Panarchia

In the southern reaches of the Rock Teeth Mountains lies a land scarred by something older than history. Legends tell of a battle in the sky, when the gods struck down a devouring thing that sought to consume the sun. Its broken body fell into the peaks, bleeding magic and madness into the stone. From that ruin rose the Panarchian Goliaths, a people whose very flesh carries the scars of that ancient fall.

The Bearing of the Pulse

Every Panarchian bears runes that shimmer faintly beneath the skin, patterns that shift like veins of ore in stone. They call this gift the Pulse, a resonance with the heart of the mountains themselves. To them it is not ornament but inheritance. The Pulse is read like lineage, its markings determining a goliath’s role in society. A child born with curling wave-like runes may be guided toward priestly duties, listening to the whisper of the stone. One marked with jagged lines may be raised to fight, their body trained to channel the mountain’s fury.

The guiding tradition of their lives is called the Bearing of the Pulse. To bear is to live in rhythm with the mountain: to wake and work by its silence, to shape one’s life around the pulse that beats beneath the stone. This is not worship in the Antiochene sense, nor a covenant like the Concordat’s oaths. It is a discipline that blends labor, prayer, and vigilance into one. Every strike of a pickaxe, every carved rune, every fortified wall is an act of alignment.

Settlements of Stone and Silence

Panarchian settlements cling to the sides of cliffs and crater rims, their structures carved directly from rock as though grown out of the mountain itself. Homes are narrow and angular, designed to withstand tremors and avalanches. Temples are vast hollows tunneled into the stone, lit by crystal veins that glow with an unearthly light. At night, the mountains hum faintly, and the runes on every inhabitant’s skin respond with a soft glow. Outsiders describe this as eerie. The Panarchians call it proof of their bond.

Every settlement is fortified, not against human armies but against what stirs below. They speak of tunnels that shift without warning, of whispers that echo from caverns thought long sealed. Their walls are lined not only with spears and rifles but with binding runes, wards etched in blood and stone dust. Children grow up tracing these symbols with their fingers, learning their shapes before they can walk. For them, defense is not a burden but the first language of life.

Faith Without Gods

Panarchians do not serve gods. They serve the mountain. They believe the Rock Teeth holds within it the remnants of the devouring thing and that its heart still beats in secret. Some say the Pulse is the mountain’s warning, teaching them to listen for the rhythm that will one day falter. Others claim it is the gift of the gods who struck the devourer down, a mark of their victory left in the blood of the people.

Their priests are not intermediaries with heaven but interpreters of stone. They read tremors like scripture, mark avalanches as omens, and listen to the resonance of the rock to divine their course. Sacrifices are not burned or bled but buried in the earth: iron, salt, and bone offered back to the stone. To be cut off from the mountain, whether by exile or by will, is to be severed from the Pulse itself. Few survive long in such a state.

The Vigil Beneath

Panarchians hold a grim conviction that the Falling was not final. They believe the devouring thing still stirs below, seeking once more to consume the sun. Their duty is to hold the line, to keep watch until the day the mountain breaks and the true battle resumes. This belief defines every aspect of their culture. Warfare is not conquest but vigilance. Children are trained not to raid but to endure sieges. Festivals are not for joy alone but for drills, testing the community’s readiness to withdraw into fortified hollows at a moment’s notice.

Yet the younger rune-bearers speak of dreams. They wake with visions of a mountain heart that beats louder every year, of stone that whispers not in warning but in invitation. Some say the devourer is not waiting to rise but already rising. Others fear the Pulse itself may not be a gift at all but the infection of that broken god, spreading slowly through bloodlines until the Panarchians themselves become its instruments.

Relations with the World

Few outsiders have seen a Panarchian city and fewer still are welcomed as guests. Traders of the Concordat speak of receiving iron and crystal in exchange for grain and timber, but always at fortified gates, never within the walls. Antioch respects the Panarchians’ discipline but considers their stone-worship dangerously close to heresy. Panarchians in turn see Antioch as too quick to raise the torch, too eager to burn what it does not understand.

What unites them with both powers is a shared conviction: survival at all costs. For the Panarchians, however, survival is not for themselves alone. They believe their watch is for the world entire. If the devourer rises again, it will not consume only the Rock Teeth but all of Masada. And so they keep the vigil, carving wards into stone, reading tremors like scripture, and bearing the Pulse in silence.

The mountains will break one day. The only question is whether the Panarchians will break with them or stand as the last wall between Masada and the dark.