Gulak

(adj: Gulaki)

History

• Debatably the first nation to have a metropolis (Thutot), the people of the nation spread word like wildfire of the miracle, drawing in pilgrims who they then charged for admission. In the process, Thutot became rich with relics and an appealing target, and so Gulak was attacked for its status. As peace was made, Gulak rebuilt while others progressed – so it never suffers any of the missteps the others had in their expansion. Indeed, instead it accepted refugees in this time. Though technology suffered some with the influx of new immigrants, culture flourished. Their expanding population and willingness to adapt successful ideas from elsewhere allow them to benefit more easily and in more situations than other nations.
• Gulak, Thutot especially, holds many types of relics – some of historical significance, some with connection to the Great Maker, but some that originated from within Creation – be it preserved plant or animal matter, firsthand drawings or ancient recording of songs, or the highly coveted dreamstones. They even hold a crystal that contains an advisor of indeterminate origin.
• Gunstar: Heavily overpopulated, and suffers all of the problems that come with that, minus the supply shortage.

Culture

• Alchemicals: “The free-spoken nation of Gulak presents something of a problem for traditionalist Champions. It is not uncommon to see an Exalt engaged in heated debate with a group of visiting pilgrims or even natives. Some Exalts of this nation feel somewhat bitter that their traditional benefit of freedom of expression and loosened social limitations are handed out freely to all visitors to Gulak. Others enjoy the ease of finding outlets for rigorous debate and simply wish the pilgrims who throng to the nation were less skittish about disagreeing with them.”
• “Though homogeneous by Creation’s standards, the Eight Nations contain countless subcultures, creeds and ethnic groups. Gulak alone encompasses more such groups than all the others combined. It’s a crazy-quilt of peoples drawn together by the promise of freedom and stitched into one society by millennia of history. This admixture has formed a cosmopolitan nation with a wealth of cultural and scholastic resources. It’s also created a nation riven by social fault lines, lacking conviction and weakened by decadence and corruption.”
• “Gulak has been a melting pot for millennia. Its people have always loved complexity and diversity; they pride themselves on melding the best ideas and traditions of the Octet into a superior whole. Their artistic tradition incorporates elements from every other, as does their cuisine. Even their language is polyglot: while all Autochthonia shares a single tongue, each nation has its own accents, slang and jargon, and Gulak absorbs them all.
• But the Gulaki aren’t as open as they like to think. Those who don’t assimilate remain on the outskirts of society, living in monocultural town-enclaves and urban ghettoes. Even the most gifted of these minorities rarely break through the glass ceiling into high-ranking positions held by members of more cosmopolitan elements of Gulaki society”
• “There are dozens of distinct cultural groups, or clades, in Gulak. . . . Each clade has evolved in its own direction over time. Citizens whose forebears arrived from the same city centuries or millennia apart often regard one another with more suspicion than do those with entirely unrelated origins, as their similarities throw their few differences into stark relief.
• The insularity of the clades affords their members a measure of privacy rarely found outside of the ranks of the regulators or the citizens of Kamak. While one’s habits and shortcomings may become common gossip within the precincts of a town or district, members of one’s clade will not share such details with strangers.”
• “Autochthonian families don’t fulfill the same social roles that they do in Creation, and Autocthonians don’t take on family names. In Gulak, clades fill the role of family or clan. Members of Gulak’s Tripartite precede their personal names with the name of their clade. The Populat of some clades do this as well; in other clades, they are not considered worthy of sharing their clade’s name with their own.”
  • Individual clades are detailed on p. 88, but many many of them do not easily translate over to Gunstar.
• “Gulak exhibits a clear split in attitudes between its cosmopolitan cities and its parochial towns. While members of many clades rub shoulders in each of the nation’s cities, most towns are provincial enclaves populated by citizens of a single clade. Their city-dwelling cousins unfairly view these towns as hotbeds of impoverished ignorance and clannish, loutish prejudice. In return, many town-dwellers see the cities as cesspools of affluent decadence whose inhabitants lack all conviction.”
• “At first glance, Gulak is more sartorially diverse than any other nation, drawing on a wide range of fashions. But this diversity conceals a certain rigidity; whereas the folk of nations like Yugash or Claslat may show individual senses of fashion, each Gulaki clade and sect has its own traditional apparel. Nonetheless, there are overall cultural trends at work.
• The native Gulaki have always favored heavy, intricately patterned garments. Gulak’s air tends to be cool, though never so cold as wintry Kamak. For this reason, long-sleeved coats are typically worn along with trousers and boots. The traditional Gulaki coat bears on its back a bold insignia indicating the symbol of the wearer’s clade. Forehead-revealing turbans and Sindhi caps are common headgear.
• Citizens commonly wear all sorts of religious paraphernalia appropriate to their personal creeds: medallions, amulets, icons, prayer beads and the like. Likewise, Tripartite members associated with paradigmatic schools may wear images indicative of their philosophical outlooks. As with the clade symbol, these items help like-minded Gulaki find one another in their nation’s crowded cities.”
• In formal situations they wear okina to differentiate rank (p. 89), and tattoos are common, some clades use them as rituals, others as one of the few personal things they can have in crowds.
• “Lectors are more numerous and more esteemed here than in other nations, and their training in creative fields often takes precedence over their religious education.
• Virtually every style of art—whether visual, literary or performing—to be found elsewhere in Autochthonia is practiced here. Indeed, some artistic fashions now extinct elsewhere remain alive in Gulak’s conservatories. Nonetheless, certain styles remain predominant, drawing on ancient Gulaki modes. In visual art as in costume, jewel-bright tones abound, as do intricate knotwork and lavish detail. Music is heterophonic and prone to improvisation; the theremin is especially popular.
• Gulaki art tends to be sacral in nature, as opposed to the ideological, statist art favored in places like Estasia and Yugash. Mystery plays are especially popular, being a key component of Gulak’s constant stream of religious festivals.”
• “The gastronomy of Gulak exceeds that of other nations in breadth and complexity. By taking in peoples from the other seven nations, Gulak absorbed both the immigrants’ regional delicacies and the techniques needed to create them, and their sophisticated chemical industry allows them to reproduce them all. Whole new culinary arts have flowered and withered here over the millennia. Now Gulak is acknowledged as the gourmet center of Autochthonia. Harvesters come from every nation to study the art and industry of cookery under Gulak’s master culinarians.
• Here, complex foods are not solely the domain of the Tripartite. Even the lowest of the urban Populat need eat nutrient paste only rarely. Visiting pilgrims from the other seven nations—not to mention members of Gulak’s countless heterodox sects—require a vast selection of festival foods, from noodles, soups and dumplings to rock candy, mochi and jelly sweets, and Populat aides hawk such delicacies from roving carts to any who want them. Overindulgence remains a sin, but it is more common and less aggressively censured than elsewhere.
  • Meat-eating is more common in Gulak than anywhere outside Claslat. Dozens of varieties of rat are bred by various clades for size, flavor and texture. Fat-tailed strains are especially prized. Cage-raised cockroaches are also delicacies; candied roaches are served whole, or the meat may be fried, steamed or smoked. Cockroach carapaces are pureed to thicken bisques.”
• “Most Gulaki try to show tolerance toward alien sexual mores. Visitors are rarely so accepting. Many pilgrims venerate Thutot while deriding her citizens as deviants and libertines.”
  • “An ancient tradition peculiar to orthodox Gulaki sects is that of shekeda, or sacred intercourse. As a rite of passage into adulthood and full responsibility, each young lector (known here as a shekedavi) anoints himself or herself with luminescent body paint and dances in a temple courtyard until approached by an interested citizen. The two retire to a divan within a curtained shrine to Kek’Tungsssha or Noi, there to perform the sacred act.”
• “Most members of the Populat—and the Tripartite, for that matter—attend sporting exhibitions, while the regulators keep watch at all such games to suppress outbreaks of rowdy violence. Gulaki sport is almost entirely team-based. Activities include races of running, climbing and swimming; ball games; games of skill; wrestling; formalized mock combat; and fights or races between trained rats. Teams are mustered both geographically by towns and urban districts, and ideologically by clades, sects and schools.”
• “Unsurprisingly for a nation built largely upon the pilgrim trade, Gulak is deeply devout. But that doesn’t mean its people are intolerant. Millennia of constant exposure to other denominations, combined with several religiously motivated wars—including civil wars—have left the Gulaki open-minded in religious matters and averse to sectarian strife. Many enjoy debating the validity and worth of one another’s creeds. Visitors are encouraged to join in such debate as long as they do not cross the line into harassment or proselytization.”
• In Vanilla, they directly worship the Divine Ministers more than any other nation.
• “Unlike more secular nations, life in Gulak is full of sacraments. Rituals are performed at every major step in a citizen’s life, from a child’s birth to the commitment of his mortal remains to the recycling conduits. Other sacraments include the implantation of the soulgem and its removal; achieving sexual maturity; gaining promotions; attending religious festivals and going off to war.
• Like so much else in Gulaki culture, religious services and sacraments are feasts for the senses. Gongs and bells are rung; sitars are played; hymns are sung by swaying congregations. Young cleric-acolytes carry bright rustling banners and bear smoking censers that reek of incense. Lectors daub the laity with brightly colored pastes infused with aromatic oils, then present them with a taste of sacred liquor in a chalice of jade.”
• While there are many sects for various towns and clades, the Gulaki clerics make sure they fit into the orthodoxy. Beliefs are examined for all eight nations in Thutot by legates from each, with Gulaki never holding a belief heretical if another nation believes it.
  • A few divergent but accepted sects are detailed on p. 91, but ehhh.
• Government officials tend to choose like-minded fellows regardless of qualification, leading to homogenized and under-qualified leaders.
• “Even with little private property and no money, Gulaki society is quite competitive. One cannot buy a better apartment or finer clothes or a private vehicle, but all of those things come with promotion, so the pressure to improve one’s station—either to have these things for their own sake or to keep ahead of the neighbors—is intense. This competitive element increases productivity, offsetting to some extent the corrupting effects of nepotism.
• Insofar as currency exists, it is in the form of favors. Citizens make deals for patronage, owing debts to their patrons in exchange for promotion. These clients then use what influence they have to support their patrons, covering up their patrons’ dealings and indiscretions.”
• They have a branch of Conductors who act as Reach Guides, and all children of the Tripartite spend some time as Docents. Most uniquely, once a year, a member of the Populat who has shown remarkable artistic talent is promoted to a lector, including modifying their soulgem at death.
• Alchemicals are treated very highly, almost worshiped, and Alchemicals who don't mesh with their home nation often find their way there.
• Gunstar: “Gulaki chefs are put through training regimens to make them the finest of any in the Realm, maximizing the consumption of the fertility drugs that every morsel of food is laced with. Music halls and grand poetry salons draw thousands of mortals to listen to talented lectors and Exalted performers, promoting Deliberative-approved doctrine with every showing. Nowhere else does mortal culture flourish as it does in Gulak—nor, for that matter, mortal population. So great is the nation’s overpopulation that entire sectors of its geomantic grid are dedicated to powering the spatial-folding technology built into its dormitories, compacting the living space of thousands of citizens into a building no larger than a single Populat apartment.”
• Gunstar: Though the overpopulation benefits the Exalted in the form of prayer, it has the obvious drawback that sickness spreads easily, and tensions between cultures clash. In such a large group, traitors are often able to hide even easier, and there is simply too much for the Void Hunt to find.

Physical Descriptions

• “Artificial incense and synthetic spices. Bustling urban plazas packed with polyethnic crowds, their jostling sleeves tinkling with icons, their coats marked with the sigils of their clades. Endogamous towns whose walls are strung with machine-stamped prayer strips that flutter like war banners. Raucous religious festivals where millennia-old reliquaries are paraded through the streets. Shrines of a dozen denominations piled atop one another like wedding gifts. A temple prostitute clad in skintight silver and bioluminescent body paint. Philosopher-aristocrats gathered in an atrium of plastic and bronze, listening to the words of the master beneath a stylized jade tree.”
• “Gulak is contained within a cluster of over a hundred spherical chambers gathered like a bunch of grapes. These chambers are generally two to five miles in diameter, and even the largest—the central chamber containing the metropolis of Thutot—is less than thirty miles across. Seven other major cities are located at the nation’s edges, either within their own sizable chambers or embedded into the nation-cyst’s outer wall.
• Most of Gulak’s smaller chambers contain a single town apiece. These are connected to the nation’s cities by a looping network of pneumatic trams. Vast artworks cover the walls and ceilings of these chambers: conduits daubed with luminescent paint to form elaborate glowing filigree; bas-relief gearworks picked out in gold leaf; mosaics of colored mirrors that shimmer like the sea; artificial waterfalls flanked by swirling patterns meant to evoke the legendary “foliage” of Creation.
• The small size and curved walls of the town-chambers requires efficient use of space. Streets become stairs as they run up the sloping floors of a town, then give way to elevators going still higher. Balconies jut out from structures set in the upper walls and ceiling. Towers rise dozens of stories into the air, their upper levels linked by covered bridges of glass and steel.”
• Gunstar: “The air in Gulak is thick with hymns to the Chosen. Cathedral-complexes hold hourly masses, empowering the Exalted with mortal worship in accordance with the catechism of the Deliberative’s prayer calendars. While the temples of the Chosen are found in every city of the Realm, the nation-district of Gulak has been designed purely as an optimized power-source.”

Cities

Thutot: 'The First City.' (Metropolis, originally Thousand-Handed Triumphant Ordinator, Starmetal caste)

• “Thutot is a spiderweb, an intricate filigree of starmetal and steel, a sparkling rainbow-tinged mandala. Her delicate spires rise like needles through webs of causeways and bridges, their elongated windows shining with inner light. Where other cities are claustrophobic, Thutot seems even larger from within. Her open plan reveals new vistas at every turn: steeples and minarets, arches and buttresses, plazas and amphitheaters. And people are everywhere—commuting, working, praying, or merely gaping at this miracle of the Machine God.
• Though Thutot’s structure is airy and spare, it still makes efficient use of space. The tallest towers stretch up-ward for thousands of yards. Monorail routes crisscross the gaps between structures; high-ranking Tripartite members employ aircars for even swifter transportation. Stellate pod-chambers, designed to provide additional housing or work space without requiring the construction of new buildings, cluster like glittering burrs along the flanks of towers and hang suspended from the undersides of railways.”
  • There's a good section about the city's culture (p. 93), but a gem worth bringing up regardless is “Lectors put on impromptu artistic performances, ambushing passersby with art and wonder.” There's also two boss charms detailed.
• “Thutot is the unquestioned center of Gulaki religious and political life. Both the grand autocrat and the high celebrant live and work there. As to the Great Councilors of the Sodalities, the leadership of the Harvesters is traditionally seated in Mogera. Other cities have greater or lesser claims on the other Great Councilor positions.”

Mogera: 'The Gateway to Gulak.' (Patropolis, Moonsilver caste)

• “Unlike the spiderweb towers of Thutot, . . . Mogera comprises a single shining structure. A score of tram terminals, their rounded walls bright as mirrors, spill forth from the silver mass of the city’s main body like the limbs of a nautilus reaching out from its shell. Most of Mogera is invisible from outside, however; the city has burrowed into the wall of its cyst-chamber and grown out into the body of Autochthon proper.
• Countless curving corridors twist and interweave like veins through Mogera’s innards, no two entirely alike, following no obvious logic in their layout and structure. Domed courtyards and plazas bulge throughout the labyrinth. These have ceilings ablaze with artificial light, walls lined with multi-level mezzanines and floors broad enough to contain masses of smaller structures. There are no navigable grids of corridors; Mogera’s layout is intuitive to natives but inscrutable to visitors, who easily become lost without guidance.
• Mogera is no mass of soulless metal. Indeed, the marks of humanity are everywhere upon him. Bright banners flap and crackle in the updraft from his vents. Posters for sporting events and lector-performed artistic pieces are pasted haphazardly over his walls.”
• Again, two interesting charm details on p. 94. Wish more did this.

Sata Ka'est: Town.

• "Two massive conduit bundles, each wide as a city block, pass through a three-mile-diameter chamber. One cuts across horizontally; the other rises vertically from the carpet of manmade structures forming the town of Sata Ka’est. The bundles meet at the center of the chamber in a snarl of junctions and valves that constantly hiss with jets of steam. That snarl crawls with Populat workers, as do the stairways, ladders and elevators that link the snarl with the town below.
• Sata Ka’est was founded by the Sahima clade when their pacifist forebears emigrated from Estasia. As the Sahima refuse to use lethal force, regulators of other clades have traditionally been assigned here. The two groups maintain an uneasy coexistence, with the Sahima resenting their protectors and the regulators viewing their hosts as feckless. A few rare Sahima do become regulators, though this puts them at odds with the traditions and beliefs of their kin.”

Mula Charvaka: 'The Divine Machine.'

• “The Divine Machine hovers at the center of a brass-walled chamber one mile in diameter. Nine hundred feet tall, one hundred wide and forty thick, it is composed of burnished indigo metal laced with the Six Magical Materials. Susurrant Essence flows writhe through the air just above its surface; these occasionally discharge into the chamber wall with blinding, deafening flares. Twenty-five cylindrical pedestals lined with prayer consoles rest on the floor of the chamber. They are connected to the Machine by braided starmetal cables that ripple loosely overhead with the snaky, dreamlike motion of long hair drifting in underwater currents.
• At the dawn of Gulaki history, the Rarata clade claimed the honor of tending Mula Carvaka. It is their holiest place; Populat workers are ritually purified before they approach the prayer consoles, and a Rarata preceptor with theotechnical training is always on hand to supervise the sacred work. Entering the chamber for other purposes is forbidden.
• The National Tripartite Assembly has humored the Rarata for millennia. But people are agitated over the resource crisis and recent Estasian and Sovan jingoism, and the Assembly deems it unwise to press the latest wave of immigrants into close quarters in Gulak’s crowded cities. They have zoned the periphery of the Machine’s chamber for residential use by Sovan expatriates. The Rarata are reacting poorly to this indignity.”

People of Note

Akumyo: The alien spirit within the yasal crystal.

• In Vanilla, it claims to hold knowledge of barriers between worlds, promising to help them pierce the Seal. However, a possible hook is that it uses them to open it somewhere else, if you know what the insinuation is (probably Malfeas).
• Actually a decently fun hook for Vanilla, but probably can't translate well.

Rarata Shernasha: High Celebrant of Gulak.

• Rising in age and portraying herself as a moderate approachable by all, she uses this to play political opponents against one another. This keeps peace, but only due to her personal management, and as she is approaching the end of her life, this will not perpetuate itself and Gulak will deal with the fallout.

Tal Taush: Harvester Guru

• A rising star among Harvesters, he joined Domadamod in the Far Reaches. Ten years later, he returned to Thutot, wiser and closer to the Machine God. Though not actively seeking change, when people ask his experiences, he tells the truth – even Domadamod sees anend to Autochthon's resources, that recycling will not postpone. Leading the preceptors and clerics wonder: can the truth be heresy?

Yali Vekitat: Conductor Councilor of Mogera.

• Part of a Sovan clade who believes unity is necessary, but she hears of a Sovan invasion and wonders if it's worth it.
  • Not terribly useful, SIGH.

Rovuna: Populat artist.

• A middle-aged shift chief who has created dozens of new inspirational songs over the years to raise her crew's morale. She was to be raised to a lector, but she refused, seeing caste-breaking as a violation of her creed. Worse yet, she did so publicly, causing the lectors great loss of face.

Sahima Amat: 'The Gulaki Messiah.'

• A mere child, born six years ago in Sata Ka'est with shining eyes and crystal hair, she is the fruit of Kadmek, most favored Divine Minister among the Populat. Though young, she is already inspiring is her beauty, serenity, wisdom, and prophecy. Many in her clade worship her, and she is quick to remind them that only the Great Makers and his ministers are due. Others still, both inside and outside of her clade, are eyeing her for political use.
  • This is actually one of my favorite hooks in the Vanilla because there's so much that can be done, and in the hustle and bustle of the Gunstar it's even more fun.

Blissful Jade Artisan: Agent of Change, Jade caste of Mogera.

• Finding the corruption endemic in the government unsatisfying, she applied social pressure in Mogera's Tripartite to make it more meritocratic. Successful in this, she moves on to make it more democratic now. Moonsilver and Soulsteel caste of the state are watching her, wondering if she needs to be dealt with, or if she needs to be followed.

Censorious Principle: Honorary Preceptor, Moonsilver caste of Thutot.

• Tasked with keeping an eye out for heresy in the city's philosophical schools and religious sects, he possess intellect and wit that do not get much exercise in his spying. Tiring of mild-mannered masquerades, he's decided to start incorporating more life and drama into them.

Voice of Authority: Gremlin Hunter, Soulsteel caste.

• “Voice is of the opinion that life is best enjoyed when one has a clear view of its possible end.”
• Created to wipe out a massive Voidbringer cult which he did in two years, Voice found his calling not in the hunt but in the battle. He loves being a champion, he loves fighting gremlins, and does it so well he only bothers to keep track of how many Apostates he's laid down permanently in the sea of gremlins he's violently waded through. “He has fought menacing rogue Exalts such as Clambering Horror Mechanism and Ultimatum of Shadows to a standstill more than once, and has successfully killed Apostates with the aid of his assembly.”
• Just as much as he loves the work of a champion, he so too enjoys the celebrity. While in Gulak, he is known for either seducing young Tripartite members or neophyte Alchemicals if not publicly promoting himself in parades and festivals. “Popular as he is in Gulak, most of its Champions and senior Tripartite members regard him with a grudging resentment—while he may be effective, his self-assured arrogance and habit of creatively interpreting his orders have made few friends.”
  • Stats on p. 135, kinda like a First Age Ma-Ha-Suchi.

Dreadful Adjudicator of Law: 'The Law,' Soulsteel caste.

• “Adjudicator rarely speaks save to issue warnings or demand surrender, and he never repeats such demands. Appeals to mercy or leniency find no purchase with the Sentinel, who expediently enforces the letter of the law. The only emotion he has ever been known to show in public has been impatience, and that only when faced with attempts to resist arrest. Then there is a metallic clang as the arms of a crossbow unfold and lock above his wrist. He has been known to observe that it is difficult to run away with a dart transfixing one knee.”
• Few see behind the armor, and those who do say though he is beautiful, he is still cold.
• But occasionally, he disappears from contact, only to come back after crushing an organization from the inside. This is one of those times, but strangely, he has fallen in love with his target, and in love with his own disguise. He hopes to convince her to give up his radical ideals and become a law-abiding citizen, an act that has stalled his operation, but he finds he cannot give up this dream.
  • Scroll: Stats on p. 159.

Food Processing and Reclamation Center 89: What it says on the tin. (Alpha-2)

• Known to his co-workers as '89,' the animating intelligence for the center is a minor celebrity in the city of Kazahn. He showed surprising wit and a loving singing and speaking voice, and was authorized to pursue a second career as a talk show host on the local audio station. For the last hour of every daily shift, he entertains listeners with song, poetry, and interviews with local personalities. He does not allow controversial material to interfere with the entertainment, and the entertainment does not interfere with his primary job.
• Unfortunately, he has an unknown glitch (even to himself), where whenever he hears Ku's name, he shuts down a purification process for four seconds, leading to five deaths in the past three months. Worse yet, Ku's feast day in two months away, and his name is likely to crop up as it approaches.
  • I actually really like this guy, obviously his hook doesn't directly translate over very well but a lot of fun in there to consider.
  • Alchemicals: Stats on p. 61.