Ivory Tower of Shuyun

Aspect: Air

Rating: ••••

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The Ivory Tower of Shuyun is a monastery of the Immaculate Order, located in the far Southwestern Threshold, where the rolling grasslands of the Great Grass Sea fade into the chaos of the Wyld. This isolated monastery is home to a large number of Immaculate monks and theologians, who spend their days contemplating the Immaculate Texts, while practicing the mysteries of sorcery and the Immaculate Martial Arts.

The Ivory Tower itself is a curving tower, like a single tall, thin Elephant's tusk climbing towards the sky. Within are contained libraries and study cells, while around its base spread out dormitories, mess halls, and mantis stables, all encircled by a wall of ivory, supernaturally smooth and offering no grip to those who would climb it.

The monks of the tower, perhaps fifty Dragonblooded and as many mortals, spend most of their time in study, and are not concerned with proselytizing or enforcing the Prayer Calendar upon local spirits. However, they remain devoted to their Immaculate duty of protecting Creation, joining efforts to battle back incursions of the Fair Folk and the barbaric Claw Tribes, and launching Wyld Hunts against any Anathema that rise in the Southeast.

The manse itself is ancient, and an Immaculate monastery has existed within since before the Great Contagion, ousted only briefly in the face of the Balorian Crusade. The extreme distance of the monastery from the Palace Sublime means the Ivory Tower operates mostly independent of the Mouth of Peace, whose authority they accept (but of course, some doubters whisper, this has never been tested). Missives must travel a great distance between the Immaculate leadership and the Tower, the energies of the Wyld rendering even the magic of Charms somewhat unreliable. All of this combines to allow the monks to hold to more ancient traditions dating from the early Order, which do not align perfectly with the orthodoxy of the Blessed Isle (thus their focus on study and the Hunt rather than spreading the faith, or differing interpretations of the role of Salt Gods).

One thing that binds the Ivory Tower and the Palace Sublime tight, however, is the presence at the Tower of the Woven Scrolls, five scrolls said to have been penned by Mela the Immaculate Dragon of Air and accepted as part of the Immaculate Texts. Because these scrolls are present, the Tower is a pilgrimage site for Immaculate adherents seeking to see the various Texts first-hand, and each decade a few make the dangerous journey from the coast through the dangers of the Grass Sea to reach the Tower.

Over the centuries, the monks of the Tower have adopted an unusual tradition. The grasslands that surround them contain many dangers: Claw Striders are plentiful and hungry, the occasional Torpor Fly flitters this far south, and tribes of Lion Folk or other Fair Folk move through the grasses. Above, the giant insect known as the Soaring Mantis waits to snatch up prey. At some forgotten point in the past, the monks of the Ivory Tower began to domesticate those insects, the safe courtyards within their walled compound providing safe harbour for Mantis eggs that might otherwise be devoured by ravenous claw striders. The presence of trained Soaring Mantes not only deters other Soaring Mantes from ranging near the monastery, it also provides the monks with a form of transportation that lets them keep watch over the grasses below from the backs of their flying insects (their Mantes, draped in cloth ‘saddles’, able to bear two monks aloft. More than one Anathema ranging through the grasslands has discovered how effective this partnership can be, as a formation of monks unleashes its sorceries from the air before mantes and monks hit the ground to join the melee.