The Still-Heart Monks

In the high, wind-scoured mountains in northern Leoriel, there exists an ascetic order that has pursued a terrifying form of enlightenment: the Still-Heart Monks. They believe that emotion is the root of all suffering, chaos, and extra-planar encroachment. Their goal is to achieve a state of perfect, untainted logic by systematically and permanently purging themselves of all feelings. They achieve this through a brutal regimen of alchemy and ritualistic surgery, spending years ingesting carefully prepared solutions of mineral poisons and rare herbs that dull the passions. The final rite of initiation involves a procedure where a master of the order uses an enchanted silver scalpel to sever the specific nerves and aetheric channels within the brain that are believed to conduct emotion.

Those who survive are transformed. A Still-Heart Monk is incapable of feeling joy, fear, anger, or love. Their faces are placid, unreadable masks, and their voices are flat, uninflected monotones. They are beings of pure, cold intellect, able to analyze any situation without the taint of bias, sentiment, or morality. This, as expected, makes them excellent tools. Their services are often sought by kings, generals, and spymasters due to their ability to serve as a perfect, incorruptible advisors, judges who can pass sentence without pity, or strategists who can sacrifice thousands of lives without a moment’s hesitation if logic dictates it is the optimal path to victory. They are the ultimate pragmatists, the uncredited masterminds behind many historical events, but their counsel is a poisoned chalice. Their solutions are always efficient and often effective, but they are also utterly devoid of mercy, empathy, or any consideration for the human cost. They are a living embodiment of the grim principle that to perfectly understand the world, one must first cease to be a part of it.