Cloister of Wisdom

The Cloister of Wisdom (alongside the Spiral Academy, Heptagram, and House of Bells) is one of the four 'Exalted' Schools of the Realm, though many at the Cloister eschew the title.

Located a mere day’s ride from Sion in Incas Prefecture, the school is operated entirely by the Immaculate Order and serves to train Dragonblooded and mortal alike in the ways of the Immaculate Order. This includes both mastery of theology and of the sacred styles of martial arts which perfect the soul in its present incarnation.

Life at the Cloister

The Cloister, at any time, is home to hundreds of students. Some of these are Dragonblooded, but some are also mortals seeking to perfect themselves. Dragonblooded at the Cloister learn the secret forms of Immaculate martial arts, and while some move on to become monks many return to secular life, putting their skills to use in service of the Legions, Thousand Scales, or Great Houses. Mortals who attend the Cloister are always bound to the path of the Immaculate clergy, for perfection of a mortal soul is not acceptable within the Perfected Hierarchy unless that soul is completely dedicated to the path.

Students rise with the sun and begin chores (backbreaking and menial), meditations, and learning. There are no assigned classes in the sense seen at many other schools, but a large number of teachers move about their offices or the grounds. Students must recognize their own weaknesses and seek out those teachers and classes that will help them improve themselves... learning how to do this is the first and most vital lesson on the path to self-perfection of the soul.

All students wear short-sleeved robes of light grey wool, bound with simple belts, in similar style to those of Immaculate postulants. They sometimes wear straw sandals but usually go without shoes. Furnishings about the Cloister are also simple, with students sleeping together in large dormitories, on woven rattan mats. Food is filling, but simple, with no meat and no alcohol, devoid of the complex flavours and luxuries of Dynastic fine cuisine. Students are not required to be celibate, but the choice to take lovers is often a sign that a student lacks focus and spiritual advancement, and their success at the Cloister becomes less likely.

Punishments for shirking duty or failure come from two sources. Infractions are punished by teachers assigning much heavier burdens of chores, locking a student in a meditation cell alone for several days so they might contemplate their misdeed and cure their erroneous thoughts, or using a wayward student as demonstration for some form of martial arts. Students who get involved in personal disputes with other students are permitted to resolve these through martial arts duels between the two parties.

Curriculum

There are two parallel curriculums at the Cloister: all students share classes and meditations on Immaculate Doctrine, but some amongst the Dragonblooded engage in the advanced and difficult meditations needed to begin taking in the forms of the Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wood Dragon Styles, while the remainder (Exalted or mortal) learn the simpler forms of Five-Dragon Style.

Layout

The Cloister is located within an isolated valley of Incas Prefecture. The school is massive, though it lacks external defenses.

The largest building is the central Temple Hall, containing a cavernous temple devoted to the five Dragons, capable of containing five hundred persons around a central altar and lit by both glowstones set in multicoloured chandeliers and light through five massive stained-glass windows, each depicting one of the Immaculate Dragons in a scene from the Immaculate Texts. Around the temple can be found private cells for individual meditation, as well as libraries of Immaculate scriptures.

Deep beneath the Temple Hall are restricted chambers where teachers practice advanced katas and meditations. These rooms also contain the Chamber of Records, a sealed depository for both rare Immaculate scriptures and heretical texts... students may request the former be lent out to them, but the latter are reserved for emissaries of the Palace Sublime or Office of Harmony.

Adjoining the Temple Hall are two other large buildings: one is the Hall of Masters, home to the quarters and offices of the Cloister’s teachers above a massive dining hall where all at the Cloister, be they student, teacher, or visitor, dine together. The other is the Garden Hall, surrounding a large meditation garden where a code of silence is enforced. The Garden Hall contains the bulk of the Cloister’s classrooms, and its expansive infirmary.

Separate from the three central Halls stretch the five Young Dragon Halls, each terminating in a temple to one of the Immaculate Dragons. These halls include large dormitory halls each capable of holding up to fifty students, though they are rarely full. A student’s dormitory is determined by the castings of an Immaculate astrologer the day they arrive at the Cloister, though often those entering in the same year will be grouped in the same Hall.

The five Young Dragon Halls are linked to the central buildings by paths of coloured marble. Between these paths, surrounding the center, are large and open practice yards: one of stone pillars, one of packed dirt, one of short grass, one of sand, and one sunken into the ground and filled with a shallow layer of water.

Descending into the Cloister’s valley is difficult, the walls steep and rocky, with a single path leading downward. Visitors pass through a small pavilion, which forms a bridge over a stream coursing down into the valley... they are expected to cleanse themselves with water from a bronze washbasin and the smoke of sandalwood incense before entering the school.

Graduation

A student is given seven years to learn from the Cloister. At any point within that time, the teachers may judge them to have mastered what the school has to teach and they will be announced as graduates that year. If the student does not achieve this in seven years, they are sent away and never permitted to return.

The annual graduation ceremony is often attended by important figures within the Immaculate Order, including the Paragon of Sextes Jylis, who will immediately accept into the Order any graduate who petitions for the tonsure.

Students

Over the centuries, the Cloister has produced a number of graduates who now serve in prominent roles within the Immaculate Order, and within the wider Realm. These include Cathak Cainan, Mnemon Caras, Ragara Ikkyu, Cathak Vessala, Mnemon Gitene, Peleps Deled.

More recent graduates include:

RY763 - Ledaal Xian, Lin Zexu, Soren Kavanagh, Cathak Ketsa, Cynis Jainisim

RY764 – Cathak Nadja, Mnemon Icheka, Mnemon Miasa, V’neef Aliset, Walking Crane, Striding Cloud.

RY765 - Mnemon Ashime.

The Forsaken Heresy of RY764

The most recent event of significance to occur at the Cloister took place at the end of RY764, mere hours after the year’s graduates had been declared. Ten senior monks of the Wyld Hunt had come alongside the Paragon of Sextes Jylis to the graduation ceremony, taking all twenty graduates who had taken the tonsure to join them in a Hunt against the fearsome Anathema known as the Bull of the North.

After the graduation, as those students who had not joined the Order made their departures from the valley in the footsteps of the Paragon, a terrible event occurred. Peleps Lyta was a mortal student at the Cloister, not well liked by any who knew her: her impatient violence and jealous hatred of those students blessed by the Dragons were barely concealed, and most thought she would either have proper respect beaten into her or would be expelled.

As a Wyld Hunt of thirty monks underwent its blessings and prepared for departure, it is said that Lyta erupted with a demonic golden light, her forehead gleaming with the mark of the Anathema Forsaken... her lust for power undeserved had caused her to steal the very power of the Unconquered Sun. Her screams of rage shook the valley, and her tiger-claws bit deep into the flesh of the assembled monks, taken by surprise that such an awful sin could occur on the very grounds of Wisdom’s Cloister.

The foul Anathema escaped the valley, bounding up the nigh-insurmountable slopes with ease as nearly all of the Cloister’s graduates were left dead or broken below. Chase was given, but Lyta could not be located, and many in the Hunt express certainty she has fled the Isle entirely to avoid Immaculate justice. With such high casualties and the need for the Hunt to seek out this new Forsaken, the operation against the Bull of the North could not join the War with the Bull and was called off.