A Manual on Essential Techniques in Eight Sections

attributed to the Immaculate Dragon Pasiap

Ten thousand arguements we have heard that in the beginnging Pasiap was an engineer. And many of us have read so often of his humble origins that we ceased to question our beliefs. But no one ever seems to notice that the instruments of correction are the circumference of the wheel; that the man who built the wheel was undoubtedly a student of Pasiap too; that the man who hammered the nails, was as much an engineer as well. Until today few seem even to have noticed that although Pasiap was a "humble engineer", the only tool scripture gives us made by his hand was not a winch nor a lathe, but a whip

- From the verbal arguments of Nestor Mo Zi, on the Twenty-Fourth Day of Deliberations, Conclave of Crystal

A Manual on Essential Techniques in Eight Sections is a series of journal entries entailing the reconstruction of infrastructure in the central provinces of the Blessed Isle. The chapters are each a treatise on the nature of the perfect village, commingling religious lessons on the correct thought required of both officials and peasants with simple diagrams for efficient roadplans and building huts. It is attributed to the personal hand of the Immaculate Dragon Pasiap, an account of his trials shortly after the great war against the Anathema completed, though there are many both in and outside the Order who dispute it's place as a canonical text.

The world disarrayed. Roads split from upheavals of earth. Grand bridges fallen, stone corroded under tides of torment. Fell palaces of the Anathema ruined, but so too were the shelters of my people. Everywhere mortals set piteous hands of bone and flesh to the righting of things, yet their roads of dirt washed away under Danaa'd tears, their wooden bridges broke at Mela's cry, and straw roofs lit at Hesiesh's touch. They had forgotten the path of making.

In this time I came to the foot of the Mountain, for all spreads from the center. And at the foot of the Mountain I found a village. I asked "Who governs here?" and all but one cowered at the call. This one answered that no one ruled, that the people governed themselves. But anarchy is not governance but the lack of it. Anarchy precedes all governance.

So began the tutelage of my seventh pupil.

- Excerpts from A Manual on Essential Techniques in Eight Sections ---