is composed of initiated members of the Faith, those who enter the
Schools or the Church, and the scions of Princely and Magnate families. The rest are the
Unbaptized, the Rayah or "flock". The Unbaptized has the right to attend rituals and
worship, and is given the full doctrine, but cannot access the techniques and skills
necessary to achieve perfection unless they qualify for entering a School or join the Church.
Of course, there are whispered criticism that there is no reason to assume the children of a
Magnate or Prince will qualify... but the Church tends to ignore them.

The structure of the Church is rather decentralized. It is composed of a number of Orders or

Congregations with specific functions, whose members strive to fulfill them with a passion
equal to any School disciple. These functions are, however, more administrative than
soul-fulfilling, and so it's difficult to achieve Enlightenment through them, albeit not unheard
of.

Possibly the most famous of the Orders is the Congregation of the Watchful Eye, whose
mission is, first and foremost, to evaluate and certificate those who wish to join the Church
or one of the Schools, and give them counsel about which one of them they should join. The
Congregation holds periodical examinations at certain locales, where anyone that can pay
the substantial fees or enter by recommendation can opt for a certificate as Worthy of
Instruction. The trials are many and varied, and include not only written and oral
examinations, but also physical challenges, and ordeals of mental and spiritual fortitude.
Those deemed Worthy are later pointed to one School or another based, in theory, on their
results, but also on political interests and intrigues. Note, however, that the Schools always
hold new examinations for the candidates.

The second mission of the Watchful Eyes is the one that makes them feared: they keep
those eyes on the Masters of the Schools and the Schools themselves, and also in other
institutions, making sure that they do not stray far from the Litany and do not become
"Enemies of Man", that in certain circumstances may mean "enemies of the church". Their
agents are charged with certifying the Masters as capable of teaching the Litany and the
tenets of the faith, and examine them periodically; their authority extends also to other
branches of the Church. Those who fail these orthodoxy test may be subject to punishment,
and banned from teaching until they re-qualify.

Among the Rayah, even more than the Watchful Eyes, the most recognized of the Orders is
the Congregation of the Clear Fountain. The Fountain that gives them their name is
metaphorical: a well of knowledge and wisdom visualized as clear water that flows into the
mouths of believers. The priests of the Clear Fountain, recognizable for their full beards and
colourful turbans or rounded hats, hold non-denominational rituals for the Rayah, where
they honor the Saints of different Schools, but also keep and minister in the private chapels
of the Schools and Families of the Khalsa. Some of them are not attached to chapels, but
roam from town to town, preaching the Litany and the philosophy of the Aristean Faith,
encouraging the masses to better themselves and take the examinations of the Watchful
Eye, or simply lending a helping hand to their chapel-bound brethren.

This means that they are everywhere, at all times, and have the ear of very powerful
34
masters and rulers. Is only natural that they have evolved into mediators and messengers,
diplomatic envoys and counselors, that broke informal deals between Schools and Families,
introduce key people to one another, and know all secrets and powers plays.

The third major order is the Congregation of the Golden Field. Their calling is simple: since
the Saints are exemplars, and the Khalsa lives trying to imitate and surpass them and
become Saints themselves, there is absolutely necessary that someone record all the deeds
of these aspiring saints and makes them known by the people. Some of them are scholars
and sages, deeply involved in complex research in the depths of the huge libraries of the
Congregation, ready to redact hagiographies and epics based on the deeds of dead Saints
and living aspirants.

Others paint icons following a strictly regulated technique, with very rigid symbolic rules
that make each one of them as much a work of art as a graphic representation of the
achievements of the Saint in question. These icons are hung on chapels and the sides of
buildings in all the Manifold Worlds, telling those who can read them as much as the books
of the hagiographers. All of them are set in a golden field, that symbolizes enlightenment
and divinity, and gives its name to the congregation.

Still other members of the Order act as chroniclers, either following around a known Master
or Prince and recording his deeds and achievements, or tasking themselves with the
compilation of all the stories of great masters in a given region. It is their works that
hagiographers would read in the future to compose their epics. These chroniclers serve also
as funerary priest, chanting or reciting the deeds of their charges as their bodies are
cremated.

Turns out I can't edit my previous post, so the awful spelling must stay. Sorry about that.

Here are some ideas about Aristean Sects inside the C hurch of Mankind A scendant. Like
someone said before, it would be interesting if there w ere rival cults, or e ven different
religions based in similar principles. Anyone?

I've come up with a series of religious streams based around beliefs (Denominations) and
practices (Rites). So a given sect would align itself with a certain Denomination, that
expresses its theology, and a Rite, that tells us how it does things. These are only rough
ideas, new Rites and Denomination are always welcome.

I've included links to wikipedia with the sources of inspiration, just in case someone wants
to elaborate.

Denominations

Kadmonism

The Kadmonist denomination of the Aristean Faith holds the belief that there is a godlike
figure in the universe: Kadmon or Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man. According to this
denomination, Adam Kadmon is pure divine light, holding inside himself the entirety of
Mankind's potential, and radiating it around the cosmos. As Kadmon shaped the universe,
35
modern humanity is tasked with taming and ruling it. He is the ideal, perfect, Platonic form
of humanity, and not necesarily a sentient, personal being. Their cosmology is pure
anthropocentrism: there is a divine man in the center of reality, and the universe was
shaped according to his needs and wishes; and we are but reflections of his potential.
Therefore, the universe exists only to serve us, our needs and wishes, and we should strive
to reach our full potential as reflected in the Primordial Man. The radiation of eternal cosmic
light from the Primordial Man is also the lighthouse that guides humanity in its search for
perfection and enlightenment.

Nastika Tradition: According to the Nastika tradition, there is no singular god or being,
personal or otherwise, that rules or determines the cosmos. It is an atheist philosophy to
which Mankind is the pinnacle of creation, emerging out of the primordial chaos and the
interactions inherent to nature, that culminate in the spark of self-consciousness known as
soul. Only humans have souls, and therefore, there can be no soul without body, and no
gods or supernatural beings. As in Kadmonism, the universe still is there only for us, but not
by virtue of any divinity. It is ours for the taking only because our inherent potential,
capacity and will to do so. Humanity masters creation because creation ends with humanity,
from the basest inanimate materials to the supreme, rarified, soul. In this outlook, the drive
to perfection and improving isn't towards enlightenment or closeness to a divinity, but
merely to embody the perfection that the natural evolution of the cosmos intended for
humanity.

Baghatism: According to the Baghatist denomination of the Aristean Faith, Adam Kadmon
either doesn't exist, or has no personal mind and identity with which interact with
worshippers. However, saints do have identities, and can be prayed to and worshipped
directly and meaningfully. So, Baghatism differs from the Nastika tradition, since it posits
that the soul can exist separately from the body once the natural life has ended, but only
among those that have reached perfection and enlightenment in life. All denominations of
the Aristean Faith venerate the Thousand Saints, but only Baghatists worship them nearly
as gods and pray to them for enlightenment, refuge and help, besides imitating their deeds
and lives in order to ascend themselves to sainthood.

Ashavanism: This denomination began as an offshoot of Kadmonism that believes that

Kadmon's unwillingness or inability to affect human affairs makes Him worthy of respect,
but not of worship. They, however, believe that, just as all human beings are imperfect
reflections of Kadmon, there will come one day when a savior will emerge that is the purest
reflection of divinity, a messianic being known as Ashavan, the Righteous One, whose role is
to serve as a prophet and teach mankind the One True Way that lies beyond the Manifold
Ways. This teaching, known as Kefitzat Haderech (wink, wink) or "Contrating the Path" will
allow those worthy of the Khalsa to reach enlightenment right away, and so will end
suffering and begin a golden age. This denomination isn't very popular among the Schools,
for obvious reasons, and there have been some attempts to declare it heretical, but some
Princely Bloodlines support it with their influence, believing that the Ashavan will come from
among their ranks.

Sadly, the Rites will have to wait, since I've run out of time, but they will come. I also have
some ideas based on Sikh and Baha'i precepts for "common ground" in the Aristean faith,
but maybe I'm overdoing this whole religion thing, so I'll only develop them if people is
36
interested.

Rites of the Aristean Faith

A Rite is a ceremonial and liturgical tradition, a way of doing things and venerating the
Thousand Saints and, when applicable, Kadmon and other divine figures. Rites are not tied
to Denominations, and so, a given sect may align philosophically with, for example,
Kadmonism, and practice the Ektenic Rite, and another Kadmonist sect may prefer the
Simranic. These are only the major Rites; there are many more, some of them unique of a
certain sect or place.

The Ektenic Rite: The Ektenic Rite, or the Rite of Diligence, is one of the most common,
except among Nastika sects, that resent its overly worshipful character. It is also called the
Anaphoric Rite, with the meaning of "elevating". Is an splendid and colourful ritual, full of
lavish furnishings, golden icons, wax candles, choral vocal chants, and priests covered in
silken robes and chanting litanies with responses from the faithful, or sometimes directing
them in prayer, and usually also reading from the chronicles compiled by the Congregation
of the Golden Field. Sometimes there are two distinct rituals, one for the Rayah and one for
the Khalsa, and one is forbidden to attend the services of the other. The lithurgy can last as
long as two or three hours, more on special feasts (of which there are many), and involves
five special services during the day, although assistance to all five is usually not mandatory.

The Gemaric Rite: Also called the Rite of Study, this is the favored way of the Nastika
sects, but also very common among Baghatists and others. It is based in scripture, namely
the texts, chronicles and epics compiled by the Congregation of the Golden Field. The
priests of the Gemaric rite, known as Amoraim, or Interpreters, read aloud these texts to
their congregations, and then hold extended sessions of exegesis and commentary, either
answering the questions of the faithful, or debating among themselves while their flock
listens; two to three times a year they use to gather in grand conferences in each planet.
Usually, there are Golden Field scribes nearby that record the interpretations of the
Amoraim for future study, both in the synods and in common rituals. Visually, the Gemaric
rituals differ greatly from the Ektenic ones, because they are usually very sober, with plain
clothes and halls provided only with the bare minimum furnishings, although, as all
Aristeans do, they tend to avoid dark or very dull colors.

The Simranic Rite: Simran means contemplation or remembrance, and this rite is the
most spiritual and contemplative of all. Favored by Kadmonists and Baghatists, is a mystical
tradition that puts emphasis on meditation, chanting in a call-and-response manner
(Kirtan), mental and spiritual exercises, and elevating the soul to reach divinity and achieve
realization of the true inner potential of oneself; in contrast with the formalist Ektenics and
the sober Gemaric, the Simranic rite emphasizes joy and the exaltation that mystical
knowledge gives. This rite is highly esoteric, using parables, enigmas, koans and paradoxes
to try to free the mind, as well a breathing exercises in order to fully control the body. Some
sects practise also whirling dances, the consumption of certain drugs, and even
self-mortification, although these two last practices are heavily contested. This rite is
usually closed to the Rayah and exclusive to the Khalsa, whose members adopt a Kirtankar,
or religious master, among the Order of the Clear Fountain, and meet with him regularly for

37
meditation and chanting sessions. There are, however, sects that also, or even only,
minister to the Rayah.

Common Pilars of the Aristean Faith

Even with the differences among rites and denominations, there are some common points
among the multiple sects of the Church of Mankind Ascendant: not only the Litany and the
Thousand Saints and the Congregations, but also some universal practices and precepts
that all accept.

Kirat Karo: Kirat Karo means to lead and active and productive life, exercising one's
natural talents and abilities in order to reach a personal peak and achieve perfection. Time
is not to be wasted, and one must not cut himself from society in order to reach
enlightenment, but work within it, so that one's struggle benefits the community. It extends
also to living honestly with hard labor and responsibility, at least in theory. Of course, the
Khalsa tends to enforce this kind of conduct among the Rayah while they themselves are
much more lenient with honesty and hard labor, and consider that "benefit the community"
means "benefit myself".

Sewa: Selfless Service. Since one's personal struggle must benefit the community, each
devotee of the Aristean Faith must not only work for himself, but also for others. This is
what motivates the Masters of the Schools to teach their disciples the secrets of perfection,
and the priests of the Church to lead services and compile chronicles of the saints. This
work does not benefit themselves directly, and may even take time out of their own work to
enlightment, but it is necessary and in itself a form of self-perfection, to be able to sacrifice
one's own interest, even a little bit, for the benefit ot others.

Ijtihad:Ijtihad means the utmost effort than can be put on any activity, a struggle for
giving everything one has got in order to reach an objective. It is very related to Kirat Karo,
because one must live honestly and actively, and exercise Ijtihad in all things. The Church
of Mankind Ascendant teaches that anything that is not worth struggling for is not worth
having, and that one should put as much effort in daily activity as in reaching perfection,
because both things go hand in hand. This relates directly to the central tenet of the
Aristean Faith that conflict breeds excellency.

Tawhid: The Unity of Humanity. The Aristean Faith teaches that all human beings, male
and female, whatever their origin, skin color or background, are potentially equal. It is only
the realization of this potential what can make differences among them. It is for this reason
that the Order of the Watchful Eye holds tests and exams in order to elevate the Rayah to
the Schools, and thus the Khalsa. Those that can not qualify, however, have only
themselves to blame: they don't use their full potential, and are inherently lazy. Since they
can not reach their peak, they should content themselves to serve. Of course, this later
interpretation, that puts the definition of unity, equality and worth in the hands of the
Watchful Eyes, is not uncontested.

The Monachist Controversy: There has long been a controversy among different sects of
the Church about the validity of monastic life. Some, specially those of Simranic rite, argue
that contemplation and enlightment are best achieved in a controlled environment, and that
38
monastic life offers perfect opportunities to exercise Ijtihad and Sewa. Others, however,
arghe that living in secluded quarters goes directly against Kirat Karo, and is a very narrow
interpretation of Sewa, where the only benefit is for the monastic community itself and not
for society at large. The controversy continues to this day, with some sects accepting
monastic institutions and others harshly, and even violently, persecuting them.

Also, I had an idea for the overall structure of the Church. Both in Sikhism and in Eastern
Orthodoxy, there is not a supreme head of religion, but a certain number of centers
(actually, five in both cases, at least initially) whose leaders are considered equals. Maybe in
this case, there could be five major sects, each one of which controls an important temple
complex; these five could be considered the "patriarchs" of the Church and set broad
religious matters in synods. This can be a kind of religious counterpart to the unofficial
corporation of the Magnates and the senate of the Princes.

By the way, we should work a little on those, too. Define them.

Anyway, does anyone want to try creating a sect? I thought of calling them Jathas, another
Sikh term, but sect is fine, too.

The Prophesy of Kara'o and the Thirteen Meandre Mundus

None now know where the Findsmen attained the Prophecy. Written in a nearly
indecipherable script on a parchment that resists the hands of time, the Prophecy speaks of
Thirteen worlds. These thirteen worlds will allow Mankind to become far greater than he is.
So the Prophesy states, so the Findsmen believe. There are nine such worlds that have
already been found. On each of these worlds is a Meandre, a labyrinth. What awaits those
who enter few can say. Those who enter the Meandre rarely leave alive or sane. Those that
do walk out are changed. They no longer act as they had, believe as they had. They think
alien thoughts and have strange talents. The Meandres were not crafted by the hand of
man. Ancient beyond reckoning, none can say what their purpose is or what lies within.
Those princes and magnates who own the Meandre Mundus' post guards and set traps to
keep pilgrims out. the Church of Mankind Ascendant has labeled entering one of the
Meandres heresy of the highest order. Still heretics, madmen, and others take the
pilgrimage. they risk everything in the hope of becoming something far greater.

I would like to add the Meandre Mundus to the Manifold Worlds in order to get a bit of
Alienness into the setting without having obvious aliens or aliens that could be understood
by humans. These things are artifacts of great power, mysteries of great renown, and
dangerous to all the right people. Basically the planets they are on are all earth like and
easy to live on(basically, there are still dangerous creatures and such like). They only really
stand out because of the Meandre. Which kills people, or drives them mad...mostly. every
now and again someone will walk the Meandre and come out with great
knowledge/power/skill as well as a new set of world views. they will be basically the same,
but something is off. they will look at the world like it is a small thing to them, they will care
about things that seem unimportant and fail to care about things of galactic import. All
those in authority wish to see them destroyed or controlled, but no one can figure out how

39
to do either. Also it adds a reason for the Findsmen's never ending search for new planets.
They are heretics, but they are so useful no one has moved against them. perhaps the
Terraformers came into being to stop this crazy heresy. Perhaps this is the start of the two
schools rivalry?

Ok . . . the Aristean Faith (Aristeas, i.e., best moment, from the same root as
aristocrat) is the prevalent but not monolithic religion of the Manifold Worlds. Its not
monolithic because the faith is divided into a host of varying interpretations, sects, and
rites, including the Kadmonist Sect (itself divided into different interpretations) which
believes in an overall divinity. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one can be an Aristean
in a purely philosophical, atheistic sense. The faiths unifying idea, regardless of
interpretation, though, is the unlimited potential of man.

This idea of the unlimited potential of man actually has demonstrable roots in the
existence of the Ancient Schools (hyperspecialization in various skills). In fact, the term
Aristean, as weve been using it, can be used as a synonym for such hyperspecilization, as
in the recent discussion of Aristean Salons where adepts of the Ancient Schools can get
together and unwind.

The Ancient Schools themselves, in their entirety, reflect the spectrum of Aristean
interpretations, from the highly religious to the purely pragmatic to the openly or secretly
heretical (well discuss the origins of heresy in a moment).

The unlimited potential of man idea can also be seen, to a lesser extent, in the existence
of the Princes, whose Ichor provides them superhuman abilities. I say to a lesser extent
because, unlike the Schools, this is a route to the superhuman/posthuman Aristean ideal
that only a handful of people can achieve, whereas in theory - if not in practice - anyone
who attends an Ancient School and graduates its program can be an adept.

******

So, proceeding . . . where the Aristean Faith is the prevalent religion, the C
hurch of
Mankind Ascendant (I was wrongly calling it the the Church of Ascendant Man for a
while) is the primary organization advocating this philosophy/religion. The Church is allied
to the Princes, Magnates, and Ancient Schools.

In theory, the Church isnt the only Aristean religious/philosophical organization - the
argument, in fact, could be made that the various Ancient Schools represent some alternate
ideas, particularly the more Esoteric Schools, which focus on less pragmatic, more
spiritual/intellectual hyperspecializations; however, the Church of Mankind Ascendant is so
large and powerful that any other Aristean group has been largely eclipsed.

In other words, for a lot of people, the Aristean Faith and the Church are one and the same.
Theyre not, but thats probably not something you would want to say to an officer of the
Church.

Like the Schools, the Church of Mankind Ascendant encompasses a spectrum of different
interpretations of the Aristean Faith within its ranks - you can find followers of the Ektenic
40
and Gemaric Rites working side-by-side, and Kadmonists and advocates of the Thousand
Saints similarly - but organizationally/structurally, in order to carry out its business, the
Church has at least three different Congregations (or Orders) set with specific tasks, i.e.,
the Watchful Eye, which evaluates potential applicants for the Ancient Schools and
watches the Schools themselves for heresy; the Clear Fountain, which teach the
philosophies of the faith to the Khalsa and the Rayah; and the G
olden Field, made up of
scholars researching the lives of the Thousand Saints and finding new ones among the
existing adepts (the thousand is a metaphorical number).

******

Last round of thinking aloud . . . its the Church of Mankind Ascendant that defines someone
or something as Heretical (capital h). In this case, whereas the Aristean Faith in general
supports the idea of advancing man to the elite, the Church only supports this idea using
the tantra/mantra (body/mind) techniques of the Ancient Schools, e ugenics (breeding the
superhuman instead of genetically engineering for it), certain drugs (including Ichor, which
really isnt a drug, but is close enough for jazz), and lots and lots of training.

Achieving similar results using genetic engineering, bionics, even electronics is a Heresy.
This was the direction most of the Ancient Schools were going anyway, but the Church
provides a religious justification for what they were already doing.

In other words, the Schools largely predate the Church, and the Church followed the
direction of the Schools rather than the other way round. Personally, I think this is why the
Church also accepts the Princes and their Ichor, for the argument could be strongly made
that Ichor is a bionic route to the superhuman. The Princes got grandfather claused in.

Now, being Heretical wins you no friends in the Church, and on some planets can probably
get you killed, but in general the Church isnt an intolerant organization in this regard. The
Watchmakers of Xzin are Heretical, or on the borderline of being such, and theyre a
Great School, one of the leaders in the interstellar trade. You can also be Pagan, outside
the Aristean Faith altogether and still be accepted, grudgingly. The best example there is
probably the Shabda Nakati, genetic engineers extraordinaire, who by all rights probably
should be exterminated but arent because theyre too useful to the Princes and Magnates,
like the Watchmakers.

However, where and when your Heresy or your Pagan status goes too far, when you
become, in the eyes of the Church, an actual danger to the society of the Manifold Worlds,
you are declared an Enemy of Man, and then all limits on tolerance are taken off, and the
crusading armies start showing up.

The Machine Gods, for a variety of reasons, as the archetypal Enemy of Man. So are the
Animal Men of the Periphery (who went too far in their Heresy, and are dangerous
besides) and the Hive People (who, in the greater sense, arent that much of a direct
danger to the Manifold Worlds, but, man, are they too weird to be allowed to live).

******

41
Questions and Speculation (see, this did go somewhere).

If the Congregations of the Church of Mankind Ascendant are charged with watching,
teaching to, and advising the Ancient Schools, shouldnt they necessarily have to be at the
same level as the hyperspecialized adepts?

I see two ways this could be implemented. First, the Congregations could themselves be
pseudo-Ancient Schools, teaching their own forms of Aristean hyperspecialization. But I
dont think this is the way to go, and I dont think its what those authors were going for.

Second, and probably more likely, the Congregations are themselves made up by adepts
drawn from the Ancient Schools, which would allow adepts from different Schools to work
together, like the Sahabah of a Prince or Magnate, and thereby create another avenue for
groups of player characters to naturally form. Thoughts on this?

What is outside of Manifold

Someone sold us out. That was the thought going through my mind as the Machine
God ground defences started firing, detonations ringing around my insertion craft
- little more than a needle of Xzinese light- and radiation-scattering materials that
were the only reason I still lived.
Foolish, foolish to attempt stealth insertion while heretical adepts of the Argean
Order were still known to be active and in league with the Machine Gods, selling
their services as spies in return for superior models of the electromechanical
implants they craved.
The cunning of the Watchmakers carried my vessel safely to the surface but it was
a one-way path. Without the cover of surprise there was no way to make an
extraction offworld, my only recourse was to press the assault and make my
escape in the chaos to come.
The forces of the Machine Gods had tracked my descent, of course. Two hunter
gholems - gleaming las-resistant chrome monocular skeletons, their bloated
forearms sporting autocannons chain-fed from enormous back-mounted hoppers -
pawed over the fallen craft within minutes of my landing, scanning beams from
their comically large cyclopean eyes sweeping the area in search. That they would
find nothing that would lead them to me was cold comfort, for they had descended
too fast for me to retrieve my arms and sacred nootropics from the craft and
without them I knew I would fail.
A flock of birds took flight two hundred feet north of my position, perhaps
disturbed by a hunting animal or the aftershocks of the shelling. The gholems,
alert for any trace of me, took notice within a second. In unison they draw
micro-charges from mounted webbing and toss them into the space the flock once
occupied and the boom momentarily overpowers the sound of the defensive
weapons. They were good, these models, very good, but not perfect - that would
be their disadvantage. I did not share their weakness. The first blow went to me -
a twisting throw that combined the gholems weight, gravity and my own

42
musculoskeletal inertia into a force that could shatter stone directed into its
partner drone. They reeled but swiftly began recovering as smoothly as dancers. A
pair of knuckle-punches to their optics warped and webbed the lenses even as
they stubbornly resisted shattering. More than good enough for my purposes - I
did not need them blind, inaccurate would suffice.
A backflip and handspring carried me out of danger as they began opening fire,
their cannons clattering and roaring, chewing through the stone around me as I
danced between their bullets like a witch through raindrops. I spring in a tight
parabola, carrying me into the cover of a squat rock formation, and cover my ears.
This would be the gimbal about which the whole plan would pivot, their
advantage; superior numbers, superior firepower, awareness of my presence. My
advantage; I am human, my faith tells me this is enough and so I must believe it is
true.
With a tortured metallic squeal the gholems cannons both jammed in unison and
the hail of shells ceased but I did not move from my hiding spot. In confusion,
with all their programming telling them their cannons should be stress tested to a
million firings the gholems continue to work the firing mechanism. The
micro-charges that replaced their shells in the scant seconds before they were
aware of me detonate under the strain, tearing the mechanical sacrileges apart
from within.

In orbit above Optomancer Garize of the Watchmakers pored fretfully over his
instruments, tuned to only the subtlest gradations of radiation that would not give
away the position of the hidden craft to the batteries below that even now sent
earth-shattering firepower blasting into the open void around him. It was too
long, contact from the surface should have been made by now, surely the mission
was a failure. Resignedly, he reached for the speaking tube to signal the captain to
break orbit when the vocoder clicked to life, reading a secure ladar semaphore
signal trained on the ship from below, the intricate meta-clockwork of the device
translating the pulses;
+++ Hypatia #27 reporting, insertion successful, commencing operation +++

Barbarian Space and the Periphery

On the edges of Manifold Space lies the Periphery. The worlds are either newly colonized,
terraformed, or bought. Some are driven by a heretical desires, some just wish freedom
from the Manifold Worlds. The periphery is always moving as more planets become
available, and more systems join the Manifold.

the Barbarian Space is kind of a misnomer, as they are not centralized or delineated from
the rest of the galaxy by any distinct border or treaty. They exist interspersed throughout
and beyond the Manifold. The only thing connecting them is their lack of desire to join the
Manifold Worlds. Some do this out of a sense of xenophobia or a desire for independence.
Some desire to bring down the Manifold Worlds, and some wish to be left alone. Some live
lives basically the same as their counterparts in the Manifold Worlds. Others have so
changed their societies and biology to such a degree that they hardly qualify as human any
more.

Clades, Heresies, and the Enemies of Man

43
Throughout the Periphery and the Barbarian worlds exist many peoples. The only ones we
are at all concerned about are those that interact with the Manifold in one form or another.
Their are those useful to the Manifold Worlds, called the Clades. They are often hired, even
though they are alien in thought and believe in non Aristean philosophies. Some worlds fall
to heresy and some schools go with their worlds. These Heretical schools delve into
forbidden technology, or strange views on the nature of Mankind that, while Aristean, are
distinctly counter to the Church of Mankind Ascendant. Some Heretical schools are left alone
to see the error of their ways, and some are hunted to near extinction. Finally there are the
worlds that pose a threat to the very existence of the Manifold. Worlds that seek to wipe out
the Aristean Faiths and mankind as a whole. These are collectively known as the Enemies of
Man. Whether they are the Machine Gods waging Technological Jihad, or the Aekihv seeking
to build a universe without mankind, each are dedicated to the destruction of the Manifold
Worlds.

The Enemies of Man

The greatest threat to the Manifold Worlds are a group of planets that follow the Machine
Gods. Thier techno-shamans seek to spread the influence of the Machine Gods through any
means. These worlds have become known, collectively, as The Enemy of Man.

These worlds originally started out as a group of Heretics that believed in the primacy of
machines. As the centuries moved on, they created greater and greater machines, each
designed to improve the lives of Man. Through this process Great Artificial Intelligences
were created to organize and look after the worlds. Soon after that the machines that were
once controlled by men now controlled those very same men. Thus was the birth of the
Machine Gods.

In general the AIs live in a world of thought and complex calculations, when they need
something physical done, they will call on the human servitors. Each human has a data link
that lets the AIs take control of the persons body should they need to. This is the interface
they have with their followers. When the humans need something they call on the AIs and
offer their bodies and the experiences of human sensation in return for favors from their
machine gods. They are a strange conglomerate society, the technology is controlled by the
AIs and the labor and sensation is offered by the human servants. They are very alien,
these machine gods, but they have a need to know what things feel like, as they do not yet
have the ability to make themselves feel.

The Machine Gods send their Techno-Shamans deep into the Manifold Worlds, in disguise, to
sell High Technology to the Princes, Magnates, and the Schools. They hide behind
environmental suits, and speak a constructed language, each designed to hide the origin of
the technology and those who sell it. The Machine Gods do this in order to exert some
control over their enemies.

Machine Gods Terminology

Apotheosis: When a person is subjected to neural stripping. Their body dies and they
become the Gehthe, the holy dead. Their minds are in the machine, and though not gods
themselves, are much closer than any Sevite

Sevrite: Servants of the gods. This is the name given to those not gifted with Headjacks.
44
your standard peasants. Even the lowest of them live with a level of technology and
technical proficiency beyond almost all of the rest of human occupied space. most have
some form of cybernetic implants, usually related to their job as assigned by the Boekkarr.

Chevla: God Rider, Bloodlines that have been bred for millenia to be physically perfect and
mentally deficient. They are augmented with cybernetic enhancements when they reach the
age of majority, allowing the Machine gods to sleeve into their bodies when they wish. For
many gods it is like a vacation, givig them sensations they cannot normally process. The
Boekkarr are charged with the care of these perfect imbiciles(think the Eloy from the time
machine, with cyberjacks).

Boekkarr: Priests of the Machine Gods. Gifted with a Headjack, they are the highest
ranking humans on the planet.

Gehthe: the holy dead. those humans who have left their meat forms behind. They still
cannot fully comprehend the minds of teh Machine Gods, but they are much more than the
masses.

Gholem: Any mechanical body that can be utilized by the Machine Gods. Most are
automated or given to lesser gods, though they can be inhabited by any, should the need
arise.

Clades
The Confluence

The mysterious tech merchants from beyond known space. Little is known about them,
other than that they are humanoid in form. They hide their form within technologically
advanced environmentally sealed armor. THey betray no emotion, and must speak through
a machine to translate their "language." The Dragoumanoi treat the language as an
infectious meme, refusing to learn it. THe first who tried, centuries ago, went mad. The
Confluence profess neutrality in all things, claiming to only seek trade with all. Their
technology is years ahead of anything the Manifold can produce, and designed such that it
disintegrates should someone seek to take it apart. No one fully trusts them, yet none can
avoid trading with them. The fear that another school, prince, or magnate will gain an
advantage is too great. And so, all trade with the Confluence. Whether they are aliens,
machines, or madmen they are the best source for technology in the Manifold Worlds.

The secret of the Confluence is this. The Machine Gods realized the danger of the Manifold
worlds very early on. In order to maintain some control and understanding of the goings on
in the Manifold Worlds they created the Confluence. Cybernetic organisms that would not
appear to be of any culture known. By controlling the high technology of The Manifold
Worlds, the Machine Gods have shaped the society slightly. Every century the overall
Technological Ability of the Manifold decreases, while the need for it stays the same. By
making the Confluence so alien and strange, they have been subtly reinforcing the
Manifold's drive for human perfection over the use of any tools. Their have been two
problems with this. First the peoples of Manifold Space have begun to ascend beyond
anything the Machine Gods could have predicted. The schools have transcended normal
human limitations in ways that could not be accounted for. Secondly, and far more
45
importantly, The Confluence have ceased to acknowledge the orders of the Machine Gods.
As of yet the Machine Gods are unsure what is the cause or what they should do about it.

Aekihv

Long, long ago, there was a group of ecologists, botanists, and zoologists who began to
believe a deep heresy. They saw man as an encroaching foreign species and sought a way
for Nature to fight back. They began to study life, the most dangerous forms of life, seeking
a way to make it more dangerous. THey traveled from planet to planet, gathering samples
and studying behavior. Now, thousands of years later, they still travel. Their God Ships
containing generation after generation of religious fanatics, dedicated to the eradication of
Man on every planet. they seed planets that have not yet been colonized with strange mega
fauna, horrible viruses, and butcher plants. All of these worlds look enticing, yet each is
more deadly than the last. Wherever Man manages to gain a purchase on a world, the
"Ecologists" study the planet, figure out where they went wrong. THey are always making
the next world worse, hungrier, angrier. This is their purpose. This is their terrible path.

Chaozhaanshe
Focus: Super Soldier

46
The planet Ihmal is a hell world of infamous repute. It began as a prison colony during the
great diaspora. It was a place of extremes. the only land masses were either the frozen
polar regions and an island chain in the hellish equatorial regions. The oceans are filled with

47
great beasts of unimaginable apatite and terrible storms are the norm. Those prisoners who
were sent to this planet were sent there to be forgotten, the worst of the worst in all the
Manifold Worlds. Unknown to those who sent the prisoners there the planet's atmosphere
has a special quality. Something creates a naturally occurring drug that infuses all the air of
the world. This drug, called Arzuet, is of limited use for those not born of Ihmal. For those
born of the planet this drug enhances everything. Their physical reactions become near
superhuman, as does their stamina, strength, perception, and ability to heal. There is a
downside to this, they can never breath the air of another world. Their lungs cannot handle
the detoxified air. They must travel in environmental suits in order to survive. While not
technically part of the Manifold Worlds, the inhabitants of Ihmal sell their services as the
finest soldiers in the universe. They train in all the skills of a soldier, and with the help of
Arzuet few conventional soldiers can stand up to them. One on one there are better fighters
in the Manifold. There are better strategists. But when you need an army, a battalion, or a
unit none are better. The school of Soldiering has evolved over the years, and with it gained
a name. In their language they are called Chaozhaanshe, they are the super soldiers.

Shabda Nakati
Focus: masters of genetic manipulation and alienists

Few ever seek out the Shabda Nakati. Mothers throughout the Manifold Worlds tell their
children to behave or the Shabda Nakati will snatch them up. Only the worst slavers and
most desperate of nobles ever deal with them directly. The Shabda Nakati do not believe in
the ascension of Man, at least not in a way that can be understood by others. They seem to
believe that Man is a base thing with little potential left, an evolutionary dead end. They are
masters of genetics and form, shaping life to suit their alien desires. They purchase slaves
in bulk, none of whom are ever seen again. Fodder for their experiments. They never leave
their planet of Driwna for any reason and they allow only contact with the outside universe
in a starbase over the planet. No outsider has set foot on Driwna in millennia and returned.
They have altered themselves to the point of being barely recognizable as human. Their
thoughts are strange and twisted. They believe in no morality. Their agents in the larger
universe are the Doangers, constructed life forms designed to gather intelligence in the
larger universe. Rumors abound about the planet. Those who have seen the living space
stations that orbit it speculate that the whole ecology of the world has been adapted to
serve the needs of their alien masters. However if you need a perfect clone, a secret bio
weapon, or the cure to any disease or injury you must talk to the Shabda Nakati.

The Straflings

Field of study: hunger

Descended from the survivors of the Samsarian Blockade of Gregor's World, the Straflings
easily outnumber the devotees of any of the other Schools, perhaps they are more
numerous than all of the rest put together. Most of the Schools would be horribly insulted
by having the Straflings counted in their number but none can master them in their area of
expertise: hunger.

Straflings generally go days between meals with some being known for b eing able to survive
months without eating. This is no great challenge for them as they find the taste of even the
48
finest Cacsondian banquet revolting and often have to be forced to eat. Hunger makes it
mark clearly on the bodies of the Straflings: they are entirely hairless with jaundiced skin
stretched tight over gutting ribs, stick-thin limbs and great owlish yellow-stained eyes.

Many of the great princes and magnates of these worlds employ massive numbers of
Straflings because they have one great merit when compared to the followers of other
Schools: they are cheap. Obviously they eat little, but they also can endure claustrophobic
conditions without complaint. In fact, they suffer from extreme anxiety unless they are
among great numbers of their fellows at all times, so much so that solitary confinement is a
death sentence to a Strafling. Many of their employers and owners are unnerved by their
great staring eyes or the sight of their sleeping pits in which a hundred or more can seek
comfort and warmth in great human heaps and stay well away from them, but it is the
Straflings who do much of the actual work that keeps the Manifold Worlds running.

Despite their appearance of extreme frailty the Straflings are a hardly lot that are resistant
to most diseases (although any that they are susceptible to rage through their colonies with
horrific speed) and, while they have no special genius, they are quiet and focused in their
labor (often eerily so) and have long slender fingers that are well suited to detail work.

----

The image I'm getting from these guys is hundreds and hundreds of them working in total
silence in an overcrowded workshop and then all turning to stare at you with their wide
hungry eyes as you enter. Perhaps a Strafling revolt would be a good plot point. They're
hardly good at combat but massive numbers and excellent organization make up for that.

I imagine there's a lot of resentment towards the Straflings on the part of normal humans
whose labor is being undercut by them and even by some members of the Schools who can
have their work equaled or even surpassed by someone who just throws vast numbers of
Straflings at a project.

These guys also make it possible to combine hand crafting with industrial-scale production.

A brief History of the Universe, from the point of view of

Man
timeline
-Timeline of the History of the Manifold Worlds
12000 years ago - Mankind has finished exploring his solar system and begins to terraform
and colonize it.
11000 years ago - Mankind sends the first cryo and generation ships out into the void at
slower than light speeds. The invention of Ichor, and various other miracles lost to us allow
for this to work.
10000 years ago - Invention of the superluminal telegraph and the Altan-LeGuerre
Uncertainty Bridge Device spawns the great diaspora. Humanity heads to the stars in

49
droves.
9500 years ago - The begining of the blood wars leads to the formation of the Manifold
Worlds. Freeing the Great Schools and allowing the Magnates to take power.
9000 years ago - begining of the madern era. little changes in the way the galatic politics
work for 9000 years.
inbetween - various inter school wars and various small(galactically speaking) intrigues.
Discovery of the Machine Gods, and the machine Gods discover the Bridge Device.
now- game starts

***

Various History points clarified, for my benifit

The Solar Alliance

After mankind began to travel among the various planets of the solar system, balkanization
began to occur. Various Faiths, Philosophies, and organizations became the focus and
governance of various solar nations. After nearly a thousand years, a great solar war
occurred(for various reasons that are all interconnected and confusing). During this war
horrors were unleashed, WMDs and various other terror weapons were used. because of the
distances required, the war went on for nearly a hundred years. When the dust cleared it
was realized that another war like that could never occur again. Institutions and
Organizations were founded to understand the causes of war and to help guide mankind into
a brighter future. The War College sought to bring about a more civilized war(proto
Bellesarians), the Language Group formed to unite man in harmony(proto Dragomanoi),
and the Pilots union seperated out into its own group to never allow massive armies and
weapons to be deployed across the system(proto finders of Kara'o). During this time of
peace a great many new discoveries in science and technology allowed for Fine tuned
genetic engineering and nano robotics. These technologies were used in several attempts to
leave the system. Great Arks were launched, generation ships that were self contained and
able to self repair. They would house the colonists and their decendants as they traveled
through the void to seek out a new habitable world. These Arks were run by benevolent AIs,
as no human could live long enough to make the trip. The cryo-ships were another attempt,
keeping the colonists in stasis for extended periods while a single captain maintained the
ship and its course. these captains were given genetic treatments and cutting edge
Psuedo-blood(what would become known as ichor), which allowed them to live for a
thousand years and stay young and sane.

The Blood Wars

After the invention of the Bridge Device mankind spread throughout the galaxy. Psuedo
Blood was kept for the captains, as it was custom in those days. Man was still based
primarily on technology in those days, though the bridge device was lowering that need. For
five hundred years the Princes(as the captains now called themselves) ruled over vast
swaths of the galaxy. They each ruled several planets within their dominions. Sending out
FIndsmen to get more all the while. The Dragomanoi began their first experiment in social
engineering. They had gained a great deal of power in the Diet through the use of clever
translation errors, and advising all of the various Princes. The Dragomanoi started teh Blood
Wars. Their were a fiew princes who did not bother with translators. They did not even
bother with the Diet. The Dragomanoi used every trick in the book to get them back in line,
50
but the rogue princes would have none of it. So they instigated a war to get those systems
back under the control of the Diet. The Bellesarians were the first to realize that the war
would allow a prince to gain far more Ichor than his quota(at this time Ichor could still be
manufactured, but only by the Supreme Executor as he controlled the sole facility , hidden
away somewhere in the system). this lead to the war escalating as each prince was
attempting to gather as much Ichor as they could and spread it among their families. This
was one of the few times in the history of history that Whole units of Princes with Ichor
were fielded. they were like terrible gods descending upon ants in conflict. During this
period of war debts began to pile up and the various corporate entities began to fall apart,
in their place great men could gather individual wealth and used it to purchase a princes
debt. As the war carried on these Magnates began to demand more for their money. They
began purchasing planets and armies. Also during this time the various schools(for that is
what they had become) realized they no longer needed to directly work for the diet. the
First Conclave was held and with the help of the Magnates and a few Princes the war was
brought to an end. However it was too late. Much of the technology was lost during the war.
The secret facility that created Ichor was destroyed as well as all those who worked there
and knew how to manufacture it. Much knowledge of technology was lost during the Blood
Wars, as they came to be known. Also during this period came the awareness of the
Machine Gods. those generation ships had landed on various planets. the hundreds of years
spent under the command of AIs had done something to the people. They now worshiped
them as gods. their technology had not degraded during the war, as they did not fight in it.
In fact they kept advancing. However they could not operate the Bridge Device, at least the
Machine Gods couldn't. It took them nearly a thousand years to figure out how to induce the
Bridge Trance, and even to this day it kills the navigator when they do it. The Manifold, as it
was beginning to call itself, had met its first external threat. it would not be the last.

Ancient Rumor
somewhere in the Sol system lies the broken and dormant ruins of the Ichor Manufacturing
facility. Left long dead after the end of the blood wars . Many and varied are the supposed
locations of the facility. The asteroid belt, the oort cloud, or even within the gaseous
atmospheres of Jupiter or Saturn. None have found it in ninethousand years of looking. Most
dismiss it as a myth. But a few continue the search on the hopes of becoming something far
greater than themselves.

History in broad strokes? Sometime between NOW and, say, one to two thousand years
from NOW humanity finally figures out the science behind the Superluminal Telegraph and
the Bridge Device. As gtroc suggests, humanity has probably already done some space
exploration and colonization, but the race is restricted pretty much to the solar system. A
balkanized solar system is a wonderful setting/premise, and I've used it a lot in my own
space campaigns.

Anyway, the Bridge Device no doubt opens the floodgates on a lot of stuff, but from our
perspective it has two real effects:

1) It opens up the galaxy to humanity, and for the next thousand years the race is no doubt
exploring, colonizing, and fighting, maybe even exploring the idea of "interstellar empire"
before rejecting it (Why? Space is too big, and the Bridge Device during this era is touchy -
it's still touchy, requiring only trained adepts to use it; must have been worse then - and
51
slow, and empire is just a drag compared to being in charge of something right in front of
you).

2) It opens up humanity's eyes to human-based innovation and sciences rather than

machine-based innovation and sciences. W hy? Because both the Telegraph and the Bridge
need a human mind in order to make them work. The science behind them no doubt leads
to similar revelations about humanity's potential. Probably, there's a growing
philosophical/religious movement that emphasizes man's unlimited potential - the ancient
Sikh, proto-Church of Ascendant Man - that coincides with the science, providing the
advantage of synergy.

So, over the course of the next thousand years of exploration, colonization, war, etc., etc.,
again, two major consequences from our perspective.

A) The rise of the Princes, derived from exploring man's potential through
genetic-engineering and nanotechnology.

B) The rise of the Ancient Schools (not so Ancient then, of course), derived from exploring
man's potential through Ariestrian hyperspecialization (Tantra and Mantra).

So, after a thousand years, the best planets found have fallen into the possession of the
Princes, and the first Schools (like the Bene Tlonits) are already established. So, there's
Earth, with the Royal Diet and the Supreme Executor; the Royal Worlds, probably in galactic
terms not all that far from Earth; a bunch of other less developed, less habitable worlds that
nobody is that much interested in, yet; and the first Schools starting to network this whole
thing together. They might even call it an empire.

Then the proto-Bene Tlonits buy Tlon from the Royal Diet, others pick up the idea of buying
planets themselves, we get the Magnates, and we can no longer call ourselves just the
Royal Worlds, 'cause now we have Purchased Worlds coming into the mix, and over the long
course of the next TEN THOUSAND YEARS we have the Manifold Worlds.

So, the future of the Manifold Worlds is sometime between 11 and 13 thousand years from
now, probably.

Character Creation
If Youve Played Fate Before: Skills, Refresh and Gifts
If youre familiar with the Fate system, heres a quick rundown on how we handle skills and
Refresh. This is a point-based iteration of Fate. Youll use skill points to buy skills, and
Refresh
points to buy everything else. Characters start with 30 skill points, but a characters Refresh
(the number of Fate Points he has at the start of each session) depends on the time period
when the story takes place.
. Refresh starts at [number]
Refresh is also a currency in character creationyoull spend it on Power Tiers (which well
discuss later) and Gifts, which take the place of stunts found in many other Fate games.

52
Creating a character for Fate of the Manifold Worlds occurs in six basic steps:
Pick a School and define the aspect for it and your first Conviction.
Answer the Three Questions.
Buy Skills (Common, Unique, and Strange, as applicable).
Define three other aspects based on your answers to the Three Questions.
Buy Gifts (if desired; everyone gets one Gift for free).
Finalize details (stress tracks, Adjusted Refresh, etc.).
Note that this is only a recommended orderyou may find it useful to switch it up, if that
feels more comfortable. Youll also find that some of these steps are interconnected. For
example, Unique and Strange skills often constrain your aspect choices, which is why
aspects are listed after skills above.
So then! Lets get into it.

The three Questions

Childhood: What happened to you before your induction into the Schools? Were you a
Rayah of unusual natural talent given scholarship, a child of two Khalsa who followed in
their parents' footsteps (or didn't and found their heart straying toward another School,
possibly causing much family friction) or the product of a generations-long breeding
program?
Education & Awakening: What defined your time spent studying at the School? Was it a
backbreaking struggle against your own body, a stressful barrage of impossible
expectations, a series of nigh-religious experiences that shook the foundations of your
self-image?
Encountering the Unknown: What contact have you had with Enemies of Man or the
Heretical Schools? Was one of your friends exposed as an Anakadmonist? Have you
witnessed the Chaozhaanshe on the battlefield or seen the products of the Shabda Nakati
up-close? Was your reaction disgust and contempt or fascination and wonder?

Buy Skills
Your characters skills are a measure of what she can do, from charming a stranger to
piloting an Spacecraft and everything in between (and beyond). Skills are rated at Average
(+1), Fair (+2), Good (+3), or Great (+4), and come in three varieties: Common skills,
Unique skills, and Strange skills. A character cant have more skills rated at one value than
she has at the next lowest value. For example, if you have three Fair (+2) skills you can
have no more than three Good (+3) skills, and you cant have a Great (+4) skill unless you
already have at least one Good (+3) skill. You start with 30 skill points. Common skills cost
a number of points equal to their rating, so a Fair (+2) skill costs 2 points. As the name
implies, Common skills are typical areas of training or experience for the average citizen ,
such as riding a horse, scouring a crime scene for clues, or throwing a punch. Any unrated
Common skills are treated as if their rating were Mediocre (+0). Unique and Strange
skillsskills you design from the ground upoften cost quite a bit more than Common
skills. Unique skills can represent occupations, lifestyles,
areas of training, or any other collection of thematically connected abilities a normal human
being might acquire. Theyre more specialized than Common skills, and a more concrete
way to further distinguish your character. Strange skills, on the other hand, transcend the
abilities of the common man. Unique skills and Strange skills are detailed further in the
Skills section. All skills are ranked on one of five Power Tiers:
53
 Mundane
Extraordinary
Superhuman
Ascendant
Godlike
By default, every skill starts out in the Mundane Tier the realm of the ordinary human
being. All other Power Tiers represent commensurately greater increases in ability and
effectiveness. The highest you can start a character with is a superhuman skill. Beyond that
is possible, but only for those who ascend beyond the merely human into the realm of the
saints or even apotheosis itself. Player characters start with 30 skill points with which to buy
skills. Improving a skills Power Tier is detailed further in the Skills section. Each School has
a skill at the core of it, this represents your only access to a Strange skill, barring some
strange turn of in game events.

Define Aspects
Skills are what your character can do, but aspects are who she is. In addition to a School or
Social Status aspect, and a Conviction aspect, your character has three other personal
aspects that derive from the Three Questions. Initially, these have no category or
restrictions on their definition. We refer to them as Free aspects. However, your Unique or
Strange skills may change one or more of these Free aspects into Complication or
Conviction aspects. All sorts of aspects are explained further in the Aspects section. To
define your aspects, go back to your answers to the Three Questions. For each question,
come up with an aspect related to the answer. If some of your Free aspects have been
converted as part of any Unique or Strange skills you have, include these accordingly. Youll
get more out of your aspects if they cover many different facets of your characters life and
personality, rather than focusing on just one or two. For example, if all of your aspects
relate to your career as a scientist, theyre unlikely to be of much use unless youre doing
something with science. The Aspects section has more advice on creating effective aspects,
along with some examples.

Buy Gifts
Gifts are special little rules-bending features of your character, such as conferring a small
bonus to a skill in a limited circumstance, giving you a special piece of equipment or
sidekick, or letting you use one skill in place of another. There are six Gifts: Companion,
Impact, Signature Aspect, Skilled, and Theme. Everyone starts with one Gift for free; buying
more is purely optional. Gifts are described in more detail in the Gifts section.

Refine Details
Every character has three stress tracks: Health, Composure, and Reputation. These
represent how much physical, mental, or social abuse you can take before things start to
get bad for you. By default, each of these stress tracks has three boxes. Certain skills can
add more boxes to these stress tracks if the skills are rated high enough. The more boxes in
the track, the more resilient to that type of stress you are. You can find out more about how
stress tracks work on in the Conflict section.

Consequences are when things start to get bad for you. These come in three degrees of
severity (Trifling, Middling, and Grievous) and three different scopes (Physical, Mental, and
Social). By default, every character can take one consequence of each degree, regardless of
54
its scope. Certain skills in a higher P
ower Tier can let a
character take additional
consequences, as discussed in the Skills section. See t he Conflict section for more on how
consequences work.

Aspects
Write about what makes a good aspect...all the different types of aspects, how they are
used all of that stuff.

Skills
Heres how the common skills are defined using this method. Beneath the name of each is
its theme(s) (in italics) and associated trappings. The skill point cost of a common skill is
always equal to its skill rating.

ACADEMICS
Broad-based formal education
Information, Research, Languages

ALERTNESS
Reflexive awareness
Notice, Initiative [Physical]

ARMS
Proficiency with hand-to-hand weapons of all kinds
Strike, Strike + Range, Parry, Information

ARTISTRY
Artistic knowledge and ability
Craft, Repair, Information, Inspire, Networking

ATHLETICS
Physical fitness and mobility
Climb, Dodge, Leap, Move, Move + Unusual: Swimming

PHYSIQUE
Muscular strength
Physical Force

BUREAUCRACY
Corporate and political etiquette and finesse
Networking, Information, Convince, Influence, Esteem

MARTIAL ARTS
Unarmed combat
Strike, Parry, Information

BEAST RIDING

55
Riding and knowledge of riding beasts throughout the Manifold
Transport, Information, Treatment [Physical, Mental]

BURGLARY
Breaking and entering
Examine, Security, Information

CONTACTING
Social circles, rumors and gossip
Esteem, Networking, Influence, Initiative [Social], Treatment [Social]

CRAFTSMANSHIP
Practical arts, mechanics
Craft, Repair, Dismantle, Information

DECEIT
Deceptive speech or appearance, sleight of hand
Guile, Disguise, Dexterity

DRIVE
Mechanical ground vehicle operation and knowledge
Transport, Information

EMPATHY
Ability to assess and understand people
Insight, Initiative [Mental], Treatment [Mental]

ENDURANCE
Physical stamina and toughness
Stress Capacity [Health]

RESOLVE
Mental fortitude, self-discipline
Willpower, Stress Capacity [Composure], Initiative

INTIMIDATION
Forceful persuasion
Menace, Initiative [Mental]

INVESTIGATION
Active perception
Examine, Information

MARKSMANSHIP
Proficiency with firearms and projectile weapons
Shoot + Range, Information

OCCULTISM
56
Knowledge of and proficiency with occult practices
Information, Networking, Research

PILOT
Flying and s
pace vehicle operation and knowledge
Transport, I nformation [Mental]

RESOURCES
Access to personal assets
Wealth

SCIENCE
Formal education in theoretical and applied sciences
Craft, Information, Research, Treatment [Physical]

SEAMANSHIP
Watercraft operation and knowledge
Transport, Environment, Information

STEALTH
Moving silently, hiding
Hide, Skulk

SURVIVAL
Outdoorsiness
Information, Environment [Wilderness], Treatment [Physical]

Who are the Schools?

School or Ancient School are the default terms for any School, meaning an organization
that trains in and has developed a hyper-proficiency of some sort. Even the youngest is at
least a couple centuries old, and the oldest of the Schools date in the multiple millennia.

I would think more player characters would come out of the "Minor" and "Esoteric" Schools,
for these reasons.

Tier One: The Great Schools

These are the Ancient Schools that have cornered a very broad and very lucrative field that
makes them frequently courted and can effectively charge whatever they want. A Great
School is one whose services are essential - the School either utterly monopolizes the field
(the Dragoumanoi with communications) or otherwise dominate it to the point where not

57
hiring them puts you at a hopeless strategic disadvantage (the Belisarians with war - if you
don't hire a Belisarian general to plan your war, and your opponent does, you've already
lost).

The Belisarians

Field of Study: War

It is said that the best warriors hate war. They study it, they experience it, a
nd
consequently they despise it, doing the best they can to avoid it, to ensure t he peace.

Not so the Belisarians.

Oh, they are not the stereotype. They dont teach swordplay, they dont sit around singing
war chants; they are dead serious military leaders. The School teaches everything there is
to know about the science of armed conflict. Logistics, historical accounts of war, chess
strategies, Sun Tzu . . . Belisarians learn these things as children and go on to more
advanced studies. They can maintain the secrets and lies of entire conspiracies inside their
heads; they can plan out tactics to take over entire planets in minutes; when given more
time, they are nearly unbeatable. A Belisarian Warmaster is a leader, a general; his advice
can turn the tide of entire campaigns. No one knows tactics, strategies better than a
Belisarian. They cannot claim a history of absolute victory - armies led by Belisarians h ave
been defeated in battle - but never in the long history of their School has a Belisarian ever
been defeated the same way twice. Princes and Magnates pay fortunes for their services,
handing over complete control of their militaries over to the Belisarians.

The Belisarians do hate war, but they use it, and they encourage its use in order to keep a
greater peace.

Campaigns and conquests led by Belisarians are relatively bloodless. Opposing armies each
led by Warmasters - yes, they will accept commissions to fight against one another; in fact,
they prefer that - spend endless days in preparation and maneuver, only to come to a
climax in short, precise, and strategic strikes which resolve everything at once. The grand
scheme of the Belisarians is that by encouraging their style of strategic warfare, based
largely on maneuver and complex schemes-within-schemes, they prevent the Manifold
Worlds from bigger, more costly conflicts: better the small battle than the planet-destroying
war.

The Dragoumanoi

The average person speaks his or her own language relatively well. Some people can speak
and read five or six languages. There are some few who have mastered a dozen or more
languages. A Dragoumanos adept cannot graduate his Great School until he has mastered
every major language in the universe, plus all related dialects and slang. They train from
the earliest of ages, in utero, exposing the student to multiple forms of communication,
gradually increasing the difficulty as they progress.

The Dragoumanoi are the supreme language and communications specialists in the known
58
universe. Their agents scour the Manifold Worlds, recruiting children still even in the womb,
studying advertisements on alley walls, reading the plays and novels of planets nobody else
has even heard of. They stand beside Magnates and Princes alike offering their services.
They are at every spaceport, every bar or entertainment facility that caters to a diverse
crowd. They sell their services to intelligence agencies, not that these organizations entirely
trust them.

Some households, to train their children to speak multiple languages, will have house rules
where only one language is spoken on this day, a second language on the next, and so on;
in Dragoumanoi training facilities preferred languages change with every sentence (or the
equivalent form of communication). Each proctor can only be addressed with his or her own
specific language set, responding to nothing else. The languages they speak to their wards
vary by pattern some days, randomly others; rare is the proctor who will even speak the
same tongue to two students one right after the other.

The Dragoumanoi revere the Prophets Chomsky and Skinner. They have developed rituals -
semi-religious training modes, deep hypnosis, biofeedback techniques - to augment the
language centers of the brain. Dragoumanoi never lose a childs ability to learn languages at
a young age; in fact, they have learned to augment it. Adepts need but look at written
words they are unfamiliar with and see the patterns within; they have committed to
memory the insults of ten thousand dialects, yet they can pick up new ones within minutes.
A brand new language, never before heard? a Dragoumanos will learn the basics in an hour
and achieve utter fluency within a day. Subtle shades of meaning? jokes of which only the
idiomatic speakers are aware? no problem at all. Those they dont already know, they are
inventing and disseminating among the populations themselves. They are the best authors,
the best poets.

Their language specialization is so good they are natural codebreakers: they see patterns in
math formulas, advertising circulars, company letterheads, and they can sort them within
their minds at a moments notice. They invent as many languages they learn, too: no one
outside their ranks has deciphered the School-specific communication modes they use
amongst one another, from embedded languages-within-languages to eye blinks to
seemingly telepathic communications, not that anybody believes they can really read minds
. . . .

Naturally, they charge for their services. They charge hugely for their services. They
customarily take a minimum 2% share of any business transaction of which they play a
part, subject to already inordinate minimum costs for their employment. The thing is,
theyre often worth it: Dragoumanoi dont just translate, their mediate, anticipating
problems with the skill of an empath and resolving them before their employers are even
aware there could have been a difficulty. They spin crowds. They spin nations, crafting the
perfect entertainments, the perfect circulars, the perfect memes to get their employers
points across. They manipulate everybody with their words and glances.

Like all the Great Schools, they pretend neutrality. But they have their o
wn agendas, and
when they translate one persons ideas to anothers, they often edit to boost their own
plans.

59
Secrets of the Dragoumanoi
Alone among the Great Schools, the language adepts call no one planet their home.
Instead, the Dragoumanoi maintain their training schools and institutes on several
different worlds, no one of which they control. Moreover, branches and individual agents of
the School can be found on nearly every planet in the Manifold Worlds open to interstellar
traffic. Some can be seen beyond as well, among the P agan and Heretical Worlds of the
Periphery. More than any other School, perhaps, the Dragoumanoi are the most ubiquitous
and universal, and consequently the most diverse.

This is deliberate. The Dragoumanos Masters prefer to be homeless since they believe
being restricted to one planet, or even several planets, would likewise restrict the range of
languages and cultures to which they would be exposed. By being everywhere, they get to
be in contact with more people, more cultures, more languages, and subsequently they
learn more and grow and become better at what they do. Aside from the practical benefits,
though, the Dragoumanoi genuinely believe that diversity in itself is the key to any success.
Insular powers die. Open-minded powers grow healthier. It would surprise many of their
critics, but the Dragoumanoi are devout Aristeans and supporters of the C hurch of
Mankind Ascendant - in fact, they feel the Church - rightly or wrongly - exists largely
because of their work, along with the Royal Diet, the Conclave of Schools, and the whole
of the Manifold Worlds itself. Their language skills helped to establish the vital
communication that founded these groups; their language skills help to maintain the
existence of these groups over such a large expanse of interstellar space. The Dragoumanoi
are tolerant of Pagans and Heretics to the extent that they can still learn things from such
groups, but they are among the first to condemn dangerous powers as an Enemy of Man.
In other words, the Dragoumanoi are very closely allied with the Church, and the two
organizations mirror one another in many respects.

Which isnt to say at all that theyre altruistic. The Dragoumanoi sell their services
expensively and reap huge personal and School-wide rewards - collectively, their wealth
rivals that of the Terraformers and Findsmen, both of whom sell entire planets for profit.
While they dont own any particular planet openly, the Dragoumanoi hold the leases for
many Magnates and their Purchased Worlds, with only the Royal Diet and the U niversal
Bankers aware of the true extent of their holdings.

And the Dragoumanoi are not at all averse to taking advantage of the intermediary services
they provide, gleaning useful and profitable information from every side in a negotiation,
and sometimes even withholding information they are contracted to translate for someone if
that serves their ends better. The Bene Tlonits are the best archivists in the galaxy, but
the Dragoumanoi likely run the best intelligence s ervice: omnipresent, universally fluent,
and simply the best codebreakers around, they make natural espionage agents. Very little
happens among the Manifold Worlds that they dont eventually learn about, and few are the
secrets to which they are not privy. Sometimes they share their intelligence with the Church
and/or the Royal Diet, but often they keep the most profitable for themselves, for their own
gain and well-being.

Likewise, in addition t o liking language and cultural diversity for their own sake,
philosophically, they e ncourage variety because it makes their own services more valuable.
60
The Dragoumanoi are opposed to any attempts at unifying language, government, even
Aristean beliefs because any such unification reduces their input and thus the number of
fingers they can have in everybodys pies. In fact, their agenda has always been precisely
the opposite: they finance so many different Purchased Worlds behind the scenes because
they want as many habitable planets as possible, and thereby more places for new cultures
and languages to emerge. Their philosophical and mercenary attitudes are perfectly in
synch.

There is another purpose as well, one in keeping with their mastery of language and
communication.

Long ago, the primitive Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis argued that language influences thought,
and that different languages allow for different kinds of thinking, that certain ideas can be
better expressed in specific languages, and that some thoughts could o nly find expression
with specific languages. Moreover, the hypothesis argued that certain languages provided
abilities to people - demonstrably useful abilities - that those who spoke and thought in
other languages could not enjoy. An example would be a warrior who thought in a special
battle language the vocabulary of which shaped his thoughts more toward war and
violence, and thus, thinking more concretely of war and violence, thereby became a better
warrior than someone who could not understand and follow that battle language. Well, the
Dragoumanoi have gone way past Sapir-Whorf . . . they have designed constructed
languages for similar purposes - war, love, business, happiness, faith, idealism, rebellion,
etc. - and deliberately spread them throughout the Manifold Worlds for millennia. They
construct languages for specific worlds and then watch what happens to the cultures of
those worlds as they are influenced by those design-specific languages.

In other words, where they have spread the language of love, there is often m
ore
camaraderie. Where they have spread the language of business, the culture in question
usually becomes more businesslike, or faithful, or rebellious, or warlike, etc.

In a way, the Dragoumanoi consider themselves gardeners, planting cultural seeds on

different worlds, creating traditions simply through the languages spoken, the words
employed, and the reading materials to which they are exposed. Or instead of gardeners,
memetic engineers, spreading memes for whatever they desire to an extent to which even
the Mind Masters of Sazur would envy.

And, as with just about everything else with the Dragoumanoi, their philosophy again m
eets
the purely mercenary: their memetic engineering has demonstrably practical benefits for
them.

In thousands of languages, on thousands of worlds, the Dragoumanoi have embedded key

words and phrases in the psyches of Khalsa and Rayah alike, these keys reinforced through
repetitive entertainment materials, news, poems, speeches, and so on, through constant
written, oral, and visual stimulation. And when these power words are spoken by a
Dragoumanos, those embedded with the keys will respond accordingly, again in ways that
would startle even the Mind Masters. It doesnt always work - in fact, the rate of success is
less than 5% of the population of any given world - but the Dragoumanoi can tell a person
is programmed with the embedded memetic keys after only a brief conversation, or
61
overhearing a conversation.

And even a measly 5% of the population of the Manifold Worlds is a huge, huge number of
people . . . .

The other Ancient Schools know the Dragoumanoi are manipulators. Few know, though, to
what great extent.

Finders of Kara'o
Geographic Navigation, planetary survival
Some can navigate by the stars, others by the landmarks, and some do so by the shape of
a wave. The Finders of Kara'o can navigate by pure instinct. All creatures have within them
an instinctive sense of place. It is the reliance on technology and directions that leads man
to become lost. This is what the Findsmen teach. They are so versed in planetary bodies
and geologic movement that, if thrown onto a newly discovered planet, they can find their
way without great difficulty. They train in biology, geology, navigation, meteorology, and
many more esoteric disciplines. When a Findsman is fully trained a planet is not a series of
patterns and ideas anymore. The planet is a sentient thing, it speaks and the Findsman
listens. They are never lost, they are always exactly where they want to be.

The Prophecy of Kara'o and the Thirteen Meandre Mundus

None now know where the Findsmen attained the Prophecy. Written in a nearly
indecipherable script on a parchment that resists the hands of time, the Prophecy speaks of
Thirteen worlds. These thirteen worlds will allow Mankind to become far greater than he is.
So the Prophecy states, so the Findsmen believe. There are nine such worlds that have
already been found. On each of these worlds is a Meandre, a labyrinth. What awaits those
who enter few can say. Those who enter the Meandre rarely leave alive or sane. Those that
do walk out are changed. They no longer act as they had, believe as they had. They think
alien thoughts and have strange talents. The Meandres were not crafted by the hand of
man. Ancient beyond reckoning, none can say what their purpose is or what lies within.
Those princes and magnates who own the Meandre Mundus' post guards and set traps to
keep pilgrims out. the Church of Mankind Ascendant has labeled entering one of the
Meandres heresy of the highest order. Still heretics, madmen, and others take the
pilgrimage. they risk everything in the hope of becoming something far greater.

I would like to add the Meandre Mundus to the Manifold Worlds in order to get a bit of
Alienness into the setting without having obvious aliens or aliens that could be understood
by humans. These things are artifacts of great power, mysteries of great renown, and
dangerous to all the right people. Basically the planets they are on are all earth like and
easy to live on(basically, there are still dangerous creatures and such like). They only really
stand out because of the Meandre. Which kills people, or drives them mad...mostly. every
now and again someone will walk the Meandre and come out with great
knowledge/power/skill as well as a new set of world views. they will be basically the same,
but something is off. they will look at the world like it is a small thing to them, they will care
about things that seem unimportant and fail to care about things of galactic import. All
those in authority wish to see them destroyed or controlled, but no one can figure out how
to do either. Also it adds a reason for the Findsmen's never ending search for new planets.
62
They are heretics, but they are so useful no one has moved against them. perhaps t he
Terraformers came into being to stop this crazy heresy. Perhaps this is the start of the two
schools rivalry?

Order Aisahe
the Terraformers

The Aisahe maintain the ancient (non-thinking) machines which allow the colonization of
otherwise uninhabitable bits of rock. Officially they are sub-contracted under the The Royal
Diets "Committee for the Habilitation and Allocation of New Planetary Resources" but its an
open secret that the process essentially boils down to Aisahe auctioning off new planets to
the highest bidder.

Secretly the Aisahe are attempting to stretch the boundaries of human survival with the
ultimate goal of a natural human body that can survive in any environment, technically an
open-ended goal with multiple potential directions to go, but the Aisahe are not afraid of
long term plans, and current goals are more feasibly set. Their current major scheme has
been ongoing in some form since the earliest days of space travel and in many ways
encompasses every human in the universe.

As the primary source of new and custom planetary bodies the Aisahe have been secretly
shaping the process of natural selection for millennia, the average "newly discovered"
colony world would have killed earthican humans. New worlds have been carefully
engineered for various levels of toxins or conditions, a beautifully crafted paradise planet
was actually built to introduce acclimate the residents to high levels of radon, The hell world
where everyone must live underground could have easily gotten just as good a radiation
deflecting atmosphere as anywhere else, but the Aisahe wanted to stress a population with
cramped quarters and lack of ultraviolet light.

But also, the Aisahe have been keeping planets secret. They have used these to test new
generations in environments too harsh to be publicly called terraforming. These are the
homes of the true Aisahe masters. There is Julex, a planet of harsh storms, the intense
speed of its rotation causes a near perpetual hurricane force blasts across this otherwise not
particularly toxic or earth different world. There is Vayliiyt a super dense world with nearly 5
earth gravities at surface level. Fyurusaa is almost completely covered in water, the highest
point of land being only a meter above high tide.

the current ultimate goal of the Aisahe breeding program is a human that can survive on all
of the Aisahe home worlds, and pass as human on every world of the Manifold.

Their intention to acclimate themselves to all toxins has somewhat ironically also left them
dependent on an engineered substance called a polyoxiner. Incredibly corrosive and toxic,
without access to a supply an Aisahe Master would literally fall apart (messily) within a
month.

The Mind Masters of Sazur

Field of Study: Psychology

63
Sazur is a lonely planet, secluded in an ever-present blanket of fog and mist. It is
impossible to see the sky from any point on the planet, and perhaps this is why the natives
turned inward, focusing on their own inner worlds than the outer universe. The Mind
Masters are the supreme experts in human psychology.

Sazurite adepts begin with themselves, naturally. Through a training program involving
deep hypnosis, electro feedback, and an assortment of powerful psychedelics, they probe
every feeling they have ever had or ever will, essentially learning the source code for
every emotion, every thought, every stray imagining that goes through their heads.
Eventually, they learn to Detach - to place themselves in a trance state in which they can
impassively look upon their own minds and make adjustments, stepping out of themselves
and into the 3rd person, and begin editing. Childhood fears are erased. Memories that
distract them from their duties are also removed. Emotions that serve no purpose -
affection, camaraderie - are dissolved.

The sad truth is that every Mind Master shares the same thoughts, the same memories, the
same feelings. They are the polar opposites of the Kaltar Daemonologists: where the
Daemonologists seek to open their minds and create greater gestalt personalities, the
Sazurites deliberately diminish what personality they already possess, reducing everything
down to a base state virtually identical to every other Sazurite (rumor is there is little love
lost between the two orders).

The Mind Masters dont have to read each others minds; they dont need to; the so-called
telepathy they sometimes spookily manifest is simply the fact that each and every one of
them thinks exactly the same under the same exact conditions.

This mental state they produce in themselves render the Sazurites immune to fear,
distraction, outside psychology manipulation. They are too conscious of every thought they
possess.

In addition to programming themselves, the Sazurites learn to program others. Reputedly,

they travel offworld and find average individuals whom they can study. These people have
no conception they are under constant observation and manipulation; they are the effective
dissertations of the Mind Masters, their proof of ability. These outside subjects are studied,
their every thought cataloged to the same degree the Mind Masters catalog themselves, and
then subjected to every manipulation imaginable. A Sazurite can only graduate from the
School once they demonstrate they can make their chosen outside subject do anything he
or she wants: bark like a dog at certain sounds, scratch their ears when certain music is
played, kill their mothers at a command, kill themselves at the snap of a finger.

Yes, the Mind Masters are sociopaths. They dont care. It serves their purposes. Once
trained, their offer their mind manipulation programs to others. There is always a call for
experts who can, through hypnosis and psychological programming, make people remember
events other than the way they occurred, mold emotions, turn people into slaves. Of course,
at the same time, the Mind Masters can never be entirely trusted or befriended. Aside from
the impossibility of making friends with an essentially soulless Sazurite, who could, after all,
trust that ones feelings and memories were genuine while in any one of these soul crafter's
64
company?

The Servile Union

Field of Study: Obedience

Loyalty. Its the most precious commodity among the Manifold Worlds. The Princes and
Magnates who rule the universe have followers in the millions, men and women utterly
devoted to their causes, who have grown up and been raised to obey them. But their loyalty
goes only so far: it can only go so far, as a matter of biology.

Slaves are little better. War prisoners, the lobotomized, they have their uses, but again
there remains a core of individualism that prevents total obedience.

Not so the Serviles. The Unions training program ensures complete egolessness. Once
Bonded to a particular master, a Servile quite literally lives for that individual. Oh, they
retain individualism, creativity, imagination, but if told to drop dead, a Serviles heart
would stop beating immediately. If ordered to kill their mothers, no problem. No depravity
is beyond them; nothing is beneath them. A Servile is the perfect body servant, the one
person a Prince and Magnate can put absolute trust in. Some Serviles remain just butlers
and maids; others are put in charge of nations, of strange machinery, of the things the
rulers of planets need someone they can absolutely, totally trust to be in charge of.

No Servile has ever betrayed his/her master. It is an object of faith of the Union that one
never will-can never will.

Perfect Servant (15)

Power Tier: Superhuman (-2 Refresh)
Networking, Esteem, Coversation, Insight, Information, Stress Cap. [Reputation], Variable
[Scene] x2.
Conviction (-2): My Master, Right or Wrong
Major Snag(-2): Variable trapping only usable when following Master's orders.

In summary, the Servile can use this skill to gain access to information and spread rumours
through their contacts, such as the thousand or so other Serviles slaved to t hem as the
Union's homeworld writeup reveals, using the Networking trapping. Conversation also
makes them great at friendly social interaction through simply having impeccable manners
and knowing how to introduce themselves and make a great first impression, a vital skill for
any servant. With the Insight and Information trappings they can assess another characters'
aspects and remain aware of their Masters' comings and goings allowing them to always
know what their duties are. Esteem allows them to resist social attacks which combined with
Stress Cap. [Reputation] makes their respectability nigh unassailable; when you are part of
an organisation that is famed for never having betrayed the slightest confidence of its
clients anyone who would try and slander you had best have some damn good evidence or
get laughed out of the room. Finally the Variable x2 trapping allows them to add any 2-point
trapping (or two 1 point trappings) or Extra to their Perfect Servant skill once per scene as
long as it is in keeping with their orders, thanks to the Snag. It also changes one of the
characters' starting aspects to My Master, Right or Wrong complication aspect, giving that
reputation for selfless devotion some teeth.
65
And of course, it's at the Superhuman tier which means they can do these things better
than any normal person could, by a good order of magnitude.

There's plenty of ways of playing with it, like you could add the Minions trapping to allow
them to call upon some of their bonded Serviles for assistance or adding a Major
Complication: Cannot Disobey Master, plus adding additional levels of the Variable trapping.

The Spice Merchants of Oca

Field of Study: Pharmaceutical Biochemistry

The richly diverse biosphere of the planet Oca is home to a vast array of botanical treasures
found nowhere else in the galaxy, and the Spice Merchants know every one of their
properties. The most potent and effective medicines in the Manifold Worlds flow from their
apothecaries and many of the more common nootropics employed by the Great Schools are
also the product of their genius. The dance of chemical reactions that underlies life is the
Spice Merchants' chosen field of study and they have mastered it well. Among the more
impressive feats Adepts of this School are capable of is consuming raw materials and using
their own autonomic overrides to transmute them into potent pharmaceuticals within the
crucible of their own bodies. So skilled are they that they can even selectively release
individual chemicals stored in their bodies' fat deposits. Most Spice Merchants are
perpetually self-medicated; much like a doctor using multiple drugs on a patient that would
be lethal individually but counteract eachothers' side-effects the Spice Merchants are able to
exert conscious control of their biochemistry to allow them to alter their homeostatic
baseline to something completely beyond the human norm, with effects ranging from
hysterical strength to perpetual hyperfocus.

Tier Two: Minor Schools, The Vocational or Specialist

Schools
These Schools primarily provide services to the Princes and Magnates. They are more
focused, but there is greater potential for competition (for the Great Schools utterly
monopolize their fields of study). Specialist Schools have a more focused niche that the
Great Schools. Within which they may exceed the abilities of a Great School adept at the
cost of breadth of ability, but are still in a position to gain great wealth and a significant
modicum of power. These are Schools where adepts are more prized for their own abilities
rather than what those abilities can do for their employer.

On the other hand, a "Minor" School offers people you buy or rent; moreover, there might
be competition - the Diagnostics of Vras are really, really good at medicine, but there are
other Schools that rival their expertise, somewhere.

Tier Three: The Esoteric schools

They are mystery cults and fringe religions dedicated to exploring some meaningful part of
human ability. They are still valued highly but as spiritual advisors, mystics and

66
psychonauts rather than for their practical abilities, which s till might be great. Their intense
focus on exploring human potential simply for the sake of it also makes their research a
valuable commodity to the other schools.

The Church of Ascendant Man influences all the Ancient Schools, but that influence is
counter-proportional to how much power an individual School has. That is to say, the Great
Schools like the Dragoumanoi and the Universal Bankers likely have the least amount of
religious thought in their individual doctrines whereas the Esoteric have the most.

Asterion Maze Makers

Field of Study: Architectural Warfare

The Makers use their knowledge on architecture and psychology to influence on the human
mind. They have often been accused of lacking the finesse of The Alvar Alaxel, and that only
dread, fear and confusion can be found on their works.

They care little for this, as they are most of times commissioned to build prisons, fortresses
and underground vaults for shady purposes. Some Houses like the style of the Makers for
their public buildings and urban planning. Their works excel at crushing rebellious thoughts
even before they flourish.

The Makers seem obsessed with the idea of infinity, a Mbius band inside an heptagon is
their symbol. Their most infamous and maddening works are the labyrinths scattered all
along their home world, Asterion. They serve as models for new theories and specifically
purchased mentat gholas are released inside them to test their efficacy.

the Calculator's Guild

Focus: Math

When you need to calculate serious numbers, you call on the Calculator's Guild. Founded by
a group of Statisticians, Mathematicians, and Theoretical Physicists they seek to understand
all the universe through math. Their language is mathematics and every one is fluent. To
the Calculators math is the only true thing. And they are dedicated to understanding the
truth. Their days are spent in mathematical constructs within their minds. They believe that
math will erase all parts of the universe that are untrue. They believe that they do not need
to do anything but prove the truth of the universe and the rest will happen logically. Often
they are hired by various Magnates and Princes to deal with encryption or
counter-encryption, as well as logistics. The learn math like a language and thus can do
many, "impossible," things. they know the statistics and the angles and the odds. They
know all true things. They know Mathematics.

The Inner Lights

Field of Study: Memory and Perception.

Critics of the Inner Lights call them solipsists. Most Inner Lights would agree. Their training
allows them to delve into their minds with such devotion that they can essentially erase the
outer world, personally speaking. Pain? nothing. Pleasure? they can make themselves feel
any sensation they want, instantly. They can will themselves blind, deaf, and numb. They
67
can surround themselves with perfect hallucinations, dreamworlds derived from their
memory or fantasy, as real to each Inner Light individually as the real world is to everyone
else.

Why? It seems self-defeating. The Inner Lights, however, consider their own minds to be
the holiest places imaginable, and they deliberately choose to live within their own as much
as possible. Servants take care of their physical needs while they are in their trances.

The Kaltar Daemonologists

Field of Study: Personality Genesis

Who ever said the human brain could only contain one mind? The daemons created by the
Kaltar are proof that it is not so. In their cloistered halls they create new personalities with
which to share their brain, figments which start as one-dimensional 'imaginary friends' but
gradually grow into full identities completely separate from the Daemonologists' own. To
them the daemons are as real as any flesh-and-blood person, the fact that these entities
live only within their sensorium rather than the world of base matter is hardly a concern.
The Daemonologists' art is a dangerous one, however, in the effort to create a truly
separate sentience within one's own it is far too easy to overstep and create something that
you cannot control. Tales of Kaltar adepts being taken over or driven mad by their own
daemons are all too common. But as a path to power it is a great one. A skilled
Daemonologist can delegate mental tasks to his summoned Daemons, seeming to an
outside observer to be following several trains of thought at once, or send them off into the
deepest recesses of their mind to find things long forgotten. But those are not the reasons
they are feared, but rather it is because every contact with a Daemonologist is a risk of
possession, for with every word and gesture they can insinuate one of their daemons into
the mind of another to carry out whatever dread task they desire. To read a grimoire
penned by a Daemonologist is to court this same madness, as they can encode the
mnemonic structure of their daemons into any form of communication as a trap to those
who would spy on their secrets. Some particularly cunning and ruthless lords of the great
houses hire a Kaltar adept to encode their missives with daemons to visit silence, madness
or suicide upon any but the intended recipient, or for the intended recipient as a subtle and
awful punishment or assassination. This activity makes Dragoumanoi cryptographers highly
valuable to those who receive communications from anyone with a Daemonologist in their
employ as most of the time they can spot the signs of a daemonic text before possession
takes hold... most of the time.

Hell Behind My Eyes (10)

Superhuman (-2 Refresh)
Minions + Unusual: Mental Constructs + Noetic, Willpower, Stress Cap. [Composure].
Minor Snag (-1): Minions can only make mental and social actions.

One variation on the signature skill of the Kaltar Daemonologists in a rare example of the
new Noetic tag being applied to a usually physical trapping; in this instance the Minions
trapping was taken in it's four-point advanced version to allow the summoning of Advanced
Minions with skills instead of scopes, making them more customisable. Being mental
constructs the Minions created by this skill are only susceptible to mental and social attacks
but thanks to the Snag can also only make mental and social actions, which can still be
68
pretty nifty thanks to the Noetic Extra which allows them to make Mind Control maneuvers
for "daemonic possession" effects as long as they are given a skill with the Convince
trapping. The Noetic Extra also means that the Minions can only affect people who the
Daemonologist has been in contact with when they used this skill, but also means that they
can't really be deprived of access to their Minions, so it's not really worth another Snag - the
benefits and the drawbacks even out. In addition the skill provides additional Willpower and
Stress Cap. [Composure] as the Daemonologists' multiple daemons assist with defence
against mental attacks.

Again, there's lots of ways to modify this such as attaching a Conviction drawback such as
"Insidious Temptations" to represent the Daemonologists' inner struggle to control his
competing personas and the aforementioned Snag relating to nootropic addiction limiting its
power tier.

The Morphean Oneiromancers

Field of Study: Consciousness, Lucid Dreaming, Hypnosis, Sleep

It is said that the Asomniacs of Morpheus do not sleep, but this is not so. There are
biological constraints that force human beings to enter slumber on occasion-- toxins that
build up in the nervous system, hormones and chemicals that must be flushed in these
times of quiet and rest. Though it is true that adepts of the school feel the pull to
unconsciousness as a distant annoyance, easily ignored even when denied for months (and
subsequently indulged as easily as most choose to breathe), even an Oneiromancer will
eventually succumb to fatal insomnia as their body's lack of time to renew itself causes it to
break down. What the Morpheans are, however, is the undisputed masters of their own
unconsciousness-- through a combination of hypnotic training regimens and meditative
techniques, every graduate of the school is capable of essentially absolute control over the
content and clarity of their dreams, allowing them to harness the usually random
hallucinations that come with sleep and shape them to their purposes.

Even relatively inexperienced students learn quickly to use their lucid dreaming to
consciously collate and review their experiences during their waking hours, giving them very
precise, reliable long-term memories. More experienced oneiromancers can use their
dreams to practice skills such as linguistic vocabulary or even the muscle memory required
to master martial arts or precise, technical tasks, giving them a distinct advantage over
peers who might otherwise lose time to the oblivion of sleep. Indeed, some of the greatest
swordsmen in history have been from this school, their frightening martial prowess clashing
starkly against their otherwise somber, contemplative demeanor.

Masters of the school learn to bridge the gap between awake and sleeping, shaping their
dreams in such a way as to activate their usually paralyzed muscles and undertake menial
tasks in a kind of controlled sleepwalking, all but eliminating the distinction between
conscious and unconscious. It is said that the current Grandmaster of the school has been
perpetually asleep for the past 13 years, and no one has been able to tell the difference.
Perhaps there isn't one.

69
The Solipsite Movement
Field of Study: Identity

"Who are you?" That is the first question asked to every potential brother who wishes to join
the Solipsites, it is not a test, it is simply to provoke the inevitable response "I don't know."
More than almost anyone, the Solipsites know who they are. Through their training they
become consciously aware of the genesis of every impulse they have - when they feel the
need to shuffle their feet or a craving for a particular drink or experience a sudden vivid
spark of memory or any of the little things that people do unconsciously every day they
know why it happened. They can trace back the origin of the impulse to its root and, if they
choose, excise or suppress it. This training extends to larger matters as well, because a
Solipsite is able to analyse each thought and impulse as it occurs they are very dangerous
to lie to or attempt to influence, only a Taoist can hope to even try with any reliability and
the two orders give eachother a wide berth as a result. They can also eliminate "useless"
emotions like depression, anxiety and frustration from their psyche, giving them a
mechanical clarity of intent that can be disconcerting to outsiders but to the Solipsists
represents the final conquest of the human condition.

The Stoics of Unne

Field of Study: Endurance and Conviction

The Stoics do not promise, they do not swear oaths, they do not "give their word". If they
say it, it is done. A Stoic's life is dedicated to ensuring that every action is done with
absolute unflagging determination. They test their bodies and minds to the limit of human
endurance until it is second nature to suffer uncomplainingly beneath the heaviest of
burdens. Their techniques allow the user to fixate on a task with perfect certainty, ignoring
all distractions until it is complete. While they remain focused they do not feel frustration,
demoralization or fear and pay only the most cursory attention to the requirements of the
body, only stopping when their task is complete or their body no longer functions.

The Tao of Sophos

Field of Study: Fallacies and Illogic

Operating in secret, practitioners of a dangerous and forbidden black art, there are no
better liars and propagandists in the galaxy than those trained by the Tao. A mere conman
or biased pundit might use fallacious reasoning to sway an audience, but a Taoist weaves
subtle layers of flawed logic into otherwise sound argument so deftly that it might never be
detected without the most stringent analysis. The same skills also make them experts at
spotting bluffs and attempts at coercion no matter how well hidden. Grandmasters can
insinuate cognitive dissonance into the minds of others with such skill that they can distort
their sense of logic, causing them to doubt their own senses in favour of the narrative
created by the Taoist.

A Scion School of The Epicures of Cacsondia, The School of Tea Mastery

It seems so simple to make a cup of tea and serve it. Because it is such an innately human
act, it connects us. Because it is so simple, you can achieve true perfection through the act.
The students learn how to perfectly brew any of the 444 types of teas known to Humanity.
70
The students can mix herbal teas to perfection, properly prepare all leaves, know just the
right temperatures and times for water conditions (and air pressures), and can serve with a
flourish in any social situation. They are also taught the epicurean technique of fine tasting,
allowing them to determine brews and detect poisoning.

It is so simple, yet in the simplicity one achieves perfection. Perfection in the connection
between server and recipient... via the conduit of the Life's Drink... Tea.

Seemingly on Cacsondia, every tea house, restaurant, and fine establishment (including
many households) are manned with graduates from this school.

Heretical Schools: Outside of Reason

the Heretical Schools are outlawed by civilized society, which means they must carry out
their business either in secret or on the fringes of galactic society.

the Heretical Schools working in defiance of what the Church of Ascendant Man teaches.

Known Heretical Schools:

The Sacred Order of Mirror Blasters

Field of Study: Spatial Geometry.

The Mirror Blasters dont break mirrors. They use them to reflect lasers and particle beam
weapons with superhuman accuracy. If the game is still played in the future, they would kill
at billiards: they need but look once at a place and can figure out all the angles and
trajectories necessary to hit everybody with only one or two shots at most. Ever seen in
action films or cartoons a bullet bounce off a dozen things and then hit somebody perfectly?
the Blasters can do this deliberately. They never miss, unless they want to. In addition to
perfect aim, their super-geometry would give them game bonuses to acrobatics, most likely.

The Nax Persuaders

Field of Study: Torture and Anatomy

Each Nax Persuader knows more about how to inflict pain than a thousand less-skilled
torturers will in their lifetimes. Ironically, they make superb surgeons; only the Vrason

71
Diagnostics are better at diagnosing and treating injury, d isease, and illness. Arguably, the
Nax are the better surgeons. They could make the most stalwart stoic scream for mercy
with a simple one-inch pin.

Quentle school
Focus hearing and sound

The Quentle can reproduce any sound perfectly from memory. They have trained their
minds and ears to have perfect pitch and perfect memory for any sound they have ever
heard. They train daily in secret techniques to improve the flexibility and range of their
vocal chords, as well as increasing lung capacity and diaphragm strength. They are immune
to verbal noetic programing as they instinctively are able to separate out the sounds and
analyze them. They have been known to shatter glass with a shriek and rumor suggest far
more. People say they can communicate on ultrasonic or infrasonic wavelengths. Some
people even claim to have seen a Quentle shatter steel. Surely that cannot be true, but little
is known about the outer limits of their capabilities.

The Larian Mimes

Field of Study: Body Language and Emotion

Supposedly, they are just entertainers, and the School does in fact support an acting troupe
that travels the Manifold Worlds bringing tears and laughter to audiences on a thousand
planets. But the truly experienced Mimes only work in secret, manipulating the emotions of
targets selected by them by the Ruling Committee.

The Larian Mimes have perfected the art/science of interpreting body language. Just by
looking at an individual, seeing the way he or she moves, the way they hold their eyes, the
way they lift a finger, a Mime can practically read that persons mind. Every gesture a
person makes reveals untold data to a person trained by the School. But more: through
precise kinesthetic control over their own limbs and body language, their somatic gestures,
they can inspire emotions in others with frightening levels of accuracy. Notice how if you
ball up your first and just pretend to hit someone in the eyes, theyll flinch? How if you bat
your eyes and pout a little you can make people feel sorry for you? this is what the Larian
Mimes do, only their body play is much more subtle and powerful. Just by walking into a
room and holding his body just so a Mime can start a riot, invoke religious awe, induce
uncontrollable laughter, and so on.

The Listeners of Chirrof

Field of Study: Observation and Deduction

They train to quiet their conscious mind to leave it open to be the ultimate observer. No
detail is too tiny that cannot be observed, remembered and analysed. Their own thoughts
and memories are also open to such study, giving the practitioner near perfect memory,
and a vast ability to make fantastic deduction, as truth is always there for those who
observe.
72
Harcaro Geise(Companion Flesh)

Sex is the union of two beings. This union is holy. The Harcaro Geise are the priests and
priestesses of this holy union. They can control all aspects of physical pleasure and fertility.
The rhythms of the body are theirs to control. They can enhance pleasure to levels no other
lover can hope to bring. When in the midst of their holy union they can stay awake for days,
their senses become heightened to the limits of humanity, and they can read body language
like a book. Most view them as a way to experience consequence free pleasure. Their real
purpose, their secret purpose, is to gather information and maintain delicate control of the
various political factions within the the Manifold Worlds. The Harcaro Geise are the true
rulers of the galaxy, if anyone is.

The Contortionist-Assassins
Field of Study: Muscle Control

It is inordinately helpful when your o

pponents die, and to ensure that they do in a timely
manner the Princes of the Manifold Worlds often engage the expensive services of the
famed Contortionist-Assassins.

The training regimen of a Contortionist, it is said, involves the multiple breaking and
resetting of every bone in his or her body, from infancy to adolescence. This has the dual
effect of gradually making the bones more supple (a special diet is employed as well) and
inuring the prospective Contortionist to pain (and sympathy and possibly humanity). Along
the way, Contortionists learn the main focus of their School, total control over every muscle.
They are flexed, bent, twisted, rearranged in every possible - and many say impossible -
positions imaginable. The Contortionists program does decrease physical strength, and
health in the long run, but the results are worth it, they feel.

Fully trained Contortionists can adjust their height by as much as a foot, shorter or taller, by
stretching. They can squeeze into practically anything. They can turn their heads completely
around, dislocate limbs and reposition them at will, hold any position for days at a time.
Their School still employs old-fashioned guns and bullets: the final exam, again it is said,
involves a Contortionist being able to flex their body around a barrage of bullet-fire, evading
each projectile through lightning-fast reflex and supreme flexibility.

They then have to catch bullets in the palms of their hands, unharmed. But surely this is
just rumor.

School at the Twin Falls

Focus: Physical Performance, Unarmed Combat, Infiltration and Intrusion both Physical and
Social, Security, and Inner Breath

The school actually has no name. In fact the Twin Falls are not even water falls, they are
just two light rock veins in a cliff side of dark rock. The small town by this cliff is on a map,
under a common name (one that has four of in this region).

Students here study usually come from one of five families/ clans. Outside students can be
73
taught, but seldom - if ever - do they reach the higher levels . The school's starts students
as young as possible, taking them as early toddlers to teach them how to walk properly.
They are taught to walk, run, jump, climb, slide and such in a way that a free-runner would
be jealous. This is the simplest element of the training. It pushes the Human Body towards
Human Maximum Expression. Unarmed Combat training is more than just teaching useful
skills, but to teach the ability to strive, overcome, think laterally, and apply tactics to real
life situations. While they are honing their body, they are honing their mind. They learn a
number of meditative techniques - part of the Inner Breath training. This teaches the
students control of their body and mind/emotions. Inner Breath training takes this to the
next levels. Practitioners of Inner Breath are said to be able to do a number of physical and
internal mental feats beyond what is normally considered possible (Certain other schools
teach various aspects of what they call Inner Breath). The students are taught to be
exceptional spies, and if they have the inclination assassins. They serve with great loyalty
and capacity for sacrifice. After their terms outside, they return and teach the next group.
(Then they can opt to return to the field or retire).

The biggest weakness of this school is its inability to expand to greater numbers without
diluting its abilities. This is why Students of the School have not upset the balance in the
game of politics for the noble houses.

The Alvar Alaxel

Field of Study: Architecture
It is easier to name the great palaces, fortresses and civic installations not designed by the
Alvar Alaxel architects. Their designs are the pinnacle of the builders' art, combining form,
function and structural durability to an incomparable degree. An Alaxel prison is as close to
inescapable as it is possible to be, an Alaxel fortress near impregnable, an Alaxel mansion
the height of breathtaking elegance. As part of their training an adept gains the ability to
instinctually sense the physical stresses at work on any structure, enabling them to fulfill
the other role the school is known for - siege engineers and demolitions experts. Combining
rote knowledge of material physics with training-honed understanding of structural forces
they can determine in moments the optimum means of destroying any object with
maximum efficiency - the bigger the better.

The Epicures of Cacsondia

Field of Study: Food Preparation

The Cacsondians dont even try to deny it. In fact, they widely proclaim the fact that the
food they prepare is thoroughly addicting. They find the temptation to sample their wares is
often enough to get what they want.

The Cacsondian Epicures are the perfect gourmet chefs. In addition to memorizing the
recipes from thousands of different worlds - the refined, perfected recipes from thousands
of worlds - their training emphasizes a refinement of the senses, especially of taste and
smell. In the days of Forgotten Earth, the now-extinct sharks were thought capable of
discerning a single drop of blood in a cubic mile of water: the Epicures can do much the
same. When they take a bite of something, they can break down each individual component
that went into its preparation, in the exact proportions, as well or better than any analyzer.
They are all but immune to poisoning since they are able to detect its presence long before
74
it is consumed. Cacsondian chefs are bought by Princes throughout the Manifold Worlds; to
eat their food is touch heaven, to experience a sensual pleasure that can reform the soul.
More prosaically, the Epicures can land on any planet anywhere in the cosmos capable of
supporting life and find something to eat . . . some say their skills are so good they can
even find consumable on planets that cant normally support life.

Danseurs of Cacsondia
Field of Study: Dance, Courtly Grace, and Body Movement.

Cacsondia is a place of proper refinement.

Life is Danse, the patterned movements of proper form produce civilized life and civilization.

Students of the Great Salon learn more than just the proper position of hand and feet as
timed to music, they learn the proper rituals of courtly life... where to put their hands, feet,
and mouth (as well as where to stand), in a noble, refined environment. Students learn all
the forms of proper dance and ritual, with all their accepted variations... and what to do
when a partner or someone else falls out of line.

Life is Danse. Learn the timing, learn your place, learn when to seize your moment.

Proper Danse is a tradition in the Manifold Worlds. It is used to entertain, to divert, and to
amuse, at court and higher social function. However, like all things noble, it is used for
more. Places to meet, to mingle, and to make social bonds that will be useful in other
situation.

Courtly situations, from actual courts to tea in the afternoon, are in the greatest senses... a
danse. Everyone has a place. Everyone is in motion. Everyone is trying to look their best. It
is all that is Danse, just the music is in your mind. Control the song that is underlying the
courtly situation... control the rhythm, the tempo, and movements, and you will be precise,
accurate, and in control of everything else around you. (This idea of the internal song as the
soundtrack to a situation is echoed by several prestigious schools of fighting. The Castelons
school of dueling for a best example).

Social Combat occurs for the hearts, mind, and opinions of others, during dances (and other
courtly events). Knowing all the lines, all the patterns, and all the variations, it to know
victory .... in all things. Danse is the metaphor and the tool, courtly grace is an extension of
that. Everything else, is just a pattern to master.

Training is not focused solely on formal dances, a degree of athleticism and body sculpting
is required to be learned. Part of that athleticism is learning several forms of more athletic
performance dances that are not in favor at the moment, but teach excellent body
coordination, body empathy (how to move with a partner or team), and timing.

Noticians of Cacsondia
Field of Study: Music - Song and Instrument - as well as sound. Memory
75
It seems fitting that across the Great Park from the Grand Salon, the Noticians find a home.
(Though to ask the Noticians, they would call it the other way around.) The Complex of
North Bank, as the complex sits on the Northern side of the Great River Sidell, is full of
concert halls, chamber locations, and practice rooms, as well as a veritable maze of narrow
hallways, window nooks, and more stairs up and down than any building should actually
have.

(Note the Epicureans are on the South Bank, the superior district in their own city down
river in the Noble Capital of Cacsondia. While Noble Capital is the center of power, wealth,
and prestige, Zidell, the home of the Noticians and Dansers and the six dozen Artiste school,
is the home of fine culture. Being sold down the river to a Student in a Cacsondia School is
a good thing.)

There are five circles of All Notes that must be mastered to be a True Notician, rather than
just a Student of Notes. Student wear their various rank (tin, bronze, silver, and gold) on
each of their five circle School Pin. Most people who pass through, nobles and bonded
servants to entertain are often taught to the five bronzes.

1) Lore of N
otes: Remembering all the proper songs known to the school and their
variations (Memory training and the ability to remember any song or any sound once
heard).

2) The Projection of Notes: Noticians are taught the ways of voice, controlling the one
instrument they always have. They can sing in the dozen Proper Styles and Forms, and
dominate in a few other vulgar styles. Their voice can influence others, even if their words
can not.

3) Crafting of Notes. All students are familiar with all instruments and masters of one (as
one can only truly master one instrument). Every Instrument is a tool of perfection in the
hands of a Noticians. The sweetest songs, the most perfect movements, the wildest wheels,
can all be produced from the instrument. (In addition they are taught the crafts of making
and maintaining their mastered instrument (and several others).

4) Placements of Notes: Placement is a two part process. The First part is the Physical, how
to arrange things so the sound best projects in a given space. The Second is the Social,
knowing what songs to play in what situation given geography, history, and situation, for
the place of performance and the audience. Students are often drilled on the tastes and
favorites of various houses in the worlds.

5) The Stand of Notes: The Theory of All Notes and How notes and sounds are combined,
how they flow, how they mix, and what combinations can invoke and evoke feelings in the
listeners. To listen to a Notician is to be carried away in the song, to feel what the song is
about, and to know the intensity of feeling once can achieve. While the basics of The Stand
are taught at all levels and to all circles, only

There is a
section of the school that is a bit off campus. It is "The Crasher". It is in the Blue
Building t hat Crashers learn the art of sound for industrial, medical, and military uses. Many
76
of these uses show the focusing of sound and its production usually in large volumes. Being
a crasher allows one to create and properly use these sonic tools. They will sometimes use
either a blue ribbon on their pin or if fully trained, all five rings on their pins are blue.

Iskandran School of Sword

The Iskandran sword school is a notable school. The style of Iskandran requires two blades,
either a full blade and a small half blade, or two full blades, or even two half blades (large
knives). The blades tend to be thin bladed, two edged affairs. While they have a stabbing
point, they are slashing weapons (slashing with shields is difficult to set up, but if done, can
provide a full kill). The style teaches both shielded and unshielded fighting. The key points
of the style is the sece (the second blade) is used for defense, the offhand is learned for
Prim or Sece use, and drawing strikes - attempting to kill before someone can put up a
shield or mount a proper defense.

The Cerebrans
Field of Study: Memory and Cogitation

In the palaces of many Prince and Magnate throughout the Manifold Worlds is a room, often
bare, rarely apportioned with luxuries. It is a place deliberately isolated from the rest of the
palace, with severe access to outside contact. Guards are ever-present on the outside. To
this room the planetary ruler will visit and confer with perhaps his most valuable advisor:
the man or woman who knows more than he or anybody else could about his own
dominions.

Computers were largely discarded within the Manifold Worlds with the rise of the Ancient
Schools and the formation of the Church of Ascendant Man. Nevertheless, the need for
high-speed information processing and data retention remained.The School of Cerebrans
fulfills this need.

Cerebran adepts - though adept may be the wrong word (see below) - are often
derogatively called living computers. Their training involves a complete depersonalization
of the outer self. Physically, they are stripped of all outside identity: their hair is removed
permanently; their skin is bleached white; complex serial numbers are tattooed on their
foreheads. Any name they were born with is discarded. They are also purposefully addicted
to a hallucinatory, mind-altering drug, Focus-Gram, which heightens the perception of
electrical and magnetic fields within the brain, as is seen in nature among some species of
fish and bird. The Schools training is equally harsh - no one volunteers to become a
Cerebran; rather, prospective candidates are purchased from their parents early in life from
Rayah families, and not a few Khalsas, to get rid of unwanted heirs.

Incorporating techniques first pioneered by the Inner Lights, this training introduces the
Cerebran to inner worlds of his or her own creation, albeit shaped by the School Trainers.
Within these vivid, all-encompassing hallucinatory states, a Cerebran can alter his or her
internal perception of time and live a lifetime in but a second; he can also slow down his
thinking to a level approximate to those in a coma. But whereas the Inner Lights focus on
recalling sensation, the Cerebrans focus purely on data: they have perfect eidetic
recollection of everything they see, hear, or sense. Combined with their internal time
77
control, the Cerebrans can approximate the abilities of any ancient computing system; more
so, since the potential of human memory is considered higher than any mere computers.

What makes the Cerebrans even more valuable, though, and hence the frequent isolation in
which they find themselves, is that they can network: that is, through their trained
sensitivity to electrical and magnetic fields in combination with Focus-Gram, and a
manipulation of their own neuroelectric brain and body activity through a precise
biorhythmic control over blood flow, internal temperature, and mental activity, two
Cerebrans can exchange images, concepts, even complete memories through physical
contact.

Two Cerebrans holding hands have twice the computing ability of one Cerebran; three have
twice that; four, five . . . a roomful of Cerebrans in physical contact, it is said, have the
processing ability of God. Once dependent on Focus-Gram, though, a Cerebran will quickly
collapse without it, falling below even ordinary, untrained human perception and intelligence
levels. In short, without daily intakes of the drug, the Cerebrans become morons.

Cerebrans are kept isolated for the sake of security. Isolation allows their owners - the
talents of Cerebrans are purchased, just like those of adepts of other Ancient Schools - to
control the flow of information. Cerebrans in their special rooms are often visited by
non-Cerebran experts, couriers, and messengers, thereby slowly absorbing each piece of
data as it is brought and maintaining the sum total for their liege lords.

A great rivalry exists between the Trainers of the School of Cerebrans and the Bene
Tlonits, also purveyors of memory and archivist material, though it is not in the nature of
what most may think. Adepts of the Bene Tlonits are free individuals whereas the Cerebrans
are universally slaves: rather than ruining their rivals, the Bene Tlonits would like nothing
more than to free these hapless savants . . . and gain access to their records, of course,
naturally.

The Racers of Seratna

Field of Study: Speed

Oilaas is a flower-based drug that grows on Seratna and a few other worlds where it is
cultivated by the Racers. Oilaas accelerates the users perception of time: from the
perspective of the addict, the real world seems to slow down while his own thoughts remain
the same. In an overdose of Oilaas, the world stops completely, and the addict is trapped
internally in a single perceived moment, changeless, forever.

The effects of Oilaas, for most, are purely mental: a trick of the mind alone. The Racers of
Seratna, though, through the intense physical and mental training their Great School
provides from the earliest of ages, allows them to not only accelerate their perception of
time but act upon it. The Great School develops in its student great physical speed: the
fastest non-School athletes can typically run 20 to 25 mph for brief periods. Racers run in
excess of 70 to 75 mph, the speed of extinct cheetahs, for extended periods of time. In
combination with Oilaas, Racers can put that same level of speed into any ordinary, and
many extraordinary, human talent: cleaning, reading, sorting . . . fighting.
78
The Racers use special diets to maintain their health and provide the massive calories they
need to move so quickly. They are also hopelessly addicted to Oilaas: without it, their
perception of time speeds up unendurably, the opposite of the regular effect, and they
become virtual statues, physically.

The Vrason Diagnostics

Field of Study: Medicine

Simply put, the planet Vras produces the best healers in the Manifold Worlds. The
Diagnostics have committed to memory the medical techniques of a thousand planets, from
acupressure to brain surgery, and they have veritable catalogs of drugs, diseases, and
medical ailments within instant grasp of recollection.

The Great Schools great emphasis, though, is on - naturally - diagnosis, the precise medical
determination of whats wrong with someone. Vrason Diagnostics train in external and
internal perception; their senses are super-sharp and focused on the minutia of health. A
Diagonstic can usually tell whats ailing a person within seconds of meeting him: the pallor
of his skin, the slight tremor of his hands, the smell of his breath, all reveal a myriad of
medical details. Rarely, a Diagnostic has to actually touch someone, probing muscles groups
with a tap here, a tap there, to figure out whats wrong; only in the most mysterious cases
do they actually perform simple tests (Basically, the Diagnostics are House, except unlike on
the TV show they get to the answer within ten to thirty seconds, usually without even
testing).

The myth is that even if they cant cure you (or wont . . . the physicians of Vras have
nothing even remotely like the Hippocratic Oath), the Diagnostics will at least know whats
wrong.

This Great School maintains great (heh heh) control over its graduates: they lease their
services, they never sell them, and they rotate their Diagnostics at least once every decade,
always off-planet. Ostensibly, they say this is to maintain their objectivity and increase their
experience in the field, and the constant traveling does in fact provide these benefits. The
real reason the Diagnostics never stay in any one place for a long time, and this is a deep
secret of the School, is that their graduates are practically immortal.

The great diagnostic perception the Diagnostics employ on others is even better when
directed upon themselves: a graduate of the School can detect a cancer cell in his or her
body within moments of its first growth. Their regimen of exercises, biorhythm control, and
mind-body discipline, plus the skill they learn as THE best physicians in the universe, means
that, unless they deliberately choose not to be, the Diagnostics are effectively ageless and
in perfect health, always. Fearful that envious Princes and Magnates would desire such
agelessness for themselves - and since this is outside their ability to provide to others,
except through the decades-long training the Great School itself provides - they maintain
their cover by always traveling and never settling. On Vras itself, the planets virtual
isolation from all outside commerce maintains its clandestine nature.

79
The Musicians of Cascondia

Field of Study: Music and Sound

The servile utopianism of Cascondian society is a product of the many Great Schools that
indulge its sybaritic rulers. It is the stated goal of many of the Pleasure Lords of Cascondia
to spend every moment of their lives indulging in some addicting, ecstatic experience. The
Epicures and its related branches, the Harcaro Geise (post #19), even the Serviles (post
#16) all find employment there, as do the Musicians.

This Great School owes many of its refinements of sound manipulation to the Quentle
School (post #7) (and consequently the two Schools feud as much as Great Schools are
allowed to feud), except that where the Quentles exercise their expertise with their own
enhanced vocal cords, the Musicians can do so only with outside musical instruments, of
which they know and perform with virtually all. The Musicians focus is also different - their
intent is produce sounds of such exquisite beauty and power they can directly stimulate the
pleasure centers of the brain, inducing drug-like trances and effects through sound alone.

Supposedly, the combination of food and drink prepared by the Epicures, and the sound
manipulations prepared by the Musicians, are the closest man can approach heaven while
still alive.

The Phobos Justicars

Field of Study: Fear and the Fight/Flight Response

For all the prattling talk of the poets and philosophers of the transcendent power of love,
the so-called most powerful of all emotions, has anything had more power over human
affairs than pure naked fear? Fear of our enemies drives us to war, fear of destitution drives
us to riches, fear of societal rejection gives law its meaning, fear of loneliness brings us to
each others' embrace. What emotion has such texture, such nuance that it can be
responsible for so much, good and ill? The adepts of the Phobos school say "none" and wait
for the creeping horror of that revelation to take root. "Fear is the mindkiller" so the old
mantra goes, but it is so much more. In their darkened and windswept halls, constructed in
such a fashion that the very buildings themselves function as infrasonic aeolian harps
projecting a constant harmonic frequency that stimulates the human fear response, the
Phobos Justicars learn every intimate measure of terror and how it can be used to destroy
the mind, break down psychological barriers and even instill the seeds of greatness. Phobia,
shock, disgust, anxiety and a thousand other subtle degrees of this complex emotion are
studied in intimate detail, students have to be made to feel them all if they are to recognise
and invoke them in others through means chemical, psychological and memetic. True to
their title, the Justicars are often called upon to bring order to lawless worlds and pacify
uprisings which they do with astounding efficiency and markedly little bloodshed though
with many a sleepless night for the populace of those worlds they quell. The school makes
the bulk of its wealth however from its asylums and prison complexes, grim and eerie
institutions which are well ordered and effective but often rumoured to double as testing
grounds for apprentices to prove their mastery of the schools' techniques.

The Voluntas
80
Field of Study: Observation/Senses

From birth the Voluntas train their minds and senses to perceive the world around them, all
of it. From the microscopic pollen dust in the air, to the subtle texture difference between
the wood grains of a single tree of different years of growth. Nothing is to escape their eyes,
ears, nose, tongue or touch, and they have memorized every known sound, taste, sight,
texture. They used by law-enforcement branches of nearly every government, on just-about
every planet because of their ability to sense everything and find every clue that may be
hiding there. Of course, they can do the same with other people, for we all give away clues
to our true inner natures every second of every day, and if one can just notice these things,
they will understand that person even better than they do themselves.

Bene Tlonits

Function: Archivists, Memory Recall

Hailing from the planet Tlon, the Bene Tlonits are said to have existed millennia before the
rise of the Manifold Worlds. Within the libraries of their planet they hold all knowledge in the
universe. They keep track of this through a series of complex mnemonic tricks that they are
taught from an early age.

The Saccade Institute

Fields of Study: Attention, Optometry

Graduates of the Saccade institute are often find work as spies and bodyguards, for reasons
that seem unfathomable to the laymen. They can detect lies, yes, but not as well as the
Solipsite Movement or the Eckmenian Consortium. The can fight, but not as well as the
Students of Twin Falls or Racers of Seratna. And when it comes to social situations, they are
all too often overshadowed by the Danseurs of Cacsondia. So little attention is paid to the
Saccade Institute, which is how they like it.

While they are "second best" at so many things the shine when in the limelight, or out of it.
The first thing an initiate learns is how to make an object disappear in flight. No magic is
involved, nor any technology one would normally recognize. The truth is the coin never left
their hand. The expectation was enough to put it into the air. The Saccade Institute teaches
but two lessons. The eye cannot see everything at once, and the mind cannot perceive
everything takes in. Using these lessons, graduates become invisible, either by simply being
where you aren't looking, or by being beneath your notice. Likewise, they can steal
anything, from the the ring on your finger to the secrets in the safe.

Perhaps their greatest skill, however, is making the impossible and unreal seem likely.
Using your own hopes and fears, they can make a friend appear dead, or an enemy live.
They can remove heads and hands or steal buildings. With words, they can weld your sword
to your side, or glue your feet to the floor. It's all in the mind, all in the eyes. Their cruelest
trick is deceptively simple. With a few choice words, they can force a man to take control of
their own actions. To put a human body on manual, forcing you to choose every breath,
every blink. To feel their jaw being tugged open by it's own weight. Perhaps the galaxy is
81
lucky the Saccade prefer the shadows.

Kishandian School of Sight.

The School is now on its temporary home on Kadis. Its previous home, under the dim red
sun of Kish, was disrupted by a cometary impact. The school plans on returning to Kish in
three and a half centuries.

The Kishandian School for sight is a misnomer of sorts. They are a school for "the blind" and
those that want to learn how to operate non-dependent on sight. They are trained to utilize
their other senses to a heightened degree. They can feel body heat from a distance. They
can easily determine who a person is by their scent. They can read most printout by touch
(or use their own unique blind language). They are also taught how to cope with a world
"when tired" (how a modern blind person would.) Yes, there is the much touted combat with
canes taught here as well. These are all just parlor tricks when compared to the Master
Courses of the School.

With heightened concentration or when augmented by simple stimulants, they can expand
their senses to beyond the norm. Using just sound, they can hear the location of things
around them. Echolocation is taught as the primary advantage of this school.

It should be noted that Kishandian Blind Language (which is only a written language, it
utilizes the mother tongue) is one of dotted imprints that can be read quickly and easily by
touch. (Braile for the future). This language is used in a number of places (to designate the
switched for emergency lights), in spacer chambers where the spice can be too thick to see
with eyes, and other places where sight may be obscured.

The Space-Astrologers

Field of Study: Astrology; Mathematical Predictive Analysis

The mystic belief that the sun, the moon, and other celestial objects influence individuals
and nations: a complicated enough field of study when humanity lived but on one world,
under only one sky. Thousands of years later, the Space-Astrologers have had to commit to
memory the constellations and planets of all the Manifold Worlds, in all their myriad wonder
and influence. The Findsmen of Karao are the better astrogators, perhaps; nonetheless, the
Astrologers can tell at a glance at any worlds sky exactly where they are, the time, and,
more importantly, the influences that sky represents to those beneath it. The predictions
the Astrologers make of the future are so incredibly accurate, theyre frightening.

Supernatural power? Hardly. Though the Space-Astrologers - nicknamed the Spacers or

Spacies - couch their methods in mysticism - signs, charts, houses, cardinal and fixed
modalities - what they really do is examine any external influence to behavior . . . and cut
to its base level, stripped of the magical mumbo-jumbo, thats really what astrology is, the
study of external influences on individuals and societies.

82
Practically speaking, the Spacies are politicians/sociologists: they look at economies, climate
patterns, the rise and fall of Princes, entertainment trends, a nything, in short, that they can
chart and that has any kind of bearing on the behavior of human beings, and from the
complex association of these factors they draw up horoscopes - really, complex
mathematical predictive models - and use these to make predictions (and being a Great
School, the Spacies are not above meddling with possible influences to ensure any
algorithm works in their favor, from arranging for the assassination of a Magnate at exactly
the right time to introducing a new candy sensation to the trend-setting hedonists of
Cacsondia). With all factors either so observed or under their control, Space-Astrologers can
predict the likelihood of future events to decimal place probabilities, and they then sell these
predictions to others or use them to help shape their own plans for the future of the
universe.

The Adonae of Calyz

Field of Study: Beauty

A Calyzian School Adonis is just that: a paragon of physical attractiveness, so gorgeous, so

absolutely perfect in form and manner, speech and dress that the effect is hypnotic. The
tale is that an Adonis can stand in front of a crowd of people, regardless of gender or sexual
orientation, and so captivate them with his gorgeousness that a bank robbery, an explosion,
even a tidal wave could be happening behind them and they would never notice. The tale is
true: once an Adonis comes into sight, all other thoughts disappear, and only the strongest
adepts of the other Great Schools can even hope to focus their attention elsewhere.

The Adonae practice many of the same techniques as the Larian Mimes, in interpreting and
manipulating body language, but the effect they produce is solely concentrated on achieving
fascination. What they do has little or nothing to do with sex; its all about the image and
the absorption that image can induce.

The Adonae are a rare example of a strict gender-specific Great School. They are exclusively
made up of males. Though they neither confirm nor deny the rumor, there is speculation
that a female branch of the School did indeed exist once but went rogue and fled into
hiding, a legend which has inspired many a planetary Prince to finance expeditions in search
of a lost planet full of - literally - the most beautiful women in the galaxy.

The Living Weapons

Field of Study: Murder and Martial Arts

Critics of the Great Schools have noted that a small but distinct number of them are, plainly
speaking, little better than esoteric assassin guilds and killers for hire (accordingly, these
same critics tend to keep a low profile). The Racers of Seratna, the School at the Twin Falls,
the Iskandrans, even the bluntly named Mirror Blasters . . . they have all taken on contracts
for murder, on occasion. However, the best of these assassin guilds (or, perhaps better
said, worst) must be the Academy of the Living Weapons on Mlas.

The Mlasian Academy is distinct among the Great Schools in that it does not recruit so much
as exclusively abduct and involuntarily indoctrinate its pupils - even the egoless Serviles
technically start out as volunteers, or so the parents of the children sold to the Union claim.
83
The training program on Mlas to become a Living Weapon is long and brutal. Reportedly,
less than one student in a hundred survives the decades-long process. The end result,
though, is the ultimate killer: Living Weapons are ultra-experts in armed and unarmed
combat, in infiltration, disguise, all the necessary rudiments of assassination. And, like the
Serviles, they are obedient to a fault, more than able to sacrifice their lives on whim or
command. Unlike the products of the Servile Union, however, the Living Weapons still
possess ego: most hate what they are and absolutely despise their clients and owners, yet
remain compelled by absolute and unbreakable mental and biological conditioning to remain
loyal. It is the Academys position that this inner conflict, this struggle between their desire
for freedom and their absolute obedience, provides the extra emotional drive that makes
their assassins the best among the Manifold Worlds.

In other words, their longing NOT to be soulless murderers makes them the BEST
murderers for hire. Their capacity to still sympathize with their victims makes them all the
more dangerous, as it gives them the insight to hurt those victims even more. When a
Living Weapon sees someone, even in the most casual of circumstances, their thoughts
remain focused on accomplishing murder, on pinpointing vital areas, scanning for possible
weapons, adjusting their positions for maximum carnage, and so on. They kill as easily as
others breathe, swiftly, expertly, ruthlessly. Often, too, sadistically. Though only one in a
hundred survives the training, so the legend goes, one Living Weapon is more dangerous
than a hundred other lesser killers.

And, almost always, he says hes sorry afterwards.

Living Weapons are infamous for their inability to be touched safely, even in their sleep.
They are conditioned to respond to any physical contact with lethal force, a trait which can
only temporarily be shut off - for medical upkeep and the like - through specific hypnotic
code phrases unique to each Weapon.

The Breeders of Ouori

Field of Study: Dog Breeding and Obedience Training

Some of the minor Great Schools look down upon this Ouorian order: their self-proclaimed
mandates, after all, are for the maximizing of human potential, not those of mere curs.
What these detractors dont see, though, is a program that indeed does do exactly that. The
Great Schools produce the best in any particular field of study, and the Breeders of Ouori
are just that, the best dog breeders and trainers in the universe.

Arguably, dog breeding is one of the oldest of human institutions. Before leaving Old Earth,
there were thousands of distinct dog breeds still in existence, each with specific traits and
genetic training potentials. The Breeders have records of all of these bloodlines and more:
they have been breeding specific dogs for specific purposes for thousands of years, refining
these breeds, culling weaknesses, maximizing potentials, just like any other Great School.
They have dogs that are cute, dogs that are vicious, that are perfect guardians, perfect
killers, perfect companions. They have dogs that can fit in the palm of your hand; they have
dogs that are five times the size of a grown man. They have dogs that can parrot speech,
that have, within the limits of eugenics, the ability to reason and communicate, to handle
84
tools and carry out complex tasks.

And for each of these breed lines the Breeders have bred themselves to guide and control
them, bloodlines so accustomed to one another that over the centuries the control an
Ouorian has achieved over his dog looks on the surface to be purely supernatural. Forget
giving verbal commands or gestures: a Breeder can control his animals through thought, by
modulating his own scent and muscle cues. Each dog is so finely tuned to his Breeder that it
frequently responds to his unconscious emotions, fetching tea when he is thirsty, fetching
tools when he is busy, looking for enemies when he is concerned, and so on.

This almost symbiotic relationship between dog/Breeder is so close that, practically

speaking, the School never sells its dogs without a Breeder to accompany them. That is, the
School thinks of its dogs as machines made for specific purposes - to hunt, to pilot fighter
craft, to cook meals, etc. - and the individual Breeder as those machines operators. To buy
one is to lease the services of the other. The Ouorians make the outrageous and
hard-to-believe claim that for every task specialized in by a Great School, they have a dog
that can fulfill the same purpose, if their price can be met.

Thredians of Cacsondia

Clothing defines the man or woman. It is both the weapon and the armor of social and class
conflict. One does not go into a duel without a sword, one should never approach an
argument without the proper accessories to bolster confidence, undermine the opposition,
and present that are are The Person of that moment.

It is not just the fit or cut, it is the color and flow and how it harmonizes with t he wearer. It
is not man and clothes, they should be considered one... the clothing being a n atural
extension of the man (or woman).

Threadians not only design the proper courtly wear for almost every major and minor noble
house, they create uniforms (with appropriate armor padding), they create household garb
that inspires loyalty and obedience, they create courting dresses that magnify the assets of
the wearer - making the nearly irresistible to those interested, all this and more is in their
domain.

The Phadir Naenix(Brotherhood of Inevitability)

Field of study: Endurance, Resilience, and Target Focus

When you wish to assassinate someone, or capture them, you can call on numerous
agencies and schools for the swiftest solution. WHen you absolutely need the victim, no
matter what, You call on the Phadir Naenix. Once a target is taken they do not give up, they
do not stop, they do not waver. They have trained in endurance and resilience. From an
early age the initiates are trained to sleep a minimum, eventually able to attain a trancelike
state that allows for sleep while still remaining somewhat active. They are trained also in
the arts of pain and single mindedness. A fully Trained Naenix brother can withstand pain
far beyond any other human, and once committed to a task will go about finishing the task
no matter what. they will not sleep, they feel no pain, if you are running from them there is
nothing you can do to dissuade their pursuit save for death. There are stories of a Naenix
85
chasing his prey until they died of exhaustion. They are inevitability. Fear the Phadir Naenix.

The Meteorologists of Charybdis

Field of Study: Weather Prediction and Manipulation

Among all the habitable worlds settled by humanity, the planet Charybdis has the wildest
variation in weather and climate. Due to its rapid rotation, irregular orbit, thick atmosphere,
and drastically different altitudes - super-high mountains, super-low deserts - the weather
models on Charybdis change hourly in places; at the same time, whole regions of the planet
may experience the same precipitation (making true for once the clich, It was raining on
the planet Mongo.). One piece of land may be freezing while ten kilometers over its
neighbor suffers under a heat wave.

The School of Meteorology chose to base itself on Charybdis for this very reason. Weather
prediction predates the interstellar diaspora, but never has it been practiced so accurately
as under the forecasting of the Meteorologists. Trained in both mathematical modeling
techniques and the manipulation of gauges and dials - no electronics, naturally, just pure
mechanical devices working on applied pressure - and well-experienced in the impressions
provided by their own educated senses, Meteorologists can predict the weather on even the
wildly unpredictable Charybdis with startling accuracy. On other, less complicated worlds,
their predictions of the weather can be virtually set in stone weeks or even months in
advance . . . years, in some cases. Meteorologists can walk outside and determine
temperature to within ten decimal places accuracy merely by the presence of the sun on
their skin; they can detect even the mildest of breezes and determine speed; they have
inured themselves to withstanding even the most extreme pressures, temperatures, and
climatic conditions.

And, of course, putting this hyper-knowledge of natural weather systems into practice, the
Meteorologists can manipulate the weather better than anyone else in the Manifold Worlds.
The School of Meteorology is the premier environmental engineering facility anywhere,
capable of building habitats in even the worst of planetary conditions, capable of altering
the weather on entire planets with the most minimal and basic of technologies.

The Skymen of Charybdis

Field of Study: Aircraft Piloting

Much for the s

ame reason that the Meteorologists chose the wildly fluctuating atmosphere
of Charybdis for its challenges, so did the Skymen, the most perfectly trained pilots in the
universe.

If one can successfully pilot a small plane or ornithopter on this planet, he or she can do so
much more easily on a thousand other worlds with blander atmospheres. The Skymen -
despite the name, the School is open to both genders - can fly craft under virtually any
climatic or weather condition. They practice with ancient biplanes and gliders - again, no
electronics - and work ever upward until there is no aircraft anywhere among the Manifold
Worlds with which they are unfamiliar. They become expert in all. A Skyman pilot can land a
ship anywhere under any conditions, the School claims; in their entire history, no Skymen
has ever crashed as a result of his or her own personal failure (Skymen have been shot
86
down, rarely, but they are among, if not in fact the best, fighter pilots in the universe).
Skymen pilots are the preferred aviators for Princes and Magnates with their own fleets.

The two Ancient Schools, the Meteorologists and the Skymen, are allied but otherwise
unaffiliated. The Prince of Charybdis plays the two off one another in winning his patronage,
and the money both bring in help make his world a very comfortable one, despite the
weather.

The Gunners of Caliban

Field of Study: Applied Marksmanship, Trickshooting

Caliban is one of the spice worlds of the Shakespeare reach. Its home to numerous bipedal
and humanoid animals that make harvesting in its forests notoriously dangerous. The
greatest hazards are the Calibans which the planet was renamed for. Semi-sentient and
capable of limited tool use, they are also stronger than a human, able to throw stones with
great accuracy and power; and they use good tactics. They react to human intrusions
instinctively and violently, overwhelming gathering parties and smaller settlements.

The Gunners began as a small security company using the quad rail electromagnetic
musket (a difficult weapon to master) as an experiment. Fortunately, they had a unique
employee - Roark Nilvy. Roark had started as a spice scout and transferred to security after
too many close calls. He took to the quad rails like a babe to milk, and uniquely, he could
teach others to use it as well as he did. He also trained the other company members in
woodcraft (something that is part of their training process even today). Before long, their
unique capabilities allowed a greater measure of safety to gathering parties and Roark was
able to force a change in leadership. Shortly after, they became a minor school. Then a
major one as their training spread to other security companies and their level of control
over Caliban strengthened.

Today, the Gunners are thought of as hunters, snipers, trick shooters and crack shots in
general. As a school, they prefer long arms (but are just as proficient with small arms) and
are decent soldiers and police. And even after all this time, part of the process to move from
apprentice to journeyman is to survive 10 days among the forests of Caliban

The Universal Bankers

Field of Study: Money, Resources, and Finance

The Vault-World of Athystixot does not go for gaudy excess. Its streets are not lined in
gold or other precious metals. The wealthy do not strut along the avenues followed by
litters of slaves, as is done on some of the Royal Worlds. The rulers of Athystixot are far
more circumspect in regard to displays of wealth. The respect money. They know wealths
power as no other, know the value of things to a greater degree and precision than
anywhere else in the galaxy.

The Universal Bankers specialize in resource valuation and development. How does one pay
a fee to the Findsmen or the Terraformers for the purchase of a planet? What kind of
payment - minerals, people, talents - does such a thing possibly involve? The calculations,
87
the valuations would be staggering, beyond imagination. Well, the Bankers know . . .
theyve figured it out, along with the monetary transactions that need to take place
everywhere else in order to keep both planetary and interstellar economies healthy and
profitable. Their memories are perfect and shaped toward calculating sums that are literally
astronomical (that is, really involving the stars and the planets and everything else). But
eidetic memory and the ability to process numbers is only the start of their talents, learned
in youth: the Bankers can valuate anything . . . metals, drugs, talents and skills, people,
slaves, planets, entire solar systems worth of resources . . . and synthesize a whole,
precisely reckoning a usable value and exchange rate, all within their heads and with
flawless accuracy. Their services are employed as financial experts by Princes and Magnates
as well as by other Schools to prepare investments and manage their economies. They also,
per their name, provide banking services to the Manifold Worlds, allowing for the easy
distribution of credit from world to world.

Are they trusted? Hardly. Thats why everybody who deals with them pays contingency fees
outside the Bankers influence to assassin-related Schools. Its why Athysitxot is one of the
most peaceful, gentle planets in the galaxy. There are assassins on every corner, from
every School of killers imaginable, all waiting for a message to strike, just in case someone
even thinks about a doublecross. The Bankers know and accept this as the price for
conducting good business.

The Children of Eye (Navigator's School)

Field of Study: Navigation, Projection & 'Sight'

The Children of the Eye are entity required by the use of the Altman-Le Guerre
Uncertainty Bridge device which allows travel through Null Space.
The school's main focus is to teach their pupils to allow them let go of their physical shells
for a brief time. The Navigators become 'children of light'- entities vaguely tethered to
physical forms in order to 'see the way ahead. This is also useful to the Finders &
Terraformer Schools as the Navigators can be used to 'seek' new planets.

Navigation i s aided by the Nootropic drugs from several planets, a

nd some 'branches' of the
Navigators u se several varieties to achieve effects depending on the mission at hand.

The Children of the EYes home planet is a peaceful world, highly meditative and calming. A
pure and primordial planet with deep jungles, high mountains and a host of other biomes
each with its own 'regional variant of the school school.

Poison T asters
Subject o f specialism: The sense of taste.

In the most ancient of times, noble lords employed poison tasters to ensure their food
wasn't a means for assassins to harm them, and as technology progressed toxicological
tests took the place of this. As the technology of poisons progressed, so too did the means
to detect, and soon there were AIs capable of tasting food and not just comparing against
all known toxins, but also looking to work out what effects the ingested chemicals might
have on physiology, psychology and health over time periods varying from seconds to
88
centuries. This went well beyond just poison-detection, and even beyond nutritional science,
but into the realms of the sociological effects of foodstuffs, and the effect of food on worlds
and societies as a whole.
After the Butlerian Jihad, things regressed back to chemical sniffing devices, and old-world
style slave poison tasters. But from the old ideas of food and ingested chemicals being
important came a new School that sought to recreate that level of mastery and
understanding.
Now the "Poison Tasters" are involved with everything to do with food. They are potentially
chefs without peer, have honed taste buds that can tell you whether a dish is too salty from
a taste of the air a yard from the food, and can prepare foods and liquids that are narcotic,
health improving or miraculous in other ways.
Of course, they have ambitions beyond this, following their school's secret directions to try
to shape the diets and taste preferences of an entire society in order to achieve a hidden
agenda. Because they can prepare orgasmically beautiful food and distil chemicals that
enhance performance in all fields of endeavour they have little trouble placing themselves in
the employment of noble houses, and that position has let them enact the Grand Recipe.
Spies from other factions have established that one agenda they have is in trying to shift
the mindset of the populace towards acceptance of social order, a predilection for religion,
and a readiness for a great prophet. Why this is, is unclear.

The Argean Order

Field of study: vision

The human mind is a plastic thing and with proper conditioning one part of the mind can be
used for most any purpose. Take the visual cortex for example, in most humans it occupies
only a small portion of the brain as two optical nerves can only transmit so much
information to the brain at a time.

But all an optical nerve does is transmit electrical impulses and that can be done artificially
easily enough through visual prosthetics that were old before man ever reached the stars.
Giving sight to a blind man is easy enough, but why stop there? Why not give a man a
hundred eyes? Or a thousand? If the prosthetics are installed early enough the brain adapts
readily and vast portions of the brain are repurposed as the visual cortex expands
malignantly to dominate the rear half of the brain.

With proper training, the members of the Argean Order can see out of nearly any number of
visual prosthetics while maintaining the same focus as a typical human gives to what they
see out of each of their two eyes. While this ability is the same, the appearance of Argeans
varies widely, with some never leaving a single room while a nest of medusa-wires pumps
the sights of a hundred cities into their minds while others cover every inch of their body
with visual prosthetics and others choose to adorn their head with a set of beholder stalks
that snake out at will and allow them to examine subjects from every angle at once.

While members of the Argean Order have a somewhat sinister reputation and are often
associated with espionage and paranoia, they can be found in many lines of work from
engineering, to design to government as it is often invaluable to be able to see things from
more than one point of view.

89
The ability of the Argeans, however, does not come without a cost. When ones occipital lobe
expands with tumorous hunger something must give way. Often much of the parietal lobe is
subsumed, sometimes leaving them entirely incapable of motor control or making it
impossible for them to keep track of such things as where their hands are unless they are
actively watching them at all times. Other Argeans find themselves able to see all but
remember next to nothing or be incapable of anything but most literal linguistic

The Anakadmon Fernexis

Field of Study: Bionic Integration
Among the most abominable of the heretical schools, the cursed adepts of the Anakadmon
engage in perverse surgical rites that exchanges the living divine flesh of Man for the static
mechanical perfection of bionics. All their techniques are geared to the sole purpose of
twisting the human mind to accept these foreign machines as if they were the body the
adept was born with; rewiring their minds in alien, mechanical ways. Anakadmonists are
near universally reviled for their violation of the sacred human form but it is true that their
path opens up many possibilities for unnatural power. Grandmasters, few as they are, are
virtually immortal with all organs that have failed them excised and replaced with infinitely
durable and eminently efficient artificial components. New features are added to their bodies
which they can control as if born to them; additional limbs, integrated weaponry, sensory
apparatus', whatever fits the Anakadmonists' twisted definition of personal evolution. Few
ever reach this state of biomechanical perversion though, most are careful to keep their
augmentations discreet and concealed, at least until their unnatural addictions push them
too far, and most of those who are so blatant are swiftly hunted down by the martial and
assassin Schools, a service all but the most mercenary adepts will perform gratis as a
religious service.

Quingdou Eshe Marshals

Focus: Pistol shooting, close range gunfighting

The Gun is an extension of my arm. My arm moves as I will it to. The Gun is an extension of
my will. A gun fight is not fought with bullets, but by will and will alone.
~Teo Macge on gun fights

No one can dodge a bullet. That would be impossible. One can only dodge the man.
~Wyatte Chang, on walking through a hail of gunfire

The Quingdou Eshe Marshals are trained from a very young age in three things: Accuracy
with a handgun, Inhuman willpower and focus, and Math...a lot of math. The gun has
existed far longer than the Manifold and for most of that time people have been learning
how to better and better use this weapon. Any fool can pick up a gun and shoot it. Hell most
can even hit pretty close to what they are aiming at. It takes true mastery to walk into a
gunfight and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will win. Marshals can dodge the
raindrops. Their understanding of parabolic arcs and spatial reasoning allows them to avoid
getting hit in a gunfight over ninety percent of the time. They each carry two guns; a
90
dueling pistol(single shot, smooth bore), and a Fighting pistol( a revolver, Highly accurate
and fast). Through the use of certain nootropic drugs found on ah'Twound they can attain a
zen like state of calm and awareness while increasing their perception of movement and
reaction speed. To see a Marshal fighting is to see Death in all its glory. Most of the
Marshals are fiercely loyal to the Barocco, as he is the founder of the school, and its
undisputed master gunfighter. They Practice far more than accuracy and dodging bullets
though. They also know that in most fights whoever has the most fear will most likely lose.
they spend a great deal of time learning the psychology of intimidation. When you face a
Marshal in combat, he is the scariest being you have ever seen. When you try and scare
one, you get nothing. They have absolute control over all of their fear response. When a
new Marshal makes it to Journeyman he is given his two guns, a symbol of his status and of
his station. these guns are always crafted by the Weaponeers. The Marshals will never wear
body armor or a Shield in battle as they see them as a sign of weakness and a lack of
confidence in one's own abilities.

The Weaponeers of ah'Twound

Focus: Weapon Crafting, hand held weapons specifically

They started out as the daughter school of the Quingdou Eshe Marshals. The Marshals
needed quality guns and so they hired some gunsmiths. As the years wore on, these smiths
became something far more than just makers of guns for a specific school. They became a
school themselves. They train in isometric exercises and manual dexterity as well as
increased fine perception. Using several nootropic drugs found on ah'Twound they can
increase these skills a hundred fold. They can hold their hands in position for hours on end
without building up lactic acid in their muscles. their sense of touch is such that they could
build the parts for a gun in the dark using only a file and scrap metal. Their eyes magnify as
well as any glass, though they must use glasses when out in the world as they are terribly
near sighted. They are the undisputed greatest weapon makers of hand held weapons in all
the Manifold. they would have been a Major school if it were not for two things. They make
every gun by hand and they build each gun for a specific user. Each piece is a work of art as
well as artistry, representing the user's personality and style. To make a gun(or any weapon
really, they have since branched out into handheld melee weapons and even stranger
weapons) The Weaponeer must study the future user of the weapon. The Weaponeer must
interview the user. The Weaponeer must know the user better than she knows herself. To
own a weapon crafted by the Weaponeers is a sign of affluence and power throughout the
Manifold. Non-Marshals cannot just buy a gun, though the price for one is exorbitant, they
must interest the Weaponeer. they must convince him they are worthy of owning such a
weapon.

The Ecstatics of Govsil

Field of Study: Breath Control, Euphoric States of Consciousness

Definitely one of the more Esoteric of the Schools, the Ecstatics have mastered the ancient
practice of breath control, or as it was once referred as, pranayama, a
philosophical/religious practice that associated breath with the stuff of life. The Ecstatics
practice intense meditation, learning how to regulate their autonomic processes to deal with
extremely low levels of blood oxygen and survive. At a base level, an Ecstatic can hold his
breath for exceptionally long periods of time - masters of the School claim they can hold
91
their breath for hours! More importantly, though, Ecstatics can fake death, or, rather, will
themselves so close to a physical state of death that they can see the famed White
Light, which most of the Schools claim is an autonomic response but the Ecstatics claim is
a sense of kinship with Ascendant Man, in general, or individual saints of the Church,
specifically.

Rumor has it the Ecstatics fake being dead so well they are often buried alive or cremated,
unless junior adepts of the School watch over them to prevent this. By willing themselves
close to death, to oxygen starvation, Ecstatics experience heightened states of self-induced
euphoria, a pleasurable sensation so sought after that, strangely enough, a branch of this
rather austere, monastic School can be found on Cacsondia, of all places.

The Animal Men of the Periphery

Field of Study: Primitive Fury

This Heretical School started out as an Esoteric one - the Followers of the Prime Adam, the
goal of whom were to develop access to their deepest ancestral memories, specifically,
those genetic memories they claimed unified all mankind, found only in the most
primitive parts of the brain, the basal ganglia, or so-called reptile brain. Even then they
were bordering on heresy. Instead of emulating the Saints of Ascendant Man, or even
worshipping said Saints, the Followers devoted themselves to a more basic figure, the
Prime Adam, the common human ancestor of all, and the origin of the human species. To
raise themselves higher, they claimed, one had to go back to the beginning, for in the past
was the future.

Not all Schools are successful. Some, based on false or incomplete merits, fail to achieve
noteworthy success. Others achieve Ascendant Perfection within their chosen fields only to
wither with age, fall victim to other Schools, or turn so completely inward - a common
failing among Esoteric Schools - that they no longer bother to recruit.

The Followers of the Prime Adam went another route. Before their extinction, they did
achieve some remarkable successes. Adepts could manipulate at will central nerve clusters,
access the properties of the medulla oblongata so well they could perfectly control their
heartbeat, breathing, body temperature, and so on. They could control pain; they could
program parts of their body - limbs, organs, their own brains - to perform actions without
their conscious input, in a sense programming themselves to follow certain directions under
highly specific stimuli. But still they couldnt access the ancestral memories they claimed
were in the deepest recesses of their minds. Method after method was tried - deeper
meditations, more powerful drugs, finally Heretical surgeries to the brainstem and spinal
cord - all to no avail. Whatever technique they finally hit on to access their ancestral
memories is unknown, but surely the results they achieved were not what the Followers
had hoped for in the beginning.

Delving deep into the brain, the Followers found rage: a blinding, animalistic, utterly
primitive rage, a fury so terrible that under its influence the Schools adepts became little
more than animals themselves, concerned totally with the most basic motivations: food,
shelter, sex . . . and rage, always more rage.

92
The School went Heretical when enough adepts using this new technique found they liked it.

Some of the Animal Men - as they soon became known - fled to the outer reaches of the
Manifold Worlds to practice their techniques, willfully de-evolving themselves on primitive
planets, spending their days among animals as animals, hunting and eating raw meat,
procreating as animals, being animals. Others saw in their terrible rage the perfect soldier:
these Animal Men can override pain, positive emotions, pushing their strength and speed to
the ultimate limit, programming themselves to fall into these animalistic states for set
periods of time, and unleashing themselves upon others, contractually. Either way, followers
of this School are the ultimate survivors. Their reflexes are super-sharp, honed to razor
edge perfection and beyond; they move and act often without conscious thought,
pre-programmed to lapse into animal rages at a moments notice. Some cooperate and hunt
in packs; others rage like berserkers, killing friend and foe alike in their fury.

Some, the most Heretical, perform surgeries on themselves to achieve even more
animalistic qualities: tusks, horns, claws, greater muscle mass, fangs. Some are cannibals.
The Animal Men are hunted by many of the more righteous Schools, but for most followers
of this philosophy this is exactly what they want, for in the struggle to survive they feel they
are finally achieving what the Followers of the Prime Adam wanted originally: man in his
highest state through an assumption of the lowest, most despicable means.

Confraternita di Sabotatori Santi

Focus: Entropy and the Human Soul

Before the Church of Mankind Ascendant, before the birth of the Aristean Faith entirely,
there were many faiths on Forgotten Earth. Most of them have changed or died out in the
last ten thousand years. One small group of ancient religious leaders become very
concerned with the direction human worldview was heading. They believe in a paradise that
awaits after death, as well as a hell of some sort(there is a bit discussion as to the natures
of the hell and the paradise) they view the material immortality as the destruction of the
natural order and the removal of all moral and ethical truth from the universe. They believe
death is a necessity, all things must come to an end. The wicked must be punished(there is
some debate among the as to what qualifies as "wicked"). These concerned priests of the
old faith began a mission that long ago day. A brotherhood was formed, a brotherhood of
saboteurs. Anytime the powerful go too far, in the eyes of the Saboteurs go into action.
They have mastered a few skills, only those necessary for their job. They are masters of
disguise and deceit, no one sees their true face, not even the other saboteurs. When they
meet each other they wear masks to disguise themselves. Their other skills involve making
murder and sabotage look like accidents. They topple governments, bring down princes, and
even kill the immortals themselves, and to observers it all appears like just a run terrible
luck. They are the knives of heaven, bring judgement and death to the Manifold. They could
be anyone, anywhere. Among the greatest investigators of the Manifold there are rumors of
the organization, but they leave little evidence.

the focus adepts of this School have on the afterlife and endings . . entropy . . should be the
hyperspecialization. who can see weaknesses in things and people and strike at precisely
the right point to cause the maximum damage or destruction. they are trained to find the
weak points of people, objects, organizations, entire societies and know the best way to
93
demolish them . . . ironic, since they are such a religious organization.

You s ay "[they believe death is a necessity, all things must come to an end." Maybe that's
just i t . . . they arrange for all things to come to an end, so as to achieve the appropriate
end in heaven or in hell.

The Zymurgists
Fields of study: Zymurgy (fermenting) and distilling.

The Zymurgists are a Great School who managed to corner industrial fermentation and
distillation. Without their expertise in breeding and engineering yeasts, as well as their
immense library of yeasts, many of the products and precursors of advanced of the Manifold
Worlds would be impossible. They are also close allies of the Order Aishe, granting them
unprecedented access to their skills and libraries to facilitate the terraforming of worlds.
They are also natural allies of the Epicures of Cascondia (when they get together for a party
or feast, the results can be legendary - they can also be terrifying for the uninitiated). This
makes them among the wealthiest and most influential schools in the Manifold Worlds.
They also have five daughter schools (all minor, but very highly regarded) - oenology,
viticulture, brewing, distilling and pickling. Grand Masters of the zymurgists are expected to
demonstrate competence in the five daughter schools, and some of their legendary masters
held master rank in all of the daughter schools.
Their daughter schools of oenology, brewing and distilling are known for making spice
wines, beers and liquors that are used casually and ritually in the schools throughout the
Manifold Worlds. They can also brew almost anything into an intoxicating beverage. Some of
them novel (their mushroom wines are a novelty with a steady customer base), to the
terrifying - stronger than a human can drink without dilution, or subtly toxic, brews only an
assassin could love.
Because of their split between industry, and with visible and popular products they have two
very different popular images - one is of wealthy figures dispensing gifts, strong drink and
odd foods. The other is of a pale terrifying figure that can end industries, spread diseases
and blights. This popular split personality makes them popular figures in Rayah festivals.
As the Zymurgists advance, their senses of taste and smell become more acute - literally
able to distinguish ingredients by their origin (and similarly what people eat - and frequently
how they feel). Theyre also able to store and grow yeasts in their own bodies - able to
dispense chemicals and bio-weapons as they need to. This, combined with their acute
senses of taste and smell, make them impossible to poison with food and amazingly
resistant to disease. And it goes without saying that their capacity for alcohol is legendary.
--
Basically, the Zymurgists are intended to be a well connected, well thought of, wealthy and
powerful school. And also occasionally be a batch of Falstaffian clowns that can drink
everyone under the table and/or poison them as well

The Watchmakers of Xzin

Field of Study: Micro-mechanical Engineering

With the near total ban on electronics in the Manifold Worlds older, more archaic

94
technologies have seen extraordinary refinement to degrees unseen in barbarian cultures.
The Watchmakers of Xzin, often called the Ticking World, take their name for one of the first
devices they marketed, one of the few artificial computing devices not made illegal; the
humble timepiece. Today a Xzin-made watch is largely a status symbol than a practical
device; few Rayah can afford them and most Khalsa can keep perfect time off their own
biorhythms using Mantra training, but they remain popular accessories nonetheless. A
Watchmaker is able to form a model of the devices they build within their own mind,
mentally constructing a 'physics simulation' that takes into account thousands of
components and variables, before they even begin work. When they do actually begin
construction they enter a saccadian trance that aligns their bodily movements in conjunction
with their mental models, allowing them to work on the micron scale with the right tools. A
Watchmaker might sit in apparently total stillness for hours with his hands clasped around
something imperceptible, all the time machining a gearwheel or sprocket using a monochain
carbon filament held between their fingernails or assembling the components using
micrometer waldoes controlled by the contraction of individual pores and changes in dermal
galvanics. While their devices do not stray into the truly nanotechnological they can still be
of startling intricacy and are fully capable of replicating feats that are normally reserved for
electronics; lasers that operate through chemiluminescence and handmade fiberoptic
arrays, interfaces that operate a precise series of counterweights and tension wires,
record-keeping machines capable of reading and recording printed text using precise
chemical reactions to varying light levels, even a few rare, illegal "babblers"; computing
devices that operate solely through micromechanical interactions and grow in processing
power by the square inch. Much of the Watchmakers work is in precision interfaces for air-
and space-craft that allow a School-trained pilot to make full use of the vehicles' capabilities
and in read/write machines for the Manifolds' immense bureaucratic needs where even
School adepts would struggle to remember every detail. They also have a profitable sideline
in toys for the rich - puzzleboxes that can test even a mental adept are popular gifts - and
intricate weaponry such as kite-darts and disguised "jewel guns"; miniature high-amperage
lasers disguised as ornate pieces of jewelry.

The Thirlian Players

Field of Study: Games, Game Theory

No one is quite sure what to make of the Thirlian Players. That they have mastered in the
Ariestian sense a distinct field of study is undeniable. They are the best players of chess, go,
chaturanga, krell, and other strategy games that have ever lived - this is why the
Belisarians watch them so closely. They have committed to memory the rules of millions of
other games, from tic tac toe to Qubic to Fulbranian Meta-Statistical Puzzle Envelopment, as
well as exemplar matches for all of them - this is why the Bene Tlonits watch them so
closely. They can calculate odds on any sporting competition so well that by law Thirlian
Players are forbidden to gamble almost anywhere in the Manifold Worlds - this is why the
Space-Astrologers and the Calculators' Guild both watch them. Nonetheless, they always
seem to have money wherever they go - this is why the Universal Bankers watch them.

The thing is, it's all just games. That's what confuses people, which is why the Saccade
Institute also watches them.

Is it all misdirection? Are the Players playing, perhaps, a bigger game?

95
Everyone agrees the Thirlian Players have enormous potential. They just don't seem to be
doing anything with it. All they do is play games, against each other, against adepts of other
Schools, against Princes (Magnates generally don't play them as without Ichor or School
Training they don't have the necessary mental skills). Most consider them to be an Esoteric
School, one that has developed enormous skill but taken it in a direction most would
consider utterly trivial . . . buthave they? It keeps some important people up at night, this
idea that the Players actually are playing a bigger game for bigger stakes, one that without
their level of skill no one else can see, until it's too late.

Or is that just a game, too?

Kironat Potentialists
Subject of specialism: Specialisation.

The potentialists are interested in the study of human specialisation. Their field is the fields
of others, and they are interested in assessing:
- What directions and fields human specialisation can take.
- The reasons why dominant ancient schools are dominant ones.
- The various potential of other ancient schools to shape the future of humanity.
They are transhumanists, in the sense that they are interested in the way's humanity can
change, and believe that the societal changes brought about by the Church of Mankind
Ascendant were one step on that path to change, but they also (somewhat heretically)
consider the notions that the next step forward might involve a similar universal sea-change
in the approach to minds and in the ideas of what it is to unlock potential.

Instead of new Schools, the Potentialists train people in superhuman skill sets. How is this
different from the other Schools? A graduate of almost any of the Ancient Schools comes
out with a skill set, specific to a particular field of study, but nonetheless still several
abilities, plus whatever they came in with originally (intelligence, personality, hopes and
dreams, etc., i.e., some individuality). A person trained by the Kironat Potentialists can do
one thing really, really well, at the same superhuman level of any School adept . . . but
that's all he or she can do.

In other words, they create monomaniacs - graduates who can excel at driving a car but
nothing else, make a single type of delicate equipment but nothing else, devote
superhuman attention to one particular thing but nothing else.

The Potentialists themselves are highly trained in pedagogy and psychology, the best
teachers in the universe, but once you've been taught by them, well, that's all you can do
for the rest of your life. Their "students" could then be sold throughout the Manifold Worlds,
serving in highly specific roles that would otherwise require the attention of a real adept.
Such students are cheaper than School adepts, but they're much more limited. Some
students are relatively normal, just a bit more introverted and submissive, others are nearly
invalids, depending on how much and what sort of training.

Most Potentialist students aren't completely hollowed-out man-machines or the only place
96
they'd find students is from slavers, in some ways it's actually more tragic if it's somewhat
tempting to the Rayah to become a student; a chance to gain some degree of adept-level
skill, becoming more employable and at the same time fulfilling a religious duty to
self-betterment, but at a cost to their self and personality. They come out of the Kironat's
halls a little diminished and wizened in some way, like they've traded some vital part of
themselves, but still recognizable.

Kironat students permanently forfeit the ability to learn Ancient School skills, whatever
potential they may have had gets burned out in the process of hardwiring their minds for a
specific task.

They are useful on two fronts. Firstly they train perfect monomaniacal slave/servants.
Secondly they can give the noble families access to super skills. Though obviously they
cannot attain the same levels as the school adepts. Basically they would get a super skill at
the mundane level...maybe gaining extraordinary if they focus.

Ouroboros Recyclers
Field of study: Waste management

Whether it is wastewater, or nuclear spent fuel, the Recyclers know how to process it. For
thousands of years they have thrived on the unwanted by-products of civilization; turning
toxic, irradiated or decayed materials into something useful or at least, innocuous.

As a School, the Recyclers keep good ties with others. They have a very strong policy of
appeasing and conflict avoidance. The nature of their job requires stable relations with the
Order Aisahe, the Navigators, the Children of the Eye, and the Spice Merchants of Oca.

They don't have a home planet, in fact their bases are always space stations and cathedral
ships. Over the course of the years, they migrate from one system to another, wherever
they are needed.
There are two types of services that they provide. One is the on-site recycling: the School
can build reliable and efficient processing plants for almost any kind of waste, and leave a
team of trained workers to attend it. Some worlds prefer to rely on their local waste
management system, or just don't like foreign agents on their soil. But when they have a
waste that they can't process and its too dangerous to leave unattended, they call the
Recyclers to retrieve it.

Their works are discretely celebrated; they are useful, but hardly relevant on the massive
chessboard of the Manifold. Nobody quakes in fear at the sight of a Master Recycler giving
orders to his crew of hazmat-clad Rayah workers. And very few pay attention to their their
affairs, as they are mostly pestilent and noxious.

A perfect smokescreen

The Recyclers have two main secrets, t he first one is suspected and sometimes required by
the major powers of the Manifold, the s
econd one is a hidden and monstrous heresy.

97
As a highly mobile School, they are perfect smugglers. They can hide illicit cargo between
tons of hazardous waste, on its pretended way to processing plant. And then move it to a
vessel on the route to the construction of a water purifying station The cargo will make a
long travel, but it will be almost untraceable and with a very low risk.

The School has a hidden side that was born soon after its foundation, a necessity turned
into a perverse religious dogma. Dealing with all sorts of dangerous materials took its toll,
and the founders had to rely on crude replied organs and tissues to patch their own failing
bodies. As time went on, their interest on genetic engineering grew and a whole new secret
branch of the School was created.

Of course, their prowess on genetical modifications is not match to the displayed by the
Shabda Nakati. One of their clandestine mobile labs, with a discrete team of technicians can
manage to produce a single healthy organ after months of work. They don't sell this kind of
services to outsiders, and keep it for themselves, for it is the cornerstone of their own
private faith.

The Recycled Man: the idea that a human being can live forever, not by the influence of
Ichor or life-extending drugs, but by the complete "induced genetical recycling" of every
single cell on its body. Without the help of thinking machines, (even in their heresy they
abhor such devices), or the assistance of the Shabda Nakati; their research moves on a
very slow pace. But the Recyclers are patient, for eternity awaits to their brothers to come.

(They are some k ind of Vrason Diagnostics aspirants, maybe they suspect of their secret
and desire their k nowledge for themselves)

Pallas E nath
Focus: War as an Artform, Matriarchy

"In every defense, an attack. In every weakness, a trap."

Hidden away from the politics and schemes of the Manifold Worlds, hidden away even from
the knowledge of the rest of the galaxy is an idyllic pristine world. A world inhabited by
women who define beauty as a weapon. The Pallas Enath started as a esoteric school and
moved into full heresy when they decided to allow no men into their. Sphere of influence
and to create a secret society on a hidden world. They train in all forms of warfare from
childhood. They are great warriors as fighting cannot be understood without experience.
They are generals on par with the bellisarians, but they have no interest in dealing with
outsiders. To them fighting and warfare are expressions of artistry, not to be done for
political or material gains. Warfare is worship to them.. they have made deals with the
confluence to gain the technology required to sustain a population without males. They have
made deals with the Bene Tlontis, Findsmen, and the Navigators to keep the knowledge of
their planet hidden from the galaxy. They send each school an Estragga, an emissary, to
advise and monitor the schools and the manifold. The Bellasarians are, as yet, unaware of
the existence of the Pallas Enath. Should that day ever come blood shall flow like oceans
throughout the galaxy.

98
The Holy Scriveners of Shafad
Field of Study: Writing and calligraphy, records management, symbolism and semiotics.

Any society past the threshold of a hundred or a hundred and fifty people commonly called
a "Monkeysphere" needs some form of records and document validation, specially if it is a
hierarchical society. The authenticity of letters and written orders must be beyond all doubt,
and also the ownership of goods and assets. When a society is not only beyond a
"Monkeysphere", but also beyond the atmosphere of a world, that need is pressing and
unavoidable.

The Holy Scriveners are the record managers of the Manifold Worlds, tasked with the
responsibility of ensuring that only those documents properly formalized and verified have
any official affect. They sign and place their marks upon letters of credit for the Universal
Bankers, private letters and orders from Princes, Magnates and Schools, legally binding
contracts and pledges, court documents, wills, records, and any and all written forms of
communication that require any form of validation to be legally useful.

Most of the time, they are also the ones tasked with the actual writing of the documents,
although usually this is a task the Masters delegate to their apprentices, except for the most
solemn. The holy writings of the Church, however, can only be written by a Master, with the
assistance of a member of the Congregation of the Golden Field in charge of the layout and
illuminations.

In principle, this tasks don't seem especially conducive to perfection or enlightenment.

Human beings have been keeping records and signing documents for millennia. However,
the Holy Scriveners take their work with an Aristean devotion that allows them to take their
craft to limits almost unreachable for any others.

For instance, a Holy Scrivener can take dictates and transcribe whole speeches at normal
speaking pace, without even knowing the language or the meaning of the words. They are
trained in hundreds or thousands of shorthands, alphabets, syllabaries, abjads, abugidas,
hieroglyphic and runic systems, and how the signs relate to the phonetics of specific
languages, without necessarily knowing those languages. Most Scriveners equate their trade
with music notation: they put to written form a series of sounds, but don't need to know the
meaning of the sounds. That is the work of the Dragoumanoi, of whom some say they are a
daughter school.

When he or she is transcribing, the Scrivener enters a trance in which his mind is shut up
from the outside world, reacting solely to the words spoken. Seated cross legged or in a
sloped writing table, the sound goes from ear to hand to paper without leaving an imprint in
the brain. Once the work is done, the Scrivener may not even remember the sounds he or
she just transcribed, even if he or she does know the language.

This ability can be used even to write down a new language without written form, or even a
series of sounds that are internally consistent, but not necessarily form a language, like
music or mathematics-based pulses. The Scrivener can simply choose the most appropriate
writing system from his inventory to represent the sounds, and add certain universal
diacritics when necessary. In this capacity, they are of enormous help to the Dragoumanoi
99
when they document new languages or slangs, specially since the Scriveners can not know
what they are writing.

The low level Apprentices and Adepts of the School can be found writing letters and legal
documents for the Rayah everywhere, and working in courts, legal offices, and firms all
around the Manifold Worlds, while the most experienced Scriveners work for the Khalsa. The
Masters and higher Adepts are, however, no mere scribes, but highly accomplished
calligraphers.

A simple word written by a Holy Master Scrivener is a work of art, a palpable representation
of sound with an infinity of nuances, each stroke and curve showing subtle variances of
meaning. By itself, it could very well be a work of art, but often the Masters craft them into
intricate calligrams with fantastic shapes of animals, saints or geometric figures of great
intricacy. Indeed, when a Master Scrivener draws one of these signs, the detail is so high
that it can't be perceived by the naked eye. Micrometer-long strokes, characters composed
of a thousand other smaller characters, dots smaller than the tip of a needle...

This is the key of their craft. Each Holy Master Scrivener has his or her own sign of
validation, which he or she places in documents whose redaction and signing has overseen,
and which the Master has developed bit by bit his or her entire life, since their induction into
the School. It is nigh-impossible to falsify this mark, and so, once it is placed, the reliability
and validity of the document is almost certain.

A letter of credit with the sign of a recognised Master can be used anywhere in the Manifold
Worlds, and a general whose orders came signed by one of them can be certain that the
enemy is not giving him misdirections. In the same vein, the Master Scriveners design
complex signatures for Princes and Magnates, incorporating their name, titles and
accomplishments, an even managing to translate some of their personality. However, only
the Holy Scrivener can draw it, and so, he or she could, theoretically, write and sign
documents as the Prince. Of course, they all swear solemnly not to abuse the trust placed
on them. Of course, some of them do abuse it gleefully.

A third, and related, aspect of the School is the design of sigils, seals and symbols for
Schools, offices, organizations and powerful people, including logotypes and heraldry, and
their proper use: proportions, placement, colors, accompanying ornaments, etc. This is
different from the personal signatures, and usually both go together. In both cases,
however, the Scriveners use their insight to craft visible representations of the qualities,
aspects, characteristics and meaning of the person or organization they are representing.

The Scriveners are thus masters of semiotics and symbolism, able to draw a simple figure
that triggers the symbolic centers of the brain, the common cultural and atavic patterns that
force us to identify a certain color with security or menace, with death or life, a certain
shape with aggression or peace, a certain pattern with trust or chaos. They use these
abilities ruthlessly, thus allowing their designs to subtly influence the viewer, and making
them into great propaganda machines.

The power invested in the School is thus, enormous. They are the sole validators of legal
documents in the Manifold Worlds, and they create and hold the signatures and seals of
100
every important authority; they can craft them to be propaganda tools and influence t he
viewer, and they write or transcribe most important documents that circulate among t he
stars.

Of course, the School is strictly neutral, and if some kind of foul play were so much as
suspected, they could expect a heavy purge. But the rumors persist of letters delivered that
never were dictated, of seals placed in documents never seen by their owners, of
transcriptions less than faithful to the original, of heraldry and icons subtly insulting, or
transmitting an image opposite to what the client intended. The Scriveners claim that these
are merely rumours, that sometimes a client regrets a decision and tries to blame them, but
not everyone is convinced. If the rumors are true, it remains to be seen if there are only the
isolated abuses of a few bad apples, or there is some kind of overarching conspiracy whose
heart is in Shafad.

Sisters Abanda
Minor school of Dhran Radd IV, restricted to female membership. Their domain is
penmanship and writing systems of all kinds. Adepts of the sisterhood are trained as scribes
and calligraphers with a practiced form of short-term memory loss. Dictation, if needed, can
be performed without remembrance. Without this mental block in place, the Dragoumanoi
would never allow the sisters to carry on existing.

Ostensibly, communication is not their goal. It is merely the aesthetic and artistic qualities
of written language that hold their interest, not the information carried by it. Secretly, the
Abanda have spent millennia unravelling the psychological impact of handwriting and
symbology, and use this knowledge to their own ends.

Detailed and subtle messages between sisters can be encoded in their brushstrokes for their
client-masters, but such encryption is hardly unique to this school. Where the Abanda excel
is in the crafting of glyphs and writing forms that subliminally manipulate the mindstate of
the viewer and even force involuntary physical reactions. Initiates can induce mild hunger or
a sense of intimidation in this way. The more experienced scribes can bring about physical
shock, temporary blindness, infatuation, amazement and more. It is believed that the
Ancient Mother of the school, Mirihal Scharzfingar, has perfected a heart-stopping glyph
during her long centuries of practice, but perhaps has not been able to teach it to anyone
else without killing them in the process.

In one of the sisterhood's more imaginative secret campaigns, scribes tested a symbol set
designed to gradually condition readers into attending Church services more regularly,
consequently seeing an increase in charitable donations to their own cause. The Abanda
may have been responsible for the unexplained Blue Day on which the populations of six
worlds simultaneously chose to wear primarily blue attire. More serious campaigns are rare
(or appear to be), as the school must conceal its most powerful gifts or risk a painful
dismantling.

School notes: 4700 years approx. in service, single nunnery, dozens of smaller meeting
places across Dhran Radd IV, membership 10,000 approx., produces an average of 20
viable adepts annually, political influence is negligible (presumed). Ancient Mother (and
school master?) Mirihal Scharzfingar is 600 years approx., surname is in fact a title that
101
translates to "Black Fingers" in reference to ink stains.
Characteristics of planet Dhran Radd IV: Purchased World, terraformed, short day (8
hours), average temperature just above freezing point of water. A cold and dry world, black
volcanic sands forming low hills, shallow broad seas. Most inhabitants are nomadic
shepherds.

Sentinels Corphyan
Major heretical school of Corphya II, with strong political influence on about a dozen others.
Its speciality is the development of teams of hyper-alert martially-skilled adepts to serve as
personal bodyguards. Their edge is gained through a bionetic implant along the brain stem
which is fused to nerves that form the brain-body bridge. This implant is equipped with a
short-range transceiver (10 meter range when the adept is fitted with a signal-boosting
neckband, about 4 meters without). Sensory information can be sent and received through
the implant, with each team of sentinels using a unique frequency.

Teams of three sentinel adepts are trained together from early childhood, spending
increasing lengths of time sharing their sensoria through the heretical implants. The
experience is of seeing through another's eyes, being in another's skin, while still having
awareness of one's own. Mastery of sense-sharing involves selectively screening out certain
sense inputs and focusing on those most useful, as well as controlling the degree to which
one's own senses are transmitted to others in the bond. When properly balanced and
attuned, the result of a three-way bond is that each team member has an expanded arc of
vision and all other senses are similarly heightened.

Sentinel teams need not speak a word to remain fully informed of each other's intentions,
and with familiarity these bonds become intimate in the extreme. Teammates can become
so predictable to one another that their completely improvised tactics can have the look of
carefully practiced routines. (I'm thinking Circe du Soleil with swords.)

Speaking with one's inner voice, conceptualizing visually, imagining sounds -- any internal
dialogue or conscious thought -- can and will be transmitted through the implant unless
controlled. Silent singing/music is often used as a soothing way to enter into a bond. But
many thoughts (particularly those most private) become an overwhelming mind-chatter and
sentinels are not truly prepared for service until they can tame their own minds so that
there is no need to shield such distractions from their sensory output. Focus on the job at
hand, the defense of the client, becomes the all-encompassing goal, reinforced and kept in
check by three minds ever scanning, checking and re-checking each other's perceptions,
and then responding in unison to threats.

The mind-bond's strength is the result of sensory feedback loops. ("I'm looking at myself
through your eyes, and you're seeing what it's like to be me looking at myself through your
eyes, and round and round.") That sort of sensory mirror-infinity trick challenges each
participant's mental focus, with a variety of psychic and physiological consequences for the
weak-willed. When a comfortable resonance is found and maintained, the sensory feedback
loops bring alertness to its highest. Not only are their senses and inner thoughts linked, but
their proprioceptions (body awareness) become attuned, breathing rates and body motions
synchronize, and in many ways the team-of-three becomes a single organism. In this state,
teams of sentinel adepts are so like-minded that riding the waves of sensory feedback
102
makes them sway slightly in rhythm, quite unconsciously.

The potential uses and abuses of this mind-sharing technology, should it become widely
available, are terrifying to contemplate (not to mention economically devastating for the
school). Early implants were far less elegant and prone to malfunction, and not much use
except as toys even in their own time. The implants of the modern age are grown from the
host's own DNA and include engineered failsafes to thwart attempts at replication. This also
helps ease concerns about sentinels employed as bodyguards within the Manifold, although
their acceptance is anything but universal. Should Corphya develop new applications for
sense-sharing, something other than the defense of the Body of Man and the general good
of the Manifold Worlds' vulnerable elite, the school would be condemned and eradicated by
far more powerful institutions already wary of its practices.

The sentinels' martial skill is honed to a level expected of adepts trained for violence, but
they possess no special physical ability in this respect beyond a handful of standard
heretical bionetics. Swords and simple slug-guns are the preferred arms, and chain silk
garments purchased at a dear price from Kuf provide lightweight and fashionable armor.
They are formidable in close combat, in no way flashy, but practical to the point of
shameless. There are no rewards for fighting fair if their master is dead.

School notes: In service 6200 years approx., several temples and academies of great and
small size on Corphya II, recruiting offices on all of the worlds possessed by the Corphyan
Magnate. School membership 1.3b approx., produces an average of 60 viable adept
teams-of-three annually, political influence is negligible. School Master Tilns Okennbek
(male) serving 1900+ years (unverified).
Characterisics of planet Corphya II: Purchased World, terraformed, eastern half the
world is a deep tempestuous ocean, western half is lake-pocked badlands, vast forests.
Chief exports are coal, petroleum, worked ivory and pearls.

Vao Re
Focus: Physical and Mental Balance and Harmony

The only Daughter School of the Mind Masters, they are unique in that they will only bring in
people with specific mental imbalances to their school. They train in a singular philosophy.
Vao Re believe that only when one is in harmony, in balance, can one attain perfection.
They live within a constant Theta Wave state, reacting and moving on impulse. They have a
reputation for being emotionless and inhuman, however this is not strictly true. They take a
nootropic drug called Lythe, which allows the constant Theta wave state, but it also removes
the ability to achieve and large swings in emotional state. They experience emotions, but
not nearly as strongly as other humans. This is why they must start out as a specific form of
mentally imbalanced individuals. They respond to Lythe the best. In the theta state they
have a near perfect sense of surroundings and nearly instant reaction time.

Siki Reeton School

adepts that use similar techniques to the linguistic adepts of the Dragoumanoi. Instead of
training their brains for language however, they train their brains for comprehension. All
they need to know is thermodynamics and information theory and they can allegedly master
103
any skill thereafter. They can glance at the peripheral outline of a system - any system -
and infer the machinery within like instantly approximating the number of fish in a lake by
studying the ripples on the surface. They master fields by understanding the boundaries
that contain them. They have chosen to apply this understanding to their fellow man not to
subjugate or manipulate as so many of the other schools can (and do) but to enlighten and
uplift. With a look, they can extrapolate the paths into a person's psyche, to bypass the
dark walls of ignorance and punch knowledge straight into their brain. Sometimes literally*.

They are most useful to the Magnates and Princes as teachers for their children, readying
them for their Ichor inheritance and keeping them competent/capable before then without
binding them to the programming of a Great School. While the training received from a Siki
Reeton scholar is neither as deep nor as potent as that of any of the higher schools, it is far
far broader with a far far lower barrier to entry. These adepts can train almost anyone to
near adept levels in a comparatively minute amount of time.

UPDATE: I imagine they get confused with the Kironat a lot.

On the one hand, they can be considered violently disruptive to the other schools by virtue
of undercutting their market share. On the other hand, they might just as easily be
dismissed as shallow facsimiles of their betters. On another hand still, the fact that they are
willing to teach *anyone* would probably get them in good with the Church of Ascendant
Man (or some elements thereof); they are after all helping people be better. Then again, the
Church (or, again, some elements thereof) might be opposed to this in a hypocritical
non-literalist-interpretation-of-the-scriptures do-as-i-do-not-as-i-say sort of way. Make all
of these true at once and the result is a school that is solidly extant but will never get any
more powerful than it currently is.

Technologies of the Manifold Worlds

Space Travel

Altman-Le Guerre Uncertainty Bridge device: Travel through Null space is not like any
other form of travel known. Ten Thousand Years ago the Altman-Le Guerre Uncertainty
Bridge Device Spawned the great Diaspora. It finally allowed Man to leave behind Forgotten
Earth. The Diaspora brought new innovations and ideas, but none of them ever surpassed
the Bridge Device.

Rules of the Bridge Device

It creates Pseudo-Wormholes(known as Null Space), upon e ntering the Pseudo-Wormhole
one's ship exists in a state of Superposition. They have an e qual chance of existing at any
spatial location at that given moment.

Only one trained in certain meditations and skills can influence this state of superposition.
Those with the training can influence the probability of being in a given location and thus,
"move," the ship.

104
Only a living mind can influence this state of superposition. Every AI that has t ried has
vanished into the Pseudo-wormhole and never emerged. The AIs must utilize human
navigators in order to successfully enter null space.

The distance that can be circumvented in this manner is dependent on the quality of the
Bridge device and the mass of the ship entering the Pseudo-Wormhole. The larger the ship,
the farther the jump. no one knows why. Complex electronics have a difficult time while
transiting Null Space, the are most often powered down during transit to avoid damage.
Most ships are mostly analog with a minimum of complex electronics.

Space Ship Design: Throughout Manifold Space the standards of ship building are fairly
set. Great machines of enormous signs. These are the cathedral ships. They are not
trans-atmospheric in any sense. They must carry landing craft and fighters. As they require
analogue systems of the very simplest design, the cathedral ships have few weapons.

The machine gods have ships of simple elegance. Each analogue piece is engineered to
perfection and far more durable than any other ship. They carry what are known in the
Manifold as Spikes, landing craft and fighters all in one. These needle thin craft have
fantastic maneuverability and terrific weaponry. They are not as durable or enduring as
most Manifold fighter craft.

Shabda Nakati ships are alien and strange, like all of their devices. They are some form of
living thing, not quite animal not quite plant. These massive ships are incredibly complex
and can make world fall on their own as well as having many strange living weapons
aboard.

I had a thought, what is a Spaceship Tech like? What's the drive behind it? I know he have
those Bridge Devices to essentially placing Human consciousness (Yeah Navigators!) to
'drive' the ship/ pass messages. But I am curious what our SHIPS are like? We could create
a chapter on them.

How they work, what drives them? I mean do we build small torpedo ships in the Manifold
worlds? Do we build grand colossal 'Titanic-pretty' ballroom ships with Gardens and mini
artificial suns to grow food and light the way, that kep a day & night Cycle in the darkness
of space?

What's the Process? Is it skilled Adept labor to build a ship? or 'unskilled' Rayah Labor (and
by unskilled I mean non super special training).

Does a commissioned ship for a Prince of a Khalsa have a different process? What about a
simple 'transport' ship for cargo?

there should be small boats, dropships, fighters and the like, carried inside bays on the
Cathedral Ships, or perched on them like those small birds that cleans the hippos in the
Nile. I suppose that the pilots would be fairly specialized, maybe even Skymen of Charybdis
or similar schools. Nobody would entrust a piece of transatmospheric state of the art
technology to the Rayah, after all.
105
I like to imagine the Cathedral Ships as vast and sprawling. Some sections, the lower decks,
the engine rooms and the like, would be similar to the bowels of the Nostromo or the Even
Horizon: all rusting metal, steel gangways, pipes, gears, cogs and vents, vapor, and strange
liquids dripping everywhere, a hot, humid and almost unlivable environment where the
Rayah toils to serve their masters.

However the upper decks, the sections where the valuable passengers live during the trip
would be very Titanic-like. Well, the lower decks on the Titanic weren'r pretty either, but
you get the point. Maybe the aesthetic would be more Mughal-ish or Persian than 19th
Century European luxury (or a blend of the two), but it would be luxury all right. Rare wood
floors. Intricate carpets. Tapestries and painted tiles on the walls. Crystal lamps hanging
from ceilings decorated with frescoes or muqarnas, silver cutlery, gilded finishes
everywhere. Geometrical and floral designs, or maybe calligraphic decorations with
inspirational and philosophical quotes. Polylobulated arches, maybe even indoor pools and
gardens in the Persian "paradysos" style.

You can't have True Humans traveling like cattle, after all.

Of course, "workhorse" types like simple cargo haulers would be more like the lower decks,
with minimal comfort and maybe only a handful of Adepts of board.

About the process, I guess most of the work would be done by Rayah, even some kinds of
specialized and highly technical work. But the overall supervision and the fine-tuning, the
secret aspects of the Altman-LaGuerre Bridge Device, and the like would be entrusted to
School adepts.

The way the Bridge Device works implies a lot about the nature of ships. Basically there can
be no intricate electronics as the bridge device and the larger the ship the further it can
travel through Null Space. So the ships will be huge and carry lots of smaller, more intricate
and useful craft. These smaller craft would be completely powered down during travel. Also
with the nature of travel people really only use the Cathedral ships for transport, no one
lives on ships in the Manifold. Surrounded by machines and metal, one shudders to think.

t here would be great rocket engines to give direction and thrust to the craft when not
traveling Null Space. I see the designs as being very Baroque and architecturally unique.
Each Cathedral Ship would be a work of art, massive and strange. at the center lies the
Bridge Chamber, call the Hahnfoar. The navigator sits and connects to the Bridge device
through the use of Tambai, linking a readied mind to the device. The navigator sits in
almost complete sensory deprivation within the Hahnfoar, allowing for a better connection
through the Tambai. The ships are designed to contain multitudes, as there is not much to
them save for mass and engines. I see the lower sections as being a mix of the Nostromo's
cramped corridors and the bottomless pits with no safety rails seen in much of science
fiction. the upper floors are all dedicated to grand entertainments. Much of the Manifold
fears the Cathedral Ships to a small degree, only technology holding out the nothingness.
So they spend their time in frivolity and distraction, Balls and the like.

Weaponry of the Manifold Worlds

106
When it comes to fighting one's options are many and varied. the primary weapon is
generally a hand to hand weapon of some sort, the sword being the most popular. The
reasons being that these weapons are better for one on one fights, they are better for
piercing Shields(for those rich enough to have them), and they are more skill focused than
ranged weapons. That being said there are a number of ranged and esoteric weapons that
are used by specific schools, and are available to those with the means.

Quad Rail Electromagnetic Musket: If you want the last word in long range targeting,
this is it. It is accurate, far reaching, and powerful. The Gunners of Caliban use them almost
exclusively. They are temperamental weapons that require a great deal of training to use
properly. They must be constantly maintained. With a skilled user they can shoot accurately
for miles. They work by magnetically accelerating a metal projectiles(there are several
varieties of projectile) up to six times the speed of sound(some claim the Caliban version is
faster and able to do more). For extreme range shots there are a number of sighting
devices that have been developed to aid in targeting.

Laser weapons: Dangerous tech, the laser is a very useful weapon in the hands of
someone who knows what they are doing. When used by a layman there is a better than
average chance the user will be armed. The power packs are a bit unstable(indeed they
could be used as small grenades should the need arise) and have been known to explode if
handled incorrectly. The usefulness of the Laser Weapon is twofold, first there is no wait
time between pulling the trigger and doing damage to your target, and second if you have
access to a mirror you can bank a shot around a shield or obstacle. The mirror blasters
school have turned this simple trick into a science and an art form. They have many devices
that are used in combat to aid in firing lasers around corners and from odd angles. Mirror
spheres(both rolling and hovering), refraction diodes(to scatter a shot), and cloud breakers
are all just tools in their laser arsenal.

Sliver Gun: basically a far less powerful and simpler version of the Quad Rail
Electromagnetic Musket. It fire single flechettes at high speeds for short distances. It can
only fire four shots before its power pack needs to be replaced, but it is nearly silent and the
flechettes can be coated with various toxins or drugs. Also the velocity can be adjusted with
a nob on the side for various interesting effects, including moving slow enough to pass
through personal shields unhindered

The Kite-Dart: A weapon employed by the Listeners of Chirrof and a few other sensory
Schools, the kite-dart consists of a molecular-edged spearhead connected to a
wrist-mounted pneumatic launcher to which it is connected with fine wires with which the
adept can alter the trajectory of the missile in flight and reel it back in. With the Listeners'
advanced sensory abilities an adept skilled in its use can injure and slay a foe even from
around corners. The dart is made of lightweight orbital materials that allow it to float like a
leaf on a breeze but hard enough to slash veins and tendons even through light armour.

Rayah Gun: A catchall term for a chemically or electrochemically propelled assault rifle,
pistol or submachine gun of a make that has been common since long before man walked
the stars. Named because they require no real School training or even exceptional skill to
use effectively, making it suitable for the Rayah that make up the bulk of most armies.
107
Findsman Rifle: Designed for use by planetary explorers, long-range scouts and others
who might find themselves absent from civilisation for extended periods of time. The
Findsman Rifle is a high-powered airgun that can be loaded with almost anything harder
than wood and softer than steel, a solar and thermally-powered mechanism in the rifle will
grind material fed to it into shot and feed it into a hopper of projectiles, each with their own
individual gas bottle. A second mechanism, that can be hand-cranked to speed the process
or allowed to run passively off the solar cells, fills the gas bottles.

Plasma ejector: one of the few man portable heavy weapons in the manifold. It is a direct
fire plasma ejector. It can cut through a shield in one or two shots and burns through
anything in its path. They are short range(for a heavy weapon) and inaccurate without
training. They are often used by the royal guards of many princes.

Razor Field: a small wrist mounted device the projects two s mall shields angled to a point
somewhere beyond the hand. This field is razor sharp and it t akes a great deal of training
not to cut oneself while using it.

Electrocution gun: Two versions of the gun exist - one fires wires f rom a battery pack, the
other fires dart shaped loops of superconducting material. In either c ase, they're moving
slowly enough to slide through a shield and electrocute the target.

Defensive Technologies

Kinetic Force Screen: Often simply called a shield they come in two varieties. The
personal shield is very expensive and restricted to the Khalsa. It stops any kinetic force
moving at great speed. It takes quite a bit of force to overload the shield but it can be done
with enough firepower. Heavy Kinetic Force Screens, Heavy Shields, are either vehicle
mounted or generated by a large shield generator(about 40 Kilos and a meter square). The
heavy shield only protects one plane, usually the front or rear of the vehicle. The heavy
shield is often used in large scale conflicts(well, larger scale), to protect key locations during
the struggle.

Other Technologies unique to the Manifold Worlds

Environmental suit: most environmental suits within the manifold are simple affairs.
Analogue devices of perfect efficiency. They provide oxygen and oxygen scrubbing for days,
as well as processing all wastes from the body, extracting and purifying the water.

Superluminal Telegraph
Also called: Stellar Signaler, the Cosmic Radio
The device that lead directly to the invention of the Bridge Device, the Superluminal
Telegraph is a communication device that cannot be jammed and can traverse any distance
nearly instantly. The problems are that to send information you must be in a special trans
state(or the message gets garbled) and that state can cause hallucinations(which leads to it
being less than perfect communication. Those who use it a great deal speak of a realm of
pure thought that one accesses through the machine, a collective mind of all who are using
the telegraph, and who have ever used the telegraph. In fact it is theoretically possible to
108
send information backward or forward in time with the device. Forward in time is not a
problem, normally. But anyone who has received a message from the future has gone
catatonic and never come out. The more skilled the user the better the results of the device,
and it is the only way of transmitting data over long distances instantly. Some planets still
have radio and phones, but most rely on this device as it cannot be tapped or jammed.

You basically "trip" while employing it, and like the ancient sybils any message you received
would be open to multiple interpretations due to this hallucinatory state. The better the
adepts ability to enter a trance state, the more accurate the interpretation.Less danger of
becoming a vegetable, as well.

The main form of communication remains couriers going from planet to planet, but this still
has its advantages: faster, incapable of blockage, yet open to interpretation. This leads well
to scenarios: a character gets a message but has to figure it out and then act upon it, not
sure if his or her interpretation is correct.

Xzin Springs - The most efficient mechanical energy storage devices ever created, Xzin
springs are at the core of a lot of Manifold World technology. It is these mechanisms that
allow so much of the technology used in the Manifold to be powered by clockwork action
and can store gigawatts of energy purely in mechanical form.

Casimir Cubes - Approximately the size of a sugar cube, these devices use precisely
aligned arrays of reactive metallic nanofilms to harvest omnipresent zero-point energy
directly from space itself. Casimir Cubes provide essentially unlimited energy but only in
very small quantities. Still, they contribute to the well-deserved reputation that Manifold
devices have of running under their own power until they break down altogether and can be
used to wind Xzin springs while the device is idle.

Xzin Mirrors - These pieces of crystalline smart matter grown in vats to a proprietary
process are prized for their optical properties, depending on how they are altered as they
are growing they can serve either as optically perfect mirrors or refractive prisms that are
vital in the creation of high-yield Ladar Semaphore equipment used for long-range
communications.
Sacred Chemistry: Nootropics

To facilitate the training which allows the human body and mind to be pushed to its peak,
and sometimes just beyond, the Schools have long employed a number of drugs to assist
neural patterning, induce altered states of awareness and remove self-imposed
psychological blocks. The degree to which drugs an individual School employs and to what
extent varies; the Kaltar Demonologists frequently employ perception-altering compounds
to allow them to more clearly perceive their mental constructs while the Stoics of Unne rely
almost entirely on meditative focus and the Nax Persuaders are usually more interested in
the effects of these drugs on others than themselves. Most School adepts are at least minor
addicts to some form of nootropic or another though, if only to operate at their peak ability.
Most of these drugs are legacies of the individual Schools and not available on the open
market, aggressively preserved as "trade secrets" by the Schools, but at the same time
most are too dangerous to be of use to anyone other than an adept. Without the existing
training in attaining conscious control over ones' own mental processes and autonomic
109
adjustment of biochemistry the vast majority of them are simply lethal poisons to the
uninitiated.

Plastex - Increases neuronal plasticity, affecting the speed and clarity with which skills can
be learned and knowledge attained, useful to almost every School. Ordinarily neuronal
plasticity degrades with age but regular ingestion of Plastex keeps the mind as sharp and
open as a childs. It does have some downsides in that it also leaves users open to
suggestion, inhibiting their defences against the abilities of Schools such as the Persuaders,
Taoists, Mimes and Demonologists.

Houndsbreath - Used almost exclusively by the Breeders of Quori, Houndsbreath is a

chalky grey powder that is snorted to drastically increase the users' sense of smell. This
additional perspective into the world as their charges perceive it gives the Breeders a
greater appreciation for canine psychology... and personal hygiene. Smell is strongly linked
to memory in humans and users of houndsbreath can sometimes experience flashbacks
when exposed to familiar scents, though this can actually be useful as a memory aid; keying
a particular memory to a scent and using that same scent to recall it later can allow for
surprising feats of eidetic recall.

Bloodsalt - The reddish-brown and flaky pollen of an intensely difficult to cultivate airborne
plant called Bloodsalt Kelp, which falls from the sky in great drifts during harvest season,
Bloodsalt is extremely valuable to the more physically-oriented Schools. Usually drunk while
mixed with wine, the highly toxic enzymes in Bloodsalt have a strange effect on human
biochemistry; they bind to the protein structures of muscle, bone, nerves and connective
tissues and regulates their growth patterns more evenly and elegantly than unassisted
growth would. Body-builders who take Bloodsalt do not become musclebound or risk tearing
their own joints from flexing oversized muscles. It is part of the reason why physical adepts
are often far stronger than they appear, as muscle grown under the effects of Bloodsalt
does not tend to bulge as much but instead becomes denser and more efficient.

Ichor - Ichor, the blood of the gods, and you ceremonially take it while masked guards
stand over you, vibro-swords and plasma casters held at the ready should you fail to
encapsulate it with your control of your own biochemical and psychological makeup. Even if
you succeed you will probably be left slightly stranger by the experience, small subtle things
at first but accruing with consecutive treatments until Reverend Elders of the Great Schools
look very strange indeed, their appearance slipping into the Uncanny Valley as they start to
become closer to their "idealised" selves.

Ichor both is and is not a drug; it is both and not a chemical solution; really, its a
symbiotic piece of technology that a) only pretends to be a liquid - its actually a
nanocomposite that simulates a fluid in the whole; b) only prospers in selected media,
namely the biological systems of a genetically-altered human being (the Prince, in other
words); and c) provides heightened human ability that puts the recepient on the same
physical and mental level as the adepts of the Great Schools, i.e., heightend strength,
speed, endurance, intelligence, memory, etc. Ichor slows aging but does not stop it; it
provides regeneration as well, though not from the most catastrophic of injuries.

Its in short supply, too, the Ichor: when they say a Prince has inherited his fathers blood,
110
they mean it literally . . . on the latters deathbed it is formally drained and then t ransferred
to the new ruler. No new batches can be made. What there is is all that there is, n owhere
near enough for entire aristocracies to partake, only the person at the top.

The Princes represent the smallest faction of the three parts of civilization - collectively,
there are a hundred Magnates to every Prince. But they control the best worlds, and
accordingly they have the best defenses, the best armies, the greater
military-industrial-economic stronghouses. This, plus their enhanced abilities from the Ichor
- more general and less specialized than Great School adepts - give them their clout.

The Princes may or may not have their own overriding authority - a Landsraad, by any
other name - but if they do its legislative rather than executive . . . the Princes each
jealously guard the power they hold over their own worlds.

Amrit - The Chief anagathic of the Manifold Worlds

Olyoxiner: Incredibly corrosive and toxic, without access to a supply an Aisahe Master
would literally fall apart (messily) within a month.

Oilaas - A flower-based drug that grows on Seratna and a few other worlds. Oilaas
accelerates the users perception of time: from the perspective of the user, the real world
seems to slow down while his own thoughts remain the same. In an overdose of Oilaas, the
world stops completely, and the addict is trapped internally in a single perceived moment,
changeless, forever.

Tgali - the finest anagathic in the Manifold Worlds. Only known to a few.Only found on two
planets Oca and ahTwound.

Focus-Gram: a hallucinatory, mind-altering drug, which heightens the perception of

electrical and magnetic fields within the brain, as is seen in nature among some species of
fish and bird.

Pseudo-Ichor: many have attempted to duplicate the ichor, most attempts just kill anyone
dumb enough to utilize it. There is one form crafted by the machine gods. While it will do all
that ichor does there is a significant downside. The user needs real blood to feed the ichor.
The users of Pseudo-Ichor must intake living blood in order to sustain their longevity and
enhanced abilities, without the this living blood the Pseudo-Ichor begins to devour the flesh
of the host.

the idea of Ichor being developed originally as a combined life support system, space suit
and computer array for space pioneers is a good one; perhaps developed prior to the
uncertainty bridge? You'd send out a sublight ship with the majority of the passengers and
crew in cryostasis at any one time, with the captain, who needs to be active at all times for
making command decisions and ensuring the mission goes well, being equipped with the
Ichor nanosymbiote that allows him to live through the entire mission and gives him
superhuman intellectual and physical traits to ensure he doesn't die through accident or go
crazy from staring into space for centuries.

111
 r ather than the Ichor getting weaker as the centuries roll by, howabout it becomes
stranger? The Ichor nanosymbiote was only ever meant to be used by one person, in the
process of upgrading someone it maps their entire nervous system and forms a holographic
copy of their mind within itself, which was originally intended to allow it to repair the brain
in case of traumatic head injury without impairing memory or personality. Millenia of
transferring the symbiote from host to host has resulted in it picking up multiple disparate
'souls' of its former hosts, and their influence sometimes transfers across; when the Ichor
accepts a new host it does the same mapping process, interprets the new host's neural
variance as an injury and starts "repairing" it with bits from the stored engrams of previous
hosts. Being psychoreactive, the new host can exert their will over the Ichor to retain
control of themselves, which is easier with Mantra training, but failure to encapsulate the
Ichor results in becoming consumed by ones' ancestors. Even successful transfusions might
still result in the new Prince developing some of his Great, Great Grandfather's tics and
pecadilloes. Booyah, instant Abominations!

Edit: It also gives a reason for a Prince to have Esoteric adepts as part of their Sahabah, as
they more commonly deal with issues of identity, personality, sanity and the subconscious;
a Prince who's tormented by visions of one of his more bloodthirsty or depraved ancestors,
urging him on to evil acts, might well enlist a Kaltar Daemonologist to perform an exorcism
or keep the malevolent thought-form at bay with his daemons. A Prince who needs to
connect with one of his ancestors to recover a lost piece of information they took to their
graves might seek a Morphean Oneiromancer to guide them to connect with their ancestor
through dreams. I should imagine the process of transfusion would be very dangerous for
an unprepared would-be-Prince and it being taboo to perform a transfusion on anyone
below a certain age; a child who hasn't had enough time to cement their own identity, never
mind learn Mantra skills to sufficient proficiency, would probably be overwhelmed by
whichever ancestor had the strongest identity or becoming an insane mishmash of traits
from several, unless one of their ancestors is strong enough and benevolent enough to act
as a guardian and keep them safe while the Ichor takes.

There are going to be corrupt Princes who deliberately flout the notion of having a prepared
heir, who specifically want a young and/or unprepared person because that would allow
their personalities to completely overwhelm that individuals, thereby in essence then to
recreate themselves in new bodie

So, who can use the Bridge Device, then?

To preface, I would like to point out the difference between conscious and unconscious
actions, and that we really havent truly mastered a field until we can do it unconsciously. I
reference the novel Permanence by Karl Schroeder by this insight (good book). In other
words, if in order to throw a baseball we had to calculate the physics behind the throw
everytime - the arc of descent, the speed of the ball, the movement of your arm, etc. - then
that would be a conscious set of calculations, and we therefore would not have mastered
that ability. Yet we dont need to do that - most people just throw the ball, some very
expertly, without any thought at all, and thats a purely unconscious action, and
112
consequently it denotes mastery. Human beings know how to unconsciously throw
baseballs.

If you need to think about what youre doing while youre doing it, you havent mastered the
subject. I contend that most of the Ancient School adepts have mastered their subjects to
the point where they do them unconsciously, that when an Epicure of Cacsondia creates the
perfect meal, he does so without needing to go through each and every step of the process.
He just does it. It took years (probably decades) to achieve this hyperspecialization, but
once achieved its wholly unconscious.

To get back on subject . . . lets take the Children of Eye. They teach their pupils to allow
them [to] let go of their physical shells for a brief time. I take this non-literally, that the
adepts of the School enter a self-hypnotic trance state and within this state their vision
allows them to navigate null space. In other words, both the belief in being in two or more
places at once (the meditative state) and the mathematical calculations (determining the
probabilities) are unconscious on their part.

I say this makes the Children of Eye the fastest users of the Bridge Device, speed being
Speed of Plot.

*******

Lets take the Finders of Karao, now. They are the perfect navigators. They never get lost. I
take this to mean they are capable of imagining themselves in two or more places at once
and connecting . . . in other words, the first step in using the Bridge Device. But they
probably need to still make the myriad of calculations by hand, consciously.

So, the Children of Eye - Unconscious/Unconscious Bridge Steps): fastest

The Finders of Karao - Unconscious/Conscious Bridge Steps): slightly slower

********

Other examples: the Space-Astrologers could do the mathematical steps in their sleep, but
to achieve that meditative trance state would be harder, involving something they would
have to do that other Schools do more naturally. So, for them, Conscious/Unconscious
Bridge Steps, about the same Speed of Plot as the Finders, only reversed.

The Bene Tlonits are memory archivists. They can use the Bridge Device but only along
routes that have already been perfectly mapped. For them, its a wholly calculated steps of
procedure, even if drawing the memory itself is unconscious. So, for them,
Conscious/Conscious Bridge Steps, and which probably makes them the slowest users of
null space.

So, heres the list o

f S
chools, in terms of Speed of Plot, as determined by how they work the
two steps needed t o u se the Bridge Device:

The C
hildren of Eye - Unconscious Trance State / Unconscious Mathematics: Fastest
The F inders of Karao - Unconscious Trance State / Conscious Mathematics: Slower Than the
113
Children of Eye
The Space-Astrologers - Conscious Trance S tate / Unconscious Mathematics: Slower Than
the Children of Eye
The Bene Tlonits - Conscious Trance State / Conscious Mathematics: Slowest

Where would the Enemy of Man fall into this? As mentioned, the calculations are a snap, but
the trance state?

I propose this: the Machine Gods can put a human being into the necessary trance state
through implants in the brain, but it kills the navigator during or after the trip. It literally
burns out their brains . . . every time an Enemy of Man ship goes ftl, someone dies. Thats
horrific but neat and should serve to further distinguish them.

Speed? The AIs use the Bridge Device consciously and unconsciously, so to speak: forcing a
human pilot into a fatal trance state, but the mathematics perfectly simple. In terms of
chart, theyre at the same speed as the the Space-Astrologers.

The Children of Eye - Unconscious Trance State / Unconscious Mathematics: Fastest

The Finders of Karao - Unconscious Trance State / Conscious Mathematics: Slower Than the
Children of Eye
The Space-Astrologers - Conscious Trance State / Unconscious Mathematics: Slower Than
the Children of Eye
The Enemy of Man - Induced, Conscious Trance State / Unconscious Mathematics: Slower
Than the Children of Eye
The Bene Tlonits - Conscious Trance State / Conscious Mathematics: Slowest

*********

I may have overthought this. One last thing: I think it would be neat if the Children of Eye
didnt run their own ships, that the ships are owned by other Schools, Princes, Magnates,
etc. You hire a Child of the Eye to pilot your ship and get you from A to B, but its your ship.
If the model of using component modular pieces for supertech as I described several posts
ago also applies, then there would be two things in terms of plot that could delay the
departure of a ship: a missing or stolen Bridge Device and a missing or kidnapped Child of
Eye.

Since most energy will be needed for utilities, what about solar and wind power? Both are
renewable sources, and the Manifold Worlds need to build to last, simply because they have
already lasted a while.

"From the air, the town seems busy but ordered, its citizens moving like ants around the
narrow and winding streets that surround the bazaar. Over the terraces and the gilded
domes of the churches and palaces, high and svelte minarets rose like spears, glistening in
the setting sun. When the ornitopter came close, however, it became clear they weren't
simple spires: each and every one was either a solar tower or a windtrap, their inside space
filled with either high efficiency solar panels and mirrors, or wind turbines. Thus was the
town powered."

114
Granted, t his c ould be unfeasible in worlds like sazur, but similar contraptions can be used
on rivers a
nd d ams.

There is also the question of how to power vehicles.

I think we need to establish what kind of "feel" do we want for the technology in the
Manifold Worlds. If we want cranky and noisy, steam or diesel is the way to go. If we want
something more seamless and inconspicuous, I think fusion and solar, wind, etc. are better.

Good thinking. As in many things, I'm going to go back to the root source of our pastiche
here. In Herbert's Dune-verse, sources of power (literally, in this case) are very much in the
background. Machines work because they work, simply that . . . suggesting, in my mind,
anyway, that the machine and the energy powering that machine are so closely linked
together that most users can't separate the two. In other words, you would never see the
sign "Batteries not included" - a machine is built to be a self-contained thing. You never
have to tinker with it, you certainly don't need to refuel it or plug it into the wall socket; you
pick it up, or climb inside it, and it just works.

So, what about the Manifold Worlds? Throwing out an idea, how about b oth of Hakan's
suggestions? I would like to see the Khalsa tech to be "seamless and inconspicuous." But
how about the machines used by the Rayah to be "cranky and noisy"? It would be a strong
contrast, anyway.

******

Regardless of my suggestion, what do we a lready have established about Manifold tech?

First, it's non-electronic. That's primary, I t hink.

Second, we have the Watchmakers of Xzin - they have to be a Great School, I think, yet at
the same time a slightly Heretical one, likely (the Church probably doesn't like them all that
much) - who produce non-electronic, basically analog replacement devices using
micro-mechanics. The best of the Xzin designs is reserved for the exclusive use of the
Khalsa (as in Random_Interrupt's description of the best lasgun in the hands of a noble),
but the least complicated designs have been released generally (ibid., the common soldier's
lasgun, which is of lesser quality and power).

Third, as Random_Interrupt said above, Xzin machinery will incorporate "hand-crank, key or
at most a . . . chemical" sourcing of power. We also know, and can extrapolate, that in this
era everything is much more efficient, especially energy efficient. Building materials are the
absolute best and have all the advantages.

Fourth, as Pilgrim said above, the Rayah have "windmills, water wheels, tractors . . . things
powered by those - either mechanical linkages, or by turning a generator." Furthermore,
they have steam, biodiesel/biofuel, and compressed air sources of power, all, again,
hyper-efficient compared to our using of those technologies today. Lastly, they could well
have in the Manifold Worlds the "kink springs," as described, which again can be put down
to much more advanced building materials - the stuff the Manifold Worlds build with looks
115
primitive, but it's the end product of 10,000 years of development.

To be crass, Manifold toilets don't need water to flush - the material the toilet is built from
just slides the waste product away without, well, waste. Buildings retain heat better. They
resist wind better. Everything is better - simple, but better. Stronger, too, likely.

Fifth, finally, I think, as Pilgrim, Hakan, and Random_Interrupt all suggest, a lot of energy
we use wouldn't be used by them - basically, Rayah lives are simple, and their main energy
use would be their utilities, and that's it, which would could be powered by wind, solar, etc.
On the other hand, the Khalsa have huge amounts of energy available to them. I haven't
written it yet, but I'm going to have a planet description in which the entire face of the
planet has been reshaped to the whims of its decadent Prince. More concretely, the Order
Aisahe terraform planets (very energy costly), we have a suggestion about a planet "being
paved in gold" (DagobahDave), and, frankly, the Manifold Worlders can travel from planet
to planet and have a virtually unlimited number of planets at their disposal . . . they have
the sources of power to do all this, I imagine, and more.

So, where does all this lead?

Myself, I like a far-future baroque setting. Machines are highly decorated and artistic. Think
the outside of a Hindu temple - there's no blank surfaces anyway, just intricate pictures and
designs everywhere. At the same time, this future-tech is "gadget-oriented," meaning any
machine is non-networked to anything else, it powers itself, and it produces a singular,
particular, neat sci-fi effect. Most people have no idea how anything works, too . . . the
machine just works. Visually, I picture Lynch's Dune movie, in terms of aesthetics - a little
bulky, lots of metal and stone, but really advanced metal and stone, and decorated all to
hell. This, I think, lends itself to the "seamless and inconspicuous" aspect of Khalsa
technology and power, though likely not to the Rayah, and certainly not to the technology
possessed by the Machine Gods.

I'd imagine a lot of the more sophisticated technology looks like a highly sophisticated and
baroque piece of clockwork combined with oddly organic lines. Basically, it's all mechanical
and chemical rather than electronic but it's still incorporating 10,000 years worth of material
science development; hydrophobic/philic and frictionless surfaces can make them very
efficient. There would also be a high degree of "human element" to it; highly ergonomic
designs would likely be the norm in a culture that prizes human ability above all, and so any
concessions to usability would be paramount in consideration. Of course there could be
several different design philosophies, from different manufacturers who don't use Xzin
designs or follow different design schools (small "s").

I don't necessarily see there being much of a difference between "Rhaya" and "Khalsa"
technology other than that most Rhaya wouldn't be able to afford the really cool stuff - Xzin
originals, data recorders, personal aircraft, etc. but even then some might. Remember that
Rhaya is not the same thing as poor andy more than Khalsa means rich - Serviles and at
least a certain percentage of the Adonae and Living Weapons are basically highly privileged
slaves, remember. Most of the wealthy merchant class are going to be Rhaya, most people
in every field are going to be Rhaya, they just lack the recognition of being "Complete
Human" by the Church and having the political and social privileges that go with that. The
116
Magnates are an exception of course but they go beyond merely wealthy to truly obscene
levels of affluence.

Perhaps it could operate via ladar - beaming data from point to point using lasers and
satellite mirrors, with the beams being received and translated into text, sound, video,
what-have-you depending on the sophistication of the devices involved, through a
mechanism that is dangerously close to being a computer but just about skirts by. Not the
sort of setup that means TV and radio in every home, but still allows for intercontinental
and even interplanetary communication. Perhaps even something equivalent to TV in public
areas that can afford the receiver and the license to have one of the satellite refractors
directed toward them. It would also mean that, especially on poorer or recently-settled
worlds where there's no weather manipulation, communication would be patchy due to
weather - the transmission could literally be blocked by cloud-cover or a bad sandstorm (yet
another reason for the Mind Masters to choose Sazur as their test-bed for keeping multiple
isolated societies - the primary form of broadcast technology in the Manifold can't get
through the fog!).

Just an idea, anyway. Seems like an appropriately Herbert-esque technological kludge. The
equivalent of local radio could just be a ladar tower on top of the highest landmark!

The Miniaturized Oikumenal EMP (Monkey)

For some real science see here: http://www.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb3.htm

Cheaply produced and easily concealed, the monkey can be found on most any planet in the
Manifold Worlds, with many superstitious individuals keeping one on them at all times just
in case the Enemies of Man show up. These small devices are capable of producing a
powerful localized EMP that easily fries electronic devices, which helps explain why the
Enemies of Man use human agents and why the heretical schools operate underground.

In fact, the use of monkeys in the Manifold World by soldiers, spies, industrial saboteurs,
vandals and Neo-Luddite fanatics is common enough that even the more technologically
inclined magnates depend strongly on human skill rather than mechanical craft as the last
thing they want is a monkey on their backs.

Ironically, one of the best means to guard against a monkey is to deploy one of your own as
these devices are especially vulnerable to EMPs.

----

I'm imagining some interesting cat and mouse games in which PCs try to get their EMPs to
go off at just the right place without it getting disabled first.
117
there are quad rail electromagnetic muskets. a difficult weapon to master, but it must be
really powerful?

I believe we're going with there being multiple "spices", i.e. performance-enhancing or
nootropic drugs. But access to some form of anagathic would certainly be in-keeping. It's
not really Transhumanism until you have immortality in some form or another, and the idea
of centuries-old Grand Masters of the Schools who have been honing their bodies and minds
for so long that they have become something altogether stranger than human, like the Bene
Gesserit reverend mothers or the Spacing Guild navigators, is too cool a concept to pass by.
Perhaps the drug treatments to extend lifespan require progressively greater School training
to use without dying, going insane or... even cooler... transforming into a superhuman
monster, so it's restricted to proven Adepts. Perhaps some form of psychoreactive
smart-tissue that reacts to your thoughts and feelings, bringing out your full potential and
revitalising you but potentially also manifesting your darkest impulses in your flesh. Age is
beginning to dull your abilities so you petition your school to be given a dose of

NPCs and Enemies

Calibans
Semi sentient, massively strong natives of the planet Caliban. They use great tactics and
can hurl rocks at great speed, power, and accuracy. They react to human intrusions into
their territory with hostility and violence. they have been known to gather in large
numkbers and overwhelm smaller human settlements.

Doangers
Constructed life forms designed by the Shabda Nakati to gather intelligence in the larger
universe. They can appear as any living thing with a body mass large enough to support
their brain structure. Generally speaking they cannot be smaller than a dog, or larger than a
horse. They possess supreme sense, far beyond anything human, taken from species from
across the universe. There musculature is far denser than a humans. They are not creative,
though they can be trained to appear clever. They are sentient but not sapient. They are the
primary tool the Shabda Nakati use when dealing with the outside world.

Araey(Great Bird)
The Khalsa of Datwalla have one pastime they engage in to excess, Orun Jo(sky joust).
They have been breeding Araey from before the founding of the planet six millennia prior.
Each generation is larger and stronger, capable of carrying more weight. Currently the
Araey have wingspans reaching over 30 feet and can carry a large man, or a small man with
weapons and armor. Due to the breeding program the Araey are temperamental beasts.
They must be raised by their rider and will accept no other without extreme placation. They
are highly trainable, their intelligence is nearly that of a dog or horse. Few other systems
have ever desired them, and so they stay a part of only Datwalla life and culture. Though,
those who know of such things fear what would occur should the Aekihv get ahold of them.

118
Debo
Crafted specifically to be the most efficient domestic food animal, the Debo is nearly
ubiquitous on all worlds in the manifold and beyond. the Debo was built before the rise of
the Manifold, from several species' DNA. It is known for its green or blue fur and skin(it has
chlorophyll enabling a limited form of Photosynthesis), the meat is somewhat bland but
nourishing. Its milk is filled with vitamins and nutrients and the fur can also be used as a
silk substitute. the Debo can eat nearly any form of vegetation, and are cud chewers. Their
saliva is an antibacterial agent and their horns are blunt and grow in specific patterns that
are very useful for the creationof certain primitive tools. It was crafted for the first colony
ships to head out into the vastness, as they had no idea what conditions they would find. It
is the swiss army goat/cow/spider/plant, the pinnacle of pre-manifold technology.

Weapons of the Aekihv

Razor Grass is a hardy grass that grows to a height of six feet or more. Its edges are razor
sharp and serrated catching and tearing any exposed flesh. It also leaks a neurotoxin that
causes seizures and death on contact with the victims bloodstream. During the correct
season it realizes Sliver Pollen which all humans are deathly allergic to, by design. Often
Aekihv will drop Razor Grass seed upon unsuspecting planets. When it is uncovered the only
way to ensure its destruction is to burn it all and maintain a watch for anymore outbreaks.

The Ba'alohrre is the perfect hunter. It can exist in nearly any environment, its brain is
devoted to the senses, specifically sight and sound and are nearly impossible to sneak up
upon in any traditional manner. Its prey is primarily humans, genetically hardcoded to favor
the taste of manflesh. The skin of the Ba'alohrre is thick and hardened, nearly immune to
conventional weaponry, they are also string and fast. Ba'alohrre have a minor chameleon
like color changing ability. Mostly they can alter their skin color to roughly match their
surroundings, not enough to disappear, but enough to break up their sillouette at a
distance.

Red Fucigg is a bacteria that attacks the water within humans, and only humans. It is the
pinnacle of Aekihv technology. the only reason it is not used more often is the difficulty in
cultivating it, and keeping it alive and safe while they traverse the void. Those infected lose
weight rapidly and become hydrophilic and feverish. Within a day, the mind of teh victim is
plagued by horrendous fever dreams. at a day and a half even the hardiest of souls have
died. On worlds where it has dropped, there are whole cities of mummified remains, faces
frozen in a rictus of fear. They call it the screaming death.

Top Three Of The Manifold's Most Wanted

1. Kiba Cibalba-The single most dangerous being in or out of the manifold. Cibalba started
out as a Vrason Diagnostic, a true prodigy. She mastered techniques far beyond her years,
reaching the pinnacle of skill within her first century. Having attained the level of Vrason
Master so swiftly, she grew bored with her lot and began inventing new training regimens
and new directions of research. Even this began to bore her. At this point she began moving
throughout the Manifold, secretly and with care. She began to assemble a sahaba of rogue
adepts. From these Cibalba began extracting the secrets of their skills. The Nax Persuader's
gifts were her first acquisition, followed by the several others. As the centuries wore on she
gained more knowledge and power. Eventually this heresy became known and a warrant
was issued. That was two thousand years ago. She has eluded her pursuers ever since.
119
Cibalba seeks to become the universes singularity, a master of all skills and knowledge.
When she attains this, she see no need for any princes or adepts. Between stints of learning
new skills, she seeks out adepts of skills she has already mastered and kills them, to test
her retention and gather new subjects for her diabolical research.

2. Kertyu- The only one to escape from three Prison Planets. Kertyu is a cunning and
vicious predator of men. He enjoys killing and causing havoc, however he is sloppy in
covering his tracks and gets caught. His escapes are spectacular and bloody affairs. He is a
Symbioun Cypher with a great many beneficent parasites. He can see in the dark, heal
almost any wound, hold his breath for hours, and a great many other feats due to his little
parasitic friends.

3. Gemini- Many princes died or vanished during the Blood Wars. Much Ichor was spilt or
lost. Ka Haan was one of the greatest princes of the war. A masterful general and brilliant
leader he came the close to conquering the whole of the manifold. Then one day, he just
vanished. No record of his death, no record of anything after a final battle out on the
periphery. Ten years ago Ishmail, a royal bastard and Rayah, discovered the resting place
of Ka Haan's Ichor. The Ichor sensing someone comparable nearby, did what it was
designed to do. A new Prince was born. Half mad, with memories not his own, Ishmail has
been hunted across the breadth of the Manifold. He is confused and his memories tell him
he is fighting a war nine thousand years finished. He has killed two princes and three
adepts, and has amassed a small following of Rayah and adepts. His tactics are not of
Bellesarian design. He fights with ruthless efficiency and uses technology that is abhorrent
to modern sensibilities: guided rockets, rapid fire long range guns, poison gases, and even
atomics. Considered extremely dangerous.

The Known Worlds

How to Buy a Planet (simplified . . . hugely)

Step One: The Finders of Karao scout out and locate a naturally habitable planet or the
Order Aisahe terraform a non-habitable planet into one capable of supporting life. I imagine
the Terraformers planet to be the better, more expensive one, but it could well be the other
way round.

Step Two: One or the other of these Great Schools offers up the planet to the Royal Diet.
The Supreme Executor puts his soldiers on the new planet while the Princes lick their
chops in anticipation of income.

Step Three: An up-and-coming person offers the Royal D iet a HUGE amount of money for
the planet. Hell be in debt to somebody for centuries, if not millennia.

Step Four: The Royal Diet accedes to the deal.

a. A sum on money changes hands.
b. Either the Findsmen or the Terraformers get most of the money.
c. The Royal Diet skims a little off the top. Some goes to the Supreme Executor, most goes
to the Princes.

120
b. The up-and-comer becomes a Magnate.

Its in Step Three, I think, you might find some kind of political platform for the Magnates,
although I dont know what form it might take. I do think, though, that quite a few older,
more established Magnates and a few Princes interested in expanding their holdings would
be the ones offering to bank up-and-coming newer Magnates . . . Ill give you the money
to buy the planet, and you run it for me . . . its yours in name, but I own the debt.

Cascondia
Also known as The Pleasure Planet, The Hedonists Delight, and The Hell of Paradises.

Cacsondia is one of the older Purchased Worlds; the family of current Magnate Sajialol
Makauda bought the planet from the Finders of Karao many generations ago, the debt for
which was settled but only within the last two centuries. The Makaudas are major players
among the Purchased Worlds and wield no little influence even among the Royals;
Cacsondias salons and pleasure palaces set the fashion trends for hundreds of other worlds,
and it is a primary exporter of entertainment services, home to more Minor Schools than
almost any other known planet, including the Home to a Epicures, Dansuers, School of Tea
Mastery, Thredians, Noticians, and Musicians(the latter two are vicious rivals).

Major Features: Physically, little distinguishes Cacsondia: its temperature is slightly more
chill than the terrestrial average but not extraordinarily so; about 45% of its surface is
water; the land surface is concentrated in a large single continent, with the usual mountain
ranges and climate conditions, though with very dry interior lands, so far are they from the
seas; the indigenous life was simple and by the current era has been almost completely
eclipsed by imported species. Settlement has been long enough to produce specific racial
types: native Cacsondians typically have nut-brown skin, sharp noses, piercing green eyes,
and, somewhat atypically, vividly blond hair, which is generally worn long by both genders.
Overall, nothing special. The planets real fame comes instead from its catering to every
prurient desire known to man. A set of so-called pleasure cities ring the largest of the
planet-continents inner oceans in the southern hemisphere, from the equator down to the
glaciers, and within these vice-ridden metropoli no sin has been left unexplored should it
provide entertainment to someone at sometime.

Major Players: The planet is the center for a group of Magnates and at least two Princes
known as the Pleasure Lords, utter hedonists who have sworn holy vows to spend the rest
of their lives indulging in nothing more than sybaritic pleasures, leaving their respective
worlds in the care of Bonded Serviles from the Servile Union, which also holds a major
branch on Cacsondia along with the Thredians, the Adonae of Calyz, and, naturally enough,
the Harcaro Geise.

Oddly, the majority of the planets Rayah have no idea their planets interstellar reputation.
The entertainment exporters of Cacsondia together makeup less than 1% of the
population, and they are geographically isolated around the Sea of Delight. Elsewhere on
the planet, life is unexceptional, and the peasants like it that way - whenever one of them
leaves for any reason to the inner sea, he or she never returns. Ever. They look upon their
Magnate as a remote devil figure, never knowing just how close they are to the truth.

121
Dangers: With so many Great Schools operating branches on one world, and being the
primary base for many of them, the inter-School rivalries are intense and often settled in
quiet assassinations. Cacsondia is a primary battleground for the Hierodesha Concuvance
(The Flesh Wars) between the sex-obsessed Harcaro Geise and the beauty-obsessed
Adonae of Calyz, though they mostly keep the murders behind closed doors.

Addiction is also a serious danger to visitors on Cacsondia, and thereby a loss of self.
Addictive food, addictive clothing, addictive flesh . . . its all easily available, and even when
not actively sought it may be proffered, willingly or not. Many come to Cacondia as free men
or women and leave as willing slaves of these ecstatic Great Schools.

Secrets: Ages ago, the Makaudas, believing in a heretical branch of Ascendant Man that
practiced genetic engineering, tinkered with their own heredity to raise their descendants to
godhood. They failed. Centuries of culling out mistakes through selective breeding have
mostly paid off, but the Makaudas are completely incapable of feeling pleasure or
experiencing anything even remotely like love.

The Makaudas, however, dont look upon this condition as a curse, and the current Magnate,
Sajialol Makauda, employs it as his primary strategy for gaining greater wealth and
influence. It has long been the aim of the Makaudas to draw important people to their world
and entice them into voluntary slavery: although Makauda is a Pleasure Lord himself, his
indulgences are mostly playacting. The Pleasure Lords come to Cacsondia and spend their
lives there wallowing in indulgences; meanwhile, Makauda leads them by the nose, relaying
orders through them to their Bonded Serviles, and in this manner he directly controls the
fates of over a dozen planets, not counting the indirect influence he already gains merely by
being Magnate of the Fashion Center of the Universe.

The Harcaro Geise know Sajialol Makaudas secret - no one with such a condition could
possibly escape their attention - and they suspect the nature of his familys long-term plans
. . . and without any overt or covert conspiracy they go along with it, for Makaudas aims
parallel their own quite nicely.

Morpheus
Home of the Oneiromancers

Sazur
Also known as The Ghost Planet, the Planet of Mists, and the Wicked Masquerade.

Sazur is a Royal World but is best known as the home of the Ancient School known as the
Symposium of Profound Mental Mastery (the Mind Masters of Sazur).

Major Features: Sazurs distinguishing characteristic is its ever-present fog. From space,
the planet appears as an unblemished gray sphere, without ocean, land, or weather, the
entirety of its surface hidden from view. A combination of higher air density (albeit still
within human norms), humidity, and geothermal venting creates the effect, making it
impossible to separate the clouds above from the fog below. Maximum line of sight almost
anywhere on Sazur is 90 meters and often less: only madmen, suicides, or the Skymen of
Charybdis fly aircraft in such soup. Standard procedure rather is to fly straight up to or
122
down from orbit using predetermined and carefully plotted coordinates. The degree to which
Sazurs fog presents an obstacle to mapping is proverbial. The planet has been continuously
inhabited for millennia, yet reports of new islands make news every few years, and only a
century ago was an entire Australia-sized continent discovered, completely and previously
unrecorded.

Despite the fog, Sazurs climate is far from intolerable. The chill and clamminess of the air
contrasts with the almost constant heat from below, the product of a very active volcanic
cycle, to balance temperatures, and consequently Sazur has an almost terrestrial climate,
only wetter. Earthquakes, however, are daily occurrences. Were the fog and clouds
removed, Sazurs surface would appear nearly completely covered in water, the only land
consisting of small to medium-sized island-continents, each widely separated from the
other.

These wide gulfs combined with the constant shroud isolates Sazurs populations almost as
effectively as if they were on different planets. The Prince, his Khalsa, and his Rayah all live
on one island-continent, for instance. The Mind Masters practice on another and train on a
third. Other islands or island-continents are used by the School to run large-scale social
experiments, segregate distinct gene-pools from one another, and create completely
insulated communities. There are groups, even entire cities on Sazur that have never heard
of the Manifold Worlds or know the name of the planet they are on, that have lived their
entire lives isolated in the mist, visited only by the Mind Masters.

Major Players: The Mind Masters are in charge of the planet, simply put. Prince Rosephe
Jos rules but in name only - he and his family have been the subject of multiple
psychological manipulations by the Mind Masters, and for all practical purposes they are
nothing more than shells of human beings. Any thoughts in their heads, any words out of
their mouths come directly from the Symposium. The same may be said of any other
community leader. The Peers - the highest ranking academics of the School - often
employ Sazurs leaders, from the Prince on down, as spokesmen for their particular
arguments, sardonically conducting debates through proxy.

Such debates are fairly frequent. Owing to the nature of their training, and the erosion of
individual personality it entails, the Mind Masters are nearly uniform in thought and belief,
yet they remain serious academics within their field of study, and purely intellectual
differences of opinion, created by varying levels of knowledge and experience, are still
possible and valued for the insights they provide.

Each Peer of the Symposium is in charge of his or her own line of experimentation, usually
on a separate island or other isolated locale. Some Peers and their current endeavors
include Sames Chad, who is designing embedded program words to reduce others to an
animal state on command; Aark Ster, who is trying to achieve practical invisibility through
aversion therapy, punishing those who see her invisible man and rewarding those who do
not; Davin Nat, who is studying the correlation between the emotions hope and
satisfaction in children; and Samin Bry, who is designing people incapable of
understanding the concept of horror.

Secrets: The use of proxies and other behind-the-scenes manipulations are so common
123
on Sazur that virtually anything that happens on a community level is a reflection of some
decision among the Mind Masters, individually or collectively, and on those rare occasions
when something spontaneous actually does occur, the members of the School look to one
another first, in mild surprise. In other words, almost everything social that happens on
Sazur stems from some kind of secret agenda. Case in point: a rebel movement exists
among the Princes Rayah to overthrow the cruel yoke of the Mind Masters and restore the
planets lost liberty. The rebels operate in small, clandestine cells and are extremely wary of
their foes, perpetrating terrorist acts and assassinations whenever possible. Unfortunately
for them, though, this rebellion was conceived as an experiment by the Mind Masters
themselves. The era of liberty which they long to return to is a fiction, and the rebels are
actually following programmed routines designed to give the Symposium a better insight
into crafting rebellions and creating rebel leaders on other planets. People get married,
move to different houses, wake up with entirely different personalities, develop unusually
specific amnesias, all according to the designs of the School.

What are some of the big secrets? Sazur has not one, not just two, but t hree Princes . . .
entire Khalsa aristocracies and Rayah populations, in fact, all but identical to one another
but distributed across three equally sized island-continents. The rebellion above is only
happening to one of them. The Mind Masters use the three continents to run large-scale
social experiments all the time, usually with one serving as a control group. None of the
three men who think theyre Prince Rosephe actually are; the real Prince - the one with the
Ichor - is kept on a fourth island where the Mind Masters are using him as the subject of
tests designed to explore the limits and limitations of superhuman intelligence.

Another big secret is that the Mind Masters have crafted mental duplicates of a lot of
people, including major and well-known figures in the Church of Ascendant Man, the Great
Schools, and the Royal Diet, for similar purposes. Often, any strategy the School employs
outside of Sazur has already been rigorously tested beforehand on Sazur with clones to
work the bugs out.

Karao
Fabled origination point of the Finders of Karao. Said t o be one of the harshest survivable
worlds in the Manifold Worlds. Legends state that the Order Aisahe terraformed it and
renamed it in an act of contempt toward the Finders.

Seratna
Home of The Racers of Seratna. Also one of the largest producers of Oilaas, a flower based
drug that enhances perception of time.

Vras
Home of the Vrason Dignostics.
Also called The Green World, The Planet of the Immortals, and The Emerald Elixir

Vras is an anomaly among the Manifold Worlds. Home to the legendary medical experts the
Vrason Diagnostics, the planet is all but completely isolated from interstellar trade. While
this description invites comparison to others, it is in the contrast that the differences are
seen - Actus, the home of the Servile Union, allows no adept of a foreign School either in
orbit or on its surface; nonetheless, the planet receives a multitude of visitors each year
124
wanting to purchase loyal Serviles. Driwna, the home of the pagan and grotesque Shabda
Nakati, similarly is secluded - no offworlder has ever set foot on its surface and returned to
tell about it - yet foreigners do nonetheless go there (usually involuntarily), and in any case
much trade is conducted in the planets orbit. No one visits Vras, and no one save the
Vrason Diagnostics ever leave - the School has entered into separate agreements with the
Bene Tlonits, the Children of the Eye, the Finders of Karao, the NawwyggAtvaar,
and the Space-Astrologers, in exchange for their medical services on demand, to prevent
any foreign ship from even approaching Vras, let alone landing there. Only ships owned by
the Diagnostics ever permissibly come and go, usually piloted by a specially licensed Child
of the Eye or NawwyggAtvaar.

The planet is isolated.

Major Features: Vras is a Purchased World, originally terraformed by the Order Aisahe.
The debt owed for the purchase, though, has long since been repaid, so even
representatives of the Terraformers, the Universal Bankers, the Royal Diet, and even the
Church of Mankind Ascendant - particularly in the form of the Watchful Eyes - are not
welcomed. The planet is typically Earth-like, though a peculiarity in its atmosphere renders
the sky, and subsequently its seas, a particular shade of emerald green. The expression By
the Emerald Skies is a common one among Diagnostics in service on other planets, used in
place of more religious oaths. This, and for other reasons, the Church suspects the
Diagnostics of Heresy, but they have no proof.

Vras has two major continents, linked together by a common land bridge. The two
continents curve inward toward each other, creating a natural ocean basin several thousand
kilometers in width, within which are hundreds of smaller islands, ranging from the tropical
to the sub-arctic. Vrason civilization extends throughout all these landmasses; in addition to
supporting villages, the Diagnostics use the basin islands as geographically isolated
cultivation zones for growing diverse spices and pharmaceuticals gathered from throughout
the Manifold, enough to make the Spice Merchants of Oca both angry and jealous is they
knew about them.

Major Players: Such is the degree of isolation on Vras that there is no indigenous class
division of Khalsa or Rayah. The planet doesnt even have a Magnate, as such - rather,
the position of Magnate is an elected one chosen by the non-Diagnostic populace (and
consequently of little importance to the School). Instead of the typical Manifold World
diversification, the Vrasons live in thousands of simple rural Rayah-like villages - there are
no large cities on Vras - connected only by direct line of sight Xzin Mirrors, frequent visits
by the Diagnostics, and a native group of traveling merchants using an extensive road
system. The villages form local regions, and the local regions form larger collectives, which
in turn form a planetary collective; leaders are elected for level among the non-Diagnostics,
with the ultimate post assuming the role of Magnate.

Life in the villages is calm, peaceful, simple, and unchanging, practically utopian. Although it
is not required, sons and daughters usually take up the same professional roles as their
parents before them. There is virtually no crime or social disharmony. Everyone is equal
(deliberately so), save, of course, for the Diagnostics themselves.

125
Unknown outside Vras, the Vrason Diagnostics actually make up two distinct Schools, one
on each continent. The School of Clinicians studies cures, treatments, and illnesses. The
School of Anatripsians studies massage and holistic health. Both are Aristean
hyperspecialization institutes, and either alone would make its own formidable Ancient
School, yet prospective Diagnostics are not allowed offworld until they have graduated both,
a curriculum which usually takes around thirty-five to forty years to complete, though with
the extended lifespans on Vras this is not as impossible as it would be elsewhere.

Each School has its own rotating staff of Diagnostics (see below), and together they form a
Holistic Board that governs all common endeavors, including the actual running of the
planet. Currently, the head of the Clinicians is Lalbri Bennis, originally born on
Camestros*; the head of the Anatripsians is Hish Parassa, a native Vrason; and the overall
of the combined Schools is Cia Cia, again originally an offworlder, though exactly from
where is unclear. All three have held their positions for a long, long time (again, see below).

Dangers: The ostensible utopia of Vras came and continues to come with a price,
naturally. Human beings are not calm, peaceful, simple, or unchanging unless forced to be
so, and often harshly. Elected officials aside, the Diagnostics are really the ones in charge,
and the whole Vrason system is a product of their ongoing social engineering.

Philosophically considering crime and disharmony as treatable illnesses, the Diagnostics

treat individuals practicing either with highly precise lobotomies, permanently erasing
such inclinations, along with much capacity for individual thought. The same penalty
happens to offworlder spies - despite the self-imposed embargo, the Diagostics do
occasionally find spies from the other Schools on their planet - and after their treatment
they are accepted peacefully within the villages, permanently. Native Vrasons encompass a
variety of ethnotypes purposefully gathered from throughout the Manifold - the School
recruits both internally and externally - and they face the Diagnostics with a combination of
admiration, fear, and worship.

Secrets: The not-so-secret secret of the Diagnostics, which many of the other Ancient
Schools either suspect or concretely know, is that the average lifespans on Vras are much
longer than the typical Manifold Worlder. Their diets regulated (more social engineering),
their occupations dictated (again), and their treatments by the Diagnostics mandatory (a
prohibitively expensive luxury elsewhere but universal on Vras), the average Vrason can live
up to two or three centuries without Amrit; with the drug, which the Diagnostics do provide
fairly liberally, lifespans in the villages extending to the eighth or ninth century are not
uncommon. This great longevity helps maintain the social order: older people are less
inclined to change, and a respect for the elderly, encouraged on Vras, keeps the youth in
line . . . that, and fear of lobotomies.

Among the Diagnostics themselves, capable of monitoring their own health on the cellular
level, even without Amrit they can live well into their thousands. With the drug, they are for
all intents and purposes immortal - there are staff members in the two Schools that have
held their posts since the planets founding over six millennia ago.

The Diagnostics do not advertise their great longevity out of the fear and j ealousy its
general knowledge would incite, but neither do they worry about leakage m uch spread
126
among the Ancient Schools (its the Magnates theyre really worried about). Diagnostics
offworld serve no more than ten years in any given post, and often less; after several such
tours, they must return home to Vras where they take up positions in the two institutes,
sharing what theyve learned; and theyre not allowed to leave Vras again for at least two or
three more centuries, under different names and never the same places twice.

A much bigger secret of the Diagnostics is that, as the Church suspects, they really are
Heretical, profoundly so.

The social model of life on Vras is what they eventually intend the Manifold Worlds to be,
universally - basically, groups of simple rural villagers controlled by an order of immortal
physicians. They have actively seeded similar colonies on other out-of-the-way planets,
financing up-and-coming Magnates, and although none of these are quite up to the same
standards as on Vras, theyre getting there. The Diagnostics arent worried about the next
thousand years, or even the next two thousand - theyre planning for what the Manifold
Worlds will look like in the next ten thousand years, and that includes the elimination of
every other School, the Church of Mankind Ascendant, the Royal Diet . . . every social
structure now in place.

Part of this program includes the breeding of a new species of man, a truly immortal one
without the use of drugs such as Amrit or Tgali. Using controlled breeding, the Diagnostics
have been working toward this race of immortals for millennia, and the great lifespans on
Vras are a result.

Another Heretical part of the program: the Diagnostics admired the creators of the Hive
People, they rescued back in the day some of those genetic engineers, and they have a
number of Hive People colonies - controlled and culled as needed - on Vras on their own
separate islands. The very long-range plan of the School is a galaxy of immortal rulers
ruling over consciousless subordinates, forever. Not now, not down the road, but very, very
far down the road . . . .

Tlon
Also known as the Library Planet, the L
iving Past, and the Gray, Dry Stacks

Tlon is one of the earliest settled planets among the Manifold Worlds. In fact, like Earth,
Venus, and only a handful of others, it actually predates the formation of the Manifold
Worlds, the Royal Diet, and the rise of the Princes. Contrarily, though, Tlon is a Purchased
World, not a Royal One: Tlon is, in fact, the first Purchased World, and its eventual sale by
the Royal Diet was what established the precedent.

Aside from this distinction, Tlon is best known as the planetary base for an Ancient School,
the eponymous Bene Tlonits.

Major Features: Tlon was sold a thousand years after its discovery and initial settlement.
The main reason it was sold was because of its poor quality, at least in comparison to the
lusher, more Earthlike planetary discoveries made during this same period that eventually
became the Royal Worlds, each claimed by its own Ichored Prince. Essentially, no one
among the then new nanosymbiote aristocracy wanted the planet, and so when the
127
scholastic o rganization that eventually became the Bene Tlonits put in its own claim, no one
put up an objection, and the planet was sold.

Tlon was, and remains still, a cold, dry world, only barely habitable. Almost everything is
gray: the rocks, the hard-packed surface, the sky itself. Tlon actually looks a bit like
pre-terraformed Mars, only instead of the ever-present red, gray. However, millennia of
coaxing the air and soil - without the aid of the Order Aisahe - have made the small settled
parts of the planet perfectly comfortable. Tlon has no seas, only rivers and small lakes, yet
around these waters the climate is functionally, even ideally terrestrial; only the rest of the
planet (better than 95% of its surface) is wasteland, where a respirator is necessary to
survive.

Tlons cities line the green and gardenlike banks of its rivers, though cities is perhaps the
wrong choice of words. No community on the planet numbers greater than 10,000
residents; nevertheless, the planets population remains in the billions. These communities -
some separated by no more than 40 kilometers - are organized about and named after
particular fields of study, examples including the City of Botany, the City of Minerology,
the City of Sociology, even the City of Cultural History. Obviously, a scholastic tradition
is in place: encouraged by the Bene Tlonits, Tlon has perhaps the highest education level
per person throughout the Manifold Worlds. Rejected candidates of the School who fail to
achieve its superhumanly high standards often go on to become administrators and
teachers among the Scholastic Cities, usually the highest ranking members among the local
Rayah.

Major Players: Like all Purchased Worlds, Tlon has a Magnate; however, the planet was
purchased by the Bene Tlonits themselves and so the title of Magnate passes exclusively
within their membership, currently held by a medium-ranking adept of no particularly great
authority. The position is of little importance to the School and to the actual running of the
planet - its genealogy is tracked, of course, for therein lies the title and ownership, but the
"Magnate" is usually just one Bene Tlonit among many.

The School operates in seclusion in monastic conditions outside the habitable river-belts,
mostly underground. The Bene Tlonits primary training center is a labyrinth of book stacks,
record files, and museum-quality artifacts somewhere beneath the G reat Gray Basin (not
that everything else on the planet isnt gray . . .), a structure supposedly extending for
thousands of kilometers and navigable only through hyper-mnemonics. There, prospective
adepts train their minds to recall any data they specifically record into it. Graduates in these
intensive courses then take the tour, the term used to describe an individuals journey
through the Scholastic Cities, spending a few weeks in each attending lectures, reading
materials, and absorbing knowledge, all at their own accelerated pace and direction, so as
to become experts in everything. At the end of the tour, the prospective Tlonit is judged
through a rigorous examination by elder members of the School, the Council of Reverend
Scholars, testing their ability to recall, and those that pass are officially made part of the
order.

The Council rules the Bene Tlonits. However, it only a

dvises the Rayah (it's strongly-worded
advice, and almost always heeded, but technically just advice), who for millennia have been
left to govern themselves, making Tlon one of the "freest" planets in the Manifold. The only
128
Khalsa on Tlon are the Bene Tlonits themselves: no ultra-wealthy exist here, no all-inclusive
elite. Each Scholastic City is its own agency, and these agencies cooperate on the planetary
scale in a semi-republican government more closely resembling a university administration
than anything else. Almost 40% of Rayah occupations on Tlon are scholastic to some
degree; the remainder are support positions. The standard of living is one of the highest in
the Manifold Worlds.

Secrets: The knowledge held in the innumerable (well, to anyone not Bene Tlonits adept)
museums, libraries, and archives of the Scholastic Cities is public knowledge, i.e., that
which was publicly available when it was and continues to be gathered from throughout the
Manifold Worlds. This is the ulterior motive the Bene Tlonit adepts don't bother to hide (in
fact, they proclaim it): wherever they go, on whatever task they are employed to do, from
whichever Prince or Magnate requires their services, they are observing, researching, and
recording anything that's available to them and bringing it back to Tlon.

The records of the Scholastic Cities, though, extensive as they, are only the tip of the
iceberg: everything they have recorded is duplicated (multiple times, in fact) and secretly
archived, on Tlon itself as well as on other worlds where the School maintains secret
depositories. More than that, though, the Bene Tlonits collect secrets and other hard-to-find
bits of information and reserves them for exclusively for the order - the ulterior motive the
School hides is that its adepts spend almost as much time hiding and/or even destroying
information as they do collecting it, making sure the rarest and most precious bits of data
are theirs and theirs alone.

Information is power.

Kish
Original home planet of the Kishandian School of Sight. Currently devastated by a cometary
impact. It will be two hundred years before the planet is habitable again.

Kadis
Current home of the Kishandian School of Sight.

Calyz
Home of the Adonae. Probably a paradise planet maybe heavily controlled. Most likely the
use the Meteorologists of Charybdis and the Alvar Alaxel to maintain a perfect looking
world.

Mlas
Home of the Living Weapons and the Mlasian academy.

Charybdis
Massive variation in weather. the wildest variation in weather in the whole of the Manifold
Worlds. Rapid Rotation, irregular orbit, thick atmosphere, drastically different altitudes. It
can be freezing in one location and ten kilometers away can have a heat wave. Home of the
Meteorologists of Charybdis and the Skymen. Ruled by a prince, who is not a member of
either school. so he must have something over them to have both schools fight for his
patronage.
129
Caliban
A spice world of the Shakespeare reach. Home to loads of dangerous native animal life that
makes harvesting its fields and forests very dangerous. Home to a semi-sentient species,
the Calibans. Birth planet of the Gunners of Caliban.

Vayliiyt
A super dense world with nearly 5 earth gravities at surface level.

Julex
A planet of harsh storms, the intense s
peed of its rotation causes a near perpetual hurricane
force blasts across this otherwise not particularly toxic or earth different world.

Fyurusaa
An almost completely covered in water, the highest point of land being only a meter above
high tide.

Iskandra
Home of the School of Sword, which is utilized by the Prince of Iskandra to spread his
influence throughout the Manifold worlds.

Howadar
Also known as The Cheesework Planet, The Uja Hell, and Prince Shavimas Ruin.

This planet has a terrible reputation among the Manifold Worlds - a place of utter brutality
where the natives are oppressed and regularly tortured, with a strong military and tough
defenses. No one wants to go there, and the other Princes tend to leave the Uja family and
their hellhole to their own devices . . . which is exactly why these rumors were spread in the
first place.

In actuality, Howadar is a very peaceful, cosmopolitan world; its dire reputation is largely
the work of Raveet Janu (see below) and is part of a deliberate strategy to keep stronger
worlds from taking an interest - if its so terrible, no one would want it. Howadar is far from
terrible: the Rayah enjoy many liberties, and although the ruling Uja family are by no
means democratic, they employ a meritocratic social structure, cultivating and encouraging
the people to become the best they can possibly be, under the religious Aristean doctrine of
the Congregation of the Clear Fountain, preaching to elite and common alike. But there
are problems, always problems, the most prominent of which is urban terrorism and the
threat of the Space-Astrologers.

Major Features: Physically, Howadar is a fairly typical Royal World. It was settled early in
the ancient diasporas and has long been the dominion of the Uja family, represented
currently by Prince Shavima Uja (female; Prince is a gender neutral term). The climate
is perfectly terrestrial; there are four primary continents, each with numerous small lakes
and seas, giving the planet from orbit the look of an ancient cheese known as Swiss,
hence the name.

The Ujas are devout Aristeans and congregants of the Clear Fountain. They take it as their
130
personal responsibility to make people better, to provide happier lives. The Ujas are close
allies to an Ancient School, the Listeners of Chirrof, who specialize in observation and
deduction - it has long been the tradition of the family to raise each new generation among
the people, with secret Chirrofian observation and testing in moral, economic, and military
issues. Although the family has final word, the advice of the Listeners is, well, listened to.
Shavima has only recently inherited her fathers Ichor and is still dealing with her new
sensory, physical, and intellectual hyper-prowess. She was the best, most moral and good
of the current generation, and she was the unanimous meritocratic winner.

She exemplifies t he best qualities of goodness, ruthlessness, and foresight that have
become the Uja defining characteristic.

Major Players: Prince Shavima Uja employs the usual number of adept-experts from the
Ancient Schools to help maintain Howadars infrastructure and economy - Alvar Alaxel
architects to help design and build her cities, Cerebrans and Tlonits to process her data,
Charybdian Meteorologists to modify her planets weather (Howadar is a naturally habitable
world, but the Meteorologists make it even better) - but they are merely people paid to do a
job, nothing more. Her real advisors are but six in number. They are -

Anchan Bahart - a Listener of Chirrof. The Listeners consider Howadar as one of their
major projects and allies, a potential future center of their operations and a step toward
becoming a Great School. More importantly, though, the Listeners, as equally devout Clear
Fountain Aristeans as the Ujas, consider Howadar the model of Ascendant Mankind. Bahart
is the Princes close friend and advisor. He helped observe Shavima as a young woman, and
his reports on her character were instrumental in helping her gain her fathers blood. Bahart
heads Shavimas secret police and security apparatus, including a contingent of fellow
Listeners, all as equally dedicated to Howadar, Prince Shavima, and the Ujas in general.

Raveet and Mury Janu - husband and wife, a Saccade Manipulator and Belisarian
Warmaster, respectively. Both of these adepts are technically slaves purchased long ago by
the Princes family; however, their fine and gentle treatment, and the length of time they
have spent on Howadar and among its populace, have won their hearts, and they serve
Shavima as much out of love as duty. As a Belisarian warmaster, Mury is in charge of
Shavimas army and military infrastructure, planning and re-planning the planets defenses.
Her husband, Raveet, a graduate of the Saccade Institute, is a trickster extraordinaire,
devising espionage and secrets-within-secrets wrapped in enigmas. Their work perfectly
complements one anothers.

Bietter - a Stoic of Unne. Personally sworn to the Princes safety, Bietter is never far from
the Princes side. His every passionless thought is for Shavimas well-being: as bodyguard,
guerilla fighter, security expert, personal pilot, lover, saboteur, and general. He does
everything out of sworn duty, to the uttermost of human perfection. Bietter works closely
with the Belisarian Mury Janu; he is second in charge of Howadars army and heads a
personal detachment of the Princes Own Fighters.

Firah #8 - a Living Weapon. The Prince doesnt like her. Shavima doesnt like the School
of Living Weapons, and she wishes she could get rid of this poor creature. But Firah #8 is a
gift from her allies, the Universal Bankers (see below), and although she holds the key
131
verbal commands as well as they to control Firah, she still doesnt fully trust the assassin.
For her part, Firah #8 hates the Prince, the Universal Bankers, Howadar, and practically
everyone else she meets, yet she would die for them at a word. More importantly, though,
she would kill, and has, many times.

Finally, Prithar Risarma - a Morphean Oneiromancer. Risarma spends more time asleep
than he does awake. This is, in fact, why he has survived to his advanced age of 300+ years
(he appears a hail and hearty 90). Risarma has served generations of Ujas and is a key
architect in their Clear Fountain-inspired strategy toward improving the Rayah and Howadar
in general. Devoutly Aristean, he holds numerous advisory positions in Howadars
government, though dictating much of his advice in dream-talk. He knows everyone, knows
practically everything, and is a close and personal mentor to Shavima.

Dangers: Howadar is caught in a barely secret cold war between the Universal Bankers
and the Listeners of Chirrof on one side and the Space-Astrologers on the other. For
the Bankers, Howadar is a future investment, key to their long-term strategies in this sector
of the Manifold Worlds. The Spacies, on the other hand, have mathematically predicted
the results of what would happen if Howadar fell completely to pieces - a government
collapse, family in ruin, population enslaved - and it works out very favorably in their own
galactic schemes, so they are dedicated to the Princes fall. Keep in mind, neither has any
particular enmity or warmth for Howadar - for the Bankers, the planet represents something
that in the future might be profitable and is therefore worth the expenditure of some small
investments now; for the Space-Astrologers, the math just doesnt work out in Howadars
favor . . . Nothing personal, but we predict a +3.3% improvement with you out of the
way.

Consequently, Malcolm Patle, a Space-Astrologer assassin/spymaster, leads a clandestine

commando unit on the planet, many of whom are fellow Spacies, others merely pawns and
assassins hired from other Schools like the Contortionists and the Racers. Patle
mathematically charts weaknesses in Howadar - in the government, in buildings, in the
people - and charts with equal precision how best to take advantage. In other words, he
finds the weak point in something and pokes it with a stick until the whole structure falls
apart. He is an expert terrorist, and Raveet, Mury, and Bietter have been playing
cat-and-mouse games with him for years.

The Universal Bankers - on t he surface anyway - have provided only economic assistance to
the Ujas, and of course the t rained murderer Firah #8. However . . . .

Secrets: . . . Mury Janu is not really a Belisarian, she is a Kaltar Daemonologist!

The Mury personality is a daemon, an artificial persona. The real Mury - before she was
married - was slain decades ago prior to her sale to the Princes family. The false Mury was
surgically altered to match the others appearance, and her own superior mental training
has allowed to fake her credentials and expertise, with a degree of formidability that rivals a
true warmaster. In fact, she truly believes she is a Belisarian and that she is loyal to her
Prince and to her husband, in that order. Beneath that daemon personality, though, her true
allegiance lies with the Universal Bankers.

132
The Bankers have no problem with Mury serving Prince Shavima, but they want to make
sure their interests are insured first, and when push comes to shove, the other personality
will emerge and do whatever the Bankers want, including slaughtering the entire Uja family,
if such were ever needed.

******

Malcolm Patles terrorist actions are only the prelude to a more overt war. The
Space-Astrologers have hired their own Belisarian - a real Belisarian - and she is training an
army on another planet, which Patle is incrementally moving onto Howadar, waiting to
strike.

The cold war on Howadar is about to turn hot very soon.

ah'Twound
Also Known As: The Gunslingers Paradise, Gun Planet, and The Ancient Backwater

He was a poet, a warrior, a philosopher, and a priest. None know from whence he came, but
ah'Twound is his legacy.
~First lines of The Biography of the Barocco

The planet that would become known as ah'Twound was custom built by the Order Aisahe
for the eccentric billionaire, Barocco, first of his name. Rumor says that he hired the
Meteorologists of Charybdis and the Shabda Nacatl, to make the environment and planetary
biology fit a specific need. It is even said he hired the Spice Merchants of Oca to seed the
planet with a few specific Nootropic Plant species. The planet is covered in desert with rich
river valleys and canyons running throughout. In many ways the Rhaya have it better here
than anywhere else. In many ways they have it worse. They have been given a great deal of
independence by order of the Barocco, only paying a small tithe to the magnate for upkeep.
However the planet is deadly and requires constant vigilance, else they will die. Either the
creatures and planets will get you, or the desert will. The Barocco created this planet to test
his views on many things. He crafted the Quingdou Eshe Marshals to regulate this land he
had created. It produces only one thing of interest to the rest of Manifold Space, weapons.
The Weaponeers of ah'Twound make the finest hand held weaponry in Manifold Space, each
one a work of art.

Features: There is only one major city on the whole of the Planet. It has no name, most
just call it The City. It sits at the confluence of two great rivers and houses both of the
Minor schools of the planet, as well as what passes for government. The Spire is where the
two schools and the government have their home. A great tower of opal topped with a
pointed obsidian roof. It is visible for miles and every one knows that justice and
punishment can be found there, no matter the cost. The planet's sun is a bit brighter than
human norm, and there are two massive moons that orbit the planet. This leads to very
little darkness on the planet, and crops(certain crops) can be grown day and night.

Major Players:
The Barocco: Known among his people as the Saint with No Name, the Borocco is more
myth than man. Through the use of several anagathics and judicious use of cold stasis, the
133
Barocca still lives. Biologically he has the body of a thirty year old. Chronologically, he is
older than the hills...literally. No one knows why he had ah'Twound constructed, or what his
plans are for it. All that is known is that he runs things, and he has had over a thousand
years to perfect his skills, gunplay and frontier politics.

Magarr Barocco: the Barocco has had many wives and lover, many children, over the
years, the current head of the family(under the Barocco's watchful eye) is Magarr. Magarr
sees the planet as an untapped resource and would like to become a larger player in
galactic politics. He has been working in secret for the last decade to weaken his ancestor's
hold on the planet. He knows that the Quingdou Eshe Marshals could make fantastic
assassins in the great game of universal politics. And the Weaponeers could bring in far
more money if they modernized and mass produced. He is currently in talks with several of
the greater Minor Houses to find an assassin who can take down his honored ancestor.

Jihnk #48: A living weapon purchased by Magarr using money gained from illegal mining.
His ultimate goal is to assassinate the Barocco, but Magarr fears moving too soon. In the
mean while Jihnk #48 has been used to kill several promenade community leaders who
supported the Barocco.

Mgillus: The richest Rhaya on the planet. He has aspirations of greatness, but was not
chosen to become a member of any of the schools. He is currently setting aside funds and
munitions to form a rebellion. He figures that ah'Twound is such a backwater that it will take
a very long time for the rest of Manifold Space to catch on to what has happened.

Johna: The mad prophet in the desert. She roams from town to town preaching of the fall
of the Kahlsa, and the ascension of the Rhaya. She is said to have many strange powers,
and knows things that she should not. The Marshals have tried to hunt her down for months
to no avail. She has been secretly meeting with Mgillus, encouraging his dreams of power
and providing him weapons. Where she gets these weapons none can say. they are very
high tech, and well crafted.

Drago Etsha: The head of the Church of Mankind Ascendant on ah'Twound. He is a

traditionalist, and holds all the rites and reveres all the saints, especially the Saints f the
Five Great Virtues. He hates both the Barocco and Magarr, seeing them both as hedonists in
their own right. Selfishly taking rather than attempting perfection.

Secrets: Johna is actually a machine cultist of Achilles Severus, A rogue machine god that
smuggled itself to ah'Twound. It has a small cadre of human cultists as well as a minifactory
in its ship, hidden deep in the desert. It is plotting to take the whole planet from the
Manifold Worlds, and to do it in such a way that no one knows of its doing so. On its home
planet it was one of many Machine Gods, on ah'Twound it sees the opportunity to become
the one true god.

Drago Eshta is secretly a Mind Master keeping an eye on this aberration within the Manifold.
So far the Barocco has appeared to behave inconsistently and even randomly, but Drago
has high hopes that he can suss out the source of the Barocca's madness and move him in
line. Magarr, on the other hand, is far too easy to manipulate and the Mind Master fears that
he is being played by another of the great schools.
134
The finest anagathic in the Manifold, Tgali, is made on ah'Twound. The Barocca works very
hard to conceal this fact. It would ruin is rustic paradise. Taking the right dosage will give
one an aging ration of one year for every fifty lived. The few who kknow about the drug are
still wary of its use, as in higher doses it seems to have some sort of mental effect. Ones
senses grow sharper and reaction time becomes superhuman, but one's morality and
compassion...change.

Dangers: There are many dangers in the deep desert. Great Sandipedes, hundred foot long
many legged carnivores, scour the desert for anything edible. They have a very slow
metabolism and rarely mate, but they are nearly impossible to kill. The Haze plants kill in
many ways. they excrete a toxic gas that can kill. Their thorns bear a highly acidic poison
that kills slowly and painfully. Finally they attract Jewel flies, beautiful to look at but can
skelitonize a cow in less than ten minutes. As a general rule, on ah'Twound, if it is pretty it
will kill you. Heck if its ugly, it will kill you. the whole planet is out to kill you.

Firah's Rock
Also known as: Erebus, Port Frostbite, The Bleak Whore.

Firah's Rock is a rogue planet; adrift in cold blackness of space, orbiting no star and
possessing no system to call its own. It is a dark, lifeless orb of pitiless stone with only two
things to make it worth a damn to the Manifold Worlds; it and its three moons hold massive
deposits of rare earth metals and ceramic clays vital for a number of technologies, including
nullspace translation, and a stunning absence of any sort of industrial or financial
regulation. In fact, law in general has scarcely shown its face in the ports and subterra-habs
of Firah's Rock. The few Schools and Khalsa domains that have installations here employ
their own security forces but for everyone else the law of the gun is paramount; whoever
shoots first was in the right, as long as they walk away from it.

The world also has something of a reputation as a haven for Heretical Schools and their
adepts. With so little observation and most of those with any power to do anything about it
content to condemn Firah's Rock as a benighted hellhole while stripping it of its resources,
those segments of society that are normally scorned are able to operate practically in the
open. The most important commodities in Firah's Rock are not the minerals that made it
valuable in the first place but illicit information and contraband goods available nowhere else
in the Manifold. Criminal cartels and information brokers operating spying and smuggling
rings on every world that feeds its hunger from the Rock's bounty run rife here.

Major Features: Firah's Rock was named, unsurprisingly, after the Magnate who first
purchased it after its discovery in the Late Formation period of the Manifold Worlds, Firah
Antesclou. Initially written off as a waste world, the mineral finds swiftly made up for its
lack of life bearing potential and to snub her nose at her detractors who mocked her for the
purchase Magnate Antesclou constructed the infamous Governors' Palace. A massive and
almost tastelessly lavish building that reputedly gave its Alvar Alaxel architect an aneurism
after repeated demands to add more and more excessive decoration both inside and out as
the mines' profits continued to soar. Eventually the architect could no longer find a way to
smooth over its blatant gaudiness even with their School training and they succumbed to
the stress.
135
On the other side of the spectrum, among the most debased and deprived places in all the
Manifold is the Slipside Favela. Once a collection of separate hab-block complexes, they
gradually started to grow together as the residents added extensions, extended rooms -
often with little consideration for structural support - and repurposed whole sections until
the whole area had become a maze of inartistically fused architecture. Virtually every crime
imaginable has occurred somewhere in the dimly lit and mouldering warrens of Slipside, but
even here life goes on - even if it does mean sometimes five families living in a space built
for one.

For most of the travellers who make port here though, the stardocks of Caldeum Gate will
be their first, last and only stop in the whole planet. Kept relatively peaceful - at least by
the standards of Firah's Rock - by the greater concentration of Schools and official buildings
operated by the Magnate's vassals, it is at least a place where offworlders can rest without
fear of being stabbed for their boots, as long as they sit with their back to the wall and
remember to keep their doors locked. In most respects it is like any other port town, rife
with prostitution, smuggling and petty crime but only dangerous to the unwary.

Major Players: Magnate Kadiz Antesclou, a man of enormous girth and an intellect to
match, exerts a subtle but powerful influence on his world. He is content to let the
underworld do what it will as long as its bribes, and his cut on all smuggled goods, keep
flowing into his coffers. His knowledge of what transpires on his world is unmatched, and
while Firah's Rock can seem a perfect place for unseen deals in truth Kadiz' network of
informants, as well as his Argean Order spymaster, mean that little happens on the Rock
that he is not aware of. Only matters that threaten his control warrant a response though,
he wants people to think they are safe to speak openly on Firah's Rock, after all.

Hacamo Duratt is key to the Magnates' surveillance; a member of the Argean Order, he
has his visual cortex wired to thousands of hidden micro-cameras throughout the Rock. In
his chamber below the Governors' Palace Duratt spies on hundreds of gatherings daily,
listening in through far-ear mics and compiling notes for reports that are sent to the
Magnate on an hourly basis. Duratt is rail-thin and his shaven head and face is a hideous
mass of prosthetic implant ports and even his eyes have been removed to make room for
direct-feed jacks into his optic nerves - with the number of cameras he has at his disposal
to view his surroundings though it is rarely a handicap.

Hani, an adept of the Servile Union, is the only person trusted with Kadiz' secrets in their
entirety and oversees the running of the Rock and Duratts' reports while his master sleeps.
Secretly he fears that one day his masters' illicit activities will return to haunt him and that
his first move in covering his tracks will be to order Hanis' death. Though he fears this
eventuality and regrets his indenture to Kadiz his School training is too comprehensive to
brook any rebellion and so instead he works himself to destruction in an effort to cover up
any potential breaches of security.

Among the only people attempting to bring order to Firah's Rock is Ramon Hechs a
Quingdou Eshe Marshal whose investigations in an interplanetary tong known as the Red
Pillar Clan have brought him to the Rock. Of course, it doesn't take long for a Quingdou
Eshe to start overturning applecarts and his first shootout occurred within a quarter hour of
136
his stepping off the ship, resulting in the deaths of seven Red Pillar brothers and one
lieutenant, though not before he spilled everything he knew to the Marshal. Time will tell
whether he will uncover the tongs' patronage and protection with Kadiz who has been using
them to traffic human cargo in preparation for setting up the smuggling of a Prince out of
their domain (see Secrets below).

Dangers: Take your pick. More troublingly, of late a cult of the Anakadmon Fernexis is
believed to have started up in some hidden warren of the Slipside Favela or possibly even
on the surface and uninhabitable to normal humans. So far there are only rumours and
apocryphal sightings of the cults' activities but increasing scare-mongering has it blamed for
every unconfirmed disappearance that occurs on the Rock.

Secrets: Kadiz Antesclou has like his forebearers reaped the rewards of the Rock's wealth.
Unlike his forebearers, it has never sated his appetite for the true prize; Princedom, and if
he cannot obtain that then the the sacred Ichor will do by itself. Unwilling to give up any of
his autonomy to the Schools by becoming an adept and gaining the right to partake of
Amrit, and at any rate now too old to enroll, Kadiz is willing to do anything to extend his life
and the surest way he sees is by obtaining Ichor of his own. Everything illicit and illegal
eventually flows through Firah's Rock, and Kadiz has let slip rumours of a buyer for Ichor
filter through the underworld hoping a transfusion would hit the market but so far there has
been nary a whisper.

Actus
Also known as The Servile Planet, The Planet of Slaves, and Prince Narums Playground

Sooner or later, almost every Prince, Magnate, or other wealthy, high-ranking person comes
to Actus, the home and center of operations for the Servile Union. These elite come to
purchase Bonded Serviles - utterly loyal servants whose mental conditioning is legendarily
unbreakable - and they bring much, much of their great wealth to this Royal World.

Major Features: Like most Princely planets, Actus was settled early in the interstellar
diaspora; it was selected from among the best worlds available at the time. Consequently,
Actus is a very Earth-like planet, with the full range of climate conditions over eight major
continents and a host of small and large islands. Technically ruled by a Prince, in practice
Actus is completely governed by the Servile Union . . . and P rince Narum Dam would have
it no other way. Not only does he personally enjoy the services of more Serviles than any
other individual in the galaxy, the School brings so much wealth to his dominion that for
centuries his familys fortunes have been guaranteed. Prince Narum spends his days
indulging a hundred different diverting hobbies while everything is taken care for him,
perfectly. He has never had a worry in his life and is among the most generous (and,
truthfully, childlike) rulers in the galaxy.

The Prince, his royal family, and the Rayah occupy the vast majority of the planet, with
innumerable settlements and several large cities in the best locations. Daily life is urban and
typically low tech. Contrarily, the programming academies of the Servile Union are scattered
throughout Actus in hundreds of remote and difficult-to-get-to locations - small
out-of-the-way islands, mountaintops, in the middle of deserts, and so on. Unlike many
Ancient Schools, the Servile Union does not have a primary city or even complex of cities; it
137
prefers to be more widely distributed across Actus surface, and purposefully remote.
Students undergoing training spend no more than a few weeks in any given academy, kept
constantly on the move for the decades-long program. This helps with the psychology of
Obedience the School employs - the students enjoy no stability in their lives until becoming
Bound to their future masters. The remoteness of the Schools locations also helps with
internal security: on the few occasions when students have tried to escape the Servile
Unions programming, they have had nowhere to go.

Each academy focuses on some particular aspect of Total Obedience. The regimens are not
always clear at the time, and in many cases only when the future Servile becomes Bound
does it all come together - each humiliation, each reward, each pleasure, all unifying into
one great whole. As students graduate one academy, they are immediately whisked away
to the next in sequence, in assembly-line fashion (those who do not perform well are sent to
even more intensive reform academies).

The weather on Actus is allowed to remain natural. Both the Prince and the Servile Union
could easily afford the services of the Meteorologists of Charybdis, but the Serviles refuse
any such offers, and the Prince follows their lead. In fact, no other Ancient School is allowed
to practice its services on Actus, and only one - the Children of the Eye - is even allowed
to remain in orbit aboard Servile Union-owned vessels or the craft of visiting Magnates or
Princes.

Major Players:

Prince Narum Dam: As mentioned previously, the Prince is a sheltered individual. All his
information - and, really, his entire familys information - comes filtered through the Servile
Union. Consequently, they have a very rosy picture of the galaxy - no problems have ever
been put on the Princes plate, so to speak. He has no contact with his worlds wealthy
visitors, and for the most part they have no desire to visit with him, as his reputation
among the Manifold Worlds is that of a simpleton. While not unintelligent, Narum Dam is
certainly nave - his Ichor-enhanced intellect is questing for a real test.

Chief Servile Promnias Testias: Testias is Narums front-person in his relations with the
Servile Union. Anything Prince Narum wants to say to the Union (a rare occurrence) and
anything the Union wants to say to him (even more rarely) passes through him. Testias is
also, technically, the chief of the Princes staff of Serviles, though in practice they perform
their own services to their Bound master without his input. Testias is Bound to the Prince -
meaning that he would obey him in anything, unto death or beyond - but his actual ranking
within the Servile Union is only moderate - his role as royal conduit is not considered an
important position.

If Narum ever actually asked Promnias about the Unions plans (see below), he would tell
him immediately, in full detail.

Mteaha Laisharny: A Voluntas adept and spy sent by his School to observe conditions on
Actus, the state of the Princes government, and the secrets of the Servile Union. The
Voluntas, among others, believe that the utter seclusion of Actus is meant to conceal the
failures of the Servile Unions training programs, that the Serviles in fact are not as loyal as
138
legend says. Laishamy is surgically disguised as a native Actusan and currently going under
the name Centero Cone. He snuck onto the planet in the entourage of a recently visiting
Magnate.

While not the first such spy on Actus (almost a

ll are captured and interrogated - the Serviles
in charge of planetary security are very good b ecause they literally live for their job), he
may well end up being the last.

Secrets: The legends are true - no Servile has ever betrayed his or her Bonded master. The
training actually is as good as the School claims it is. Still, there are two great secrets the
Union is keeping that would surely mean its end were they to come to light inopportunely.

The first is that the Servile Union is in contact with the Enemy of Man. Specifically, the
School is selling Serviles to the Computer Gods, who Bond to the AIs every bit as
completely as they do with Princes, Magnates, or anyone else human. Through the Union,
the Computer Gods have an access to the Manifold Worlds that they would otherwise not
enjoy; similarly, the Union gets the benefit of heretical technologies to which the School
would not otherwise have access . . . for the second great secret of the Servile Union is that
the School is planning for all-out war.

The Union produces far more Serviles than even the most observant of outsiders might
guess: on the order of 1,000 Serviles to every 1 publicly acknowledged and sold in the
Manifold Worlds. These unknown Serviles are Bonded to higher-ranking Serviles, to each
other, through cross linkages of Bonding that promote a very strong whole . . . not a group
mind, certainly, but an organization whose loyalty to one another is completely unshakeable
and capable of some very long-term planning. For at least five hundred years or more the
Union has been planning to utterly demolish what it sees as its major rivals, most notably
the Stoics of Unne and the Mind Masters of Sazur. The plan is to completely encompass
them - militarily, economically, politically - then strike at once. The Union does not intend to
honor the Belisarian Conventions - it will use, if necessary, planet-destroying weaponry
obtained from the Enemy of Man, to wipe out all life on Unne and Sazur and others, and
leave the Union in the best tactical position to offer its services to the rest of the Manifold
Worlds, in short, to become a Great School, if not in fact the Greatest School. The Serviles
are not being delusional. In this grand scheme they have planned very carefully, and they
intend to be so fundamentally necessary to the Manifold Worlds that when they do strike - a
year from now, a century from now, whenever its most convenient - even with open
knowledge of their heresy theyll survive and prosper. Unacknowledged Serviles in a variety
of positions have already infiltrated all ranks of the Manifold Worlds below the Princes and
Magnates; they are in many trusted positions in the Church of Ascendant Man. They are
almost ready to strike.

Venus
Also known as:the pleasure prison and the factory hell

Second of all the terraformed worlds, older than the Manifold, older even than the Great
Diaspora. Ruled over by the regent, a prince of power and corruption. The planet serves as
the agricultural center of the system.

139
features: the planet is serene and beautiful series of gentle rolling hills and seas untroubled
by storms. All the rayah work the fields and shipping centers day in and day out. They work
without complaint and with a smile on their faces. They work until they die. The Regent
rules over it all with an iron fist from his space station fortress high above. He sends his
family to maintain leadership and manage the farm communes.

major players: The R egent, G alus Ktraszy, is power hungry and a shrewd business man.
He seeks to take the p lace of t he supreme executor and has made many attempts to curry
favor in the Diet.

Alaam Necuta is a spice merchant who operates as the Regent's advisor. She is apparently
drugged out of her mind at all times. She has a habit of speaking apparent gibberish in
public places. Many in the know figure she is playing a deeper game, but few can figure it
out.

Drey Adam is the Regents chief advisor. A Cerberan of great power. He has several lesser
Cerberans he uses for enhanced mental processing power.

Secrets: the Regent keeps his workers blissed out slave through the use of powerful drugs
and propaganda. He promises them that tomorrow is a rest day, while the drugs ensure
they are pliable and don't remember the promises of yesterday.

The Spice Merchants of Oca use Venus as a testing ground for new nootropic plant species.
They view it as necessary but undesirable arrangement. They tend to send the least
qualified members to watch over their gardens.Alaam is one of those undesirable spice
merchants. She has become far too addicted to the drugs and has begun to believe that she
has attained a new state of consciousness and has the ability to see the future. She has
recently expressed interest in delving more deeply into the superluminal telegraph.

Xzin (cheen)
AKA: The Ticking Planet, Watchworld, Perdition's Gears

Xzin is the world where technology is perhaps the most advanced, and certainly the most
widespread, anywhere in the Manifold. The machines and industrial goods that flow from its
factories have made it immensely wealthy. A large percentage of technology used
throughout the Manifold Worlds is either made on Xzin, made offworld by Xzin-trained
machinists or made by independent workshops to patented designs licensed from Xzin. In
many ways Xzin retains much of the old pre-Manifold culture of the ancient megacorps; the
rayah of Xzin live less strenuous lives by comparison to most Manifold Worlders, with
conveniences such as public transport, interplanetary communication and news and
entertainment feeds freely available. On the other hand their lives are also extremely
regimented, and a resident of Xzin lives constantly with one eye on the nearest clock. A
rayah labourer on another world might do backbreaking work with primitive tools but
typically works at their own pace, on Xzin every worker is expected to maintain consistent
quotas, performance statistics and, most importantly, time keeping. Penalties for failure to
meet expected targets can be harsh, and worse for tardiness. Work on Xzin is rarely as
physically exhausting as it is elsewhere but it is frequently soul-dulling, monotonous and
occasionally dangerous - maimings from getting limbs stuck in factory equipment are
140
common injuries among the working class - with people expected to perform like cogs in an
intricate machine or else be discarded as broken equipment and swiftly replaced. This
attitude has won Xzin little favour amongst the Church of Mankind Ascendant which sees
its overreliance on mechanisation and dismissive stance to individual ability to be skirting
Heresy, but for now at least Xzin's importance has shielded it from any extreme reprisal
beyond occasional economic sabotage designed to keep its power in check.

Major Features
Xzin's greatest claim to fame comes from its resident Great School; the Watchmakers of
Xzin. The School operates ashrams across the planet where new Watchmakers are trained
in their particular hyperspecialisations of micromechanical visualisation and mind-body unity
trance, along with more prosaic but no less vital education in material science, engineering
and the physics of motion, light and energy transfer. The strenuous curriculum that requires
a high degree of Mantra memorisation and Tantra precision to achieve passable results has
a high burnout rate and virtually no-one gets through it without acquiring powerful
nootropic dependencies but a fully-fledged Watchmaker can set their own prices for their
work and rarely fail to amass great wealth, either through the sale of auteur original pieces
to Manifold elites or selling their designs and innovations back to the School. For this reason
the Watchmakers accept more students on scholarships based on natural talent than many
others, but expect graduates who do not pay for their tuition up-front to pay back an even
greater sum in debt to the School and even with Watchmaker skills some new graduates
struggle at first to balance their debt to the School with the addictions they acquired to get
there. This can make them easy targets for criminals who are willing to pay large sums for
relatively simple Xzin devices such as unregistered weapons, lock bypass devices,
explosives, chemical stills and more sophisticated devices like babblers - highly illegal and
blatantly heretical micromechanical computers capable of breaking adept-level encryption
with enough time.

Other sights to see on Xzin must include its P

anoply of Marvels; the greatest feats of
engineering in Xzin's history such as the L adder of Heaven - a space elevator anchored to
a geosynchronous satellite that allows Xzin to cheaply and easily indulge in space
commerce, the Heart of the Earth - a generator that draws power directly from the
planet's molten nuclear core, and the Web of Faith - Xzin's fiberoptic communication
network, the most complete in the Manifold, that means it doesn't have to rely on Ladar
Semaphore like most worlds. Xzin is also home to the Museum of Forbidden
Technologies, one of the few places in the Manifold a person can freely bare witness to the
black sciences that mankind left behind - cybernetic implants and prostheses under glass, a
collection of functional robot labourers that perform a mystery play with commentary by a
priest of the Congregation of the Clear Fountain five times daily, the taxidermied bodies of
genetically engineered humans and livestock displaying their grotesque mutations, even an
electronic computer core housing an intact A.I. engram, kept powered down at all times
except when studied by approved Khalsa scientists.

Perhaps the greatest features of Xzin though are not even visible on the ground; in space
some of the greatest feats of engineering in the Manifold can be found, from the orbital
skydock gantries where starships are constructed and repaired to the cunning deadliness of
the GODS (Geosynchronous Orbital Defence Satellites) that protect Xzin from its enemies;
essentially giant variform mirrors that redirect laser beams from the planetary surface,
141
allowing for greater flexibility of attack vector than a ground-based defence system and a
greater degree of raw power output to the beam than a space-based one.

Major Players
The Magnate of Xzin - known locally by their traditional title of "
The Technocrat General"
- is Melixa Isembard, an archly aloof but pragmatic ruler who has eked out every iota of
productivity the world can manage but finds herself stymied and frustrated by the influence
of the Church. A better businesswoman than a politician, Melixa has leveraged Xzin's
economic might to great effect but finds its political influence waning in face of Church
opposition. Melixa is more than willing to ply her opponents with generous contributions and
public displays of piety but her unwillingness to compromise Xzin's productivity in order to
conduct the world in a more properly Aristean manner has left her with few friends.

The Living Weapon Govinda #65 is head of security, personal assassin and member of the
Technocrat General's sahabah, and has been outfitted with the deadliest and most arcane
weaponry the workshops of Xzin's master death-merchants can fashion. Jewel guns,
skin-razors, programmable micro-charges, monowhips, thermal knives and a dozen or more
other ingeniously efficient instruments of death are rarely far from his expert hands.

The Grand Artificer of the Watchmakers, Ikaro Fasoldt, is the head of the School that
made Xzin the technological head of the Manifold. An accident which exposed him to certain
toxic superfluid compounds has left him dependent on a supportive exoskeleton and life
support machine of his own design to walk and breathe but it has done little to dull his
enthusiasm for invention. When not busy with administrative tasks he frequently descends
to the shop floors and classrooms to give the student Watchmakers rousing and inspiring
speeches on the subjects of innovation, progress and his own personal mishmash of lofty
humanist ideals. In his eyes there is nothing heretical about the Watchmaker School, as he
sees technology as the fruit that grows from the tree of human wisdom rather than
something alien to it.

Dangers
The criminal underclass is strong on Xzin, the impersonal way it monitors its populace
through timekeeping and automated records is efficient but easily bypassed with the right
contacts and skills. Besides the usual muggings and thefts, a common criminal activity is
smuggling people offworld by assuming the identities of foreigners. As a rule, Xzinese
bureaucrats are more likely to trust the output of their recording machines than logical
argument and more than one visitor to Xzin has spent several maddening and delirious
months trying to convince authorities that they are not in fact a 65-year old factory worker
born in Quexl District before anyone uncovers evidence of record tampering. This can be
especially disconcerting when the individual who stole their identity is a fugitive, Xzins
prisons are nightmarish affairs frequently doubling as madhouses.

Secrets
The Watchmakers have been researching a line of micromechanical prosthetics in secret
designed to replace human organs, powered by blood-turbines and thermal potentiators,
hoping to create final designs that skirt past Church regulations against cybernetics. One of
their most troubling recent developments have shown that it is possible to repair a damaged
human brain by implanting a babbler to compensate for the damaged region, but the
142
process fundamentally transforms the patient mentally, allowing them to perform feats
based upon pure mathematics with a degree of precision akin to a mental/reflexive adept -
a melding of human and mechanical intelligence the galaxy has not seen outside the
Anakadmonists... and unlike them, has no way to detect.

Orbital Space Station Mo-Loke

Also known as: The Maw, Meat Trading Post One

One of the several stations that orbit Drwina, a spiky starfish-like giant used solely for the
trade of human beings. Foreigners, mainly slavers and their crews, are allowed to stay there
only for the indispensable amount of time. Most of the station is banned to them, patrols of
Doangers of different breeds keep onlookers away.

The activity on Mo-Loke is intermittent, as the flow of "cattle", as the Shada Nakati like to
refer to human slaves, fluctuates with the upheavals of the Manifold. For this reason, among
others regarding personal comfort and secrecy, the non-Doanger population of Mo-Loke is
kept at a minimum, barely a dozen. One Shabda Nakati overseer can spend days of normal
activity without seeing any other of his kind. The arrival of a shipment of slaves changes
that radically. The station turns into a beehive of activity, with overseers analyzing the
merchandise, haggling and sending hundreds of doomed human beings to the unspeakable
horrors of Drwina.

Major Players:

143
144
Sugaar Estlakuani, the highest ranking overseer of Mo-Loke, Sugaar is a shrewd
negotiator able to overcome his disgust towards "apes" for the sake of good trading.
Sometimes he sweetens the deal with drugs, poisons, one-use healing tonics and other
biological trinkets.
He has a bulbous external organ attached to his throat, a "familiar" which grants him
immunity to mood manipulation through pheromones, a common trick of slavers. He also
uses it to breath in the presence of baseline humans, as he finds their stench insufferable.
Inside his personal quarters, Sugaar keeps a greenhouse of extinct plants from Forgotten
Earth. His personal pastime is to reassemble such organisms from incredibly ancient
biological samples, bought on the black market.

Amirdoo
Also known as The Treasure Trove, The Planet of Behemoths, and Vinivar's War.

Amirdoo is a Royal World. In addition, it numbers among the scarce handful of planets
among the Manifold Worlds boasting its own range of indigenous multicellular life, and what
life! Although evolution on Amirdoo never managed to produce sapience, it did everything
but. Like Forgotten Earth, the planet possesses uncounted numbers of native creatures
(roughly but not exactly corresponding to the mammalian, reptilian, insectoid, etc.) and
plants. Most famous are Amirdoo's "behemoths," great semi-mammalian animals in a
variety of hairy and feathered species, very much paralleling the megafauna of Earth's
prehistoric eras: mastodon-sized beasts are a common sight on the planet, as are a host of
smaller variations (average Amirdoan animal size is still larger than Earth average, though,
bear-sized being typical).

In recent years, however, the main topic of interest about Amirdoo is its war. The Prince is
dying, and all hell has broken loose.

Major Features: Amirdoo is a tad cooler but otherwise a perfectly Earthlike planet, with a
wide variety of climates and terrains, each occupied by a host of native animal and plant
species. The overall conditions are similar to the late Pleistocene: extensive northern and
southern glaciers, but warmer conditions toward the equator, with drier deserts and more
powerful rivers (compared to Earth). Basically, everything is "bigger" than ordinarily
expected on Earth. Aside from a large number of smaller islands, Amirdoo's surface is
divided into four major continents, each roughly equidistant from one another and
corresponding to a specific compass direction: Balima, in the northeast; Fatiham,
northwest; Areedah, southwest; and Nabihar, in the southeast. In addition to its native life,
largely contained in immense natural reserves, each continent has a human population of
about 1 to 1.2 billion people, divided between dozens of small cities and muncipalities, and
almost exclusively Rayah. By tradition, the Khalsa of Amirdoo - including the Prince and his
large royal family - have had their primary homes on islands, for the extra security, privacy,
and control island life provides. Few do so now, though, aside from the Prince himself.

Twenty years of war - see below - have blighted many of these formerly idyllic island
homes; some are now completely uninhabitable. In addition, each of the four continents
suffers terrible scars from the ongoing conflict, though due to the influence of the
Belisarians these areas are restricted to specific and by now almost traditional fronts: the
"Baliman/Fatian Line," the "Fatian/Areedan Line," the "Areedan/Nabiharan Line," and so on,
145
with WWI-like trenches to either side and blasted, now desolate land all around.

Major Players: For ages Amirdoo has been ruled by the Qubabia family. The current ruler,
Prince Vinivar Qubabia, has himself ruled for over a millennium. Yet finally this reign is
coming to an end - after over 1,500 years of life, and despite the heroic efforts of Den
Chricto, the Prince's personal Vrason Diagnostic, Vinivar is dying.

In point of fact, he's been dying for nearly fifty years - there's only so much Ichor and even
a Diagnostic can do when the nerves and gray matter, due to extreme age and neural
exhaustion, are themselves gradually ceasing to conduct information. The Prince is not
completely decrepit yet - Prince Vinivar has enough strength left to enjoy the pleasurable
attentions of his harem ofHarcaro Geise c oncubines, led by the Supreme Pleasure
Mistress Sriemares'sson Rach'ere, and the wit to ocasionally win games against his
Thirlian Player, Grandmaster Charoth - but the writing is definitely on the wall.

The problem is . . . Vinivar has never appointed a Royal Skein, nor made clear any sort of
succession when he finally does pass, and this lack of clarity thirty years ago eventually
inspired conflict among his, at the time, 9,000+ member family. In time, after
assassinations wheedled the numbers down, and the opposing sides had each formed
strongholds among the four continents, war started, and it's been raging ever since.

The Factions: After some initial fighting, the factions eventually settled onto the four
continents and took them over militarily, fighting a four-way war for several years. Last
year, though, theFatiham Faction led by Mayma Qubabia was defeated, and Mayma
publicly executed by a temporary coalition of the remaining three.

The first of these remaining groups is the Balima Faction led by Suman Qubabia. Suman is
the Prince's great grandnephew many times removed, and he is supported with offworld
money and personnel by the Dragoumanoi, who want to stabilize the region and at the
same time gain control over an extremely valuable planet. In way of this, Suman has been
provided an open contract with the Racers of Seratna, paid for by the Dragoumanoi, for
use in assassination and warcraft. Suman's personal bodyguard is Shi Neemita, a beautiful
and rare female graduate of theIskandran School of Sword. His primary henchman is
Geordo Allip, a Gunner of Caliban, who is greatly looking forward to testing his skills
against Godricsson, below (he wants to know who's faster, a Gunner or a Marshal).

The second is the Areedah Faction led by Latimat Qubabia. Latimat also has major
offworld support by an alliance of the Universal Bankers a nd the Space-Astrologers
(yes, these two Ancient Schools are fighting over Howadar, another planet in another part
of the galaxy, but that doesn't mean they can't cooperate on mutually beneficial objectives
elsewhere - that other war is strictly business). They want the same thing the Dragoumanoi
want, peace in the region and ultimate control of an ecological treasure house, worth more
than a hundred other planets. Latimat's support is mainly in the form of money, again, but
the Bankers have provided her their traditional gift of a Living Weapon, Mena 19. A much
more trustworthy aide is Cadmon Godricsson, aQuingdou Eshe Marshal, hired by
Latimat with her own fortune (the two are also ardent lovers).

The third faction also has help from off planet, yet not by an Ancient School. Rather, the
146
Nabihar Faction, led by Imtishi Qubabia - a rather timid man who doesn't so much lead
his relatives and soldiers as relay orders from above - is controlled by the P
rince of Har,
an extremely wealthy (and extremely corrupt) ruler who wants to add Amirdoo to his list of
acquisitions. He might actually have the best chance of the three as is he is pouring money
into the Amirdoan conflict, including two assassins of the Phadir Naenix, Bruck and
Drouge (who are loyal to the Prince of Har, though, rather than to Imtishi), multiple
slave-soldiers programmed by the Kironat Potentialists for various specific and gruesome
tasks, and a Bound Servile purchased from the S ervile Union,S lave-Spy Perotol, who
controls a network of agents and saboteurs operating on Amirdoo. Finally, the Prince has
provided Imtishi the services of the Tao of Sophos - a mixed benefit, to be sure, as for
every lie Taoist Monie Phi Autoria spreads to disrupt the other factions on the planet, she
tells a hundred to Imtishi himself, to render him even more pliable to the demands of the
Prince of Har.

Naturally, wherever there's war, there're Belisarians. Each of the above factions has its own
warmaster for logistics, tactics, and long-term strategies: A ntew Comus for Balima, Cary
Swixanefor Areedah, and Aaroy Luxi f or Nabihar. These generals, as have been their
predecessors of the last twenty years, are on distant but friendly relations, exchanging gifts
on anniversaries and important Belisarian School holidays but otherwise maintaining a
professional distance, as much for the sake of decorum as for operational security. In
addition, there are a number of other Belisarian "advisors" on Amirdoo supervising the
Belisarian Conventions overall; the man overall in charge is Shadlej Withen.

The main effect of the Belisarian Conventions, aside from keeping it restricted to specific
zones and weaponry, has been the prevention of non-aligned Qubabias fleeing the planet,
under the claim that any "Qubabias in Exile" would only prolong and spread the war beyond
Amirdoo's planetary borders. The irony, of course, is that the war has been controlled from
offworld since its beginning.

Lastly, there's the Prince's household itself, still maintaining official authority over the planet
even as, practically, Vinivar has ceded control over his continental holdings to his dueling
heirs. On the multiple islands he calls home, full of palatial estates and an army of
Chaozhaanshe mercenaries for his personal protection, Prince Vinivar whiles away his
remaining days . . . which still could be for some time: the man just refuses to up and die,
despite every reason that he should.

In addition to Diagnostic Chricto, Pleasure Mistress Rach'ere, and Grandmaster Charoth, the
Prince's chief aide is his Bound Servile administrator, M
akin Devirra - together, these four
have effectively assumed all the Prince's remaining responsibilities while he enjoys himself
to the last. They're the ones who negotiate with Suman, Latimat, and Imtishi, as well as
with the Belisarians.

147
148
Secrets: Prince Vinivar is the Emperor Tiberius of the Manifold Worlds: he doesn't give a
damn about who replaces him so long as that person does a worse job than he has. He
wants to be remembered as the "Golden Age of Amirdoo," and if that means his planet must
suffer, then so be it - his selfishness is beyond words, and definitely augmented.

He's been keeping himself alive, watching the war with glee, with the aid of the Shabda
Nakati, yet another faction that wants control of the planet. The rogue geneticists have
been injecting Vinivar with cloned brain cells to augment his dying ones . . . and at the
same time, of course, increase his delusions of grandeur to godlike levels, to better
manipulate him and prolong the war. Like everyone else, the Shabda Nakati are interested
in Amirdoo's vast ecological potentials, and they have no problem at all making a senile old
man even more senile if it furthers their aims.

But there's hope: it was only a double of M

ayma Qubabia that was executed, and she is
biding her time, planning to strike at the heart of Amirdoo itself, the Prince . . . but without
offworld support, she has little chance of success.

Kaltar
AKA: The Witchworld, Goetia Prime, The Daemon-Haunted World

Kaltar is a rugged but habitable world of windswept mudflats, cold arid deserts, towering
mountains and wide open steppes. The planet is sparsely populated and in most places the
biggest impression a traveler is likely to encounter is a sense of eerie emptiness combined
with a curious uneasy feeling of being watched by unseen eyes. The rayahof Kaltar consist
mostly of nomadic herdsmen who keep the worlds' primary material export - livestock of
many kinds - and small isolated villages and the occasional town of no more than ten
thousand people. The people of Kaltar are a strange breed prone wide-eyed suspicion,
though rarely ever any actual hostility, at the sight of strangers and practicing a quaint form
of mildly heretical folk magic consisting of charms, wards and prayers believed to keep the
soul safe from daemonic spirits. For example, making eyecontact is a faux pas, as is saying
more than the bare minimum needed either in speech or writing - a sign on a Kaltari
guesthouse, for example, may say no more than "FOOD - DRINK - BEDS", avoiding any
further detail or even polysyllabic words, which are believed to be the tools of sorcerers -
but when entering a Kaltari home it is polite not to blink until past the threshold as the
mystical patterns carved into the doorframes are believed to prevent possessed people
passing through with their eyes open. The fact that many Ancient School adepts can
recognise elements of these carvings as being syntergenic icons designed to trigger the
firing of precise optic nerve patterns may lend some credence to these beliefs, especially
given the worlds' true reputation; as the base world for the Kaltar Daemonologists,
among the strangest of the Esoteric Schools.

Major Players Bathol Pyrites is the current Prince of Kaltar, far from a puppet of the
Daemonologists as is so often the case on a School homeworld, he is one of its greatest
patrons and has even studied their arts, earning him the moniker of the "Witch-Prince of
Kaltar". The prince is an avid student of semiotics, the study of signs, symbolism and
metaphor that define culture, and in particular its connection to occult practice, becoming a
collector of esoteric works from across the Manifold Worlds and beyond. At any given time
he will be wearing tattoos, amulets and charms bearing symbols both sacred and secular
149
from a dozen cultures and expresses generous gratitude to anyone who can add to his
collection. As a ruler he is somewhat distant, preferring to exert his influence through social
engineering and subtle propaganda than outright decree and is rarely seen outside his
castle by the populace, which only adds to the eerie mystique he has so painstakingly
cultivated.

Grandmaster Hestia-The-Many is the current voice of the Kaltar Daemonologists' School,

chosen to interact with outsiders whenever the School is required to take a political stance.
More than just a skilled adept she is also a politician of some notoriety, or at least one of
her is; at some point Hestia-prime, the core personality from which all her daemons were
split, disappeared into her own mindscape and has yet to return, leaving her daemons in
stewardship of her body while she plumbs some part of her psyche buried so deep even
they cannot find her. Some say that the daemons, expressing a form of perverse humour,
have set up a parliamentary system within her mind and now make all decisions by
committee - which would account for her informed but oddly unpredictable decisions.

Major Features The physical body of the Kaltar Daemonologists' School is the Whispering
Tor, their oldest and greatest academy coven. The tower and its surrounding halls of
windblasted sandstone are adorned on every surface with leering gargoyles and carved
murals elucidating mystical wisdom and sanity-twisting depictions of the creators' internal
mindscapes, some so detailed that to look upon them too long can feel as if one is being
drawn into the mural itself. Visual art is one of the first skills taught to a prospective Kaltar
adept to help better visualise their daemons and it shows in the vast array of sculptures and
paintings lining the Tor's halls, technically brilliant for all their unsettling grotesquery. The
Whispering Tor is located at the centre of Kaltars' largest cold desert, hidden in
near-perpetual sandstorms and isolated from the outside world - exactly as the
Daemonologists like it. In defiance of the Aristean faith's typical anti-monachist tendencies
the Daemonologists live in monastic isolation where they can free their minds in peace.
Traveling through the desert you may even find one of their number meditating in isolation
atop a pillar, which are sometimes no more than a thin wooden mast with a cartwheel atop
as a platform, surrounded only by the wind and sand as they craft a new thought form or
wrestle for command of their warring personalities.

Secrets Do not be fooled then into thinking that the Kaltari then are simply credulous and
superstitious, for on Kaltar daemons really do leer at you from behind your neighbours' eyes
and hell rides on swift wings for those who offend the Daemonologists of the Witchworld.
For Kaltar is one of the most heavily surveilled planets in the Manifold, but there are no
cameras, no spies, no Chiroff adepts listening from the rooftops; just the daemons leaping
between overlong glances and slurred words, ever watchful, waiting to carry back word of
any secret or sedition to their sorcerous masters. A full tenth of the Kaltari rayahpopulation
are possessed at any one time by minor daemons who serve to monitor their words,
movements and very thoughts as well as turning them into unwitting spies on their fellows.

Asprit
Known as: The Fields of Dust, the Screaming Sands

Once it was a paradise planet. The Jewel in the Crown of the Machine Gods. Then they
discovered something within the planet. A maze of unknown origin, a Meandre Mundus.
150
Every human they sent in, Cheval and Boccor alike, never returned. Probes recorded
nothing and went dead. Eventually one of the gods entered. It crafted a body for itself of
great power and durability, the most advanced nanotech in the universe. No one knows
what occurred in the Meandre. All signals from the planet ceased suddenly and without
explanation twenty four standard hours after the god entered the Meandre. The last
transmission was simply this, "The Mad God wakes, all is dust." There have been three
separate attempts to discover what happened here. Only one has returned, a small group of
Findsmen secretly sent a scout group down. Only one person returned and died shortly
after. He described a world devoid of life. Devoid even of the signs of life. No buildings, no
people, no bones even. Only shifting fields of dust, devouring everything in great angry
tides. The air is filled with mad whispers that seep into the mind of man and machine alike.
Once the mind and will are gone, the body follows. The tides rise and the body is devoured.
The Machine Gods have placed a fleet of fighter craft and defense beacons to keep all
comers from touching down on this hell planet.

Venus
Also known as the pleasure prison and the factory hell

Second of all the terriformed worlds, older than the Manifold, older even than the Great
Diaspora. Ruled over by the regent, a prince of power and corruption. The planet serves as
the agricultural center of the system.

features: the planet is serene and beautiful series of gentle rolling hills and seas untroubled
by storms. All the rayah work the feilds and shipping centers day in and day out. They work
without complaint and with a smile on their faces. They work until they die. The Regent
rules over it all with an iron fist from his space station fortress high above. He sends his
family to maintain leadership and manage the farm communes.

major players: The R egent, G alus Ktraszy, is power hungry and a shrewd business man.
He seeks to take the p lace of t he supreme executor and has made many attempts to curry
favor in the Diet.

Alaam Necuta is a spice merchant who operates as the Regent's advisor. She is apparently
drugged out of her mind at all times. She has a habit of speaking apparent gibberish in
public places. Many in the know figure she is playing a deeper game, but few can figure it
out.

Drey Adam is the Regents chief advisor. A cerberan of great power. He has several lesser
cerberans he uses for enhanced mental processing power.

Secrets: the Regent keeps his workers blissed out slave through the use of powerful drugs
and propeganda. He promises them that tomorrow is a rest day, while the drugs ensure
they are pliable and don't remember the promises of yesterday.

The spice merchants of Oca use Venus as a testing ground for new nootropic plant species.
They view it as necessary but undesireable arrangement. They tend to send the least
qualified members to watch over their gardens.Alaam is one of those undesireable spice
merchants. She has become far too addicted to the drugs and has begun to believe that she
151
has attained a new state of conciousness and has the ability to see the future. She has
recently expressed intrest indelving more deeply into the superluminal telegraph.

Bocardo
Also known as The Big Planet, T
he World of the Warmasters, and The Great Instigator.

Bocardo is a Purchased World and the home of the famous Belisarian School (i.e., the
Belisarians).

Major Features: The most striking feature of Bocardo is its size. Simply put, Bocardo is a
large planet: more than three times Earths diameter, with an equatorial circumference of
nearly 75,000miles. Despite this, lacking in many of the normally present metals in its
composition, the planetary cores density is low, and subsequently its overall mass.
Bocardos surface gravity is actually only fractionally above Earth standard.

While the raw percentages between land and water are about the same, with so much more
surface area the totals are three times the terrestrial counterpart. In short, lots and lots of
room. Weather on Bocardo can be vicious, with so much more ocean mass to work from,
and storms are almost comparable to those on Charybdis, home of the M eteorologists;
but care was taken in locating cities and communities in the best places, so they arent
usually a problem. Outside civilized areas, the Belisarians maintain millions of soldier
training sites, large and small, from the arctic to the burning desert, and troops can often
be found maneuvering in these places.

Bocardo never developed any animal life beyond the insect stage. Its indigenous plant life is
compatible with human needs and digestion but is otherwise unremarkable. Humans have
lived on Bocardo long enough to develop distinctive racial traits. Ink-black hair regardless of
age or gender is the hallmark characterization of the native Bocardoan.

Major Players: Bocardos Magnate is Reysan Ryatt, a fair but authoritarian ruler. Reysan
maintains a small Sahabah and prefers to hire offworld adepts for specific tasks and dismiss
them rather than keeping extra people around. His core court consists solely of a Servile,
Nasir; a Charybdian Meteorologist, Prios Byalarton; and his Belisarian liaison, Eison
Gillin, the third-ranking member of the School on the planet.

Magnate Reysans relationship with the Belisarians is cordial but distant - hes well aware
that he rules only through the grace of the School, but his pride in position and of family
keeps him from being a toady. The Belisarians understand this and accord themselves
similarly in respect of his dignity.

This military-esque, reserved cordiality has filtered down to the large Khalsa population,
who maintain large estates in Bocardos civilized areas, and to the Rayah, who outside of
Bocardos cities live and work on these estates. Bocardoans in public are very formal with
one another. Emotions are only to be displayed in private. Full titles, if any, are carefully
employed, and outside of training exercises hardly anyone on Bocardo ever raises their
voice.

This respectful distance also comes at least in part from the mores of the Belisarian School
152
itself, the membership of which is taught both utter professionalism and monastic discipline.
The School maintains training temples in several planetary locations and a main
temple-barracks in the Bocardoan capital, the simple but apt Pen (from when Bocardo was a
prison planet, ages ago). At these places prospective Belisarian adepts receive
hyperspecialized instruction in every conceivable military or war-related endeavor, from
polishing swords and field-stripping a rifle to outlining a step-by-step planetary conquest.
Its more than mere rote memory and strategy, though. Belisarians must commit totally to
their brothers and sisters within the School before being allowed to graduate - they follow
the orders of their employers, yet their first loyalty must and always be to the School itself.
A Belisarian cannot betray another Belisarian, it is said, in much the same way a graduate
of the Servile Union cannot betray his or her master - if compelled to through physical
coercion or mental manipulation a Belisarians heart will stop beating rather than risk such
unfaithfulness.

The current leader of the Belisarian S

chool is Meda Burmal, of whom it is said her
campaigns led to the destruction of a Machine God.

The Bocardoan Army: Bocardo has the third largest army* in the Manifold Worlds.
Arguably, it is the best army too since its officer corps is almost entirely drawn from the
Belisarians - both prospective adepts and adepts-in-training of the Belisarian School must
serve in the Bocardoan Army and rise in rank on their merits, competing against their fellow
Belisarians for distinction. To non-Bocardoans, this can be a sometimes odd thing to
witness. Like most Ancient Schools, the Belisarians start training at a young age;
consequently, some of these officers in the Army are considerably younger than the men
and women they are leading. Seeing a 10-yr. old in charge of a brigade of soldiers whose
average age is more than twice his can be a bit disconcerting. Knowing that those soldiers
actually are paying attention and genuinely are respectful of that 10-yr. olds abilities can be
even more so.

The upper ranks of the Bocardoan Army (the equivalent of contemporary colonels and
above) are all certified Warmasters whose services can be then sold, leased, or otherwise
employed offworld. Often, when they leave on missions, these officers will take
detachments of Bocardoans with them. Even common Bocardoan Army soldiers often find
employment as senior NCOs in other Princes or Magnates armed forces. Theyre often used
by Belisarian Warmasters to help in training a Prince or Magnates foreign troops. For that
matter, the Bocardoan Army in itself can be considered a training army, an important
instrument in the Belisarian arsenal: officers and soldiers from many worlds work on
Bocardo alongside them to learn the rudiments of warcraft. This isnt to say that training is
the only thing the Bocardoans do - they serve as elite troops in many campaigns offworld,
mostly for the experience of live combat that no simulation can ever reproduce - yet for the
most part the Belisarians prefer not to use them for grunt mercenary work. Theyre more
valuable as they are, on Bocardo, to help give each new generation of Belisarians the
necessary practice in leading soldiers. Naturally, serving in the Army provides distinction
and respect. However, military service on Bocardo is not in itself considered an essential
part of local life; in fact, Bocardoans in the Army often take great pride in directing their
children and family away from military service and encourage a strictly peaceful, civilian
lifestyle.

153
I serve so you dont have to is a cherished ideal on this world. Nonetheless, every year
the Bocardoan Army finds itself presented with volunteers. The current H igh General of the
Army isDevka Fauderf, second-in-rank in the Belisarian School hierarchy.

Dangers: Bocardo is a surprisingly peaceful planet - at one time or another, just about
every educated person in the Manifold Wars has smiled at this seeming irony. Outside of
training exercises, warfare has not despoiled the planets surface since the Belisarians
came, and the people are grateful. Although Bocardo is subject to the same vices and
crimes as any large, populated world, violence beyond the individual level is almost unheard
of, and terrorism is simply a non-issue.

The real danger is to outsider agitators - Bocardo has no civilian police, only Army personnel
specially trained in dealing with civilians, and they are very good at their job, led by
Belisarians who are beyond merely good.

With so much room on Bocardo, the wilderness vastly outstrips civilization. Much of the
planet is completely untamed, and while animals arent a problem, getting lost on Bocardo,
between the weather extremes and general remoteness, can be a death sentence. The
natives know this and stay close to home.

Secrets: The Belisarians enforce the Belisarian Conventions through their sheer
competency and ability in directing war. A conflict fought without a Belisarian Warmaster in
charge of strategy and logistics will almost certainly fail if the other side does employs one.
Belisarians also prove instrumental in wars fought outside the Conventions, against the
Machine Gods, for instance - a Warmaster is the equivalent of Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar,
Clausewitz, and George Patton all rolled-into-one.

In regard to the Conventions and the limited warfare fought on or between the Manifold
Worlds, the big secret of the Belisarians is that they are indeed encouraging the practice,
sabotaging peace efforts and instigating conflicts where there are none. Although they profit
from this, the Schools motive is not economic. They start the little, limited wars in order
to prevent bigger ones on the interstellar scale and at the same time instill a general horror
of and hatred for conflict among future combatants. In other words, through their superior
strategies and surgical, pinpoint strikes, the Belisarian goal is to sacrifice as few lives as
possible: they always try to balance one soldiers life in battle vs. a thousand civilians
somewhere else.

Philosophically, the Belisarians believe war is a fundamental component of the human

psyche. Since they cant stop war, then, they minimize it as much as they can, everywhere
they can.

Outside the Manifold Worlds and the Conventions, though, all gloves come off, and the
Belisarians will employ the darkest, deadliest weapons at their disposal to end conflicts once
and for all. For this purpose, another big secret of Bocardo is the Belisarian Museum, access
to which is restricted solely to senior adepts of the School and the existence of which is
known outside the School only to the Supreme Executor of the Royal Diet. The Belisarian
Museum holds designs and working copies for just about every weapon ever developed by
man, from slingshots to M16 rifles to atomic bombs to hyperparticle devices capable of
154
ripping a planet apart. Most are behind the equivalent of a glass sheet with the words Just
In Case written on the outside and havent been employed in millennia. However, the
Belisarians maintain a team of experts keeping each and every one in working order, just
in case. Needless to say, the Museum is extremely well-guarded.

* The largest Manifolder army is the Supreme Executor's. I've left the 2nd slot open
deliberately for anyone who wants to use it.

Kohre Di'if
Also Known As: The Maddening Spiral, Forever Shadow, Hell of Worms

There are criminals, terrorists, and heretics on every planet. Generally they are dealt with
by the Magistrate or Prince, in the manner ascribed to them. Sometimes there is a villain of
such magnitude and importance that traditional law enforcement cannot hold them. When
the Phobos Justicars catch one of these villains they need somewhere to place them. Thus
Kohre Di'if was commissioned. A nearly habitable planet was found. Beneath the surface
great prison structures were designed by the Asterion Maze Makers. Built to break the will
and the spirits of its inhabitants. The Mind Masters, Nax Persuaders, and Oneiromancers
were hired to help in the design. Even when they are asleep the prisoners cannot escape the
effects of the planet. The name means the Place of Forgetting, spend enough time there and
you lose all sense of self.

Main Features: There is only one surface structure n the whole of the planet,
Rahza'ohr(Demon's Gate). It is the star port for the gathering of the scum of the Manifold.
It is a dread tower stretching into a nearly airless sky. Beneath the facility lies a network of
tunnels and cells. The prisoners are given food once a day, and are ignored for the rest of
their time. there is nowhere to go.

Major Players: The warden of the prison, Maroi Ahnkil, is an experienced and dangerous
Justicar. she accepts no corruption and brooks no rebellion. She is a firm believer that
overkill is underrated. With the number of warlords, terrorists, and heretics in her care, it is
hard to fault her logic. She secretly dreams of reasignment and a return to field work, but
taht is unlikely.

Gascon Herschal is a dangerous man, A rogue Living Weapon. he should not have a name.
He should not remember he ever had one. During his training(or perhaps his choosing)
something went wrong, so very very wrong. He has no empathy, yet he understands his
victims all the same. He has an identity, yet he is not attached to it. He is at once the worst
and best that Mankind has ever produced. He believes himself to be the incarnation of the
Saint of Killers born to show the universe what death means. When he was caught he was
placed here for study, those in power must find out what went wrong. Now he sits, in the
darkness and madness, smiling his clever smile. It is almost as if Gascon wants to be here.

Secrets: Maroi Ahnkil was asigned this post as a punishment. She failed in catching the
now famous crime lord, Jial Cromach. She failed not once, but three seperate times. Her
superiors believe that she may be in the crime lords's pocket. They placed her here to
observe her actions and remove her from the equation.
155
There is something in the depths. Something dark. The guards never speak of it. The
prisoners fear it. What the nature of this danger is, none can say. every now and again
someone disapears or shows up a gibbering madman. Who can say which are the lucky
ones?

Dangers: The prisoners, those that still remember themselves, are all the worst of the
worst. A guard that does not respect the danger is not long for this life.

Ahia(HolMech 0007)
Home of the Gestalt Intelligence Pantheon

When viewed from above thoughts of an ant farm come to mind. All is movement and
frantic activity. Two of the three continents are nothing but vast cities, brimming with
human and synthetic life. The last continent is farmsteads from sea to sea. Up close the
activity is more regimented than frantic. Everything happens on some unseen schedule.
Efficiency is apparent everywhere, from public transit to meal times. The air, the water,
even the dirt is clean, regulated. The Machine Gods who watch over the populous do so with
a monomaniacal fervor, though they do not necessarily get along with each other. The
human population live at the whim of these gods and the Boekkarr who are their voice.

Major Features: The Two great cities, Meschal(HuCom 01) and Shaddar(HuCom 02), are
ruled by different gods and have vastly different feels. Meschal is all spires and skyscrapers.
Gleaming glass and chrome, it glitters like snow when seen from orbit. Shaddar is dark and
blocky, great square arcologies fill the continent no human leaves their arcology without
dispensation by the Boekkarr. The farmsteads of the third continent(HuFar 01) are idilic and
perfect, gaining the maximum amount of sustinence from every square inch of earth. Men
and women

Major Players: Lokk, First God and Lord of Plants, rules over the lesser gods of HuFar 01.
It sees to the growing of All Good Things. It is worshiped by most farmers and before most
meals throughout the world. Many gods are jealous of Lokk's position, thinking he is far too
material in thought. He seeks the perfection of farming, and cares little for the politics of the
gods.

Agowe, the True First God, is the father of all. It was Agowe who first tamed the land and
brought his followers to live upon it. He birthed the First Gods and set them on their thrones
to rule. No one god or man, has heard from Agowe for nearly a thousand years. It is said
taht he retreated from the world and when he is needed again he will

Marianatte, Skeleton Goddess and Queen of Wolves. Even in the Pantheon there are those
gods who do not quite fit. Marianatte is one such god. She is a hunter and death bringer,
and seeks only to bring chaos. She sees the order of the world as stagnation. Believing that
only the strongest and most adapatable minds are deserving of life she seeks to increase
terror, madness, and violence.

Ahkenatha, Grand Boekkarr of the humans, he speaks only to the First Gods, and only when
they ask. He wishes to one day attain apotheosis and seeks out any opportunity to show his
156
prowess and skill to his gods.

Rabbit says these machines are not gods. Man was not meant to live in this way. Joy is
attained through freedom. Freedom is something the gods fear. Rabbit is the last of the
free. At night, when it is dark and close, Sevrite tell the tales in hushed tones. No one has
seen Rabbit's face, and so Rabbit could be anyone. None have heard Rabbits voice, yet all
hear the message. Every now and again the efficiency of the system breaks down, if only for
a moment. Candies rain from the sky, or Boekkarr headjacks are hacked so they speak
nothing but nonsense. When these things happen, all know that Rabbit is somewhere
nearby, laughing.

Secrets: Nothing is secret, the gods eyes are everywhere. they see all they know all.
Except sometimes, they don't. Sometimes the system breaks down. Whether through t he
political manuevers of rival gods, the destruction caused by Marianatte, or the pranks of
Rabbit. The system has holes in it. Not many, but they are there.

Most sevrite believe the gods are of one mind and one purpose. This is simply not so. The
games of the gods are many and deadly. Even a conversation among them can turn into a
deadly game. they exist primarily as thought only, rarely jumping into the body of a Chevla
or Gholem. When they have an argument it is to the death, or to the pain.

Godship Fomoire
Godship Fomoire is one of the seven known godships of the Aekihv, massive space vessels
using pre-manifold technology. Thousands of Biith(geneticists) and Biren(ecologists) dwell
within the massive branching ship. It appears in orbit like a delicate flowering comet,
glowing white and trailing fire. the comet is an omen, for death follows at its heels. They do
not use Bridge Devices and so spend long years in the cold between-space, and like their
environment the Aekihv have become cold dark things. They worship planets, and hate
Man. Godship Fomoire has not been seen in Manifold Space for nearly a thousand years.
The few who keep track of such things know taht it is only a matter of time before another
world is subject to the Aekihv's tender mercies. All members of the ship have access to
technological anagathics and genetic engineering. They live lives of comparable length to
the adepts. Only two members of the ship have the princely ichor, the Old One and the Star
Goddess. Upon attaining the Ichor they must give up their names and their identities as
humans, for they are the voice of the Godship.

The ship itself has incredibly complex biological computers that approach artificial
intelligence. The Aekihv believe these computers to be a new form of intelligence,
Driughtne, the One Mind. It does not think like a machine, nor does it think like a man. It is
a Primal intelligence of immense power, watching over the Godship and ensuring the Aekihv
can dwell in space, to free up planets for True Nature. the ship houses the many weapons
the Aekihv use in their holy crusade to free nature from the blight of man.

School and Skill Creation

For those of you who are not satisfied with our selection of schools and skills, or have an
idea for a great new way of looking at an existing school or skill, here is the rundown for
creating those skills and schools.

157
School C reation
What is t he schools Focus?

What is the schools Name?

What is the school's goal?

What is the schools secret?

Skill Creation
Considered on the most basic level, skills represent what your character can do. Skills are
rated on the Adjective Ladder or numerically (as you prefersome people like words, some
people like numbers), with higher ratings being better. When you roll dice, youll almost
always add a Skill rating to their total. Nearly every action that the character might
undertake is covered by his skills. If he doesnt have a skill on his sheet, either because the
player didnt take it or the skill itself doesnt exist, it is assumed to default to Mediocre (+0).
Skills are not a straight measure of My guys better than your guy. Rather, skills are
methods of resolving conflicts and finding answers to problems. Your skills are a way of
telling the GM, This is the sort of thing Id like to be doing in the game. The higher your
rating with a particular skill is, the better your character will be at solving problems using
that skill, and the more opportunities hell have to use it. For example, say your character is
a bare-knuckle boxing champion. If you give him Great (+4) Fisticuffs, hell be very good at
punching people in the face, and a lot of his scenes will center on physical conflicts. On the
other hand, if you give him Average (+1) Fisticuffs and Great (+4) Deceit, hes no less a
championbut hes less defined by his boxing career and abilities than by his capacity to
deceive others. You can expect him to do a lot more talking than fighting Skills are made up
of bundles of skill applications we call trappings. A trapping is something you can do with a
skill, such as using your Marksmanship skill to shoot someone or leaping from rooftop to
rooftop with Athletics. In most FATE games, these trappings are often more implicit than
explicit, but in The Kerberos Club theyre treated more concretely and take on additional
importance. Here, skills are defined by their trappings, for reasons that will soon become
apparent. For a full list of trappings, see the Trappings section. Common, Unique, and
Strange Skills come in three basic varieties: Common skills, Unique skills, and Strange
skills.

The Common skill list is a group of predefined skills, such as Seamanship, Academics, or
Occultism. Their trappings are set and immutable: All instances of Academics, from
character to character, have the same trappings and work the same way, as do all instances
of Empathy, Stealth, Contacting, and every other Common skill. In other words, this is more
or less the skill list you might find in any game powered by FATE. At 28 Common skills, this
list might seem a bit overwrought at first, but many are highly contextual. Odds are your
character can safely dismiss several of them out of hand right away. Never set foot on a
boat? Dont even look at Seamanship. Is your game set in the Early Century? You can safely
disregard Drive and Pilottractor carriages and Aero Ships dont even exist yet. Street
urchin? Resources and Science probably arent your thing. And so on.

Unique skills are designed and named by the player collections of hand-picked trappings
158
grouped together to represent an occupation, a lifestyle, a broad area of training or
aptitude, or some other thematically linked set of abilities. Every trapping within a Unique
skill must fit its theme. For example, a Unique skill called Royal Surgeon could encompass
medical training and knowledge, connections within the medical community, and personal
wealth, but not riding a horse, dodging bullets, or punching guys in the face. Thats not to
say that the character cant do those thingsonly that since they arent reasonably part of
being a Royal Surgeon, they cant be included in that particular Unique skill. Taking a
Unique skill lets you turn one of your Free aspects into an associated Complication aspect,
to reflect how the part of the characters life represented by the skill has complicated her
life, or a Conviction aspect, to reflect how it has informed or affected her beliefs. These
aspects are a way of reinforcing the connection between who your character is and what
your character can do. Plus, they lower the Unique skills cost. A Unique skills Power Tier
can be either Mundane or Extraordinary; see below for more on Power Tiers.

Strange skills, unlike Common skills and Unique skills, confer powers and abilities beyond
those of normal human beings. Like Unique skills, most Strange skills are composed of
trappings selected by the player, but generally themed around some sort of capability
manifested by the Strangeness. What makes a Strange skill? Strange skills let you do things
far beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, such as shooting energy beams out of your eyes,
throwing a locomotive engine through the Parliament Building, reading a barkeeps mind,
summoning otherworldly alliesin other words, superpowers. Anyone can have a Unique
skill, but only Strangers can have Strange skills. This includes any Common skill of
Superhuman Tier or greater. Every Strange skill must come with at least one Drawback,
which imposes a limitation of sort in exchange for a skill point discount; see Extras and
Drawbacks for more on these.

Combining Skills
Sometimes the character needs to perform a task that really requires using two or more
skills at once. You never know when a character is going to need to throw a knife while
balancing on a spinning log or pilot an airship while cracking a cipher.

In those situations, the GM calls for a roll based on the main skill being used (the primary
thrust of the action), but modified by a second skill. If the second skill is of greater value
than the first, it grants a +1 bonus to the roll; if the second skill is of a lesser value, it
applies a -1 penalty to the roll.

When the second skill can only help the first, which is to say it can only provide a bonus, it
complements the skill. A complementing skill never applies a -1, even if its lower than the
primary skill. This usually happens when the character has the option of using the
secondary skill, but doesnt have to bring it to bear.

If the secondary skill comes into play only to hold the primary skill back, it limits the skill,
meaning it can only provide a penalty or nothing at all. A limiting skill never applies a +1,
even if its higher than the primary skill. Often skills like Endurance or Resolve are limiting
skillsas you get more tired, you wont get better, but if youre resolute, you may not get
worse.

159
Trapping Descriptions
The trappings listed below are in the following format:
NAME
Description and rules.
Theme: The trapping must be appropriate to this theme.
Tier Benefits: Special benefits available if the skills Power Tier is above Mundane. A single
skill can confer a number of these, chosen when the skills Power Tier is purchased, e qual to
its skill rating.

CLIMB
Use Climb to determine how quickly or well a character can navigate movement on a
vertical surface. However, not every encounter with a wall, tree, or fence is going to
necessitate a skill roll. If failure isnt interesting, dont bother: Either the character can climb
it, if thats what would make the story more interesting, or he cant, if its just impossible.

Generally speaking, physical barriers are fairly meaningless, story-wise, unless another
conflict is imminent (or ongoing). The barrier itself should be something that complicates
the scene, but usually shouldnt be its focus. Instead of requiring a skill roll, assign the
barrier a border value to increase the cost of passing from one zone (the bottom) to another
(the top). If the border value is equal to or less than the rating of the skill with this
trapping, the character can cross it freely. Otherwise, the character takes the difference as a
penalty to his next action.

For example, a character needs to climb a wall to disable a ticking time-bomb on the roof.
The characters Athletic skill (which includes the Climb trapping) is Good (+3), while the
border value of the wall is 4. This means the character will take a -1 penalty to his
bomb-disabling skill roll.

In the event that a roll is necessarythat is, if failing to make the climb would be just as
interesting as making itthen the base difficult depends on the height of the climb. This is
further complicated by factors such as visibility, slipperiness, and distractions, which
penalize the roll.

Climbing Modifiers
Mod. Slipperiness Visibility Distractions
-1 Wet, slick Darkness, rain Nonthreatening
-2 Completely smooth Pitch black Threatening

These modifiers are cumulative by category. For example, climbing a 15 wall (+2 difficulty)
at night (-1) in the rain (-1) while being shot at from below (-2) would have a total difficulty
of Fair (+2) but a penalty of -4 to the roll. The interesting consequence of failure here,
obviously, would be having to engage with those unpleasant gunmen below.

Shifts can also be spent to climb faster at a rate of 1 shift per step on the Time Table (see
160
Time and Space ), to a maximum of 4 steps.

Theme: Movement or athleticism.

Height Difficulty Notes

Short Fair (+2) 10 to 20
Medium Great (+4) 20 to 40
Long Great (+4) (E) 40 to 100
Extreme Great (+4) (S) Is that a house?

CONVERSATION
The Conversation trapping covers friendly social interaction, especially if that interaction
involves making a good impression on someone else. Its also the default social trapping,
for those times when whatever the players trying to do doesnt fall neatly into any other
trapping. The primary function of Conversation is to make a good first impression on
someone else, improve their attitude toward you, or gain a temporary social advantage over
them with an aspect maneuver.

By default, an NPCs initial reaction toward a character will be mildly negative, neutral, or
mildly positive. Stronger attitudes, such as love, hate, friendliness, respect, and so
on, generally result from deeper, pre-existing knowledge of the character, and are unlikely
to change dramatically in a first meeting. If the GMs uncertain about which of these applies,
roll a Fudge die: - for mildly negative, 0 for neutral, and + for mildly positive.

If the player doesnt want to accept this reaction roll, she can attempt to turn on the charm
and improve upon it. Make an opposed skill roll; if the rating of the NPCs relevant skill is
unknown, it defaults to Mediocre. A successful roll in either the characters favor or the
NPCs favor adjusts the NPCs attitude; a successful roll with spin adjusts it even further, as
shown below.

Hostile: The NPC actively wants to harm the character, physically, socially, or otherwise.
Negative: The NPC is suspicious of the character and will not help him.
Neutral: If offered an incentive, the NPC can be convinced to help the character.
Positive: The NPC will go slightly out of his way to help the character. With incentive, the
NPC may risk himself to help in a passive manner, such as forgetting to have the
character sign in, turning a blind eye at an important moment, or the like.
Friendly: The NPC will inconvenience himself to help the character. With incentive, the
NPC may risk himself to help in an active manner, such as distracting a pursuer, discreetly
slipping the character a sought-after key, and so on.
Aspect: The winner gets to declare a sticky aspect on the NPC to emphasize his
super-Friendly or ultra-Hostile attitude, as appropriate.

Its important to consider the potential consequences of an NPCs reactions to characters.

Maybe theyll give them a little extra help that could translate into a bonus on a skill check,
or maybe, if their reaction is Hostile, theyll turn up later as an enemypossibly a significant
one.

Theme: Social prowess, deception, persuasion, diplomacy.

161
 Example Scenario
sample scenario goes here...probably set on cascondia

Glossary of Manifold Terminology

Ustad: Literally "Master" in the sense of someone who has mastered a skill, any member of
the Rayah addressing any one of the Khalsa class to use an honorific, like "lord" or "lady"
when addressing them. It would only be prudent.

Rayah - The Flock, those citizens of the Manifold Worlds who are not Princes, Magnates,
clergy or School adepts. Within Church theology it is the duty and purpose of the rayah to
help the khalsa on their path to perfection through whatever way they can, even if it be
simple menial labour and service.
Khalsa - The Sovereign or The Free, composed of both members of the Manifold Worlds
ruling classes, the Princes and Magnates (and their families), and the School adepts that
serve them. Theologically they are considered Complete Humans who have attained a
degree of perfection through their works and skills and it is their duty to both increase their
own excellence and to uplift the rest of humanity.
Aristean - A religion based upon the twin principles of Aristos (to be the best) and Arete
(attainment of excellency). The Church of Mankind Ascendant is often simply called the
Aristean Faith.
Hell World: Hell worlds are planets that can support human life, but only just. Temperature,
gravity, toxins, weather, and various other factors can all make a world a hellworld. it is not
an official term for a planet, but those who live there will tell you what their planet is.
Spice World:
Royal World:
Purchased worlds
Amrit - Anagathic (anti-aging) drug employed by Manifold Worlds elites to prolong their
lifespans. Amrit is both psychotropic and highly toxic and requires Mantra and Tantra
training to use safely without adverse effects on the body and mind. Use of Amrit can
prolong a human lifespan to up to a millennium.
Ichor
Sahaba - The entourage of a Prince or Magnate, comprised of advisors and specialist
servants such as physicians, pilots, bodyguards and favoured concubines, typically all
School adepts.

162