The Monastery

Nomenclature
The Monastery is only really referred to as such by the unaware and the other two factions due to their having converted the inn they are in into one. It is a name they themselves have adopted while working in this foreign land. However, individuals know them to have been part of the School of Xi and will refer to them as the students of Xi, which is their proper name.

Appearance / Archetypes
Most of the monks of the Monastery wear simple robes by default; these being brown in color. Some do wear more saffron or brightly colored robes, however these are limited to those higher in the hierarchy or those that don armor.

History & Faction Hierarchy
The Students of Xi hail from the far east, where they practice and follow the teachings of Chang Xi, a holy man that had arisen several centuries earlier. Chang Xi’s teachings were simple: life is a giant wheel, at the end of which we exist. As the wheel turns, we live, we die, are reborn, live and die once more. Each revolution represents one cycle of our existence as living beings – be it as human, animal or something else entirely. For as long as we exist, we partake in the wheel until we reach enlightenment.

Suffering, happiness, anger, good, evil – all of it is different aspects that we see with each cycle; all of it is what we need to see towards our greater purposes, whatever they may be. His teachings are vast and many on a wide variety of subjects, but what matters is that after his death his followers setup a school where his teachings continue to be taught to this day – and a place from which the Monastery currently hails.

In terms of Hierarchy, the Monastery is divided largely by age and membership within the school. The Eldest are referred to as Brahmins (or Monks by the Sedairians citizens), often gaining the title after years upon years of not just study, but meditation and pilgrimages across the land. Below them are adepts, those in the “middle” stages as it were. The lowest rung on the ladders are pupils, essentially students just starting out on their journeys. Due to the nature of their arrival here at Sedaire, most of the group consists of Adepts, with one Brahmin – Kadesh – and a few pupils.

Philosophy / Paradigm
One of the founding and most basic principles of the School of Xi is that of Karma. Karma must always be kept in balance if one is to eventually attain enlightenment and break free of the wheel. The Monastery believe, however, that the machine underneath the city has caused the wheel to “Jam”, essentially stuck going back and forth on this one day and preventing people from dying.

This has largely caused the School to incur a significant amount of negative Karma, since one of their members was the one whom caused the entire mess to happen in the first place – and thusly they are here to right what has gone so horribly wrong even though, ironically, this comes at the cost of doing many smaller harms along the way.

But they are aware of such irony – indeed one of their founding philosophies is that of having a minimal footprint when it comes to such matters, which is the root of their entire paradigm of stealth and subtlety over overt action and brute force.

Motivation / Goals
As stated above, the Monastery’s main goal is to set right the wrongs they have caused here. The main way they intend to do this is by destroying the machine that is causing the entire thing to happen before the apocalypse occurs and it is too late. While they do not have any components with them right now, they use what resources they have and what they can steal from the Society to aid in this and get the wheel to continue moving. They are hoping to eventually build a bomb powerful enough to destroy the machine completely.

Relations to other Aware Factions
The Monastery largely ignores the Nihilists; preferring instead to use stealth to bypass them completely. What few interactions with the Nihilists have still been a bit better than the Society’s though, partially due to their neutral to good stance towards the unaware, sometimes helping the Nihilists protect them against the Society.

Their relations with the Society on the other hand are a bit more complicated. The Monastery sees the Society as fools that are a bit too self-absorbed – not to mention incredibly unscrupulous in what they desire for the machine. They generally focus on taking what magical materials they can from the Society but apart from that leave them well enough alone.

Relations to the Unaware
Unlike the Society or the Nihilists, the Monastery essentially ignores the unaware for the most part – this is partially due to the fact that they are foreigners in this land and thus have little familiarity with the locals. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t know everyone – indeed, after decades of being awakened, the Monastery do know a significant percentage of the city and the people that live in it everyday. On occasion they will aid unaware that have been duped by the Society, but apart from that there really isn’t much else.

Distribution
The Monastery has its HQ situated at the Kun-Lann Inn, within the docks southern sector of the city. Their influence can be found throughout the docks, while individual members attempt to infiltrate further up into the garrison and the industrial sectors to steal items from the Society as well as get to the wall.

Ending
The Monastery’s ending will involve the player slowly finding the pieces of and building the bomb needed to completely destroy the machine as well as a device that will protect him from its possible effects. After he has assembled these components, the Monastery will give him a method to be completely invisible, letting him sneak past the carnage assembled by the Society and the Nihilists and get into the wall.

When the player gets into the abyss, he sets the charges and sets it to explode before making a run for it out the elevator shaft and into the castle. As he reaches the top and the city outside, the charges explode, creating a massive earthquake and rumble. The explosion works as the player sees the clock strike 00:00 after centuries. The wheel of life has been fixed, much to the joy of the player and everyone around him.

This is temporary however, as instead of ticking forwards to 00:01, the clock suddenly begins to tick backwards to 23:59…and then 23:58 and so on. It accelerates and the player, much to his horror, watches as the city begins to rapidly run back in time, with the pace increasing with each second. For several seconds we watch as everything moves backwards around the player, whom for some reason is unaffected. After several moments we see the city having disappeared and now there being only the original settlers going back to their boats.

The player attempts to reach out for them – to stop them somehow but in the process the device the monastery had given him slips off, causing his bones to suddenly disintegrate and his body to simply vanish into nothingness as the ships disappear over the horizon.

Special Abilities / Tools
One of the main abilities of the Monastery is its command of the mental as well as martial arts. This focusing of the mind allows them to not only retain better information across resets, but gives them a sixth sense that lets them tell what exactly is different in a given scene. Additionally of all three factions, the Monastery probably has the greatest proportion of sane individuals, simply due to that mental discipline.

Combat Styles
Monastery combat is quick, decisive and stealthy. They focus primarily on hand-to-hand combat but also use throwing knives and disks depending on the target or using flanking maneuvers to gain the advantage. In all cases they utterly avoid direct combat as much as possible but still do lean towards higher fortitude scores/stats. While they may be able to escape a lot better than the Society, at the end of the day their light armor is still vulnerable to the heavy weapons of the Nihilists.

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