География и сравнение редакций
Пневма появилась только в 3 редакции.
Белостенье, Уолпорт и Дорога
До этого дорога из Белостенья к южному берегу приводила в некий Wallport ( Exalted 2e - The Compass of Terrestrial Directions Vol. 5 - The North, p.24)
Wallport
At its southern terminus, the Traveler’s Road enters another circuit of white granite walls: Wallport, Whitewall’s filthy, stunted brother. These walls are only seven yards high and two yards thick, with a third of the circle cut off by the black basalt cliffs of the coast. The Essence-powered elevators that once moved people and cargo between the city and the harbor no longer function. Instead, steps and ramps descend about 20 yards to a lower city built on the narrow strip of waterfront.
Upper Wallport was a wealthy and beautiful town during the First Age, while Lower Wallport was as seedy as any waterfront in Creation. The old walls remain, but now, both halves of the town abound in brothels, saloons and gambling dens. The harbor can accommodate just four large merchant ships at a time, which prevents Wallport from growing any larger. Many ships have sunk while waiting their turn out in the stormy Northern sea.
About 2,000 people live in Wallport—mostly stevedores, barkeeps, prostitutes and other people who cater to the ships that come to trade with distant Whitewall. Men outnumber women more than three to one. Most Wallport folk come from Whitewall, either willingly or through exile. They are a rough lot, often drunk or drugged when they aren’t working. Every Whitewaller knows that Wallport is a cesspit for dumping malcontents and failures. The town guards ignore most crimes but deal harshly with anyone who threatens Whitewall’s commerce.
The cesspit analogy is more than metaphor, too. Half a mile west of Wallport, a large pipe spits Whitewall’s sewage into the sea, washed out by the runoff from the baths and the city water system. The sewage from 700,000 people makes Wallport stink. The Essence converters along the 700-mile pipe that once transformed raw sewage to a pure and sparkling waterfall have not functioned since the time of the Great Contagion.
К слову, сама дорога необычная (p.23)
THE TRAVELER’S ROAD
In the Old Realm, the road from Whitewall to the Inland Sea coast was called the Holy Road. Nowadays, people call it the Traveler’s Road or the Great Northern Road. At 20 yards wide, it remains the largest road in the North. Its white granite pavement shows little wear despite centuries of use. Bridges cross a few small streams along the way. The blessing on the road keeps it relatively warm in the depths of winter, as if the sun shone on it all the time, and the road stays free of snow, ice and debris despite the fiercest storms and blizzards. Every 40 yards, the road runs between pairs of stone pillars topped with inward-facing crescents. These crescents once lit the roadway, but the enchantment stopped working centuries ago.
RULES OF THE ROADAny human who commits violence while on the Holy Road—Exalted or not—suffers a Compulsion effect to kill himself by hanging, while the dead are compelled to accept Lethe and Fair Folk are compelled to abandon their corporeal forms and depart Creation. There is no avoiding the curse: Setting foot on the road means accepting the terms of the safeconduct pact. Violators can resist by spending one Willpower point per hour. The Exalted and spirits break the Compulsion after four hours. Mortals, the dead and the fae must spend eight Willpower to free themselves. If they lack sufficient Willpower… too bad. Even success means losing a dot of permanent Willpower, from the terrible struggle. The roadside pillars once did more than illuminate the Traveler’s Road. Their golden glow also seared the dead and undead as an environmental effect (2A/action, Trauma 5). Each pair of lights can be considered a one-dot artifact for purposes of repairing them. They must remain attached to the road, though—they do not function anywhere else.
Пневма
Упоминания Пневмы в Exalted 3e Core, p.83
Quote
One thousand Immaculate temples gleam in the port city of Pneuma, their façades layered with arabesques. Bells ring; prayer wheels spin; the drone of sutras fills the air. Crowds part to make way for lines of monks as they pace from station to monastery to shrine, in an endless cycle of devotions to the little gods of the North.
Pneuma’s greatest temple, the Nail of Truth, is a looming tower of blue-white marble that overshadows the rest of the city. Carved from a single monolithic mass of stone, legend says that Mela hurled it from the sky like a spear to crush an Anathema beneath it. The Nail is off-limits to mortal petitioners, for it’s there that Northern gods negotiate with Immaculate lamas over their place in the Order’s calendar.
It is known that the Wyld Hunt maintains a prison beneath the Nail where captured Anathema are held for transport to the Blessed Isle. It is said to be a place of inquisition and torture, where the sutras of the Immaculate Dragons burn in the cursed flesh of the reviled, marking them as unclean. What is not known is that the Sidereals have long used the Nail of Truth for the processing and forceful recalibration of illegal Exigents.
Далее, более развернуто в EX3 The Realm, p.157
Pneuma
Few cities in all the Realm are as thick with Immaculate temples and religious devotion as sacred Pneuma. The Nail of Truth at its heart — that marmoreal monolith said to have been cast from the sky by Mela to crush an Anathema beneath its weight — has been a site of veneration and pilgrimage for Dragon-Blooded since the days of the Shogunate. Today, it’s the beating heart of the Immaculate Order’s presence in the northern Threshold. But not all is serene in blessed Pneuma. The city is also key to the Realm’s military presence in the North. Now, legions and Order are at war for the city’s soul.
Пневма-сатрапия в книге “Царства”
A City Inspired
The Immaculate Order permeates the city. Postulants of the Order — from sons of peasants to daughters of queens — enter Pneuma’s gates to begin their novitiate, passing itinerant monks departing for distant lands. Abbots and temple matriarchs contemplate the Order’s needs in high-walled monastic gardens. Order-run orphanages, almshouses, and workhouses accommodate thousands of the impoverished and the invalid, while shikari train for the Wyld Hunt in the Nail of Truth’s heights.
When the Realm besieged the city, Immaculate monks opened the gates to her legions. House Madun, a cadet brach (1) that immigrated to the newly conquered territory, soon found itself bent to the Order’s will. Today, Pneuma’s archimandrite controls the succession, naming each new prince when the old one abdicates or dies. Her mission exacts a share of local taxes, supporting the Order’s public works and social welfare efforts. The current prince, Madun Jakath, was selected for both piety and lack of ambition, and though she’s not quite a figurehead for the Order, she poses them no obstacle.
Esprit de Corps
Pneuma esteems the Realm’s legions almost as highly as the Order. When the Anathema Jochim rampaged2 across the North two centuries ago, Pneuma was spared his wrath only through the legions’ courage and tenacity. House Tepet, which held the 3 satrapy, built upon this goodwill, making Pneuma the staging ground for house legions en route to military campaigns throughout the North. The legions’ presence has always been a source of tension between local Tepet leadership and the Order. Legionnaires are predisposed to heretical worship of the warrior-avatar Mela, and House Tepet’s Melaism and Shogunate-era spiritual traditions only exacerbate this tendency. Monks’ challenges to heresy often escalated to teahouse brawls and street duels, each side seeking to prove their faith through victory.
EX3 The Realm, p.145
Satrapies are states that have sworn fealty to the Empress, and through her, to the Scarlet Realm. Some few states — particularly those with powerful enemies such as Lunars — enter this arrangement eager to shelter beneath the empire’s wing. Others succumb to overwhelming financial pressure, or to military invasion. When a state’s leadership is too stubbornly independent, assassins and Great House–funded revolutionaries can make room for more pliable leadership.
Not every satrapy was a state before its subjugation. In some cases, the Realm carves an extant nation into multiple satrapies. In others, the Realm merges multiple city-states into a single satrapy. And sometimes the Realm establishes a colony, or impresses nomadic peoples into permanent settlements. However it came to kneel, a satrapy agrees to abide by Imperial law, and receives the protections granted thereby.
Satrapies have several broad responsibilities as Realm tributaries. They may retain any governmental system capable of maintaining order, but must accept a Dragon-Blooded overseer — called a satrap — and a military garrison. Satrapies embrace the Immaculate Philosophy as their state religion, and are expected to surrender their former modes of worship and offer full support to Immaculate Order activities. Provinces must support Wyld Hunts in particular, and report any Anathema presence to their satraps. Finally, satrapies provide their Dragon-Blooded overlords with regular tribute — massive quantities of valuables, materials, and hard currency. The Empress often demanded specific tributes to satisfy the Realm’s needs, manipulate satrapial economies, or encourage aggression against neighbors with desirable goods. The Dragon-Blooded hunger for jade above all else, but other currencies like silver and cash help Dynasts and legionnaires operate in the Threshold.
Winds of change
After the Tepet legions’ downfall, House Ragara claimed Pneuma — in part because the house founder, Ragara, had retired there — striking a deal to unofficially acquire administrative and tribute rights to the satrapy in exchange for writing off debts House Tepet could no longer repay. Centuries of housing and accommodating legions make it an ideal staging ground for Ragara Banoba’s plan to season his new house legions by deploying them to the Threshold, but local Immaculates draw little distinction between them and the old legions — the tendency towards Melaist heresy may be lesser, but it’s still there.
The avaricious new satrap, Ragara Kiris, has little understanding of, or concern for, the long history between Pneuma’s satraps and archimandrites. This has led her into conflict with arrogant archimandrite Mnemon Selima, who expects to retain all the political power she held under House Tepet’s reign. When House Ragara negotiated the transfer of Pneuma, it also ousted its V’neef garrison commander through well-placed bribes in the Deliberative, replacing her with the foppish Ragara Misati. Chosen more for loyalty than skill, his attempts at maintaining peaceful relations between the Order and the Ragara legions have proven unsucessful. Legionnaires and monks have clashed in the streets more in the last year than in the last decade, and more radical members of the Order urge Selima to overthrow the Ragara satrap in a theocratic coup.
House Ragara, however, has interests other than governance. The dungeons beneath the Nail of Truth hold Anathema imprisoned by Wyld Hunts, Exigents undergoing reconditioning at the hands of Kerlei the Chain (p. 100), and perhaps even darker secrets. The house’s inner circle seeks to claim whatever forbidden powers lie buried beneath the Nail, and would gladly sacrifice Kiris to the Order’s censure if it let them seize control of that unholy power.
Kerlei the Chain
Kerlei the Chain is the Chosen of Zhieka, Who Binds the Heart in Steel, a god of righteous imprisonment. Her sealing arts have fettered raksha princes in chains of living iron and immured heretics in dungeons conjured from their own nightmares; her baleful mien has driven even the hardest hearts to repent. For decades, Kerlei has been warden of the prison beneath the Nail of Truth, in holy Pneuma (p. 156). Here, Sidereals imprison Exigents of inauspicious origins, those Chosen by forbidden or criminal gods. Here, these illicit Exigents are forcefully purified under Kerlei’s supervision, either reconditioned to loyally serve the Immaculate Order or sent to atone for their sins in their next life. Kerlei’s Exaltation has not prolonged her lifespan, and in her old age she seeks an apprentice to take on her duties.
Life in Pneuma
When House Madun and its mortal entourage took command of old Pneuma half a millennium ago, they brought a slew of cultural and social elements from the Blessed Isle of their day, and these still influence the city’s mortal elites. Pneuman patricians speak an archaic dialect of High Realm, wear styles passé for centuries in the Imperial City — most notably their comically tall hats — and serve in ministries modeled on the Thousand Scales. Although farms do produce oats and barley, the rural peasantry’s agricultural output is geared heavily toward sheep farming. Well suited to Pneuma’s hilly environs, sheep provide milk, mutton, wool, sheepskin, parchment, and vellum. The city’s workshops turn out woolen and leather garments for the legions’ winter gear, and writing material for the city’s ministries and the Order’s libraries. Hunters and trappers range afield for pelts to fill the aristocracy’s craving for fur garments.
Neighbors
The port of Gildei has been dead for two centuries, murdered by the Anathema Jochim as a warning to others who’d oppose his dominion. It remains a blight on the landscape, its ruins haunted by thousands of hungry ghosts. None but the most reckless scavengers and outlaws dare travel within a day’s ride, and passing ships keep well clear of shore.
The Dragonguard of the Sacred Waters [of Sextes Jylis] (p. 77) rules the Monastic States of Berzen and Jagelloc In the aftermath of devastation wrought by the Anathema Jochim, the Dragonguard unified villages and towns he’d decimated, installing themselves as temporal rulers. Their theocratic governance makes them natural allies of Pneuma’s Immaculate Order. Like her recent predecessors, the Dragonguard’s Blue Lotus General rules with a firm hand. City streets here follow a military encampment’s grid; fortalices dot rural roads, taxing merchants and dissuading bandits; the Berzen docks host Dragonguard naval vessels and customs offices. But the General grows old, and feuding over the succession has already begun.
Though nominally under Pneuman authority, the tiny, fragmented Vichas Principalities retain effective independence of their highland domains, maintaining ancestral charters tracing back centuries to long-defunct Shogunate successor states. Their feuds support a warrior caste given to mercenary work and to sheep-raids into Pneuman pastureland. The Tepets once used these raids to practice rapid deployment, drawing out raiders to fight in the open rather than in mountainous terrain. With the Ragara garrison proving unfit to contest these raids, the Vichas warriors grow more aggressive.
Загадочный Анафема Йохим
war against the Anathema Jochim (RY 578-585). Императрица увела даже часть легионов из Ан-Тенга (юго-запад), из-за чего он провел один год свободным от сатрапской власти.
письмо Тепета Арады из Dragon-Blooded, p.134
Dragon-Blooded, p.134
Fear-Eater was a Deceiver [каста Затмения; это один из соратников Быка Севера]. He didn’t have the talent Jochim or the Bull had, of training men to be fierce and fearless in weeks, so he took a more literal view of things.
Doesn’t matter what happens now,” he said. “Yurgen will snap your soldiers like dead branches.” He pinned Tepet Nezurin with subtle magics, punched through jade armor like water and consumed her heart with a fiery mandala of sunlight. “Maybe,” I answered through the sorrow of losing a Hearthmate, “Jochim said that before I took his head, and he was twice the fucking soldier you are. How will you fare?”
Footnotes
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cadet houses — families descended from the Empress and thus part of the Dynasty, but not part of any Great House. Granting or removing recognition of cadet house status, as with Great House status, was the prerogative of the Empress alone ↩
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неизвестно, кем из возвышенных он был; принял смерть от Тепета Арады, который этим сильно прославился.
Хедканон: возвышение Йохима - рассвет, позднее передалось Юргену Канеко ака Быку Севера. ↩ -
Satrapies are states that have sworn fealty to the Empress, and through her, to the Scarlet Realm. EX3 The Realm, p.145 ↩